Cape Town - The government wants to tighten the country’s gun laws, and amendments to the 2000 Firearms Control Act are expected to go before Parliament early next year. And the ANC is calling for the elimination of illegal guns.
Proposed amendments to the act include making ballistic testing of police and security guards’ firearms mandatory, and limiting the validity of gun licences to 10 years before renewal is required.
Parliament has been told the police lost 13 137 firearms between 2007 and 2012.
This week, SA Football Association (Safa) president Danny Jordaan called for strong measures against illegal guns after the killing of Bafana Bafana and Orlando Pirates captain Senzo Meyiwa, who was shot during a home robbery in Vosloorus, Ekurhuleni, on Sunday.
A cellphone was stolen.
But demands for gun control, and the ANC’s call for a legislative review to eliminate illegal guns, come just two months after the police told Parliament they were struggling to implement the current legislation amid staff shortages and a troublesome IT system.
While Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko on Thursday described the proposed amendments to the act as of “a technical nature”, there had been questions whether other measures should be considered in the light of the high levels of gun violence and proliferation of firearms.
Every month there were 5 000 applications for firearm licences and around 500 of those were rejected.
“That’s indicative of the psyche we have in society,” Nhleko said during a briefing on Thursday on the justice and crime prevention ministerial cluster.
“We need to be concerned about the levels of violence in our society. We need to enter into a dialogue that will assist us… to improve our human relations… The solution… it’s not a narrow policing matter in a society of high violence.”
Justice and Correctional Services Minister Michael Masutha said that despiteconsistent decreases in violent crime over the past few years, the use of guns to commit criminal acts was a concern.
“We certainly took a keen interest in the bill that we are piloting on gun control, tightening our control measures,” Masutha said, asking whether there were sufficient penalties for gun crimes.
The bill was currently with the Police Department for discussion, and would soon be sent to the cabinet for approval.
Deputy Police Minister Maggie Sotyu said: “Maybe after the December holiday it will go to Parliament.”
The 2000 Firearms Control Act, described in its preamble as “a comprehensive and an effective system of firearms control”, introduced mandatory competency tests for gun owners and periodic renewals, set strict storage requirements, created a database of all legal firearm owners and made provision for the lawful surrender of firearms a gun owner no longer wanted. It was introduced when the use of firearms in violent crimes had escalated to around 80 percent.
But in August, police generals told the parliamentary police committee it was struggling to establish the central firearms registry because of lack of staff and storage, administrative challenges and corruption.
It also emerged the database of legal firearm owners did not talk to other crucial databases – despite a R400 million investment in this information communication technology.
Following an oversight visit to the Pretoria-based central firearms registry in September, police committee chairman ANC MP Francois Beukman said it was “worrying” the police had still to link the 1969 apartheid-era gun owners’ database to the one introduced following the 2000 act.
“We are also concerned the issue of gun license holders in the former Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei states has not been sorted out,” he added, citing potential abuse of these fragmented systems.
On Thursday, ANC national spokesman Zizi Kodwa said the ANC wanted a legislative review to ensure all illegal guns, which he described as “a menace”, were removed from society.
“The time has come for us as a nation to review existing gun control measures with a view to limiting access to guns that end up in the wrong hands,” said Kodwa. “The reality and the law do not talk to each other.”
In honour of victims of illegal guns, Kodwa called on all South Africans to revive community crime-fighting structures to support law enforcement agencies.
“We must not tolerate individuals who terrorise and take innocent lives and still find a hiding place in the same society.
“Let us identify and isolate such callous thugs and report them to law enforcement agencies.
“You take a life, you violate the constitution.” – Additional reporting by Sapa and Chelsea Geach
Political Bureau