Locked and Loaded: How stolen and rented legal guns are fuelling South Africa’s crime wave

The smoking gun behind SA’s blood-soaked streets may be closer to home than many realise.

Stolen police firearms, missing civilian guns and smuggled weapons from neighbouring countries such as Namibia were fuelling a hidden trade that runs from Cape Town’s ganglands to towns and cities across the country.

These weapons move easily through the country, often arriving first in the Mother City before being used in killings and gang wars, and then travelling inland to arm other criminal groups involved in robberies, assassinations and cash-in-transit heists.

According to analysts and police insiders, the theft of guns from law enforcement is “the root of the evil” fuelling the SA's hidden weapons trade, leaving families, shopkeepers and cash-in-transit drivers living in fear.

Over the past decade, more than 73,500 civilian firearms and over 7,000 police-issued weapons have been reported lost or stolen, with most never recovered.

Gun Free SA’s Claire Taylor said that while cross-border trafficking and conflict-era weapons still played a role, it was far smaller than it once was.

“Cross-border smuggling has declined significantly since the 1990s,” she told IOL.

“Police data shows that just 56 illegal firearms were seized at ports of entry in 2023/24, compared to 179 in 2009/10.

"The few that are smuggled across borders tend to be high-calibre weapons, often destined for organised crimes like cash-in-transit heists, rhino poaching and targeted killings.

"SA’s 4,800-kilometre border is extremely difficult to police, and corruption at checkpoints only makes the job harder.”

She said smuggling methods vary, with some traffickers hiding weapons in legitimate cargo.

“In one case, military-grade guns from Namibia were found packed in fruit trucks heading for the Western Cape,” she said.

“The problem now is less about bulk cross-border smuggling and more about weapons circulating within SA itself.”

She said just over 7,000, averaging two a day, police-issued firearms were lost or stolen in the past decade, with a recovery rate of only 25%, suggesting many were illegally diverted rather than genuinely lost.

"Shockingly, 2.2m firearms are held by 502 government institutions with minimal oversight or accountability.

"And while the police report on loss and theft, but not on how many firearms it owns, each year, no other government department does this."

She said legal firearms used illegally or rented to criminals was also a big issue.

"An example is private security companies operating within the taxi industry using legally acquired firearms to conduct illegal operations on behalf of taxi mafias as described in the police commissioner’s testimony to the Madlanga Commission where he named eight private security companies implicated in assassinations and hits.

"It also includes fraud and corruption in the issuing of firearm licences and permits."

Anti-crime activist Yusuf Abramjee said the smuggling off weapons has been a problem for a long time.

"These guns end up in the hands of criminals," he said.

"There are thousands of illegal weapons in SA and it's a growing problem ... gangsters use these weapons in the on-going warfare."

A police insider from Grabouw said many of the weapons recovered in recent months were traced back to SA police stations.

“These are guns meant for official use that end up being rented out, swapped or stolen,” he said.

“Once they’re out, they go into criminal networks and are used in violent crimes like assassinations, armed robberies and gang shootouts.

"We’ve seen the same weapon used in multiple murders across different provinces.”

A Cape Town officer said most of the guns circulating in the city’s townships come from within SA, especially the Eastern Cape.

“The majority of illegal guns we pick up are police pistols or handguns that were reported missing,” he said.

“Some are sold by corrupt officers, others stolen from evidence rooms or during robberies.

"Cape Town is just a transit point — from here, they move up to Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.”

In Nelson Mandela Bay, another police officer described how internal corruption feeds the problem.

“It starts small,” he said.

“A policeman swaps out the cartridge, then rents out his service pistol to someone for the weekend.

"Before long, that gun is gone."

At some stations, he said, the situation got so bad that officers are now required to hand in their firearms at the end of every shift to stop theft.

"But it still happens.”

The FW de Klerk Foundation said the Cape Flats were designed as dumping grounds.

"Schools and churches that once anchored communities were hollowed out, jobs moved far away and in the vacuum, gangs became surrogate employers, protectors and, ultimately, shadow governments."

The foundation said the statistics tell their own story of a nation bleeding out.

"SA’s murder rate hovers around 45 per 100,000 people," the foundations' Christo van der Rheede said.

"In just one week in July 2025, 76 people were shot dead in Cape Town alone.

"Across gang hotspots, nearly 300 murders occur every quarter, with the Cape Flats dominating the nation’s top murder precincts.

"Children are the most innocent victims - more than one a day is killed in the Western Cape and in just three months of 2024, 79 young lives were lost, many in gang-related incidents.

"In Cape Town alone, between 90 and 130 gangs operate with a combined 100,000 members.

"Over seven recent months, police seized more than 1,500 firearms and nearly 40,000 rounds of ammunition, yet convictions for gang murders languish at an abysmal 2%-3%, less than 1% in 2026.

"In essence, more than 90% of gang killers escape justice."

Once caricatured as a Western Cape affliction, he said, it now festered in Gauteng’s Westbury, Eldorado Park and the East Rand, while Nelson Mandela Bay’s northern areas endure the same daily reality of turf wars, extortion and fear.

"Officials label these low-intensity warzones', but for residents, it is simply abandonment - a life lived under siege, waiting for the next volley of gunfire."

Van der Rheede said gangs must be treated as organised criminal enterprises under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act of 1998, with prosecutors pursuing racketeering, money-laundering and asset forfeiture relentlessly.

"Specialised gang courts and stronger bail restrictions for violent offenders should operate alongside an independent task force cleansing police and prisons of corruption, gun leaks and collusion.

"On the streets, constitutional policing and modern technology must restore control - expanding trained patrols, cutting 10111 response times and using gunshot detection, CCTV and analytics to disrupt hotspots."

In August, it was revealed that some of the guns stolen by ex-police Colonel Christiaan Prinsloo — meant for destruction but sold to Cape Flats gangs — were still missing.

Western Cape deputy police commissioner for visible policing, Major-General Luyanda Damoyi, said this during an event in Manenberg.

Prinsloo, who headed Gauteng’s firearm and liquor control unit, admitted to stealing and selling more than 2,000 guns that had been surrendered to police.

Many were later used in gang shootings that fuelled years of bloodshed on the Cape Flats.

A recent report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime revealed that gangs in the Western Cape were using police and military weapons smuggled from Namibia.

According to KwaZulu-Natal police, firearms were often the weapon of choice during the commission of serious and violent crimes.

"In efforts to rid the communities of all illegal firearms, police in KwaZulu-Natal recovered 306 firearms and over 3,000 rounds of ammunition of various calibre of firearms."

Of these, police said, 14 were rifles and 13 of them were homemade guns."

Police said a total 452 suspects were arrested for property related crimes, with 231 of them arrested for burglary at residential premises.

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