In October 2022 a shootout occurred outside a Cape Town restaurant that previously cropped up in an organised crime court case - the violence left a gunman dead. It now turns out that a motorist assassinated in the city on Wednesday may be the gunman's cousin.

A man carrying a gun and wearing a helmet walked up to the Grand Africa Café & Beach in Cape Town's Granger Bay in October last year and apparently fired shots, wounding a security officer.

Officers returned fire, and, in the process, the helmeted gunman was killed.

Various media reports named him as Abdel Fattah Nassar and at the time, there were suspicions he may have been linked to organised crime activities in Israel, where he was believed to be from.

And it now turns out that Nassar may be the cousin of a motorist, Shafiq Naser, who was assassinated in the Cape Town suburb of Milnerton on Wednesday 4 October 2023.

Daily Maverick reported that a gunman on a motorbike had pumped bullets into the vehicle that Naser was driving.

String of violence

The shooting is the latest in a string of attacks that have played out around the city - in one of the other recent incidents, a private security vehicle was targeted in the suburb of Sea Point.

While the motive for the Sea Point shooting was unclear, it was reminiscent of previous problems relating to private security and bouncer activities in Cape Town....