ZELDA VENTER
A JUDGE who has seen too many gender-based violence cases serving before him involving the consumption of alcohol, has urged the Minister of Health to add more warnings on the labels of alcohol beverages to warn people that the consumption of alcohol can lead to GBV.
Judge Avinash Govindjee, as part of his order, directed his registrar to make a copy of his judgments available for the minister to see.
The judge, sitting in the Makhanda High Court in the Eastern Cape, expressed his concerns during two unrelated judgments involving men who have brutally murdered their partners after consuming alcohol.
In the first case he sentenced Mthutuzeli Manyathi to an effective 28 years imprisonment for the attempted murder and murder of his partner.
During the first incident he stabbed her several times with a broken brandy bottle while both of them were under the influence of alcohol.
She survived the attack but she died six months later when he beat and throttled her to death. Both of them had again been consuming alcohol that night, when an argument about her alleged infidelity broke out.
In the second case he sentenced a man to 24 years imprisonment after he, in a drunken stupor, beat his wife to death while she was breastfeeding their baby. He, too, accused her of infidelity.
In the opening to his judgments, the judge referred to expert testimony which revealed that intimate femicide was much more common in South Africa compared to other countries, with an average of almost three women killed by their partners a day.
Judge Govindjee also said studies have repeatedly confirmed the role of alcohol in intimate partner violence, pointing to the need for dedicated prevention interventions.
“Cases such as the present, as well as sexual offence-related cases, including child rape, frequently have alcohol flowing through the narrative as a common theme.”
He pointed to the law that empowers the Minister of Health to make regulations prescribing the way in which any foodstuff, including alcohol, shall be labelled.
This includes the nature of the information to be reflected on any label, the manner or form in which such information is to be reflected or arranged on the label and the nature of information which may not be reflected on any label.
The minister has made regulations relating to health messages on container labels of alcoholic beverages, including beer and traditional beer. Of the seven ‘health messages’ contained in the regulations, only one deals with violence and crime, the judge said.
This message on the labels only states that “alcohol is a major cause of violence and crime”. “There is no specific reference to the established link between alcohol and gender-based violence, including rape and murder, also in the context of domestic relationships,” he said.
He also pointed out that container labels for alcoholic beverages, in law, need only contain one of the seven health messages set out in the regulations, in a space one eighth the total size of the container label.
“This would appear to me to be wholly inadequate when considering the torrent of cases, including the present, in which alcohol is linked to violence.
The judge added that leaving aside the question whether the chosen form of regulation is adequate for purposes of warning alcohol consumers of the correlation between alcohol, violence and crime, the failure to highlight the link between alcohol and gender-based violence seems to be a significant omission.”
He said in the context of the country’s efforts to address gender-based violence, including intimate femicide, this at least requires proper consideration.