CLEVELAND MASS SHOOTING: An hour of terror: what happened when 10 gunmen entered a Joburg settlement killing 12

A heavily armed gang of 10 suspects opened fire indiscriminately inside the gated Jumpers informal settlement on Tuesday night. As Gauteng police launch a massive manhunt, traumatised residents recount an hour of terror amid suspected ties to illegal mining.

Just before midnight on Tuesday, 9 June 2026, gunshots erupted through Jumpers informal settlement in Cleveland, Johannesburg.

Speaking to Daily Maverick at the scene of what has now been classified as a mass shooting, Jumpers resident Gugu Magaqa said the gunfire rang for more than an hour before an eerie quiet fell over the settlement. The latest mass shooting resulted in the death of 12 people. Earlier reports indicated that nine people were injured. However, during a walk-through of the informal settlement on Wednesday morning, Gauteng Police Commissioner Lieutenant-GeneralTommy Mthombeni was approached by another wounded victim, bringing the total of those injured to 10 at the time of publication

“Insane, heartless and barbaric.” These are the words Mthombeni used to describe what lay before him during his visit to the crime scene on Wednesday morning. “You could see the way they were moving; they just entered and started shooting.”

Preliminary investigations have revealed that at least 10 suspects entered the gated informal settlement at about 11.10pm on Tuesday after being dropped off at an Astron petrol station across the road.

While many residents were visibly traumatised and apprehensive about speaking, a woman who asked not to be named told Daily Maverick that the gunmen weaved through the settlement with purpose, shooting indiscriminately.

Pointing to a clearing outside her door, she said: “My next-door neighbour was shot here. He ran and hid in his house, but they shot him again.”

She told the publication that the man survived and was taken to hospital.

Daily Maverick saw a room near a tavern where some of the bloodshed occurred. The floor was soaked in blood and marked with bloodied bare footprints. A mattress on the ground was also bloodstained.

There were also bullet casings littering the ground of the taped-off maze-like informal settlement.

Standing in the doorway of her informal dwelling, Magaqa showed Daily Maverick a hole in her wall, where a bullet had pierced it.

“I was sleeping when I suddenly heard one gunshot, then another. I just got under my bed and hid. All I was thinking was that I don’t want to die,” she said, describing what unfolded the previous night.

She said she only emerged from under her bed when she heard a frantic knock at her door. Standing there w