Thousands of police-issue guns \u2013 the made-in-South-Africa 9mm Z88 \u2013 have been sold to Cape Town gangs since the mid-2000s to early 2015. The flood of guns to gangs saw the murder rate in the city climb from a low of about 41 per 100,000 people in 2009, to about 63 per 100,000 by 2015. With the guns on the streets, the murder rate continued to climb, reaching 70 per 100,000 in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nsource of the guns fuelling the violence in Cape Town was the\nnational police armoury in Vereeniging. Specifically, the man in\ncharge of it, one Colonel Christiaan Lodewyk Prinsloo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prinsloo\nwas responsible for ensuring the destruction of these decommissioned\npolice issue weapons. Instead, this middle aged man resentful of\nbeing overlooked for promotion, sold them to line his own pockets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A\nconservative estimate, based on what available ballistics evidence\nthere is, the guns Prinsloo sold to gangs resulted in 1,066 murders\nand 1,403 attempted murders. This was just between 2010 and 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese\nnumbers of killings mean that Prinsloo\u2019s work is, without doubt,\nthe deadliest single crime to have been committed in post-apartheid\nSouth Africa,\u201d writes Mark Shaw in his fascinating and horrifying\nbook, Give us more guns.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Shaw\ndetails how Prinsloo was arrested in 2015 thanks to the tenacious\nwork of Cape Town cop Jeremy Veary and Pieter Jacobs, but also\nexplains that Prinsloo, as heinous as his individual actions were, is\nbut an indication of the rot that has suppurated within the South\nAfrican Police Service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prinsloo\nand the Cape gangs may be the most pertinent and audacious element of\nthe story, but the view of the lawless and violent minibus taxi\nindustry in KZN is perhaps even more frightening. It is such a nexus\nof corruption between politicians, police, and taxi bosses that even\nthe fearless determination of Veary and Jacobs hit a brick wall. How\nmany guns Prinsloo shipped to fuel KZN\u2019s taxi wars was never\ndetermined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And\nwhile Prinsloo may have individually shipped the largest number of\nguns out of the police armoury, and is singular in that he was the\none person trusted to ensure their destruction \u2013 including those\nguns trustingly handed in by citizens for destruction during the\npost-apartheid amnesties \u2013 the leak of guns from police to\ncriminals is longstanding and continuous, not including the supply of\nweapons by the state to the IFP for use against the ANC prior to our\nfirst democratic election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To\nthe extent that the weapon of choice among cash-in-transit heist\ngangs is no longer the AK47, but R4 and R5 assault rifles used by the\npolice and SANDF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In\ndry but often compelling prose, which also connects the dots numerous\nnews stories have set out, Shaw provides incontrovertible evidence of\nhow the state institution meant to protect citizens, is the very\nsource of weapons used to murder them. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n This\nis not an uplifting book, but it is an essential read. More so\nbecause its very existence should have the power to topple a\ngovernment, if they cared a jot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thousands of police-issue guns \u2013 the made-in-South-Africa 9mm Z88 \u2013 have been sold to Cape Town gangs since the mid-2000s to early 2015. The flood of guns to gangs saw … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4636"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4638,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4636\/revisions\/4638"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}