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Irish-Qhobosheane, Jenni. 2021 ‘Cross-border Trade.’ How to Silence the Guns? Southern Africa's Illegal Firearms Markets, pp. 11-15. Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Geneva. 19 October

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Organized networks involving Zimbabweans, Mozambicans and South Africans have smuggled firearms along the same routes used to move illicit cigarettes, drugs, ivory, gold and diamonds across regional borders. In July 2004, a team of journalists from the state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation, investigating allegations of smuggling, was offered 15 weapons by a group of gun runners operating between the three countries. More recently, a crime analyst with the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC) told the GI-TOC in an interview that since 2016/17, new AK-47s are believed to be coming from Zimbabwe.

The huge Zimbabwe diaspora population has also contributed to the flow of firearms in two ways:
- Some transnational syndicates are taking advantage of the high levels of human trafficking to also smuggle firearms, using small vehicles and buses.
- As Zimbabwe's socio-economic situation has worsened, many Zimbabweans are becoming reliant on money and groceries sent by their friends and family in the diaspora. Enterprising individuals known as amalayitsha have formed groups to transport groceries and money into Zimbabwe and some have used the relationships developed with border officials to smuggle firearms into and out of the country.

A respondent working in the conservation sector indicated that Zambia has also been a source of some rifles used for poaching in Zimbabwe and that hunting rifles, often equipped with silencers (illegal in Zimbabwe) and telescopic sights, have been provided by middlemen in South Africa to poaching syndicates in Zimbabwe.

ID: Q14657

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