Selebi declares war on guns
Boyd Webb | Pretoria, South Africa
26 October 2004 15:24
The South African Police Service (SAPS) may be disarmed of its service pistols if no police officer is killed over a two-year period, said National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi on Tuesday.
"If I can record zero police deaths in two years, then I will be in a position to say that we can look at taking weapons away from police," said the commissioner.
Selebi also said he will shortly turn schools into gun-free zones where not even police officers will be allowed to enter with their weapons.
"Students should be allowed to express themselves without police running into their schools with guns," he said, but noted that other ways of managing crime problems at education institutions will have to be found.
Selebi said drugs are a huge problem and that the "drug consumption in Pretoria schools was amazing".
Speaking at the launch of a study on the proliferation of small arms in Southern Africa -- sponsored by Gun Free South Africa, the Institute for Security Studies and the Centre for Conflict Resolution -- Selebi said there has been a marked decrease in the number of weapons in South Africa since 1997.
Contributing greatly to this, Selebi said, was the success of Operation Rachel in Mozambique where the SAPS had been involved in the searching and destroying of arms caches.
According to statistics released by the commissioner, 42,2% of rapes are committed at gunpoint in South Africa, and 73% of attempted murders and 78,4 percent of aggravated robberies involve the use of small weapons.
Many of the country's illegal weapons are alleged to have been smuggled in from Mozambique.
But with the 10th Operation Rachel completed last week, Selebi said 1 300 heavy weapons had been found and destroyed along with 187 hand grenades, 236 mortars and millions of rounds of ammunition.
With this in mind, Selebi said, the SAPS will soon be conducting a similar operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
"We are today [Tuesday] having a meeting in Pretoria with members of the DRC police and representatives from Norway," he said.
Selebi said that during the meeting, guidelines will be discussed for going into the DRC to search for and destroy small firearms.
"What the politicians are doing won't come to anything if there are marauding groups of people with weapons running around," he said.
He noted that this operation will not only benefit the DRC, but also the Great Lakes region and the continent of Africa as a whole.
Discussing the worldwide phenomenon of small arms and their use in crime, Selebi noted that other countries have approached South Africa to help train their respective police institutions to detect and destroy small firearms.
"We are currently helping Swaziland and Lesotho, and this week, officials from Nicaragua have asked us to help them," he said.
Selebi said he will use his term as head of Interpol to push for the regulation of small weapons and the detection and destruction of illicit firearms.
He said it is important to unite the globe to stop the proliferation of small arms as it has done with landmines.
"And it's important to ensure that fewer of these small arms reach our continent," he said. -- Sapa
Well so much for my thought that they would restore some authority and power back to the police force.