South Africa: Guns and gender violence - a lethal combination

Victoria [not her real name] thought she had the law on her side when she left her abusive partner and successfully applied for a protection order against him. According to provisions set out in South Africa's 1998 Domestic Violence Act and reinforced by recently enacted firearms legislation, the order gave the police powers to confiscate the gun that had repeatedly been used to terrorise her. According to the Medical Research Council (MRC), a woman is shot dead by her current or former partner every six hours, and such cases rose by 78 percent between 1990 and 1999.