Norwood Police Station: 175 Guns Stolen from the Evidence Room – When the People Sworn to Protect Us Arm the Criminals Instead

If you’re a minority South African trying to raise a family, keep a business afloat, or simply get through the day without looking over your shoulder, stories like this one from Norwood Police Station are not abstract news. They are the lived reality that makes everyday life in South Africa feel like a rigged game.

A police officer is on duty in Johannesburg. Suspects smash his vehicle window and open fire. He dies. Ballistics tests confirm the murder weapon came directly from the Norwood SAPS 13 evidence storeroom – the exact place where seized exhibit guns and surrendered amnesty firearms are supposed to be locked away permanently, never to return to the streets.

In early August 2021, Hawks investigators and the National Priority Violent Crimes unit arrived at Norwood to audit the storeroom. The officer responsible for access was nowhere to be found. That same day, the evidence store clerk took his own life. When auditors finally gained entry after tampered seals were discovered, they found 175 firearms missing: 134 exhibit guns that had been seized from crime scenes and 41 amnesty weapons that ordinary citizens had handed over in good faith. The initial count was 158; further checks pushed it to 175. Many of those guns had already been used in cash-in-transit heists, gang shootings, and attacks on police officers. Recoveries were minimal.

The station commander at the time, Colonel Phetole Mahasha, resigned in January 2022 as the scandal unfolded. This was not Norwood’s first major arms-related failure. In 2014, police raided a property just metres from the station belonging to an elderly Ukrainian couple, Mark and Emma Shmukler-Tishko. They recovered over 300 firearms, rifles, explosives, detonators, and ammunition-manufacturing equipment – many of which had previously been stored at the same Norwood evidence facility.

Fast-forward to March 2025: the then-station commander, Colonel Logan Govender, was arrested for an alleged 2020 incident in which he and a civilian accomplice reportedly staged a bogus raid on a shop, seized R165,000 worth of cigarettes under false pretences, and made the goods disappear without proper evidence procedures.

These are not isolated slip-ups. South Africa has seen thousands of SAPS firearms go missing or stolen over the years, with shockingly low recovery rates and even lower rates of real disciplinary action. When the very institutions responsible for controlling dangerous weapons become a source for criminals, the consequences fall hardest on minority South African communities already navigating high crime, structural pressures, and the daily grind of protecting their families and cultural continuity.

At Loving Life we do not do performative outrage or activist slogans. We call it straight: this is a profound betrayal. Guns that should have been destroyed or securely guarded instead armed the people who make life dangerous for everyone else. It destroys trust, shatters families, and makes the honest work of building stable lives that much harder.

Loving life in South Africa means refusing to accept this as normal. It means demanding proper audits, swift accountability, and the actual destruction of weapons that belong in a furnace, not in criminal hands. No excuses. No comfortable silence.

This is honest South African commentary grounded in the facts. The Norwood scandal shows exactly how institutional failure hits real people – the ones just trying to live safely and keep their communities intact.

Demand better where it counts. Stay clear-eyed.

Loving Life Blog – South African minority perspective, lived reality analysis South Africa, honest South African commentary.

Based on verified reports from parliamentary briefings, eNCA and Daily Maverick investigations, and official SAPS updates (2021–2025).

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