TessTurvey

🚩SAPS is one of the single largest contributors to the illegal firearms economy through its own losses, thefts and armed robberies.🚩 The recent reply to my parliamentary question exposes how over a five year period, SAPS recorded 3 433 lost or stolen service firearms, broken down as follows: • 2019/20: 672 • 2020/21: 566 • 2021/22: 712 • 2022/23: 742 • 2023/24: 741  This means that the @SAPoliceService loses on average nearly 700 guns every year. These are not hunting rifles or privately owned weapons, these are state issued firearms intended for policing, repeatedly entering circulation in criminal markets. The reply goes further and breaks the losses down by cause. Across all five years, SAPS firearms were: • 212 lost through negligence • 1 397 stolen • 1 824 taken in armed robberies  Armed robberies account for more than half of all losses. This is not an administrative weakness, it is an operational threat. It reflects how deeply criminal networks target SAPS as a supplier of weapons. It also reflects the internal vulnerability of SAPS members and infrastructure. Recovery rates expose an even deeper problem. From 2019 to 2024, only 559 firearms were recovered in total.  That is a recovery rate of roughly 16 percent. Once a SAPS firearm enters the illegal market, it effectively disappears. Communities then face the consequences in the form of murders, extortion rackets and gang enforcement. Another critical detail in the reply is SAPS’s refusal to disclose which stations, clusters or ranks are high risk for firearm losses. SAPS states that releasing this information may expose vulnerabilities. The problem is that these losses have continued for half a decade without transparent consequence management or structural reform.  Meanwhile, SAPS’s own Annual Performance Plan admits the scale of the crisis. It reports that SAPS lost or had stolen 741 firearms in 2023/24, with future targets hoping only for a slow reduction to 569 over the medium term. In other words, SAPS is planning to continue losing hundreds of firearms a year into the foreseeable future.  These same plans commit to improved firearm regulation and tighter control systems, including the Firearm Control Management System. Yet the core issue remains unresolved: SAPS is one of the single largest contributors to the illegal firearms economy through its own losses, thefts and armed robberies. This is why it is irrational for government to pursue policies aimed at restricting lawful citizens’ ability to own firearms for self defence, while SAPS itself continues to lose thousands of guns into criminal hands. The state cannot demand disarmament from compliant citizens while failing to secure its own armouries, its own weapons, and its own operational environments. The data is clear. Before any debate about further limiting lawful gun ownership, South Africa must first confront the reality that SAPS continues to be a major, ongoing source of firearms for gangs and criminal syndicates. The Democratic Alliance will fight this. IC