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Community activist and councillor, Dr. Jonathan Annipen, says while the South African Police Service (SAPS) uses domestic relationship-related crimes as a proxy to measure intimate partner violence, Gender-Based-Violence (GBV) not being defined as a specific offence in South African law is “unacceptable”.
#PODCAST Community activists urge South Africa to criminalize Gender-Based-Violence (GBV) as a specific offence #sabcnews #sabckzn @salpatel786
— SABC News Radio (@SABCNews_Radio) September 15, 2025
Annipen was speaking to SABC News after a woman was killed by her husband and their sons were injured, before he took his own life recently in Chatsworth, south of Durban.
He says GBV is a pandemic that needs urgent attention.
“It’s devastating because a country like ours, that’s leading in many parts of Africa and in first world countries, as far as gender-based violence is concerned, we are without proper laws and legislation around how we deal with the matter and we have no guidelines in terms of reference of the law,” he says.
He says it is very disappointing.
“We know that for a long time we’ve been talking about gender-based violence, domestic violence and femicide, but to find that government has just been talking about it, rather than creating avenues for victims to find relief and get justice, is really, really disturbing,” adds Annipen.
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