SOUTH AFRICA’S draconian Firearms Control Act, a decisive attempt to limit gun ownership in a society awash with weapons, has confronted a gun culture that is every bit as deep as America’s.

It is hard to imagine better representatives of this culture than Piet and Rossouw Botha, the two sons of former President PW Botha. The first member of their family to settle in South Africa in 1679 was a gunsmith and many of his descendants have been involved in the gun trade. Faced by the new law, both men are talking of emigration.

Piet Botha and his wife carry .40 Smith & Wessons constantly. “She has to drive past three squatter camps on her way to work,” he says. Both of them are good shots and spend hours on the shooting range every month.

Piet points out that one of his best friends was shot dead in the garden, that there have been five attempted burglaries of his Pretoria home, that he has twice been attacked by muggers in the past few years (he saw them off by pulling a knife — he carries three knives), that his son was badly beaten by other muggers and that his son-in-law was nearly killed in another incident.

His son responded to his ordeal by becoming a fully trained gun and knife instructor and learning martial arts. His daughter, who works in Britain, arms herself with guns and knives whenever she returns. “In our family it’s always been the tradition that children learn to handle guns from the age of five or six and we all belong to shooting clubs,” he says.

Although Piet is a sports shooter too, he says the most important thing is the defence of his family: “I can’t compromise about that. If I’m forced to give up my guns here, I’ll emigrate to the UK”.

Reminded that British gun laws are equally tough, he replies: “No problem. There you have law and order and the police are magnificent. My family will be safe there without guns.”

Rossouw Botha, who runs the gun shop Redneck Tactical Supplies in the Western Cape town of George, is only too aware that many gun shops are closing down because of the new law, which requires weapons in private hands to be re-registered every five years and, in some cases, every two years.

The regulations are bewilderingly complex and the licensing department is so slow that at its present rate it will take 65 years to re-register all South Africa’s 4.5m legally held private guns.

If Rossouw wants to continue to ply his trade, he may have to do it in the United States. “The guys I really feel sorry for are the poor, mainly blacks,” he says. “Well-off whites can retreat inside high-walled houses with expensive alarm systems and security companies offering instant armed response. But 95% of my customers are black and they can’t afford that.

“They buy my guns but have to leave them in my safe because they can’t get licences for them. They are all going to be driven into becoming illegal gun owners.”

Both men are determinedly modern and progressive Afrikaners who insist that they never supported apartheid in the days before the African National Congress came to power.

“The ANC is the democratically elected government of this country and that means its laws have to be respected,” says Piet. “This new gun law is completely wrong, but I absolutely will not break the law.”

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