Call to audit unaccounted for police guns
Apartheid-era weapons ‘used in crime’
CONCERNED about the high proportion of gun-related deaths in South Africa, the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) has called for an audit of the guns handed over by the police after the 1994 elections.
Popcru spokesperson Richard Mamabolo said there should be “an investigation into the amount and types of firearms handed over from the apartheid police to the democratically elected government after 1994” and the “amount of firearms in the hands of the apartheid police pre-1994”.
“Most murders and other associated illegal criminal activities are committed by firearms that are either stolen, come through our borders illegally and/or form part of those distributed by the apartheid police, which are to this day not accounted for.
“Authorities only get information on these firearms once they have been recovered, and to this extent, most would have been used in violent acts of crime and are dominantly traced back to the apartheid era,” said Mamabolo.
Also of concern to Popcru is that the private security industry in South Africa remains unregulated, which has three times the number of “firearms and personnel than our police and army combined”, and that poses a threat to the country.
In calling for the audit of firearms handed to the post-apartheid government, Mamabolo said police commissioners Johan van der Merwe (1994-1995) and George Fivaz (1995-2000) would assist the SAPS in “tracing the whereabouts of the many missing, unaccounted for firearms that continue fuelling the senseless acts constraining our country”. “There should also be an investigation into the amount of firearms given to certain groupings among black people in particular, aimed at fuelling a civil war around the time the Codesa negotiations were in place,” he said.
The Tactical Response Team needed to be re-established and intelligence agencies needed to play a greater role in investigating the origins and whereabouts of illegal firearms.
“The SAPS has sufficient capacity to remove illegal firearms from our communities, so long as there is proper management of resources,” said Mamabolo.
Nurahn Ryklief, the Gun Free South Africa spokesperson, urged Police Minister Fikile Mbalula to act with urgency to ensure use of the Firearms Control Act to “remove guns and save lives”.
Ryklief said Mbalula had the “power to limit access to firearms” through implementing amendments that could strengthen the Firearms Control Act and “intelligence-driven operations to recover and remove illegal guns”. – Staff Reporter
‘THE SAPS HAS SUFFICIENT CAPACITY TO REMOVE FIREARMS FROM OUR COMMUNITIES’