By Lee-Yandra Paulsen
Over the past five years, courts across South Africa have dismissed numerous gender-based violence (GBV) and femicide cases due to missing dockets mishandled by the South African Police Service (SAPS). Authorities are still struggling to identify the exact points of failure in the process, from the initial report to ensuring that dockets are available for prosecution.
Lisha Stevens, a representative of the National Shelter Movement of South Africa (NSMSA), spoke to VOC Breakfast on Wednesday about the dire need for an effective system. “If anyone has been to a police station recently, you are first not even acknowledged, and if you manage to get a glimpse behind the admin office, you’ll see dockets lying all over the place—coffee spilt on them, pages missing, and people trampling over them,” she said.
Stevens painted a grim picture of the issues plaguing the system, stating, “The first crack in the system appears when a woman walks through the doors and isn’t even welcomed or attended to. The second crack happens before she can tell her story; she’s told to sit and wait because her case is ‘just as useless as any other’ in the police station. This wait can last from a minimum of two hours to as long as 24 hours. During this time, she receives no therapy, no trauma management—not even a bottle of water.”
Stevens also described the challenges faced when opening a case docket, where the person is met with an officer who doesn’t want to hear the full story and only asks for key points to jot down. “The errors made by officials at the police station in taking down statements are enormous, and this directly impacts the case when it goes through the justice system as evidence,” she said. “After the report is completed and the case is opened, the person receives nothing more than a slip of paper with a case number and is told that they will be contacted later.”
The dockets are then filed haphazardly with others from the day, left unattended for up to 48 hours. “SAPS officials we have encountered make a decision before anything else: do we proceed with this case? They start looking for evidence and ask if they know the perpetrator,” Stevens claims, adding that officers often inform the perpetrator that their partner has opened a case against them.
In April 2024, the Western Cape Department of Police Oversight and Community Safety’s Court Watching Briefs Unit released a report revealing that 84 GBV cases were struck off the court roll due to systemic police failures during the third quarter of 2023. In total, 174 GBV cases were dismissed between April and December 2023 across 35 SAPS stations, with Atlantis, Kleinvlei, and Kraaifontein being the most affected.
Stevens questioned why SAPS still relies on manual processes rather than adopting technology, which has been proven to be faster and more efficient. “Information systems have been proven to work—they’re fast, efficient, get deliverables done on the spot, and are live. But we’re told there’s no funding, that SAPS officials don’t have the necessary qualifications to complete the documents, and that victims don’t know how to answer technological questions,” she explained.
Despite the existence of an online protection order system, Stevens highlighted that it is not functioning as it should. “We have an online protection order system; it’s there, it’s available, but it doesn’t work. After victims provide all the necessary information, the system crashes. The funds and technology are available, but they aren’t being utilized.”
According to the 2024 State of the Nation report on gender-based violence, statistics highlighted the following conviction rates:
– The conviction rate in femicide prosecutions is 91.9%, with 475 out of 517 cases resulting in convictions.
– The conviction rate in intimate partner femicide prosecutions is 92.2%, with 356 out of 386 cases leading to convictions.
– The conviction rate in sexual offence cases is 74.8%, with 3,460 out of 4,627 cases ending in convictions.
Stevens emphasized that the NSMSA is calling on SAPS to fulfill its mandate to serve the community. “We are calling on them today and every day to look at what is happening in our society, to see the levels of femicide rising day by day, and to ask themselves if they are serving as they are mandated to do.”
The International Journal of Social Science Research Review stated in a report released in October 2023 that SAPS is constitutionally mandated to prevent, combat, and investigate crime, maintain public order, protect citizens and their property, and uphold the law. SAPS is also required to provide sensitive and professional support to victims of gender-based violence, ensuring justice and safety.
VOC News
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