Men almost as likely to be killed by their partner as women – crime stats

 The police noted an almost 40% increase in reports of domestic violence between the first quarter of the current financial year and the second.

During April, May and June, the police recorded 14,936 reported cases of domestic violence. Police minister Bheki Cele at the time of release of the first quarter crime statistics for 2020/2021 described these numbers as relatively low but conceded there could be under-reporting at play.

During July, August and September, the numbers sprang back up and there were a staggering 20,645 reports of domestic violence related crimes around the country.

This was revealed at the release of the second quarter statistics on Friday.

The nature of the crimes ranged from murder and rape to robbery and arson. The relationships between the perpetrators and the victims also took various forms – from husband and wife to parent and child to sibling and sibling.

Across the board, women and girls made up the largest portion of victims – but not always by a landslide.

There were a total of 162 domestic-violence related murders, for example, and in 86 of them the victim was a female while in 76, he was a male.

The victims in 32 of the 433 domestic-violence related rapes during this period, meanwhile, were male as were those of 1,356 of the 3,302 assaults with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

Lisa Vetten, an honorary research associate at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER), she said on Friday the latest crime statistics indicated a number of worrying trends.

“There’s clearly a great deal of unhappiness in South African families,” Vetten said,

“But what’s interesting is how the statistics highlight the problems of violence in families as extending well beyond just physical violence”.

She pointed to, for example, 89 reports of domestic-violence related arson that were recorded during the period in question and 3,282 reports of domestic-violence related malicious damage to property.

“It starts to illuminate the economic side of domestic violence and neaten the picture in terms of what actually goes on,” she said – adding that women who tried to leave abusive relationships, often took a significant economic knock.

“And it doesn’t get recognised,” she said.

She said more information on the relationships between perpetrators and victims of specific crimes would have helped paint a clearer picture but that they were so varied, should also prompt South Africans to look at gender in a range of different contexts.

“If we’re aiming to better understand the gendered nature of violence, then that’s the challenge,” she said.

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