South Africa leads the hand gun ownership figures

A two year research project that investigated the proliferation of small firearms in Southern African countries has revealed that civilian ownership of firearms in Southern Africa is by far the highest in South Africa. The study, commissioned by Gun Free South Africa in collaboration with the Centre for Conflict Resolution and the Institute for Security Studies, was launched in Pretoria today.

The proliferation of small arms was investigated in the nine Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. In South Africa, more than 80% of civilians own weapons. This is more than the combined holdings of the police and military in the country. It is also much higher than the region's average of 2.27%. Mozambique has the lowest percentage - 0.4% per total population.

"Civilians own more than 3 million firearms in South Africa, that's an enormous number of firearms. More importantly we found that 20 000 of those firearms are lost or stolen every year that's 20 000 firearms going into the hands of criminals every year," said Chandre Gould, a researcher.

Jackie Selebi, the national police commissioner, who is also the president of Interpol, said since the start of attempts to eradicate illegal firearms in Southern Africa in 1997, there has been a marked decrease in the number of weapons in the country. Selebi said the success of Operation Rachel in Mozambique, where the South African Police Service (SAPS) has been involved in an operation involving searching and destroying of arms, as well as the local arms destruction programme called Operation Sethunya, largely contributed to this.