Police Capacity Building in Dealing with Domestic Violence Cases in South Africa: An Entry Point to Women’s Access to Justice

Abstract

Domestic violence remains rife in many African societies, South Africa included. Laws on redress of domestic violence are critical in responding to gender-based violence in the light of the fact that women remain the major victims of this scourge. Moreover, with the police being the first point of contact in criminal justice processes, their ability to interpret and apply relevant laws is critical to fostering access to justice for women. The Domestic Violence Act (DVA) is one of the key pieces of legislation addressing domestic violence in South Africa. It is almost 20 years since the promulgation of the DVA by the Parliament of Republic of South Africa. However, the South African Police Services’ (SAPS) compliance in this regard is still wanting. The lack of capacity by the SAPS is a barrier to access to justice for women. Reports from various institutions, both private and public sectors, indicate that capacity building in the form of training and workshops for the SAPS members can bring improvement, if done as per the Training Needs Analysis or Skills Audit. The National Instructions dictate that SAPS must be able to implement the DVA properly and accordingly, any failure by members to do so constitutes a misconduct and punishable offence (suspension or dismissal) in terms of Sect. 18(4)(a) of the DVA. Majority of police stations are still not complying 100% in the implementation of the DVA. This is largely attributable to lack of capacity in the SAPS. To address non-compliance, the Department of Community Safety usually conducts work session activities to equip SAPS members with the appropriate implementation of the DVA. Necessity for capacity building and the mechanisms adopted for capacitation are therefore underscored in this study. With South Africa’s dramatic increase in cases of domestic violence, poorly informed capacity building mechanisms not only amount to wasteful expenditure but undermine access to justice. This chapter proposes Dr. Bengt-Ake Lindval’s four knowledge taxonomy principles (Know-What; Know-how; Know-why; Know-who) as assessment tools to evaluate domestic violence training procedure as successful domestic violence training tool.