The FF Plus suspects foul play after a courier that was transporting firearm licences from the Government Printing Works in Pretoria to a provincial office in Gauteng apparently followed the wrong route via Dobsonville in Soweto and was hijacked.
Thousands of licences were stolen and are now in the hands of criminals. This is a great cause for concern particularly for firearm dealers seeing as persons with a stolen firearm licence will be able to buy ammunition and dealers must be on the lookout for this.
On the morning of 4 March 2020, during a meeting of Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police, the FF Plus asked questions about the incident and initially, the National Police Commissioner, General Khehla Sitole, was not even aware of it.
Only after he had made some enquiries to his generals, he was able to confirm to the Committee that the FF Plus’s information was correct. The priority of the case, which was being investigated on provincial level, has now been moved up to national level.
The argument that legally licensed firearm owners in South Africa are creating the problem of illegal firearms circulating, which in turn promotes crime, is heard all too often. This incident, however, shows that the police, responsible for issuing the licences, are not even able to implement proper precautionary measures to keep the licences safe.
The question remains: why were the licences transported via Dobsonville? To the FF Plus’s mind, it looks like a crime was committed after confidential information was leaked and so the party insisted that the case must be investigated urgently so that the relevant licences can be re-issued to prevent further crimes.
Read the original article in Afrikaans by Dr Pieter Groenewald on FF Plus
South Africa Today – South Africa News
