Soviet soldier Mikhail Kalashnikov designs the AK-47 two years after the end of World War II in 1947: simple, durable, deadly, and it soon becomes the world’s most trafficked rifle.
For two decades from the 1960s, it would become the revo-lutionary’s favourite, including the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), as well as protagonists on both sides of the brutal Mozambique civil war: Frelimo and Renamo.
The MK received AK-47s from the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies. But particularly from 1988 to 1990, the ANC smuggled thousands of AK-47s into SA as part of Operation Vula.
That eventually fed into the township wars and political bloodletting ahead of the first democratic elections in 1994.
The rifles were hidden in underground caches across provinces. South Africa bled as hostel dwellers clashed with township residents, particularly on the East Rand, and in political killings in KwaZulu-Natal making the AK-47 the soundtrack to transition.
Needless to point out, before his assassination, MK commander and SACP leader Chris Hani tried to dismantle underground units and disarm cadres.
He eventually got killed in the line of revolution, not with an AK-47 but with a tiny handgun in the hands of an assassin. Following the murder, the trusty old AK-47 vanished into the fog in a new democracy.
With the advent of the Firearms Control Act of 2000 and its iterations up to 2015, civilian ownership of the firearm is outlawed, with only the SA National Defence Force, the police’s Special Task Force, and certain state actors permitted to keep it.
Since then, the AK-47 has gone even deeper underground as a weapon of choice for urban terrorists and an ever-present companion to izinkabi’s ruinous hand.
The rifles are still hidden in caches across provinces.
The AK-47 resurfaces time and again in deadly taxi wars, gangland assassinations and political killings. Few rifles are ever traced. The gun becomes a ghost.
DJ Sumbody and other public figures fell to AK-47 fire.
Police confirmed the weapon’s role in countless hits – however, its origins remain as murky as ever.
Meanwhile, Operation Vala Umgodi uncovers AK-47s in zama zama camps.
In places like Carletonville and Sabie, Lesotho nationals use AKs not to sell but to dominate.
Armed with past military training, they terrorise communities, repel police and shoot rivals with guerrilla precision.
