A woman is killed every 6 hours in South Africa by her intimate partner. This is one of the key findings from the first national study of female homicides in South Africa.
It was a collaborative study between researchers from the Medical Research Council’s Gender and Health Group, the Division of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology from the University of Cape Town and the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.
The study found that 50% of all women murdered in South Africa by known perpetrators in 1999 were killed by men with whom they had an intimate relationship.
For this year (1999) 8,8 women out of every 100 000 women aged 14 years and over were killed by their intimate partners. ”South Africa has the highest rate of intimate femicide of any country in the world where it has been studied,” said Dr Naeemah Abrahams, specialist scientist in the MRC Gender & Health Group.
”We are particularly concerned about coloured women, who have twice the risk of other racial groups in South Africa,” said Abrahams.
An important finding was the role of legal guns in the murder of women by their partners. One in every five of the perpetrators of intimate femicide (20,6%) had a legal firearm. This finding pointed to the need for better gun control and the seriousness of implementing the new Firearms Control Act.
A worrying finding of the research was the low conviction rate of the known perpetrators. Just over a third, (35%) were convicted of the crime. – Sapa