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The South African Police Service (SAPS) lacks the systems to trace particular firearms, a major weakness in efforts to deal with trafficking in illegal arms. This is according to Ian Cameron, chairman of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Police and long-time anti-crime activist.

He was commenting on Monday in response to a question on illegal firearms he had posed to Firoz Cachalia, the acting minister of police, in Parliament earlier in the year.

Cameron, who is a Member of Parliament for the Democratic Alliance, asked how many firearms not registered on the Central Firearms Registry but with legible serial numbers had been recovered by the police, a matter of importance given their use in gang violence. He was told that the police did not maintain this information.

“That is a serious problem,” Cameron said, “If a firearm is recovered with a legible serial number but SAPS cannot tell Parliament whether it appears on the national firearms system, then our tracing and intelligence capability is not where it should be. SAPS also stated that only six unregistered firearms were recovered in the Western Cape during the reporting period. That figure needs interrogation, particularly in a province where gang violence and firearm-related murders remain a daily reality.”

He further asked about SAPS protocols for tracing the chain of custody from recovered firearms to the point of their recovery. While SAPS used a system from Interpol to trace firearms globally, it could not provide information on the number of firearms for which it had established these chains of custody.

“That is the heart of the problem,” Cameron continued. “You cannot claim to be serious about illegal firearms if you cannot measure how many recovered firearms are being traced from manufacturer, to dealer, to lawful owner, to point of loss, theft, diversion, or criminal recovery. Firearm tracing is not a paperwork exercise. It is how we identify leakage points, corrupt officials, negligent institutions, trafficking routes, rogue dealers, and criminal networks.”

The acting minister’s reply also revealed that between 1 April 2025 and 31 December 2025, 154 recovered firearms had been positively identified as originally belonging to SAPS, along with 205 that had belonged to private security companies.

A renewed push is currently being made to amend the Firearms Control Act (FCA), which would abolish self-defence as justification for owning a firearm. Such a measure was introduced in 2021, but was not passed. This comes on top of a pre-existing intention by some officials – such as former Police Minister Bheki Cele – to abolish legal civilian firearm ownership entirely.

This is based on the idea that more restrictive legislation on firearms would reduce violent crime, and that the Firearms Control Act of 2000 had done so. Neither assumption is supported by evidence. Major elements of the FCA have never been properly implemented.

Cameron concluded: “The debate must be honest. Law-abiding firearm owners are not the central threat. The central threat is the failure to stop firearms leaking from state, institutional, and criminal channels into the hands of gangs and violent offenders. South Africa does not need symbolic attacks on lawful self-defence. We need intelligence-led policing, proper firearms tracing, prosecution-led investigations, and real accountability for every firearm that moves from lawful control into criminal hands.”