ANC revives the 2021 Firearms Control Amendment Bill

South Africa’s government is once again attempting to tighten the country’s already stringent firearms laws, reviving a draft that bears a close resemblance to the Firearms Control Amendment Bill withdrawn in 2021 after it attracted more than 150,000 public objections.

The 2025 version, currently under discussion at NEDLAC, has not yet been gazetted or tabled in Parliament. Stakeholder organisations representing gun owners, hunters, sport shooters and the private-security industry report that they have been excluded from the NEDLAC process, while Gun Free South Africa, a foreign-funded advocacy group that favours severe restrictions, has been assured of later consultation.

The leaked text retains the most contentious provisions of its predecessor. Section 13 of the existing Firearms Control Act, which allows those seeking licences to acquire them for the purpose of self-defence, would in practice be eliminated, with approval limited to applicants who can demonstrate “exceptional circumstances” beyond the general prevalence of violent crime.

Ammunition holdings would be capped at 100–200 rounds per chambering. The minister of police would acquire sweeping discretionary powers over licensing criteria, renewal periods and revocation grounds. Sport shooting, hunting and collecting would face new quotas on the number of firearms permitted and more onerous proofs of active participation. Private-security firms would be required, among other measures, to fit tracking devices to every duty weapon.

Official justification rests on the need to reduce the circulation of firearms in a country with one of the world’s highest murder rates. Yet a 2015 review commissioned by the Civilian Secretariat for Police and conducted by the University of the Witwatersrand concluded that further restrictions on legal owners would have negligible effect on violent crime, which is overwhelmingly committed with illegal weapons, many of them lost or stolen from police arsenals.

Opposition has been swift and broad. DA MP Ian Cameron, who chairs the parliamentary portfolio committee on police, has labelled the draft a “dangerous power grab” and vowed to block it. Gun-owners’ associations, represented by figures such as Gideon Joubert of the SA Gunowners Association, have mobilised petitions and warned of economic damage to the hunting and security industries. Farmers’ groups point to persistent rural attacks and the inadequacy of police response times.

With NEDLAC deliberations still under way and no date set for public comment, the ANC seems keen to see the disarmament of the law-abiding public. Past experience, however, suggests that any attempt to push the measure through in its present form will encounter fierce resistance in Parliament, in the courts and on the streets. In a country where the state struggles to control illicit guns yet contemplates rendering lawful self-defence effectively impossible, the proposal looks less like evidence-based policy than an ideological project dressed as public safety.