Maverick News

Cape Town shootings — ‘unimaginable sadness’ as boy, 4, murdered two years after sister killed

17 Feb 2025

Four-year-old Davin Africa was murdered while sleeping in his Cape Town home a few days ago, barely two years after his 12-year-old sister was killed. Both were shot. Their murders emphasise how ceaseless gang violence around the city is claiming children’s lives.

Davin Africa was excited about his fifth birthday.

He hoped for a Spider-Man-themed party and to dress up as the superhero.

But about three days before his birthday, Davin was murdered — he was shot on Friday, 14 February 2025, while sleeping in his home in Happiness Street in Wesbank, about 30 kilometres from Cape Town’s city centre.

Barely two years earlier, in November 2023, his 12-year-old sister Kelly-Amber Koopman was murdered in the same area in a shooting that happened at night while she was outside during a power cut.

The siblings add to an ever-increasing murder toll involving children who have been killed in shootings in Cape Town, which is in South Africa’s gangsterism epicentre, the Western Cape.

Read more: ‘Our children are dying like flies’ — mothers grieve as gang-related deaths grip Western Cape

‘He had a future’

“It’s not nice to wake up with tears in your eyes,” their aunt, Tania Smith, told Daily Maverick at the weekend.

She could not believe Davin, who had been excited to turn five years old on Monday, 17 February, would not get to celebrate his birthday — and that instead of gathering for his party, the family would be mourning him.

“You can’t imagine this. It’s so sad. Davin was very active, very talkative,” Smith said. “He had a future. He wanted to play soccer. He knew all the names of the soccer players and the rugby players.”

Davin also loved the minstrels — a short video clip that Smith shared with Daily Maverick shows him dancing energetically to a drum beat at what appears to be a minstrel event.

His murder, together with that of his sister Kelly-Amber, emphasises how violence, often gang-related, around Cape Town is resulting in children being killed and wounded.

What makes this issue horrific is that it is not new.

It has been happening for years — and is ongoing.

Children caught in crossfire

Last month News24 reported that five-year-old Ameer Abrahams died in hospital after he was shot in the head when caught in crossfire in the suburb of Manenberg.

And about two weeks ago Daily Maverick reported that while President Cyril Ramaphosa was delivering his 2025 State of the Nation Address, which included him saying that cracking down on gun violence needed to be prioritised, there were several shootings across the city.

Among those wounded were two children, aged 12 and 15.

Read more: Reality check as gang shootings mar Ramaphosa’s vision for a safer South Africa

Last week, on 12 February, Parliament’s police committee chairperson Ian Cameron posted on social media that “over the last 5 days at least 58 people were shot in the Cape Flats, and at least 32 of them, dead”.

The Cape Flats comprises historically poorer Cape Town suburbs where, under apartheid, residents who were not white were dumped.

Daily Maverick understands that over the weekend, between 14 and 16 February, about 18 shootings were reported in those areas.

The South African Police Service (SAPS) is clearly grappling with trying to curb the violence.

In a statement from Saturday, 15 February, referencing the previous night, which was when Davin was killed, the Western Cape police said: “The recent spate of shooting incidents in our communities caused the SAPS to be more proactive, and it led to the confiscation of firearms and ammunition and the arrests of several suspects in crime prevention operations.”

The group Fight Against Crime has called for the SA National Defence Force to also be deployed to try to curb the violence.

It is not the first time that call has been made.

Members of the army were previously deployed to various Cape Town gang hotspots to try to quell the violence — this happened in 2019.

Violence, meanwhile, persists.

‘Too scared for my children’

In the case of Davin, his mother, Undean Koopman, who is pregnant, and his toddler sister, were at home with him when he was killed on Friday night.

His aunt — Smith — first heard about the shooting via a phone call.

“This is not something we’re just going to accept,” she told Daily Maverick.

“These people can’t just come and shoot and kill children.”

Smith said her sister was still trying to come to terms with what had happened to Kelly-Amber.

