This article indicates that South
Africa is dealing with extreme cases of crimes involving women and
their domestic partners. The murder case of Reeva Steenkamp, a South
African model, has been solved and closed. She was shot and killed by
a semi-automatic handgun. Former athlete, Oscar Pistoruois has been
charge for the murder of Steenkamp, whom he says he mistook for an
intruder in their home the night he shot her through a bathroom door.
Prosecutors say the killing was premeditated. The motive of the
murder has still not been identified and will most likely remain
unknown being Oscar Pistoruois denies that he intentionally murdered
his girlfriend. This murder case brought international attention to a
country known for troubling rates of violence, particularly against
women.
On April 2 updated statistic and
studies were published in the journal PLOS Medicine, finds that while
the overall homicide rate of women has declined in South Africa,
there has been no significant decrease in murders by intimate
partners in a decade. Current and ex-husbands and boyfriends as
well as same-sex partners and rejected suitors were considered
"intimate partners" in the study. It mentioned in the
article that now, new research finds the country's rate of homicide
of women by intimate partners is five times the global rate. South
Africa has a high murder rate, with 31.8 intentional homicides per
100,000 people as of 2010, according to the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime. Study researcher Naeemah Abrahams, a senior
scientist at the South African Medical Research Council states,
"Gender inequities in relationships and male dominance remain
important contributors to the killings of an intimate partner, and
factors that contributed to the decrease of overall killings may not
be effective for those killings of an intimate nature," she
said. Gun control appears to have had an effect on the femicide rate,
Abrahams said. She mentioned in her research that most women killed
by a partner in South Africa had been in long term relationship.
