Inside South Africa’s Ballistics Backlog: How 29,000 Murder Weapons Overwhelmed the Police

Inside South Africa’s Ballistics Backlog: How 29,000 Murder Weapons Overwhelmed the Police

When South Africans talk about gun violence, it often feels like an abstract crisis, until you hear what Brigadier Mishak Mkhabela revealed this week.

Testifying before the Madlanga Commission, Mkhabela, the head of the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) ballistics division, painted a picture so stark it’s hard to ignore. The country’s gun problem, he said, has filled every inch of space in the police’s forensic system, so much so that a museum had to be converted into a firearm storage vault.

“Every Gun in That Room Has Killed Someone”

At any given time, Mkhabela’s team is safeguarding over 29,000 firearms, each tied to a murder case somewhere in South Africa. “If anyone wants to understand how bad the situation is,” he told the commission, “they should visit my strong room. Every firearm in there has killed a victim. We are living in a dangerous country.”

It’s a chilling statement that cuts to the heart of South Africa’s ongoing struggle with violent crime. While crime statistics often blur into numbers, this one doesn’t, it’s physical, tangible, and disturbingly heavy.

42 Analysts, Thousands of Guns, and No Space Left

Behind the glass doors of SAPS forensic labs, only 42 ballistics analysts are expected to handle tens of thousands of cases, each firearm requiring careful examination, test-firing, and matching to spent cartridges or bullets found at crime scenes.

To put it bluntly: the system is collapsing under its own weight.

Mkhabela described overflowing evidence bins and laboratories bursting at the seams. “We had to repurpose a museum,” he said. “It’s now full. We don’t have space anymore. We receive more than what we can process.”

The Cost of Delay

Every day a gun sits untested, a case stalls and a victim’s family waits for justice. For police investigators, it means longer backlogs, weaker prosecutions, and, too often, killers walking free due to delays in forensic confirmation.

The ballistics bottleneck doesn’t just reflect inefficiency; it mirrors the scale of firearm-related violence South Africa faces. From gang wars in the Western Cape to armed robberies in Gauteng, the flood of seized weapons is a direct reflection of the country’s spiraling gun problem.

A Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight

Social media has erupted since the testimony.

“If 29,000 murder weapons are sitting in storage, what does that say about our crime rate?” one user wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Another commented: “We can’t fight crime if our evidence rooms look like war zones.”

The public reaction underscores a broader frustrationmany feel that while SAPS officers on the ground face daily danger, the system behind them is broken and underfunded.

Not Just a Numbers Problem, A National One

South Africa has some of the highest rates of gun-related murders in the world. Yet, the country’s forensic capacity has not kept pace with its rising crime burden. Experts warn that without urgent investment in forensic infrastructure and personnel, the justice system will continue to choke.

Mkhabela’s revelation about the Armand Swart murder investigation, where he denied allegations of tampering with ballistic reports, only adds to the perception that the system’s credibility is under pressure.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The Madlanga Commission’s hearings have peeled back a curtain few South Africans ever get to look behind. What it reveals is alarming, a country drowning in evidence of its own violence.

For Mkhabela and his 42 analysts, the work continues despite impossible odds. But as the brigadier’s words echo through the nation, one truth stands out: the fight against gun crime can’t be won in the streets if justice keeps getting stuck in the lab.

{Source: IOL}

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