By Bernell Simons
The COVID-19 pandemic left a devastating scar on South Africa, spreading rapidly and claiming countless lives. Now, the Free State may be confronting a different kind of epidemic — one driven not by a virus, but by illegal and unlicensed firearms.
According to Professor Mpho Matlala, a law enforcement and crime expert at UNISA, the Free State’s geographic position makes it particularly vulnerable to the illegal flow of firearms. Its proximity to Lesotho has effectively turned the province into a key transit corridor for weapons moving across the country.
Matlala warns that weak border management, chronic staff shortages and what he describes as a “deeply entrenched culture of corruption” create conditions that allow illegal firearms to pass through checkpoints with relative ease.
He clarified that firearm amnesty measures are designed to encourage individuals to voluntarily surrender unlicensed weapons.
“People need to remember that the Amnesty Act exists to reduce the number of illegal firearms in circulation by offering immunity for unlawful possession — provided the firearm has not been used in serious crimes such as murder,” he said.
However, he cautioned that without strong oversight and accountability within law enforcement and government structures, amnesty initiatives risk falling short. Instead of curbing violence, corruption and poor enforcement may inadvertently fuel the very crisis authorities are trying to contain.
In just two weeks, five people have been killed in the province due to gun violence — a figure that underscores the growing intensity of the crisis. Safety experts warn that the Free State is facing what they describe as a “trigger-happy pandemic,” where the spread of illegal weapons mirrors the rapid contagion of a public health emergency.
A gun violence survivor, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons, described how easily illegal firearms can be obtained and the reckless danger they pose.
“I was involved in a shooting where both of us were armed,” he said. “We ran from each other while drawing our guns and just started firing, without thinking about who else could get hurt. Looking back now, I realise how dangerous and irresponsible that was — especially for people who had nothing to do with our conflict. What shocked me most was how easy it was to get the gun. It was almost as simple as withdrawing cash from an ATM.”
A community member who survived a gun attack in Heidedal, Bloemfontein, last week also raised concerns about the growing accessibility of illegal firearms and how quickly disputes escalate into deadly encounters.
The disturbing reality is that firearms have become a daily threat in communities, claiming the lives of innocent men, women and children. Law enforcement and community organisations are sounding the alarm, stressing that urgent intervention is needed to stem the tide of violence.
Nationally, South Africa continues to battle mounting gun violence, with an average of 33 people shot and killed daily. According to Gun Free South Africa (GFSA), firearms were used in 2,886 murders over just three months.
Recent police statistics show that between October and December 2024, 1,952 suspects were arrested for illegal possession of firearms and 1,380 for illegal possession of ammunition. During the same period, SAPS recorded 411 600 serious and violent crimes nationwide.
GFSA director Adele Kirsten said firearms remain the weapon of choice for criminals and called for stronger regulation and accountability from private gun owners and security companies. She welcomed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s pledge to curb illegal guns and recover weapons from communities.
Major General Thulare Sekhukhune reported a 5% drop in serious crime overall, although incidents of mob justice and alcohol-fuelled violence have risen, particularly in the Free State.
Efforts to address the crisis have faced setbacks. In 2017, government announced a six-month firearms amnesty from 1 April to 30 September, allowing people to surrender illegal guns without prosecution. However, the programme never took effect due to incomplete parliamentary approval and the absence of a Government Gazette notice. Later amnesties in 2019 and 2020 proved more successful, but the failed 2017 initiative left thousands of illegal firearms in circulation.
In the Free State alone, 12,727 deaths were recorded in 2017, while 356 individuals were declared unfit to possess firearms due to illegal activity. Authorities maintain that voluntary surrender programmes remain vital to removing weapons from communities and protecting families nationwide.
The key question now is whether authorities can contain this crisis before it escalates further. Without sustained policing, community interventions and strict enforcement of firearm regulations, the province risks seeing gun violence spread unchecked.
As the Free State grapples with this deadly trend, the need for a coordinated response — from law enforcement, government and community leaders — has never been more urgent. The stakes are high, and the time to act is now.
Tshediso Mangope
Yesterday I attended the Branch Biennial General Meeting in my branch. I was expecting politics, but what I found instead was unapologetic vulgarity. At some point, decency packed its bags and divorced the chamber.
A woman stood up and announced, with tall confidence, that she could stand naked on the table because she feared nothing. This was in addition to a plethora of rude things flying around.
For a moment, I wondered whether I had mistakenly walked into an ANC meeting or a late-night beerhall karaoke.
This is the curse of being a broad church. Once upon a time, being a broad church meant ideological diversity. Today, it means anything goes; no discipline, no decorum, no shame.
Nowadays, the only qualification for political participation other than paying the subscription is a willingness to embarrass the movement in public. Everyone is welcome, including political illiterates, attention seekers and professional disrupters who mistake chaos for radicalism.
Vulgarity has become a substitute for politics. If you cannot argue, shout. If you cannot reason, threaten. If you cannot persuade, remove your clothes. It seems we confuse being mass-based with being mannerless.
What makes this tragic is that all of this is done in the name of “fearlessness.” But there is nothing fearless about disorder. There is nothing radical about vulgarity. Standing naked on a table is not revolutionary; it is madness.
