Police minister Bheki Cele says although there have been no arrests in connection with the New Year’s Eve shootings in Melville, there have been promising leads.

Cele was speaking on Tuesday at the Linden police station in Johannesburg, where a firearm dealer, Chris van der Bergh, handed over 298 unwanted guns.

“No arrests have been made but the police are following the leads. We can put our foot down. It’s a question of time until this is resolved. The Poppy’s [shooting], for us, is clearer than the Mary Fitzgerald Square one, which we are also following,” said Cele.

New Year's celebrations in Melville were cut short when a drive-by shooting took place outside Poppy's restaurant. Two women were killed and six other patrons wounded when they were sprayed with bullets.

At Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown, just after 2:30am on the same morning, 11 people were wounded after shots were fired at revellers from an elevated platform, suspected to be the nearby M2 double-decker bridge.

Cele promised to keep the public up to date on the investigations.