SA going gun crazy

27 January 2016 - 02:42 By Tanya Farber

Fatal shootings have soared countrywide in recent years. The number of murder victims killed by gunfire brought to Cape Town's biggest mortuary has more than doubled in the past five years."We are now in a state of crisis. Murders - most notably by gunshot - are bringing in more and more bodies each year, and the morgue cannot cope," said Lorna Martin, head of forensic pathology at the Salt River mortuary.The number of gunshot victims reaching her mortuary has risen from 290 in 2010 to 695 last year.Murder rates were outstripping natural population growth and the influx of people from other provinces, Martin said.She questioned the validity of official crime statistics, saying police stations registered deaths as subject to an inquest but sometimes failed to recategorise them as "murder" when that was the finding of the inquest.The Salt River mortuary takes in bodies from the notoriously violent and gang-ridden Cape Flats.In Gauteng, the number of gunshot deaths has risen from 1413 in 2012-2013 to 1608 in 2014-2015.Gauteng department of health spokesman Steve Mabona said these figures included suicides and accidental shootings as well as murders.Sonja Smith - who runs funeral parlours in Pretoria, North West, Limpopo and Mpumalanga - said that in the past six months there had been a spike in gunshot killings."This is especially so for farm attacks and hijackings," she said.KwaZulu-Natal police spokesman Brigadier Jay Naicker said firearm-related murders were decreasing - but only because more people were being knifed or otherwise assaulted.New gun laws in 2000, and in 2004, led to a 21% drop in gun-related crime across the country but the situation took a turn for the worse after 2010.Richard Matzopoulos, an expert in violence and safety at the Medical Research Council, said the increase in gun deaths since 2010 was probably due to several factors.First, there had been a "national rise in homicides across the country, so the gunshot deaths in Cape Town are a rise within a rise".In 2010 then police minister Nathi Mthethwa "bowed to public pressure and fast-tracked more than a million firearm licence applications in only nine months".Matzopoulos said many legally possessed guns were stolen and sold to criminals.It is alleged that confiscated firearms to be destroyed by the police were sold by corrupt officers.Colonel Christiaan Prinsloo, a senior Gauteng police officer, was arrested on allegations of his involvement in selling firearms to Western Cape gang leaders.There have also been reports of people who failed to obtain a licence being issued with a "legal" gun by the authorities.A case cited by Claire Taylor, of Gun Free SA, involves Brigadier Mathapelo Miriam Mangwani, head of the Central Firearms Registry, in Pretoria, who, in 2013, was "suspended with immediate effect for her alleged involvement in bribery and corruption relating to firearm licensing".A year later she was "fired after undergoing a disciplinary process and being found guilty on two counts".Police spokesman Vish Naidoo said the Prinsloo case showed "how seriously we [the police] take it"."One cannot make generalisations about corruption and fraud to explain high gun fatalities."If people have evidence, then they need to come forward."The police are caught between a rock and a hard place because those applying [for a firearm licence] say we aren't processing them fast enough, while those against guns are accusing us of fast-tracking."Toddler Jazlin Sentamu was disabled by gunfire in Lavender Hill, Cape Town, five years ago when she was shot by a stray bullet during a turf war between two gangs.The bullet ripped through her pram and hit her in the spine."She was one of the first children to be shot here in Lavender Hill, but not the last," said her aunt, Michelle Louw, who lives with her."I have lived here all my life. Back in the day, the gangsters would fight with bricks and sticks. Now it is just gunfire."Additional reporting by Graeme Hosken, Katharine Child and Nivashni Nair..

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