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The President’s address to the nation was a little too late an attempt to respond to the consequences of the failure of our government to build a criminal justice system that protects South Africans, but has instead been weakened, hollowed out and left women and children vulnerable.

The President is right to say that we cannot simply police our way out of the violence facing South African women and children. But he failed to acknowledge that this is an ongoing crisis, one he has been forced to address repeatedly. Frustratingly, when violence against women and children is committed and reported, our criminal justice system too often fails the very victims it is meant to protect.

While we welcome the case audit, the President fails to recognise that SAPS detectives are already overwhelmed by existing cases and have no capacity to process cold cases as he intends. 

ActionSA leaders across South Africa have visited enough police stations to know that SAPS members are, more often than not, operating under severe resource constraints, with slow response times, poor case management and inadequate support for victims.

This failure does not end with the initial act of violence. Victims are often subjected to secondary violence by the very justice system meant to protect them, whether through insensitive treatment, delays in investigating cases, failures to properly open or follow up dockets, or a lack of communication about the progress of their cases.

Sadly, the President’s interventions, some of which we hope will have an impact, are unlikely to produce meaningful change in the country if the structural failures within the criminal justice system remain firmly in place.

Until government addresses the institutional failures that allow cases to be lost, investigations to stall and victims to be failed, South African women and children will remain vulnerable to both the initial act of violence and the secondary violence inflicted by a system that is supposed to protect them.

Issued by ActionSA President Herman Mashaba