Several years ago at the Johannesburg Correctional Services Centre (Sun City), a female prisoner detailed how she had killed her alleged abusive husband who at the time was the bodyguard of the then-police minister, Fikile Mbalula.
She spoke about how on numerous occasions she had tried to get him arrested for beating her, but over and over again was sent back home to “resolve her family issues”, which police were reluctant to meddle in. On other occasions, she was told they couldn’t arrest him without “following proper procedure”.
She eventually shot him dead with his own gun on a night when he had again tried to assault her.
“I drove to the police station with his body in the car and I wanted to tell the police officers to come and see the procedure,” the woman said.
She didn’t. Instead, out of fear and panic, she kept the body for a few days before disposing of it in a dumpsite.
That tragic end to years of abuse did not equate to her freedom. She was sentenced to 30 years behind bars for murder and defeating the ends of justice.
In her own words, she highlighted how on that night, had she not killed her husband, he would have killed her.
Sadly in SA, her story is not at all unique and on the day she shared her story, several other women in prison also shared how they were jailed for taking the law into their own hands.
Fast forward to 2022 and little has changed from the police when it comes to tackling gender-based violence.
Police minister Bheki Cele and his provincial commissioners seem to sing the same tune on how police should clamp down on GBV, but the situation on the ground tells a different story.
How many lives need to be lost to shoddy police work before police are held to account?
Just last week, we read about how inaction by police led to yet another woman dying in Limpopo. She had called the police about her boyfriend who was threatening to shoot her. They arrested him on the spot, only to release him several hours later. He returned to her home where he shot her dead and then committed suicide.
This is yet another example of how turning a blind eye to complaints of GBV shortchanges the victim.
Women who take the law into their own hands — albeit not correctly — at times do so because they have been failed by the law. Women who don’t pay for GBV with their lives are often made to pay for being victimised — first by their perpetrators and then the justice system.
But how many lives need to be lost to shoddy police work before police are held to account?
It should be considered a breach of the police oath when an officer fails a victim in the way that it did in this case.
The police officer should at least face disciplinary structures or, better yet, be stripped of their police badge.
Had the perpetrator of the crime stood trial for this woman’s murder, surely the police officer who had signed off on his release from the police cells should have been put on trial for murder alongside him?
Perhaps it is such drastic measures that will force people employed to protect and serve the most vulnerable to take their roles seriously, to not dismiss another woman calling for help as just “another one”.
Three GBV acts signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa at the beginning of the year are in place. The legislation removes the rights of police to grant bail in the case of domestic violence but, as GBV researcher Lisa Vetten so rightly put it, “there has been no training or preparation for it, and so there is going to be a serious problem when it comes to implementation”.
Taking action on GBV is literally the difference between life and death and, while we know and understand that morale is low among cops because of a lack of support in terms of resources and infrastructure, there can be no excuse for our judicial system favouring the male perpetrator as we continue to battle the scourge of GBV.
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