Several high-profile cases of stalking have occurred in South Africa in recent years, yet there is no law to protect victims from the menace.
Justice Department spokes-man Tlali Tlali says there are no official statistics on stalkers.
The Protection from Harassment Bill, a piece of legislation the Justice department says is likely to be passed this year, defines stalking as: “to directly or indirectly engage in conduct that causes harm or inspires the reasonable belief that harm may be caused to the complainant or a related person by unreasonably following, watching or pursuing the complainant or a related person, or (by) engaging in verbal, electronic or any other communication aimed at the complainant or a related person, by any means, whether or not conversation ensues, or (by) sending, delivering or causing the delivery of letters, telegrams, packages, facsimiles, electronic mail or other objects to the complainant or a related person”.
For one woman in Cape Town, the past six months have been torture at the hands of a stalker who phones her up to 150 times a day.
The woman - who does not want to be named because the stalker has not yet been sentenced - said the man, a former employee, had started phoning her in August. Initially, he asked whether she had been following him, but later, he started saying he needed to talk to her.
At first she would answer her phone, but now it remains on silent, and she switches it off as soon as she gets home from work. She says that if her stalker, who is facing charges, is released, she will have to change her number. But, she says, as a business woman, it will cost her both clients and money if her number changes.
She picks up her diary where she has been keeping a list of all the calls made. It opens on January 20.
The list is long - 81 phone calls. At first, the calls are almost every minute, starting at 8.15am. They carry on throughout the day and the last one is sometime after 10pm - but, she says, the calls can go on until 1am.
“It’s horrendous,” says the mother-of-two. “My husband is a bag of nerves and I can’t go anywhere without cans of pepper spray.
“I have one in my bag and one in my car. I always have to check first if I go anywhere, in case he is nearby.”
Although the man has not showed up at her home or her place of work, and has never threatened her, the woman says she does not feel safe. “It’s like living in a prison. The scariest thing is that they become so obsessed with you, you’re literally on their mind every minute of every day,” she says.
In South Africa, women in a similar situation have very little legal recourse. Attorney William Booth, who is representing the family of Hannah Rhind, whose stalker was convicted in the UK in September, but who allegedly turned up on the family’s Clifton doorstep last month. He now faces charges of malicious damage to property, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder and arson, in Cape Town
Booth says that, while an act dealing with stalking is in the pipeline, as the law stands, people have to have been threatened before they can take legal action
In instances where the stalking is by someone with whom the victim has had a relationship, victims can rely on the Domestic Violence Act.
The South Africa Law Commission, in a submission paper on stalking, states that: “although stalking is often associated with domestic violence, it is a problem that is much broader than the domestic sphere”.
Tlali concedes that “in terms of criminal law little can be done to deter or punish a harasser until he or she actually causes or threatens to cause immediate or direct harm” but, he says, there are avenues that victims can take.
He says crimen injuria charges can include the invasion of privacy or “the impairment of the complainant’s dignity”, while the “common law definition of assault may be dynamic enough to apply to incidents of tele-terrorism, including silent phone calls where fear is instilled in the recipient”.
The South African media has reported on several recent cases involving stalking or harassing behaviour.
The man shot and wounded by a female police reservist in St George’s Mall last month was alleged to have been a spurned lover who was stalking the woman.
And a Joburg man who pleaded guilty last month to stalking nine women, many of whom had been estate agents whose contact details he had taken from advertising boards, was charged with crimen injuria under the Sexual Offences Act as he had sent them sex videos of himself.
He will be sentenced next month.
Police in Durban, meanwhile, are still on the hunt for the convicted police reservist known as the Blue Light Stalker. Ismael Sheik, who was sentenced to 21 years in prison for kidnapping, sexual assault and defeating the ends of justice, used his official status to “arrest” women and force them to perform sexual acts on him. Sheik failed to turn up to start serving his prison sentence in December.
In 2009, a Joburg e.tv journalist, Shadi Rapitso, was murdered, allegedly by SABC voice-over artist Patrick Malgas, who friends said had stalked her and confessed his love for her. He has not yet been convicted.
The South African Law Reform Commission document on stalking quotes research that indicates that around 70 percent of the people who stalk, have some kind of mental defect.
It also states that “a single prototype of stalker does not seem to exist”, and that the act of stalking is gender neutral - with as many men and women likely to either stalk or be stalked. - Sunday Argus