The journey of the AK-47, from idolised liberation weapon to menace to society

Trusty gun of freedom fighters now terrorises people it helped free

- By Tshwarelo eseng Mogakane

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 revolutionary’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.