South Africa police ‘lose 3,000 guns a year’
Almost 3,000 South African police firearms were lost or stolen in just nine months, it emerged today – about three for every police station in the country, which has some of the highest crime rates in the world.
By Sebastien Berger in Johannesburg
Published: 5:10PM GMT 27 Jan 2010
The worrying statistic comes less than six months before the football World Cup kicks off in the country.
Dianne Kohler Barnard, the opposition Democratic Alliance shadow police minister, said that the state weapons manufacturer Armscor had recently ordered 4,000 replacement 9mm handguns made by the Italian manufacturer Beretta.
A parliamentary committee heard that 2,944 police weapons were lost or stolen between January and September last year – more than in the whole of 2008, which was itself an increase on 2007, she said.
The recovery rate for weapons stolen from or lost by police was “extremely low”, Ms Kohler Barnard added, in contrast to thefts from civilians, where it was 100 per cent. [Of course, when your guns are *registered* then theft can occur by the state and reach that perfectly attainable 100% score. 
]
The figures suggest that, wittingly or unwittingly, South African police could be a major supplier of weapons to the country’s criminal underworld.
“I can’t discount that,” said Ms Kohler-Barnard, adding that it was impossible to say how many of the guns declared lost had instead been sold by corrupt officers. “I don’t know whether they are selling them or leaving them on the counter at Wimpy’s when they go to have a hamburger.” Investigations into lost firearms were sometimes launched, she said, but “nothing ever comes of them, nothing ever happens and no one is punished”.
She called for action to ensure that fewer police guns “end up in the hands in criminals.
“The thought that a SAPS [South African Police Service] firearm might be used to shoot and kill a SAPS member is unconscionable,” she said.
The SAPS spokesman responsible for firearms issues was in a meeting this afternoon and not available for comment.
Almost 50 people are murdered every day in South Africa, one of the highest rates in the world for a country not at war.
There are concerns over the safety of thousands of football fans attending this summer’s event.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/7085320/South-Africa-police-lose-3000-guns-a-year.html
And look here…
Who helped the South African establish their gun control…?
Wendy Cukier.
“…Wednesday, January 12, 2005 Headline Newsmigon@yorku.ca .
The global small arms epidemic
York’s Colloquium on the Global South will feature a lecture titled “The Global Small Arms Epidemic: A Public Health Perspective” by Professor Wendy Cukier of Ryerson University.
The event will take place today, from 2:30 to 4:30pm, in room 305, York Lanes, Keele campus. Cukier, right, who has a York PhD in management science and is co-founder of Canada’s Coalition for Gun Control, will focus on the role that guns play in global violence. Violence fuelled by small arms kills hundreds of thousands of people each year with many more injured.
The World Health Organization has labelled violence a global pandemic. Cukier will examine the shape of gun violence which varies from region to region. It is estimated that more than 200 thousand gun deaths occur in countries which are “at peace” each year: 35,000 in Brazil; 10,000 in South Africa; and 30,000 in the USA. In Colombia the number is about 20,000 and it is estimated that in 1998-99, the number of violent deaths from small arms in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala exceeded those that had occurred in the respective civil wars.
Major small arms producers include the US, China and Russia. Worldwide, over half of small arms are in the possession of civilians, 200 million of them in the USA. Although guns do not in themselves “cause” violence, they increase its lethality and fuel “cultures of violence”, asserts Cukier in the abstract presented for the colloquium. Her presentation will examine the strong association between the availability of guns and gun-related death and injury in both the north and south.
Virtually every illegal small arm begins as legal small arm. With the globalization of trade in licit products has come the globalization of the illegal trade in small arms. Weapons originating in the United States for example, fuel violence in Canada and Latin America but also account for many of the weapons seized as far away as Japan. Since 1998 there has been an emerging global NGO movement to control the illicit trade and misuse in small arms with a comprehensive strategy addressing both supply and demand.
Currently there are a range of activities at the national, regional and global level, says Cukier. One such campaign is the Control Arms Campaign and its associated Million Faces Petition, a joint project of IANSA (International Action Network on Small Arms), Amnesty International and Oxfam. International cooperation is critical because weapons tend to flow from unregulated areas to regulated areas.
Global efforts have been limited by major arms producers and gun lobbies such as the National Rifle Association. The Colloquium on the Global South provides an open space for debate and critical inquiry for students, faculty members, NGOs, social activists, and policy makers. Presented by the University Consortium on the Global South at York University, the event is free and does not require pre-registration.
For further information, or to register for updates, check the University Consortium on the Global South Web site or e-mail Miguel Gonzalez at
More about Wendy Cukier
Cukier is a professor of communications and culture, and information technology management at Ryerson University in Toronto. Since 2004 she has also been the associate dean, academic, of the Faculty of Business. In 1990 she co-founded Canada’s Coalition for Gun Control, which is supported by 350 public safety organizations and has been credited with the passage of two major pieces of legislation.
A founding member of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), she coordinates the Small Arms Firearms Education and Research Network (SAFER-Net) which conducts research on various aspects of firearms violence and prevention.
She has published more than 200 articles on aspects of firearms control and has consulted to governments around the world, most recently in South Africa. Her book, The Global Gun Epidemic: From Saturday Night Specials to AK47s will be published this year by Praeger. She has also published extensively on coalition building and advocacy.
Cukier’s work has been recognized with a Docteur d’Universite (HC) from the Faculty of Medicine, Laval University (1996) and a LLD (HC) from Concordia University (1997), the Canadian Public Health Association’s Award of Merit (1996), Jewish Women International Woman of the Year (1995), a YWCA Woman of Distinction Award, as well as the Governor General’s Meritorious Service (2000). Cukier has a PhD in management science from York.
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I guess her “efforts” at civilian disarmament has unintended consequences. Sort of like prohibition of alchohol in the 20’s in the United States.
Didn’t work then and criminal activity got worse.
History repeats itself…
h/t Hokus/Sargon
