The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has confirmed that three R4 assault rifles and a grenade launcher were stolen from Tek Base in Lyttelton following a burglary.
In a statement on Thursday 30 April, the SANDF said a suspected burglary was discovered on 27 April at around 12:00. “A member of the South African National Defence Force discovered a break-in at a storeroom upon returning from an official funeral in Mafikeng, North West. The burglar door had been forcefully opened and preliminary findings indicate that three R4 rifles and a grenade launcher were stolen.”
It is suspected that access to the premises was gained by cutting a hole in the perimeter fence.
A case of business burglary has been opened and the SANDF is currently verifying if any additional equipment or items are missing.
“The investigation is currently underway and progress regarding the case will be communicated in due course,” the SANDF concluded.
This is not the first time weapons have been stolen from Tek Base. In December 2019, the theft of 18 R4 assault rifles and three 9 mm pistols from the facility was discovered, but all assault rifles and two pistols were subsequently recovered in what turned out to be an inside job.
A parliamentary reply several years ago revealed that between the 2019/20 financial year to December 2023, 12 SANDF weapons were lost and 39 stolen, with the majority being R1/R4 assault rifles and 9 mm pistols. The single biggest loss was during the 2019 Tek Base theft.
Research undertaken by the Freedom Front Plus indicated 42 firearms were stolen from the SANDF between the 2019 financial year and the end of 2023, with the party stating that 33 were R1 and R4 assault rifles and that over three thousand rounds of ammunition for them was also stolen.
SANDF firearm losses pale in comparison to the police. Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia late last year indicated that between 2019/20 until the end of 2025, a total of 4 124 South African Police Service-owned firearms were reported as lost or stolen.
Reacting to the Tek Base theft, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) MP Carl Niehaus, the party’s permanent representative on the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans, and the Joint Standing Committee on Defence, said such weapons thefts are deeply disconcerting.
“They are not isolated incidents of bad luck or simple negligence. They are the visible symptoms of the total collapse of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). Weapons that should be protecting the sovereignty of our nation are instead disappearing into the hands of criminals, gangsters and enemies of the state. In a country already ravaged by record levels of violent crime, gangsterism, farm murders, cash-in-transit heists and daily killings that have turned townships, rural areas and even urban centres into war zones, every stolen military rifle or grenade launcher becomes another instrument of terror on our streets.”
Niehaus said the theft must be taken very seriously in this context of high levels of crime and violent abuse. “These are not just missing inventory items; they are fuel for the very instability the SANDF exists to prevent.”
He said the latest theft is part of a “damning” pattern: “in 2016, Uzi machine guns, an R1 rifle, ammunition and hand grenades vanished from the supposedly secure national key point armament depot at the SA Navy base in Simon’s Town over a single weekend. Military experts at the time openly admitted that security was either not up to standard or the crime involved an inside job. The Hawks were called in, yet no meaningful arrests followed.
“Between the 2019/20 financial year and December 2023, the situation deteriorated further: 39 weapons were stolen and another 12 reported lost across various SANDF units. These were predominantly R4 and R1 assault rifles and 9mm pistols, accompanied by large quantities of ammunition. The thefts hit bases including the SA Army Engineering Formation, 21 SAI Battalion, Tshwane Regiment, 4 Artillery Regiment in Potchefstroom and Air Force Base Makhado.”
“These are not peripheral failures. They are happening in one of the SANDF’s most important operational hubs, metres from senior command structures, under the noses of the very people who are supposed to be safeguarding our national security,” Niehaus maintains.
He said deteriorating conditions of military accommodation in Thaba Tshwane – symptoms of neglect and mismanagement – would inevitably lead to serious security problems. “When soldiers are treated with such contempt – when their living quarters are allowed to rot while billions are wasted elsewhere – morale collapses, discipline erodes and the door swings open to internal collusion. I said then, and I repeat now: you cannot expect loyalty and vigilance from people whose own families are housed in slums. The latest theft from the very same Thaba Tshwane precinct where these conditions persist is no coincidence.”
Long before these latest incidents, the EFF highlighted in Parliament the chronic underfunding, cadre deployment, politicisation of senior appointments, sale-off of strategic assets, failure to maintain equipment and infrastructure, and the dangerous erosion of morale among rank-and-file soldiers.
“We pointed out that armouries were poorly secured, inventories were not properly audited, and that the SANDF was simply not battle-ready or even theft-proof. Our warnings were dismissed as alarmist. Today, the chickens have come home to roost,” Niehaus said, calling it “a serious wake-up call for the entire nation…How can we expect our soldiers to defend the country when their own bases are being looted from within and their living quarters are falling apart around them?”
The EFF representative labelled the collapse of the SANDF a national emergency and called for the government, and specifically the President as Commander in Chief, and the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, to act decisively, with a commission of inquiry established to investigate the thefts.
“All SANDF armouries and depots must undergo immediate forensic audits. Enhanced physical security, 24-hour armed patrols, modern surveillance systems and zero-tolerance disciplinary measures must be implemented at once,” he said.
[Article by: defenceweb.co.za]