PROCEDURE IN TRANSITION PERIOD
1. Because the applications for renewal of firearm licences were so large in number in the transition between the 1969 Act (green licences) and the 2000 Act (white licences), CFR at the time (2005 - 2009) allowed people to be declared competent to own all firearms they applied for, for renewal of the licences, if they had only submitted training provider certificates. Both POSLEC and SASSETA were very slow in issuing certificates and SAPS just could not wait for them to finalise the hundreds of thousands of renewal applications.
2. Since 2007 a new unit standard, Knowledge of the Act, was introduced. SAPS accepted this one unit standard when people applied to be declared competent to own their respective firearms during the transition phase between the 1969 Act and the 2000 Act.
3. At the time SAPS also accepted competency applications with only the certificate of the training provider, without the certificate underwritten by SAQA (thus by POSLEC or SASSETA).
4. However, the understanding was always that a person who originally received competency only on grounds of completing the unit standard, Knowledge of the Act, will in the time until the licences have to be renewed, complete the other relevant unit standards relevant to his/her firearms so as to be declared competent against the relevant unit standards required for his/her specific firearms when s/he applies for renewal of competency.
5. That is one of the reasons why your DFO currently does not want to accept your renewal application if you do not have the relevant training certificate showing you have completed the training for that type of firearm (accompanied by the SAQA underwritten certificate for that unit standard – POSLEC or SASSETA or PFTC Statement of Results)
6. The other reason is that there were a large number of fraudulent activities around the issue of training certificates and SAQA underwritten certificates. SAPS now want you to hand in both the training certificate and the SAQA underwritten certificate to see if the certificates you have, may not have its origin with one of the training providers closed due to fraudulent activities.
THE UNIT STANDARD: KNOWLEDGE OF THE ACT
7. The unit standard Knowledge of the Act was introduced in 2007.
8. Before that all unit standards underwritten by POSLEC had the first section of the unit standard devoted to aspects of the Act - that is use of a handgun, use of a rifle, use of a shotgun, and use of a self-loading rifle.
9. If you thus have a POSLEC certificate for the required unit standards for your training, you do not need a unit standard, Knowledge of the Act.
10. However, it might not be a bad option to do the unit standard Knowledge of the Act with a PFTC accredited training provider, in order to be 100% certain SAPS will not try any clever actions with your applications if you do not have documentation proving you have completed that specific unit standard.
11. Not all DFOs are conversant with this very technical aspect of the Firearms Control Act.