By Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Jul 28 2004 (IPS)

A recent brutal murder of a university student and the shooting of a soccer coach by a referee has rekindled the long-running debate about gun control in South Africa.

The debate heightened after the body of Leigh Mathews, who was kidnapped on Jul. 9, was found dumped in South Africa’s commercial hub, Johannesburg, nearly two weeks later. Police say 21-year-old university student had been shot. They gave no details.

Just a week later a soccer referee pulled a gun and shot dead a coach for questioning one of his rulings during a match that had been ridden-with controversy, police say.

The incident happened in the Eastern Cape Province after the referee gave a yellow warning card to a player in a local match on Jul. 24.

Inspector Mali Govender of the Grahamstown police in the Eastern Cape Province told reporters ”the referee became threatened when the other team approached him because they were angry. So he pulled out a gun and killed the coach of the visiting team.”

Gun-related violence claims about 10,000 people in South Africa each year, according to the campaign group, Gun-Free South Africa (GFSA).

Susan Shabangu, deputy minister of safety and security, told some 100 activists marking the ‘Global Week of Action Against Small Arms and Light Weapons’ in Johannesburg this month that criminal gangs possess 25,000 illegal guns and 1.6 million rounds of ammunitions in South Africa.

But independent sources believe the figure could be anywhere between 500,000 and four million.

To reduce gun-related crimes, a new firearms law came into force in South Africa, which has one of the highest rates of gun-related crime anywhere in the world.

Under the law, introduced on Jul.1, over two million gun owners will have to reapply for their licences, undergo stringent checks and sit for a competency examination.

The new Firearms Control Act also raises the legal age for owning a firearm from 16 to 21. South Africa’s Gun Owners’ Association, which is opposed to the new regulations, failed to persuade the court to stop the bill.

”South Africa is leading the way. We hope other African countries will follow soon,” Hannah Yilma, director of the U.N. Information Centre in the capital Pretoria, told the Johannesburg gathering.

For the new law to work, Shabangu urged South Africans to work closely with the police.

‘If not controlled, these guns will eventually threaten out democracy,” she warned, referring to the country’s fledgling democracy, which was introduced after the demise of apartheid in 1994.

So far 16 African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Liberia, have joined the campaign against small arms and light weapons.

”We ask unarmed majority in South Africa to stand up to support the firearm control campaign,” said Chemist Khumalo of the Global Week of Action.

In 2002, arms deliveries to Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa constituted 66.7 percent of the value of all arms deliveries worldwide, with a monetary value of nearly 17 billion dollars, according to a June 2004 report, titled ‘Guns or Growth?’, compiled by Amnesty International, Oxfam and International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA).

The main culprits are the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – Britain, the United States, Russia, China and France – who accounted for 90 of those deliveries, it said.

The guns are being sold, said the report, across the four regions where ”more than a billion people struggle to survive on less than a dollar a day; one child in five did not complete primary school; more than 14 million children lost one or both parents to AIDS in 2001; nearly 800 million people suffered from chronic hunger; and half a million women died in pregnancy or childbirth. ”

The report is also concerned about the implications of U.S. President George W. Bush’s war on terror.

For 2004, it said, the U.S. State Department set aside 4.7 billion dollars for counter-terrorism, compared with two billion dollars for programmes for the war against poverty.

The amount includes military assistance to the so-called ‘frontline states’ – a group of 25 countries that includes the Philippines, Afghanistan, and Yemen. These are the nations that threw their weight behind he current U.S. counter-terrorism campaign.

The aid will arrive in the form of military services, equipment and training, the report said.

Bernd Pirrung, director of Goethe Institute, a German language centre, in Johannesburg, said Germany and France refused to send troops to Iraq because of their past history.

”Germany and France suffered the most from WW1 and WW2. That’s why they didn’t send soldiers to Iraq. We don’t want to go through another war again,” he told the gathering.

Small and light guns are a big problem in Africa. They have devastated Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, the DRC, Burundi, Rwanda, Cote d’Ivoire, Uganda, Mozambique, Angola and Chad since 1960s.

”I witnessed three major wars in my country, Ethiopia,” said Yilma. ”Wars affect the poor, mainly women and children,” she added.

According to her, the world is awash with 500 million small and light arms.

”It’s like drugs, the traffickers are well organised. We should not give up. We should continue fighting them,” Hannah said.

Shabangu said the ongoing gun-collection exercise should go hand-in-hand with efforts to combat poverty. More than 350 million people, or over 50 percent of Africa’s population, are living below the poverty line of one dollar a day, according to the World Bank.

”We must address the core problems of poverty, unemployment. If we don’t, (gun-related) problems will persist,” she warned.

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