Cape Town - Civil society organisations have welcomed the news that the Western Cape SAPS Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) has reduced the DNA backlog in the province from 89 158 to 25 290.
This follows an announcement by the Department of Police Oversight and Community Safety that the provincial FSL had worked through 63 868 samples within the last 10 months.
MEC Reagen Allen said: “This is an important development. It means that samples for important cases of sexual assault, murders and various other cases were processed into the system as evidence to put perpetrators behind bars.”
“The more the FSL can address its backlog, the quicker perpetrators standing trial can be held accountable for their crimes. This will also ensure that there isn’t secondary trauma for the victims, who might be waiting a very long time for their cases to be finalised.”
Allen also revealed that the Department’s Court Watching Briefs report for April and June indicated that of the 198 cases that were struck off the court roll due to investigations being incomplete and various other reasons, 36 were gender-based violence cases.
Anti-Gender-based-violence (GBV) organisation Ilitha Labantu said it welcomed the news of the reduced DNA backlog, but that it was still concerned about whether there were proper mechanisms in place to ensure that the laboratory worked optimally.
Ilitha Labantu spokesperson Siyabulela Monakali said: “The reduction of the DNA backlog is good news. However, we feel that there are other areas of concern that need to be addressed hand in hand with this.
“One primary concern is South Africa’s low conviction rate of GBVF-related cases, which is less than 14%. Between April to June 2022, 855 women and 243 children were killed in South Africa, and 9 516 rape cases were reported.
“The majority of these cases took place in the homes of the rapists or homes of the victims, further indicating that the rapist is known to the victim.
“Compared to the high prevalence of GBVF cases, this is significantly low. More stringent measures ought to be introduced to ensure that our police and communities are well capacitated to address GBVF,” Monakali said.
Action Society community safety director Ian Cameron said he found news of the backlog reduction confusing because the police recently communicated with the organisation that sample stats were still very high.
“The police sent us a letter about the backlog for the last quarter. In the letter, they told us that the backlog for the first quarter of the 2022/23 financial year, the national backlog is at 143 000 samples, which then translated to 1 800 increase per month between Pretoria and Plattekloof.
“They also said that they get about 900 samples registered per day, so someone somewhere is not communicating. Something is wrong, and the backlog is still very high.”