“She’s very sore. Her first child was killed, and now her only boy. Her first wound isn’t even healed.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGJQ2DYAgjw

Smith has three children of her own, and because of the gang situation in Wesbank, her nine-year-old daughter was staying with her grandmother in another part of the area where Smith felt the girl was safer.

Her eldest child, a 14-year-old boy, who had been among those present when his father was stabbed to death about eight years ago, was staying in another suburb.

Smith’s youngest child of a year and a few months was living with her.

“I’m too scared to have my (older) children here,” Smith said.

Problems related to gangsterism were complex, and apart from the violence it produced, there was also the possibility of individuals getting involved with, or recruited into, gangs for various reasons.

Smith hoped for better policing in the area.

“I think there must be improvement in the police force to protect our children. To protect their future,” she said.

‘Gunmen opened fire’

On Monday, 17 February, Western Cape police confirmed Davin’s murder and the attempted killing of a man.

Provincial police spokesperson Warrant Officer Joseph Swartbooi said the violence broke out at about 10.30pm on Friday, 14 February.

Read more: Elsies River residents want urgent measures to prevent gang violence after learner is fatally shot

“Unknown gunmen opened fire at the occupants of a house in Happiness Street, Wesbank,” Swartbooi said. “A four-year-old boy did not survive the onslaught on his life, while a 30-year-old man was admitted to a nearby hospital with gunshot injuries.

“The motive for this murder and attempted murder is now the subject of an investigation by the South African Police Service.”

Swartbooi said arrests had yet to be carried out.

Guilty of gunning down girl

Meanwhile, four days before Davin was fatally shot, two men were convicted in the Western Cape Division of the High Court of murdering a child in another gang shooting that happened in Ocean View in 2020.

In that incident, Emaan Solomons, 7, was killed.

@womenforchange.sa Emaan Solomons, 7, was hit by a stray bullet in her garden in Ocean View, Cape Town on 25 February 2020. Until today, she has not gotten justice. #gbvsouthafrica #tiktoksouthafrica #sayhername #womenforchange ♬ original sound - womenforchange.sa

The 10 February 2025 judgment against Eben Basson and Chivargo Fredericks, which did not identify her by name but by her initials, described what happened.

It also explained: “The Ocean View area is plagued by gang activities and gang-related warfare. The Junky Funky Kids (‘JFK’) and Taylor gang (‘TG’) are gangs in the area that have been embroiled in a turf war for primarily drug and related trade territory for several years.”

According to the judgment, on 25 February 2020, Emaan had, as usual, joined friends after school to play with a ball in a cul de sac outside her family home in Libra Road in Ocean View.

Murdered while playing

“While the children’s play area is situated within a residential road, it is a reasonably safe place for the children to play, being an enclave of neighbouring homes,” the judgment said.

No vehicles were moving along the road because it was a dead end, and residents were going about their daily routines.

“By all accounts, it was an ordinary day, with the children laughing and playing and the adults going about their usual affairs,” the judgment read.

But “this peaceful residential scene was starkly disturbed” when gunshots erupted and a man ran from a nearby park area.

Read more: Texas-Cape Flats — ceaseless massacre claiming lives of SA’s children in gang flashpoints

“The children and adults started fleeing in different directions for safety.

“So too did (Emaan) make her way to the safe haven of her family home,” the judgment read.

“It was, however, in her front garden where she collapsed, just metres away from her front door. Her mother found her child lying wounded.

“(Emaan) was shot in her back, with the bullet exiting through her chest and another wound to her left hand.”

She was rushed to a nearby hospital where she was declared dead.

Read more: Cape Town’s killing fields: Communities united in sorrow and rage

Last week Basson and Fredericks were convicted of murdering her.

The judgment said that on the day Emaan was killed, the duo had seen the children playing in the street and still decided to try to shoot the man they were after.

“They clearly had foreseen that they would have to fire the gunshots through the children to execute (their) intended target, with recklessness as to whether death would ensue,” it said.

The National Prosecuting Authority in the Western Cape wants them to be sentenced to an effective life imprisonment. DM

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