DA Accuses SA Police of ‘Dragging Feet’ on Making GBV a Crime Category

The DA is calling on President Cyril Ramaphosa to ensure that the National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide (NSP-GBVF) is implemented as a matter of urgency.

The call comes after the DA learnt that the South African Police Service (SAPS) has yet to create a specific crime category for gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF).

In a written reply to a parliamentary question from the DA, the Minister of Police Bheki Cele admitted that “in order to determine a GBV motive or that gender dynamic contributed to a crime, one currently would have to go into individual docket analysis”. Minister Cele also stated that “GBV is a social construct and not a specific crime”.

As the nation observes 16 days of activism for no violence against women and children, the national government is showing its “lack of political will and urgency to root out this plague from our society”, Bridget Masango – DA Shadow Minister of Social Development – said in a statement on Monday.

She said the DA is very concerned that one of the reasons GBVF might be on a perpetual increase in South Africa is the lack of coordination between the different government departments, as well as SAPS, tasked with addressing it.

In 2020, the NSP-GBVF were released after President Ramaphosa called the violence against women and children in this country a second pandemic. But little seems to have been done to implement the plan, says Masango.

“Instead, all these different departments and SAPS seem to do is collect statistics that show the growing problem, without ever implementing any countermeasures. Progress on implementing any of the five stages of the NSP is at a glacial pace,” she says.

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