The programme for the second day of the National Firearms Summit was clearly printed a few days in advance. In a country where the political landscape can shift so drastically from one day to the next, that pre-printing was quite a chance to take. From 09h30 to 10h00 was set aside for a presentation on IPID: Dealing with Police Firearms, by Mr Robert McBride.

McBride was presumably hastily uninvited after being served with a suspension notice on Tuesday afternoon, ostensibly due to his involvement in the illegal rendition of Zimbabweans in 2011. What lent a slightly surreal edge to proceedings at the Firearms Summit was the fact that McBride’s absence was neither explained nor excused. The conference’s hired facilitator said breezily at one stage that the IPID input had “pretty much been covered”, which was the sole mention of the programme omission.

McBride’s speaking slot was taken by Police Minister Nathi Nhleko, who had been due to address the summit on Tuesday but hadn’t arrived. Nhleko apologised for this on Wednesday, explaining that he had had “other pressing matters” – such as suspending McBride and appointing an acting successor, one assumes. When Nhleko was doorstopped by journalists during the summit’s tea break, he described the suspension of McBride as “the right thing to do”, and added that “further matters” legitimising his suspension had since come to light.

The DA has been forced into the uncomfortable position of lamenting McBride’s suspension for “discharging his mandate without fear or favour”, after having vehemently opposed the appointment of McBride in the first place. On Wednesday, opposition representatives at the firearms summit walked out early on.

“It became obvious when the minister suddenly and unexpectedly walked in, and stood to fill the slot which should have been filled by IPID’s Robert McBride, that there was nothing left for the DA to do at the summit,” DA Shadow Police Minister Dianne Kohler-Barnard told the Daily Maverick afterwards.

“The minister failed to arrive to present the keynote address yesterday, but in any case by the time he did arrive we had been silenced as the official opposition, unable to give any input or ask any questions.” Kohler-Barnard maintains that she and her deputy Zak Mbhele were deliberately prevented from giving input during the sessions’ Q&A.

As was the case on the summit’s first day, discussion was dominated by representatives from the pro-gun lobby – sports shooting, hunting, private security and so on – determined to make their voices heard by government in light of the draft Firearms Control Amendment Bill.

They would likely have been reassured by the words of national police commissioner Riah Phiyega, who told the summit that South Africa was working on understanding how to be a “gun-friendly society”.

Phiyega gave some indication of the number of legal guns in circulation: between 2010 and 2014, she said, over 3 million applications for gun licenses were received. Around 1,7 million individual owners are in possession of just over 3 million guns, with official and “non-official” institutions legally owning the rest.

Later in the day, Deputy Police Minister Maggie Sotyu said that the backlog for the processing of gun licenses exists in part because the demand is so high. In Gauteng alone, there are 10,000 applications for gun licenses per day, followed by the Western Cape.

Minister Nhleko deplored the high levels of illegal gun ownership, and said that the sclerotic and over-subscribed Central Firearms Registry meant that gun ownership was a challenge to control. Deputy Minister Sotyu took it one step further, describing the Central Firearms Registry as “dysfunctional” and candidly listing its weaknesses: among them, an old and inefficient IT system and a high staff vacancy rate. Sotyu suggested interns be brought in to help with paperwork.

Dealing with the misuse of firearms by the police, Phiyega said it was the duty of commanders to take guns away from their subordinates if an individual was being “snappy”, or if their wife had reported “unsavoury” behaviour.

Sotyu, meanwhile, called for the revival of “firearm-free zones” to be established, like no-smoking areas. She suggested that public places like schools, shebeens, resorts and parks should be classified as firearm-free zones. That idea did not go down well with the gun lobbyists, who said such places would promptly become areas for gun-toting criminals to run amok.

Anti-gun activists have at several points over the course of the summit called for the age restriction on firearm ownership to be raised from 21 – where it sits currently – to 25. (The minimum age for gun ownership in Zimbabwe, incidentally, is 14.)

Sotyu said that although she had been part of the legislative cohort responsible for the 21 restriction, she was now in favour of dropping the minimum age to 18, because it would be “more workable”.

Echoing the pro-gun camp, both Sotyu and Nhleko called for greater emphasis placed on “social cohesion” as one way to address South Africa’s violent homicide problem. Sounding a lot like Number One, Sotyu also said that “moral regeneration” was key. Guns don’t kill people: moral degenerates kill people. DM

Read more:

• Suspending McBride ‘the right thing’, on IOL

• National Firearms Summit: The battle over SA’s guns rages on, on Daily Maverick

Photo: Elite, 9mm Para pistol manufactured by SIG Sauer is on display at the IWA OutdoorClassics exhibition for Hunting Guns and Outdoor Equipment, in Nuremberg, Germany, 06 March 2015. EPA/DANIEL KARMANN