JOHANNESBURG: Three people were shot dead in an altercation over firearms at an upmarket restaurant in South Africa's economic hub Johannesburg, police said Friday.
It is the latest in a string of shootouts that reinforces the country's bleak status as a murder capital.
Thursday night's incident was sparked when the restaurant in Sandton -- Africa's richest square mile -- told a businessman they did not allow guns on its premises.
"A man with a firearm wanted to enter the restaurant which a has a no firearm policy," police said in a statement.
"That is when the altercation started leading to a shooting between the man's bodyguards and securities."
Two of the bodyguards died at the scene and the man died of his injuries at the hospital.
Four other people, including two restaurant customers, were nursing gunshot wounds, police said.
"Preliminary investigation revealed that the man who started this has previously been arrested for a shooting incident also in Sandton last year," they said.
No arrests had yet been made, they added.
South Africa is the continent's most industrialised nation and has one of the world's highest murder rates.
Many people have licensed firearms for personal protection and there are many more illegal guns in circulation.
The government last month said the murder rate had dropped by nearly 10 percent in the final quarter of last year but killings still averaged 75 a day.
A total of 6,953 killings were recorded in the last three months of 2024.
In 2023, one of the country's most famous rap artists, Kiernan Forbes, known as AKA, was shot dead outside a restaurant in the southeastern city of Durban.
In 2007, reggae singer Lucky Dube was dropping off his teenage son at a relative's home when gunmen shot him three times at close range during a botched hijacking.