A recently released report by Amnesty International (AI) says Norinco 9mm pistols, which are cheaply manufactured in China, are commonly used in cases of robbery, rape and other crimes in South Africa.
The report notes that, despite South Africa’s stringent Firearms Control Act of 2000, firearms are filtering into the underworld after being lost or stolen.
Although the United Nations Comtrade database recorded the sale of only 10 079 pistols and revolvers in 1998, AI says is not possible to establish whether this sale included Norincos because of the opaque culture of the Chinese government in its sales of weapons to African governments.
The wide-ranging report says China has increased its influence in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and these links have been cemented by arms sales to regimes with scant respect for human rights, such as North Korea, Pakistan and Sudan.
China, the report points out, is the only major arms manufacturer that has not entered into “any multilateral agreement which sets out criteria, including respect for human rights, to guide arms export licensing decisions”.
In South Africa, “guns seized from armed criminals have frequently been of Chinese origin”. AI’s report contains a sample of incidents involving Norinco pistols that were covered by the press, several involving security guards being disarmed by robbers and Norinco pistols being recovered from crime scenes.
Olajobi Makinwa, executive director of AI South Africa, said it was “quite difficult to get an estimate on the scale of Chinese weapons in the wrong hands”. She said it was also difficult to establish whether these weapons were “legitimately imported and then subsequently diverted, lost or stolen, ending up on the streets”, or whether they were “smuggled into South Africa from China, directly or indirectly, by organised crime networks”.
A security expert said the Norinco pistol “is a cheap weapon made for mass production”. He described it as a “low-quality copy of all good weapons” and one “that a weapons expert would not use”. This was borne out by two gun dealers, who said a new Norinco pistol costs less than R1 000. One dealer said the most expensive guns in the 9mm range, the Heckler Koch and the Walther P99, can cost up to R10 000.
The security expert conceded that although the Norinco was a “problem weapon”, it was difficult for a supplier to keep track of where a firearm ends up after he has sold it.