The founding fathers of the ANC taught us that freedom came with discipline. Oliver Tambo was very clear that “a revolutionary must be distinguished and distinguishable from a common criminal”. That distinction mattered because the struggle was moral before it was political. Our conduct today teaches the young ones that our minimum political programme is about freeing freedom from discipline.
The ANC’s authentic broad church produced the generation of Oliver Tambo. Today we struggle to produce a coherent sentence without insults and rudeness. The church has lost its altar, and the congregation is applauding the wrong things.
The real danger is not that the ANC is a broad church. The danger is that we have become a church without doctrine, without discipline and without self-respect.
Yesterday was not an isolated incident. It was a mirror. And what stared back at us was an organisation flirting with self-destruction. We have seen this play before, in almost all liberation movements that gained independence before us. Liberation movements are brought to heel not by enemies from without, but by scoundrels within.
We must decide whether we want to be a serious political force or a permanent stand-up situation. Reminded that history has been cruel to liberation movements and it certainly does not clap for nonsense.
*Tshediso Mangope is an ANC member in Mangaung and writes in his own capacity…
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of this publication (Journal News).
Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) will on Tuesday start working on its draft report on the Road Accident Fund (RAF) after its three-month long inquiry into maladministration.
Committee chairperson Songezo Zibi said he’s satisfied by the way the inquiry has been handled and believes it will set a benchmark for overseeing other troubled State entities.
The committee has, however, failed to get the former RAF CEO Collins Letsoalo to testify in response to the many allegations of misconduct levelled against him by witnesses after he snubbed parliamentary summonses to appear.
From a clean audit in 2020, the RAF followed that up with two disclaimers and three adverse audit opinions in the years that followed.
Following testimony from the Auditor General, the Special Investigating Unit (SIU), accounting bodies, RAF officials, former staff and boards of the entity, SCOPA will now begin to draft its findings and recommendations.
Zibi said that he believes the process has been a worthwhile one, not only for the RAF.
“We will also be able to have more specific oversight criteria, so in the case of the RAF, we won’t rely on the annual report, which is what Parliament does, and management decides what it discloses in the annual report, so they drive the oversight themselves.”
Although Letsoalo challenged the authority of the committee to conduct the probe, Zibi said that he will be afforded the opportunity to respond to sections of the report that impact him.
“If he is inclined to take the report on review, then it needs to be clear from beginning to end that he was given every opportunity to comment on the report.”
The committee is expected to wrap up deliberations on the report for onward presentation to the National Assembly by the end of February.
*This article was first published by Eye Witness News
ANC Gauteng provincial task team co-convenor Panyaza Lesufi says the outcome of the party’s regional conference must be respected and that the leadership of the African National Congress in Johannesburg is legitimate and uncontested.
He was speaking at the ANC’s 114th anniversary January 8 celebrations in Soweto on Sunday.
Lesufi said the event was deliberately held in the region to send a strong message that any differences within the party must be addressed through proper channels and that the elected leadership must be given the recognition it deserves.
“If you don’t respect an elected leadership, we will attend to you not only today, tomorrow and forever because the leadership must be respected and the leadership must be given the necessary recognition that it needs,” he said.
He officially introduced the regional chairperson of the ANC in Johannesburg, Loyiso Masuku, along with the full regional leadership, emphasising that the leadership is undisputed.
Johannesburg’s member of the mayoral committee (MMC) for finance, Masuku, was elected as ANC Johannesburg regional chair in December, defeating current mayor Dada Morero. The outcome is seen as a potential trigger for changes in the city’s mayoral position.
Lesufi stressed that no one had taken the conference to court and that there was no dispute over the leadership of Johannesburg.
Lesufi said the national leadership was addressing issues with ballot papers and boxes, which he described as “clumsy” and “unnecessary.”
This follows the discovery of papers believed to be linked to the ANC’s Greater Johannesburg regional conference in December 2025 at a private home in Pretoria.
The conference has since been overshadowed by allegations of bribery and election manipulation, which are now under investigation by both the police and the party’s national leadership.
He added that any loss of confidence in leadership should be handled by accepting the outcome and preparing for the next conference.
Lesufi also cautioned against “hard comments” and calling for a culture of respect and adherence to conference processes.
Lesufi also praised members who had engaged with the ANC through proper channels and commended branches and structures that attended the National General Council (NGC). He highlighted the NGC’s clarity and unity, saying it reaffirmed that the only leader of the ANC is President Cyril Ramaphosa.
“The NGC was very clear, comrades. And it was unanimous. There was only one leader of the African National Congress and that leader is Cyril Ramaphosa. There is no other leader of the African National Congress,” Lesufi said.
He further addressed issues of branch and regional mandates, saying the NGC had emphasised the need to end situations where delegates arrived at conference with mandates opposite to those given by branches or regions.
Lesufi noted the council had called for amendments to the ANC constitution to allow members to vote for new leadership directly and to decentralise membership systems to regions to prevent manipulation.
“The NGC was clear that the membership system must move from national and be decentralised to our region so that we get a control over it.
