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‘Outdated’ policing, lack of state funding render GBV training for SAPS officers redundant, say NGOs, experts

‘Outdated’ policing, lack of state funding render GBV training for SAPS officers redundant, say NGOs, experts
Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu. (Photo: Deon Ferreira)
Nicola Amon
By Nicola Amon
4 Dec 2024
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The recent graduation of two Western Cape SAPS districts from a gender-based violence training course comes amid continually rising rates of GBV. With a lack of active collaboration with the government, NGOs said their efforts in combating GBV will remain limited, while policing experts said training programmes are rendered redundant when applied to a system that is inherently ‘outdated’.

A cluster of police stations from the West Coast and Overberg districts in the Western Cape recently celebrated their police officers’ graduation from Ilitha Labantu’s six-month gender-based violence (GBV) course.

While Major General Beaton, a senior South African Police Service representative, said this shows the SAPS’ commitment to combating GBV, NGOs and police training experts said that continually increasing rates of GBV reveal a failing system.

“In the first six months, starting 1st April this year, there’s been more than a 7% increase in the numbers of women killed compared to the same six months last year,” said Gareth Newham, head of the governance, crime and justice division at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).

While admitting that it is difficult for the police force to prevent violence, since most incidents take place behind closed doors, police officers play a vital role in the moments following an attack.

Read more: Transforming justice - the urgent need for reforms in South Africa’s gender-based violence response

Ilitha Labantu, an NGO founded by the late Mandisa Monakali, focuses on training police officers in these vital moments following a traumatic event. Aleta Miller, a United Nations Women Representative who collaborated with the NGO in supporting the SAPS, said the training sought to give participants the tools to transform police culture and how police respond to victims by focusing on empathy, sensitivity, communication and gaining legal and procedural knowledge. 

GBV A crowd protests against gender-based violence outside Parliament in Cape Town on 30 June 2020. (Photo: Gallo Images / Nardus Engelbrecht)


Justice for victims lost to ‘poor work’


The latest research on GBV by the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) reveals that incompetence in the SAPS’ response and processing systems led to significantly decreased conviction rates for femicide cases. 

Across the four studies analysed, the intimate partner femicide and non-intimate partner femicide rates did not add up to the overall femicide rate due to “missing data” from the SAPS. Police dockets could not be located for 502 femicides in 1999, 39 in 2009, 379 in 2017 and 206 in 2020/21. 

Lisa Vetten, a research associate with Wits University’s Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, attributed the loss of dockets to the State Information Technology Agency’s two-decade failed attempt at creating an electronic case system, meaning dockets remain paper-based.

Read more: Come on Kenya and SA, when will GBV protests trigger an effective action plan?

According to the SAMRC, nearly 50% of perpetrators were not identified during police investigations in 2020/21. This, paired with the lowest levels of convictions reported during the Covid-19 year, with less than one in five intimate partner femicide cases ending in a conviction, means that the chances of a murdered woman receiving justice in 2020/21 significantly decreased.

The intimate partner femicide rate in South Africa remains five times the global rate.

Similarly, rape, which often falls under the umbrella term of GBV, sees many cases scrapped by “poor work”, said Vetten. Forty percent of rapes are stranger rapes, which often means that victims are unable to describe or identify the perpetrator. This requires specialised investigation techniques and careful collection of evidence on the scene. 

Citing the case of the victim who was gang raped by strangers, Vetten said: “You don’t even have the detectives on the crime scene wearing their crime suits to ensure there is no contamination. You’ve just got the uniform branch, walking around picking up stuff and throwing it into plastic bags.”

Read more: Specialist skills-deprived SAPS lumbers on to tick the boxes of performance targets amid downbeat perceptions

In addition, Vetten said a lack of detectives means cases that require more time and energy often fall away, while cases with clear leads and chances of successful conviction are prioritised. 


In NGOs’ hands


The SAPS was identified as a vital candidate for Ilitha Labantu’s training programme due to the clear lack of resources dedicated to combating GBV.

“It takes a backfoot compared to the many other crimes SAPS has to address,” said Siyabulela Monakali, Ilitha Labantu’s spokesperson. 

This year's programme included 19 stations from the West Coast District and 15 from the Overberg, with 60 officers taking part. 

When Daily Maverick spoke to Beaton, he insisted that GBV is “high on SAPS’ priority-list” and that stations regularly send officers for training. However, according to Monakali, the “SAPS does nothing.”

Through the submission of survivor feedback forms available at each police station, Ilitha Labantu is able to keep track of progress in various stations, filling the gaps in accountability, which Newham identifies as severely lacking. 

saps report The latest research on GBV by the South African Medical Research Council reveals that incompetence in the SAPS’ response and processing systems led to significantly decreased conviction rates for femicide cases. (Photo: Brenton Geach)



Plans and strategies good only on paper

At the graduation event on Tuesday, 3 December, Beaton cited the “six pillars” of the National Strategic Plan on Gender-Based Violence and Femicide introduced in 2020 as being among the SAPS efforts to combat GBV: 

  1. Accountability, Coordination and Leadership;

  2. Prevention and Rebuilding Social Cohesion;

  3. Justice, Safety and Protection;

  4. Response, Care, Support and Healing;

  5. Economic Power; and

  6. Research and Information Management.


However, Newham said the plan, allocated R1.6-billion, forms part of a host of plans and strategies rendered redundant due to their incompatibility with a policing system he deems “outdated”.

A recent Public Protector report said that most police stations do not implement the full Domestic Violence Act, which requires officers to record and track domestic violence cases, making sure they keep track of patterns and follow up on cases.

An ‘outdated’ system


“It is something that requires specialised training,” said Newham.

SAPS’ recruitment model involves hiring tens of thousands of people with criteria limited to factors such as having a matric certificate, a driver’s licence, fitness level, and height. 

“This is an outdated model for hiring police officials,” said Newham. “We should be testing their attitudes towards women or people of different races, their adherence to constitutional values, their belief in community service and public ethos, ability to communicate and solve problems.” 

Instead, Newham said that the police force mostly consists of low-skilled people who are unlikely to be trainable once employed. 

GBV mchunu Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu. (Photo: Deon Ferreira)


Funding issues


Monakali said that “the South African government is not contributing at all” to the Ilitha Labantu training programme. 

“It’s sad to see that when it comes to funding in South Africa, there’s more funding that we receive from philanthropy groups from outside the country than from inside the country,” Monakali said. 

While GBV rates increase, civil society organisations close due to lack of funding.

Daily Maverick approached the SAPS but had not received a response by the time of publication.

“We want to use this as a pilot for our expansion going into other regions,” Monakali added.

Since 2022, Ilitha Labantu has engaged with clusters of police metros rather than single stations, allowing their impact to have far more reach. Monakali admitted that expanding to the Eastern Cape, where femicide cases are double the national rate, poses a funding challenge.

“We have been trying to get to the minister, Senzo Mchunu, to see how we can engage further and expand,” he said. DM

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