SAPS is unfit to deal with GBV says Commission for Gender Equality

According to the Commission for Gender Equality, the South African Police Service (SAPS) does not have sufficient resources to cope with gender-based violence cases.

Delays in uploading DNA have caused an increased rate of case withdrawals

Acting chairperson of the Commission Dr Nthabiseng Moleko explains that delays in uploading DNA have increased the rate of withdrawal of cases.

“Massive delays in uploading of DNA cases and increasing, therefore, the rate of withdrawal of cases. Many victims after seeing delays in cases and prosecutors sometimes having to withdraw cases from the roll. Postponements resulting in cases being summoned again sometimes due to lack of resources and unavailability of those victims you find that that case then gets lost,”

said Dr Moleko.

There is a national plan for GBV but it hasn’t been filtered to police stations

The Commission recently released a report on the readiness of police stations to deal with gender-based violence. Dr Moleko spoke about there being a national plan although it has not made its way to police stations, reports ECR News.

“We are recommending that the monitoring and the evaluation indicators that measure and monitor the effectiveness of SAPS – we will use what they have determined for themselves.

“For example, they have a national plan on GBV integrated strategy, we will take those targets and then monitor. We will hopefully work looking forward in the medium term with status A to find a way where we can look at this from a biannual perspective using data or annual perspective,”

said Dr Moleko.

Revealed: Shock number of SA citizens still think it’s ‘acceptable’ to hit women

Earlier this year, it was reported that it’s been revealed that one in 25 South Africans believe men are justified in hitting a female partner, under certain circumstances. Although the latest poll conducted by StatsSA shows a decline in these archaic attitudes, the number of people who would excuse gender-based violence (GBV) is uncomfortably high.

The survey poses a series of questions to thousands of respondents, all aged 16 or over. It asks them about eight scenarios, in which men are most likely to strike a female partner out of sheer anger.

Over 4% of those in the study said it WOULD be acceptable for a man to hit their wife/female partner if they were unfaithful, and had sexual intercourse with someone else. A further 2.5% said a beating would be justified if a mother had neglected her children. However, the categories only get worse from here. Read the full story here.