Magistrates reluctant to seize weapons in domestic violence cases

Studies have shown that efforts to fight domestic violence are being hampered because magistrates do not use the powers available to them in terms of the Domestic Violence Act to seize weapons from perpetrators. Business Day reports that Dee Smythe of the Gender, Health and Justice Research Unit at the University of Cape Town, says in the latest SA Crime Quarterly that in one in five intimate femicides a woman was killed by her partner with a licensed firearm. The SA Medical Research Council found last year that magistrates had failed to seize weapons. In a study for the Institute for Security Studies conducted last year, magistrates said the implementation of the Act was cumbersome because they had heavy case loads and did not focus primarily on domestic violence cases.