SA is losing femicide war

FAILURE: ALMOST HALF OF FEMALE MURDER INVESTIGATIONS DON'T IDENTIFY PERPETRATORS

- Thando Nondywana

The failure to win the war against femicide in South Africa is a result of the criminal justice system's failures, according to activists who say that femicide investigations are increasingly failing to identify who is killing women.

The South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) reported that investigations failed to identify suspects in nearly half of women murder cases, during its briefing to the portfolio committee on social development on Thursday.

The 2020/2021 research study findings were that the percentage of femicide cases in which investigations failed to identify the killer increased to 44%, up from 30% in 2017.

This comes days after the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) release of the first South African National Gender-Based Violence study on the prevalence of femicide.

Brenda Madumise-Pajibo, director of Wise4Afrika, a feminist organisation, said the figure continued to reflect the deepening crisis of gender-based violence (GBV) in the country.

"Femicide studies tie in closely with the extensive study by the HSRC. One of the critical takeaways from this is that we, as a country, have normalised violence," she said.