''We don’t want people that manipulate membership to favour a certain outcome. We also don’t want people to manipulate membership purely because they are scared of democracy in their own branches.''
“What is on the agenda is to deliver a decisive victory for the ANC in the forthcoming local government elections,” he said.
*This article was first published by IOL News
ANC Gauteng provincial task team co-convenor Panyaza Lesufi says the outcome of the party’s regional conference must be respected and that the leadership of the African National Congress in Johannesburg is legitimate and uncontested.
He was speaking at the ANC’s 114th anniversary January 8 celebrations in Soweto on Sunday.
Lesufi said the event was deliberately held in the region to send a strong message that any differences within the party must be addressed through proper channels and that the elected leadership must be given the recognition it deserves.
“If you don’t respect an elected leadership, we will attend to you not only today, tomorrow and forever because the leadership must be respected and the leadership must be given the necessary recognition that it needs,” he said.
He officially introduced the regional chairperson of the ANC in Johannesburg, Loyiso Masuku, along with the full regional leadership, emphasising that the leadership is undisputed.
Johannesburg’s member of the mayoral committee (MMC) for finance, Masuku, was elected as ANC Johannesburg regional chair in December, defeating current mayor Dada Morero. The outcome is seen as a potential trigger for changes in the city’s mayoral position.
Lesufi stressed that no one had taken the conference to court and that there was no dispute over the leadership of Johannesburg.
Lesufi said the national leadership was addressing issues with ballot papers and boxes, which he described as “clumsy” and “unnecessary.”
This follows the discovery of papers believed to be linked to the ANC’s Greater Johannesburg regional conference in December 2025 at a private home in Pretoria.
The conference has since been overshadowed by allegations of bribery and election manipulation, which are now under investigation by both the police and the party’s national leadership.
He added that any loss of confidence in leadership should be handled by accepting the outcome and preparing for the next conference.
Lesufi also cautioned against “hard comments” and calling for a culture of respect and adherence to conference processes.
Lesufi also praised members who had engaged with the ANC through proper channels and commended branches and structures that attended the National General Council (NGC). He highlighted the NGC’s clarity and unity, saying it reaffirmed that the only leader of the ANC is President Cyril Ramaphosa.
“The NGC was very clear, comrades. And it was unanimous. There was only one leader of the African National Congress and that leader is Cyril Ramaphosa. There is no other leader of the African National Congress,” Lesufi said.
He further addressed issues of branch and regional mandates, saying the NGC had emphasised the need to end situations where delegates arrived at conference with mandates opposite to those given by branches or regions.
Lesufi noted the council had called for amendments to the ANC constitution to allow members to vote for new leadership directly and to decentralise membership systems to regions to prevent manipulation.
“The NGC was clear that the membership system must move from national and be decentralised to our region so that we get a control over it.
''We don’t want people that manipulate membership to favour a certain outcome. We also don’t want people to manipulate membership purely because they are scared of democracy in their own branches.''
“What is on the agenda is to deliver a decisive victory for the ANC in the forthcoming local government elections,” he said.
*This article was first published by IOL News
Parliament’s ad hoc committee investigating alleged interference, corruption and misconduct within the South African Police Service (SAPS) is expected to hear testimony from forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan on Tuesday under tight security arrangements.
O’Sullivan confirmed to IOL that he returned to South Africa earlier than planned from London after learning that Parliament’s ad hoc committee is expected to conclude its work next week, saying it was important to place evidence before Members of Parliament rather than allow what he described as false narratives to go unchallenged.
His appearance before the ad hoc committee comes after he was scheduled to testify last week but did not attend, citing concerns for his personal safety. Members of the committee later acknowledged the security risks faced by certain witnesses and indicated that measures would be put in place to ensure safe and uninterrupted proceedings.
O’Sullivan told IOL that security arrangements around his appearance have since been beefed up, but said he would not discuss the finer details.
The ad hoc committee was established by Parliament to probe allegations of interference, corruption and misconduct within SAPS, and to identify systemic failures and make recommendations aimed at restoring the integrity of the police service.
O’Sullivan has rejected claims that his earlier absence amounted to an attempt to evade accountability, insisting that he is not “in the business of fleeing” and that his return was motivated by a desire to present evidence supporting allegations he has raised.
He has also dismissed accusations by some witnesses who appeared before the ad hoc committee that he infiltrated the Independent Police Investigative Directorate or exerted improper influence within law enforcement structures, describing the claims as false and defamatory.
Parliamentary sources told The Star that arrangements had been made to ensure that O’Sullivan can testify safely and without disruption. Details of the security measures have not been disclosed, but they are understood to include heightened protection and controlled access to the committee venue.
The Star reported that the ad hoc committee’s inquiry has generated significant public interest, as it examines claims that go to the heart of SAPS governance and credibility. According to the report, O’Sullivan’s testimony is expected to address his dealings with SAPS leadership, alleged interference in investigations, and his experiences within the criminal justice system.
The newspaper further reported that the ad hoc committee is expected to continue hearing from additional witnesses in the coming weeks before compiling a report to Parliament.
*This article was first published by IOL News
