Non-governmental organisation, Gun Free South Africa (GFSA), is preparing a class action lawsuit against the police ministry in an effort to seek damages for victims of crimes committed with firearms stolen from police safekeeping.
GFSA says police are accountable for crimes committed by former senior SAPS member Colonel Christiaan Prinsloo.
Prinsloo confessed to selling over 2 000 firearms from police stores to gang leaders on the Cape Flats.
GFSA says Prinsloo was allegedly assisted in his criminal enterprise by his colleague former Colonel David Charles Naidoo. The organisation says as of 2016, SAPS records show that these firearms have been used in over a thousand murders.
GFSA director Adele Kirsten says, “Holding the state to account for its failure to secure weapons that were under its control from a period from about 2010 to about 2016 where thousands of weapons were stolen and sold to middlemen.”
A Gun Free South Africa report shows gun violence is the leading cause of murder in South Africa:
