Divine Lunga was on his way to church when someone opened fire on his car.
The 31-year-old footballer, who plays for Mamelodi Sundowns and represents Zimbabwe’s national team, narrowly escaped death on Sunday when a gunman attacked his vehicle in Hillbrow, an inner-city suburb of Johannesburg. His younger brother was with him. Neither was physically harmed.
According to The Citizen, a South African publication, the gunman apparently mistook Lunga for an undercover police officer. That misidentification, in a matter of seconds, put both brothers in immediate danger.
South African police confirmed the shooting and its severity. Captain Tintswalo Sibeko, a police spokesperson, said investigators were treating the incident as attempted murder. As of the time of reporting, no arrests had been made, and Sibeko did not release additional specifics about the investigation’s direction.
The attack is a reminder of how little protection prominence offers in South Africa. Gun violence claims thousands of lives in the country annually, and South Africa ranks among the world’s deadliest nations by murder rate, a persistent reality that cuts across economic and social lines. For Lunga and his brother, a routine Sunday morning became something far more dangerous.
Lunga’s career, by any measure, is one of genuine achievement. He has earned 21 caps for Zimbabwe’s national team, the Warriors, and was selected for the squad competing in FIFA World Cup 2026 qualifying matches. At club level, he joined Mamelodi Sundowns in 2021 and has been central to the team’s domestic dominance. During his time there, Sundowns secured four South African league titles and won the African Champions League in May, the club’s second continental championship.
The response from his teams has been quiet but meaningful. Neither Mamelodi Sundowns nor the Warriors issued a formal statement addressing the shooting directly. Zimbabwe’s national team did post an image on social media showing Lunga in a prayer position, captioned “In God we trust” alongside his name. It was a public acknowledgment of what happened, and a gesture of solidarity with a player who came very close to not walking away.
What the incident leaves open is a harder question: how South Africa protects not just its public figures, but the ordinary residents of neighborhoods like Hillbrow, where this kind of violence is not an aberration. For more coverage of developments across the African continent, see https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1my1rvy28do.