No government should ever have the monopoly on your safety and security, whether with regards to crime and firearm control, fighting fires or seeking emergency medical care, communities can (and in my opinion should) organise themselves and work with competent authorities.
Good government would and should partner with well organised community structures and acknowledge each other as assets.
Where legislation is used as a barrier (in most cases falsely so), it should be changed.
When the state lectures South Africans about gun control, it should first explain this.
According to official figures provided by the South African Police Service, after I submitted a parliamentary question on behalf of the DA a few weeks ago, 741 SAPS-owned firearms were lost or stolen in the 2023/24 financial year alone.
Only 170 of those firearms have been recovered, meaning more than 570 police firearms remain unaccounted for and potentially circulating in criminal networks.
At least eight recovered SAPS firearms have already been positively linked to serious crimes, including armed robbery, kidnapping and attempted murder in places like Kraaifontein, Paarl East and Philippi East. Each of those weapons started as a state-issued firearm.
The internal response tells its own story:
• 215 disciplinary proceedings were instituted
• Only 10 members were dismissed
• Just 9% of losses were attributed to negligence, the rest were linked to theft or robbery, raising serious questions about safeguarding, storage and operational discipline
At the same time, SAPS has reported over 700 firearms lost or stolen in each of the last three reporting periods, showing no meaningful downward trend despite repeated assurances of “improved firearms control”.
Yet the policy reflex remains the same, restrict lawful civilian ownership further.
That approach is logically indefensible.
Law-abiding firearm owners are licensed, vetted, trained and inspected. They are not the source of hundreds of untraceable weapons flooding the criminal economy. The data shows the opposite, state-controlled firearms are repeatedly leaking into violent crime.
In a country with slow police response times, low detection rates and high levels of violent crime, the right of civilians to defend themselves lawfully is not ideological, it is practical and necessary.
If government is serious about reducing gun violence, the priorities are obvious:
• Stop the loss and theft of state firearms
• Enforce real consequence management inside SAPS
• Dismantle criminal gun pipelines, not compliance systems
• Respect lawful self-defence as a legitimate safety measure
Disarming responsible citizens while the state cannot control its own weapons is not public safety. It is policy failure with a human cost.
IC
#SAPS #SouthAfrica #CrimeSA #Crime
@karynmaughan Agreed. And then, he and his qualifying wives can apply for SASSA like every other ordinary South African. Justice = paying back every missing cent stolen from South Africans, at any age, ASAP. Horrified that the Judge could care about more for the suspect than dispensing justice
@eNCA#IfAnyoneCanHelenCan
1. She won the World's best Mayor in October 2008.
2. She is the most experienced South African when it comes to managing a coalition.
3. She is Constitutional.
4. She is merited and hardworking.
No place in democracy for citizens to fund tinpot dictators! Those who wish to be part of the feudal system must fund their own leaders just as religious organisations do!!! What a travesty SA traditional leaders are thanks to the Buthelezi & IFP brinkmanship in 1994!
😲 R1 trillion for 100 politically connected people! What has BEE done for poor South Africans? What have the race-based laws and policies done to empower poor people?
Watch, the DA has unpacked a new action plan to grow the economy and create jobs: https://t.co/vMR5TzaNyT
Semi-Automatic Rifles: The Truth Government Doesn’t Want You to Hear
Every single day in South Africa, men and women with semi-automatic rifles stand between law-abiding citizens and violent criminals. They are the reason countless people are alive today. They include:
•Private security tactical intervention and high-risk units
•Civilian members of community safety organisations and farm watches
•Anti-poaching and nature conservation teams
•Asset protection and cash-in-transit crews
They are trained professionals and committed citizens doing the work the state fails to do. Semi-automatic rifles are not a luxury for them; they are the tools that keep blood off the streets.
Yet once again, government has its sights set on banning these rifles. This, despite the fact that lawful ownership is already so tightly restricted, expensive, and bureaucratically strangled that only the most dedicated and vetted citizens ever obtain them.
Meanwhile, South Africa is drowning in illegal guns – over 2.5 million of them, nearly matching the total number of all licensed firearms. Thousands more slip across our borders every year. The criminals aren’t queuing at SAPS for licences; they’re buying weapons from corrupt cops, well-connected smugglers, and the very gangs our leaders shake hands with in the shadows.
And let’s be clear: those pushing hardest for civilian disarmament are often the same people caught in scandals of corruption and criminality. The Minister of Police. The CEO of PSIRA. Senior SAPS officers. These are not the people you trust with your safety – or your rights.
The state’s own hands are dripping with the firearms it has sold to the underworld. Criminal cartels are armed by the same corrupt officials who tell you you don’t need a semi-automatic rifle. When the fox is in charge of the henhouse, taking away the farmer’s shotgun isn’t “public safety” – it’s deliberate sabotage.
Let’s not pretend this is about reducing crime. When the state is this compromised, disarming honest citizens serves only one purpose: to make sure you cannot protect yourself from violent criminals – or from the corrupt elites who protect them.
In 2021, South Africans torpedoed similar proposals with overwhelming public outrage. If these dangerous amendments return, we must be ready to kill them again – louder, faster, and with more unity than before.
Our message must be clear: calling for us to disarm while the government arms criminals is outrageous. We will not hand over the tools that keep us alive. And we will not be lectured on “public safety” by a gangster state that sleeps in the same bed as our enemies.
A good win for the people. Kudos to the Attorney Jacobs who took his arrest on and won: High Court ruling - The public ARE ALLOWED to film the police. https://t.co/sSTxGZs15m
PRESIDENT SUSPENDS SOUTH GAUTENG DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS
President @CyrilRamaphosa has suspended South Gauteng Director of Public Prosecutions, Adv Andrew Chauke, with immediate effect pending an inquiry into Adv Chauke’s fitness to hold office. https://t.co/s4dKRRF8TF
@GvanOnselen Exactly! Dreams won't fill our tummies, quench our thirst, flush our toilets, etc, etc. When will the ANC realise they're on South Africa?
@helenzille I wonder if Cyril fired Andrew himself; or if his office did it. Such scurrilous activities taking place in the Presidency, it would not be surprising if Paul issued the instruction. Incomprehensible that Cyril would compromise the formidable support keeping him in power.