Registration Leads to Confiscation in South Africa

On June 7th, 2018, the Constitutional Court in South Africa, overruled a lower court’s decision that parts of South Africa’s gun laws were unconstitutional. The laws were absolute, and did not allow for appeal or legitimate reasons for delay, such as hospitalization or death.

From citizen.co.za:

Section 24 of the Act requires that any person who seeks to renew a licence must do so 90 days before its expiry date. Section 28 stipulates that if a firearm licence has been cancelled‚ the firearm must be disposed of or forfeited to the state. A 60-day timeframe was placed on its disposal, which was to be done through a dealer.

In 2017, North Gauteng High Court judge Ronel Tolmay ruled that these two sections were unconstitutional. She stated that firearms due for renewal in terms of section 24 of the act “will be deemed to be valid, until the Constitutional Court has made its determination on the Constitutionality of the aforesaid sections”.

The effects of yesterday’s ruling are far-reaching. It is estimated that there are at least 300 000 firearm owners who – either negligently or intently – failed to renew their firearm licences. These people will have to hand their firearms in at their nearest police stations, from where it will be destroyed.

In his judgment, Froneman stated the prosecution of those who failed to renew licences timeously was unlikely. It is, however, not excluded from the realm of possibility.

Compensation is allowed under the firearms act, but is at the discretion of the firearms act registrar. Maximum compensation is only 500 Rand ($37) per pistol or 1000 Rand ($75) per rifle. Those amounts are laughably short of market
values.  The South African Rand was worth $1.40 as late as 1971. At the time that black majority rule was forced on South Africa, it was $.33. Now it is worth about $.075, or 7.5 American cents.

The South African government required all legal firearms in South Africa to be registered. Now it requires about 300,000 of them to be turned in without any rational compensation. The South African government has become amazingly corrupt in the last 23 years.  It is unknown how many $10,000 rifles or even $400 pistols will actually be destroyed, as required by current South African law.

Socialist governments in Africa are notoriously wasteful as well as corrupt.

The legislature recently voted to allow a Constitutional change so that land from white landowners could be confiscated without compensation.

This latest move toward tyranny will hasten the departure of productive people from South Africa. South Africa seems determined to follow the example of Zimbabwe.  Black majority rule quickly devolved into dictatorship, war, and starvation in Zimbabwe.

Constitutional limits are only effective if they can be enforced.

©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch