Johannesburg - As the country begins its 16 Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children campaign, the GOOD Party has indicated its concern over the ever-increasing number of rape cases currently before the country’s courts.
In a statement issued on Sunday, GOOD secretary-general Brett Herron said the Department of Justice is struggling to cope with the volume of rape cases, adding that this failure was an indictment on the fight against gender-based violence in the country that is battling to cope with the scourge.
Last week, during the release of quarter-two crime statistics, Police Minister Bheki Cele revealed that over a third of rape cases that were investigated by the SAPS were concluded in the 2021–22 financial year. Cele said that the recent crime figures showed that aggression and violence against children and women were at worrying levels in South Africa.
"In respect of the stipulated number of 41 695 charges of rape in 2021-22, a total number of 15824 case docket investigations were concluded by the South African Police Service," Cele said.
"A total of 9 068 cases were closed without referring them to the NPA," he said. Cele also said cases that were concluded without referral to the NPA included 737 false rape cases, 823 cases went undetected, 6756 cases were withdrawn, and 97 were finalised.
Herron said the police and the department of justice are failing the country’s children and women, who are at the receiving end of rape and GBV in this country.
"South Africa’s justice system is not coping with the ever-increasing volume of rape cases and is clearly failing the women and children of our country. This at a time when tens of thousands of new rape cases are reported to the police each quarter while the pace of rape convictions remains worryingly slow," Herron said.
The party added that this sad bit of news was revealed to him in a written reply to the party’s Parliamentary question, which indicated that a staggering number of 15 473 rape cases are currently before the courts, while the total number of outstanding rape cases on the court rolls is 10 118 in the regional courts and 5 355 in the district courts.
Herron added that police statistics have revealed that only 286 rape convictions were made between April 1 and June 30, 2022, while during that same period, another 9 516 rapes had been reported to police, and in the following quarter, between July and September 2022, yet another 10 590 rape cases were opened.
"As a country, we need to use this 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children Campaign to soberly reflect on what needs to be done to address this war against the most vulnerable in society. We need effective action, not just outrage and anger every time these statistics increase," he said.
The Star