Police find loaded pistol under a car at Khayelitsha taxi rank, arrest one man

Western Cape police arrested a man at a taxi rank in Site C, Khayelitsha, in the early hours of Thursday, 29 October 2026, after officers saw him kick a loaded firearm under a vehicle.

As IOL reported on 29 October, the officers had been deployed at taxi ranks in the area to protect commuters travelling to work and school. Police said in a statement that members responded to information about taxi drivers gathering at the Site C rank. When they approached the group, one man was seen kicking an object under a vehicle.

He was apprehended, and an officer who looked under the vehicle found a 9mm pistol with 15 rounds of ammunition. The man could not produce a firearm licence and was arrested for the illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition, police said. He will appear in the Khayelitsha Magistrates’ Court once he has been charged.

The arrest lands in the middle of a fortnight of shootings at and around Cape Town’s taxi ranks, and it is that run of killings that gives the Site C recovery its weight. On Friday, 16 October, two taxi owners were killed in an ambush in Epping. Two suspects, aged 27 and 31, were arrested and appeared in the Cape Town Magistrates’ Court on 19 October.

Six days later, on Thursday, 22 October, four people were killed in shootings in Delft and Maitland, which police also believe were linked to taxi violence. A taxi operator linked that attack to a long-running route dispute between the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (CATA) and the Cape Organisation for the Democratic Taxi Association (CODETA).

For the commuters who use these ranks every morning, the practical effect is a heavier police presence at the points where they board. Police said deployments remain in place and that crime prevention operations are running in an effort to curb further taxi-related shootings.

The associations at the centre of the dispute are due back at the table. The Western Cape Mobility Department plans to meet CATA and CODETA, and the South African National Taxi Council (Santaco) is also expected to meet the two associations on Thursday, 29 October 2026, the same day as the arrest.

Police have not said whether the firearm recovered in Site C is linked to any of the recent shootings. The man arrested has not been named and has not pleaded to any charge.