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978 1 91989 589 5 978 1 77582 155 7 978 1 77582 156 4 2015
344 PAGES
ZAR R371.00 ZAR R371.00 ZAR R371.00
Rape Unresolved
Victims and police responses in South Africa
D SMYTHE
Of the approximately 50 000 rape cases reported in South Africa every year, 30 000– 35 000 simply disappear. The majority are closed by the police: case withdrawn, undetected, unfounded. Prosecutors decline to prosecute approximately half those referred to them. Of the remainder that are prosecuted, around 40% result in conviction. This translates into an overall conviction rate of 4–8% of reported cases. Through a detailed qualitative review of rape dockets the author provides novel insights into police responses to rape. A key insight from the study is that while stereotypes certainly abound, it is in the process of investigating rape cases that things fall apart. The book shines new light on complainant withdrawals, false rape complaints and police responses to rape.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dee Smythe is Director of the Law, Race and Gender Unit in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cape Town. She is also senior lecturer in the Department of Public Law. She is a co-author (with Pithey, B., and Artz, L) of Commentary on the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act 32 of 2007, (Juta, 2011), and the co-editor of In Search of Equality: Women, Law and Society in Africa (UCT Press, 2014).
Selfless Constitution, The
Experimentalism and flourishing as foundations of South Africa’s basic law
S WOOLMAN
Do you possess ‘freedom’, the will to do as you like? Well, no. Not as most of us understand a term loaded down with metaphysical baggage. Don’t worry. Most South Africans have something better: a brain that carries out the most complex analytical tasks; membership in communities that sustain huge stores of knowledge; a constitutional order that provides (some of) the material goods and immaterial conditions that enable us to pursue a life worth valuing. As recent studies reveal, our neurological systems are complex feedback mechanisms designed to create myriad opportunities for trial and error and the production of new stores of knowledge. Individuals – the product of radically heterogeneous, naturally and socially determined selves – are always experimenting, attempting to divine what works best: even when ‘best’ means fully embracing who we already are. A constitutional democracy that serves such complex creatures should continually run experiments that nudge us away from our negative defaults toward more optimal heuristics. After weaving together insights from current findings in neuroscience, empirical philosophy, behavioural psychology, development economics, the capabilities approach and emergent experimental governance, The Selfless Constitution contends that only a politics that promotes rolling and reflexive experiments in living, when married to an enhancement of individual capabilities, is likely to produce the truly just, fair, egalitarian pluralist social order contemplated by our basic law. Its trenchant analysis of South African institutions and case law shows us how far we have come – and how far we still have to go.
978 1 48510 007 2 978 1 48510 180 2 2013
648 PAGES
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JUTA EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCES CATALOGUE | 2018/2019
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