21 August 2026
A former Knysna councillor and the taxi boss acquitted of plotting the assassination of ANC councillor Victor Molosi were shot dead on Thursday night.
Mandla Matiwane and Mandla Tyololo were killed in Bongani a day after ward 8 councillor and former mayor Aubrey Tsengwa was gunned down in his car in Joodsekamp.
Knysna executive mayor Thando Matika confirmed the shooting.
Police spokesperson Brigadier Novela Potelwa said the two men, aged 47 and 48, were in a vehicle in Bongani when gunmen opened fire on them at about 9pm.
Potelwa said detectives from the provincial serious violent crime unit had launched a manhunt and were also looking at whether the two shootings were connected.
“The provincial serious violent crimes detective team that had been investigating another shooting incident in the area that had occurred on Wednesday evening involving a councillor in the area, has since been reinforced,” Potelwa said.
“The motive for both shootings remains the subject of the police investigation.”
No arrests have been made in either case.
Matiwane won ward 7 for the ANC in the 2016 local government elections and served on the Knysna council.
Tyololo was the secretary of the Knysna Taxi Forum.
The two men stood on opposite sides of the case that followed Molosi’s murder.
Molosi, the ANC’s ward 8 councillor and its Knysna mayoral candidate, was shot in the head outside his Concordia home in July 2018 as he walked away from a school governing body meeting.
Tyololo was arrested weeks later and charged with conspiring to have him killed.
He spent more than two years in custody before the Knysna Regional Court acquitted him on August 25, 2020.
Matiwane was a state witness at that trial.
He testified he and Tyololo had contested an ANC ward committee position in 2016 but had stayed on good terms, and that his own relationship with Molosi had soured after Molosi accused him of wanting him dead.
Matiwane also wrote to the court opposing Tyololo’s release on bail, saying it would put peace in the community at risk.
Three men were convicted of Molosi’s murder in December 2019.
They were former ward 4 councillor Velile Waxa, former municipal official Mawande Makhala and Cape Town resident Vela Patrick Dumile.
Tsengwa, 48, was shot in Ngxalo Street at about 9.20pm on Wednesday as he drove home with three passengers in the car.
As previously reported, police said a gunman walked up to the vehicle, opened fire and ran off on foot.
Tsengwa was hit several times in the head and upper body and died at the scene.
One passenger was shot in the arm and taken to hospital.
Police are investigating a charge of murder and three of attempted murder in that case.
Tsengwa was Knysna’s executive mayor from August 2022 until the EFF and the Knysna Independent Movement, his own coalition partners, removed him in February 2025.
He won ward 8 back in a by-election in June 2025 after resigning the seat that March.
Source:IOL
