AfriForum: Secret Firearms Bill talks expose government’s hypocrisy

AfriForum condemns the government’s secretive attempts at Nedlac to push through proposed amendments to the Firearms Control Act without any representation from civil society or the firearm-owning community.

The civil rights organisation says this secrecy, combined with government’s own record of losing firearms, exposes the hypocrisy of targeting law-abiding citizens while shielding state incompetence.

“Government is quietly negotiating away the rights of ordinary citizens behind closed doors at Nedlac, without inviting relevant role-players from civil society or the firearm community,” says Jacques Broodryk, AfriForum’s Chief Spokesperson for Community Safety. “The same government that once tried to strip South Africans of their right to self-defence now wants to muzzle debate entirely.”

South Africa’s 502 state entities collectively own around 2.2 million firearms, yet compliance with the Firearms Control Act is abysmal. The South African Police Service (SAPS) is the only entity that regularly reports losses to the Central Firearms Registry, while the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and others fail to do so. The result is that state armouries, not private safes, are the true source of South Africa’s illegal guns:

• SAPS: Lost an estimated 18 000–20 000 firearms in the past decade. In 2022/23 alone, 742 firearms vanished, with only a third recovered. Between 2014 and 2019, 9 million rounds of ammunition disappeared, later rising to 9.5 million.
• SANDF: At least 57 R4/R5 rifles disappeared between 2017 and 2020, with 19 assault rifles stolen from an army base in 2019. Ammunition and even grenades have gone missing, with recovery rates near zero.
• Other entities: Correctional Services lost 19 firearms and 295 rounds in four years. A single metro police department is claimed to have lost 700 firearms in one year, while SAPS absurdly insisted all departments combined lost only 67.

The Colonel Chris Prinsloo scandal, where 9,000 police firearms were sold to gangs, remains the most infamous case of state corruption directly fuelling South Africa’s violent crime epidemic.

To add insult to injury, it was recently revealed that police and military firearms are also being smuggled from Namibia, right into the hands of criminal gangs. The South African governments complete failure to secure our borders has long empowered smugglers to move arms shipments into the country. The addition of Namibia to this list, has however raised eyebrows.

In 2021, government proposed amendments to the Firearms Control Act that would have made self-defence an invalid reason to own a firearm. In a country with 34 firearm-related murders every single day, such a proposal was not only irrational but dangerous. Civil society, including AfriForum, mobilised against the plan and it was eventually shelved – yet now, instead of open consultation, the state is plotting in secrecy.

“Trying to deny South Africans the right to self-defence in one of the world’s most violent countries was ridiculous in 2021, and it is just as ridiculous today,” Broodryk continues. “The fact that government is once again plotting amendments in secret meetings shows that they know the public would reject these proposals if they were brought into the open.”

AfriForum will be filing a Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) application to force government to reveal exactly which state departments hold firearms, how many they have lost or had stolen, and what recovery efforts (if any) have been made.

“It is obscene for government to hide behind closed doors at Nedlac while attempting to disarm citizens, all while refusing to be transparent about the thousands of guns it has lost to criminals,” Broodryk concludes. “If the state cannot secure its own weapons, it has no moral authority to lecture responsible firearm owners on safety.”