A South African man has said he was brutally attacked and had a part of his right ear shot off just for being openly gay.

Lunga Voko, 23, said he had been out celebrating his birthday and was walking to a friend’s house at around 5.30pm, The South African Times reports.

A group of drunken men at a petrol station began swearing at him from a car and began hurling gay slurs at him for wearing shorts.

‘They got out of the car and started asking me questions like why I’m a moffie. The next thing one of the guys slapped me and another attacked me with an iron rod, while the others gathered half bricks,’ said Voko, who added his friends ran away.

He said he lost consciousness after he was hit on the head, with some witnesses later telling Voko’s family that men had pulled his penis out to see whether it had been circumcised.

As he lay there on the ground unconscious, one of the enraged men fired at him with a gun and parts of his right ear were shot off.

When Voko woke up the next day in hospital, he went to the Philippi East police station to lodge a complaint. He was contacted by police more than a week later saying they had tracked down the car’s number plate through the garage’s CCTV footage.

A Western Cape police spokesman André Traut said police were investigating the case and no arrests had yet been made.