MPs wary about control of surrendered guns in amnesty

PARLIAMENT will want the SAPS management to ensure that strict control measures are in place when members of the public hand over guns during the upcoming firearms amnesty.

“The portfolio committee needs to be assured that strict protocols will be put in place for the storage, testing and destruction of the said firearms. The proposed amnesty should be an effective mechanism to ensure unwanted firearms are removed from the streets,” committee chairperson Francois Beukman said yesterday.

Beukman made the comment after Police Minister Bheki Cele wrote a letter last week to Speaker Baleka Mbete requesting the portfolio committee consider the approval of the six-month amnesty.

Cele has proposed that the long overdue amnesty run from September until February next year.

The amnesty comes amid pending litigation, including by Gun Owners SA, in response to the Constitutional Court, which ruled it an offence to possess a firearm without a licence.

Beukman said the committee would consider the amnesty request on August 16.

Fred Camphor, chief executive at the SA Hunters and Game Conservation Association, said: “The police do not have the ability and capability to safely keep the large number of firearms”.

Gun Free SA specialist researcher Claire Taylor said the amnesty would work if no questions were asked about weapons handed in; guns were handed in at neutral venues (not the SAPS); and if guns were immobilised at hand-in to reduce risk of them being leaked back into communities.

“(The country) has already held two very successful national firearms amnesties, which collected over 40000 illegal guns in 2005 and 2010,” Taylor said.

“But the 2016 case of Christiaan Prinsloo, a police officer who sold 2400 guns to gangsters on the Cape Flats, means the public has little faith that police will destroy guns surrendered in the 2018-19 amnesty.”