What would you do if you lived in a country where there were no laws against domestic violence and your parents believed problems should be resolved at home with your husband who is an abusive police official and a cheat who sleeps with his mistress in your presence?
Harriet Maliqhwa Chidi (41) paid a man to kill her husband after he allegedly abused her for 13 years. According to Chidi, her husband hit her on the head with his service pistol and threatened to kill her. She says at times she was forced to sleep in the children’s bedroom while her husband had sex with his mistress in their bedroom. Chidi reported the abuse to his station commander who then spoke to her husband and sometimes confiscated the pistol.
The abuse did not end with her. She says her children witnessed their mother being beaten and they themselves were also abused.
Chidi decided to end the abuse after her husband told her that he was sending her and the children to live with his family because he wanted to start afresh with another woman. She says living with her in-laws would have subjected her and her children to further abuse.
Chidi was arrested in January 1997 after confessing to her involvement in the killing of her husband, Marcus. She was given a 15-year jail sentence with an additional two years correctional supervision.
Mantoa Elsie Morare (37) is serving a 21-year sentence for killing her husband, Simon. She confessed to killing him in June 1993.
With the help of her nephew and his friend, she strangled her husband to death because she believed it to be the “only way to end the abuse”.
She says her mother’s death was a turning point in her life. Morare’s mother was her main source of support — financially and emotionally. She only learnt of her mother’s death when people came to offer condolences, days after her husband found out about it.
Unlike Chidi, Morare experienced the abuse even before she and Simon married. She says he was possessive and assaulted her if he saw her in town running errands for her parents. He said she “ought to be home”.
Morare said she was not allowed friends or contact with her family after she got married. Her husband complained that they finished food when they visited, and he locked the phone when he realised she was phoning her mother and sister for help as he was not supporting her financially.
Morare was subjected to sexual abuse as well. She says her husband stopped sharing their bedroom because he said she was bewitching him but came to her when he wanted sex and left the room immediately afterwards. Her two youngest children were conceived during these abusive encounters. He stopped her from using contraception, saying it was for him to decide whether to use it. His assaults led to gynaecological complications, with Elsie needing a hysterectomy in 1992.
Two days before she killed her husband, Monare alleges he beat her and threw her out of the house. She had no place to live and her only source of support was gone. She says she recalled the humiliation she felt when he started a fight with her at her mother’s funeral, and the sexual abuse. She remembered how possessive he was, and knew that it was just a matter of time before he came back to abuse her again. She took her “only way out” and killed him.
Monare and Chidi are two of the five women who have applied for presidential pardons with the assistance of the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) in partnership with the National Network on Violence against Women and the Commission on Gender Equality.
The organisations launched the “Justice for Women Campaign” in April to secure the early release of women who have killed their husbands to protect themselves and their children because “all legal remedies open to them have been exhausted”.
Lisa Vetten, gender coordinator at the CSVR, says “comments made by some judicial officers indicate that the effect of abuse on the women was not understood or adequately taken into account when they were tried”.
She says Chidi is being assessed by a neuropsychologist to determine whether the injuries to her head have affected her cognitive functioning.
“Her lawyer at the time of the trial did not bother with such an assessment or investigate her extensive medical history and its impacts upon her action,” Vetten explains.
Vetten says the difference in physical strength between men and women is not adequately taken into account.
“For defences of provocation or self-defence to succeed, it must be shown that the attack occurred immediately after the provocation, or threat to life,” she says
“Not only may women be too terrified or too powerless to fight back in the heat of the moment, but they also lack physical strength to beat adult men to death. As a consequence, they sometimes use weapons, or a third party to defend themselves, or wait until the man is asleep or otherwise vulnerable. Since these attacks appear premeditated there is no possibility of claiming the action took place in the heat of the moment.”
The CSVR found in its study into convictions and sentences for spousal killings conducted in three Gauteng courts that most women kill their male partners in response to abuse.
Vetten says they are drawing a set of recommendations to the law commission that if accepted will change the law to “accommodate” abused women. She believes that if the recommendations are accepted, there wouldn’t be a need to apply for presidential pardons in the future.
Paul Setsetse of the Department of Justice confirmed that the department has received applications from the CSVR on behalf of the women. He said the applications were being looked into and that they would undergo the same processes that all other applicants follow. According to Setsetse there are no separate policies to deal with pardons for women who killed their husbands to defend themselves.
He said the pardons should be done in a way that “will not be perceived as undermining the judiciary.
“These people were found guilty and convicted by the court of law after weighing the evidence at its disposal.”