Guns for gangsters scandal fatal for future amnesties

Over the past 20 years large numbers of South Africans - most of them law-abiding citizens - turned over tens of thousands of unlicensed guns to the police during various firearms amnesties.

The majority did so because they felt it was their patriotic duty to respond to the government's call to make our country safer. They also decided to turn over their weapons because they were promised by the police that they would be destroyed.

It now seems that this confidence was misplaced.

As we reported this week, a court has heard that among the many weapons seized at the suburban Johannesburg home of an elderly couple were firearms that had been surrendered to the police during the most recent amnesty and should have been destroyed.

The couple are suspected of having links to a syndicate that supplies weapons to criminal gangs.

The revelation has prompted a major investigation by the Hawks into the possibility that firearms handed in to the police during the amnesty had been misappropriated and sold.

It has long been suspected that rogue cops are complicit in the supply of illegal weapons to the black market - too many officers ''lose'' their weapons or have them stolen. Searching questions have been asked over the years about security measures at police strongrooms.

But if it is found that the police have been supplying gangsters with weapons surrendered in good faith by honest citizens, then it is hard to see how future firearms amnesties can succeed.

The police have suffered considerable damage to their reputation in recent years - widespread corruption in the ranks, the heavy-handed treatment of protesters, the Marikana massacre, and the horrific dragging and alleged torture of Mido Macia have seen to that.

A corrosive lack of faith in the police appears to be behind the recent resurgence of vigilante killings - just this week four suspected robbers were stripped naked and set alight near Hammanskraal.

The police top brass need to ensure that the Hawks get to the bottom of the guns scandal - and then play open cards with the public.