Marianne Merten
Women seeking protection from domestic violence have benefited from the 1999 Prevention of Domestic Violence Act despite overburdened courts, inadequately trained officials, lack of finance and under-resourced police.
Much has depended on innovative approaches such as enlisting the help of a cleaner as translator at a police station and the personal commitment of officials, according to research by the Consortium on Violence against Women, an alliance of NGOs.
“The system is working with minimalist resources. People are doing what they can with what they’ve got which is not a lot,” said senior researcher Lillian Artz.
In the first phase of the three-year project to monitor the implementation of the legislation, researchers studied more than 600 of the 6 160 prevention orders issued by three Western Cape courts from January to November last year.
Most applicants for the order were women aged between 31 and 40 and the order usually applied to more than one person, including children, parents and siblings. In Mitchells Plain 33 mothers applied for orders against their children and 79 men sought protection against their female partners.
But one key obstacle is the complicated form available only in English and Afrikaans that must be completed before the courts issue a protection order a civil remedy to stop abuse from a partner. Researchers found these forms “were filled in inaccurately and were incomplete”. Frequently there were “rampant inconsistencies” between the applicant’s affidavit and the form. They also found that court officials completed the forms using similar language, thus obscuring the real cause of abuse: one court would classify threatening telephone calls as harassment, others as intimidation.
Interviews with policemen and court staff showed there is still confusion about what to do when the protection order is breached, whether to confiscate weapons and how to enforce the law’s provisions for the eviction of abusers, payment of emergency money and disputes involving custody of children.
Despite initial fears by some authorities that the legislation would be abused, the research showed that 93% of applications for prevention orders were finalised although police often expressed frustration that applications were withdrawn within days.
The research was presented for discussion on Women’s Day to 130 magistrates, clerks of the court, policemen and women’s rights lobbyists.