(2017) 1 African Human Rights Yearbook 19 eligible for parole after serving only three years in jail. In another South African case, S v Shrien Dewani,62 the newly married wife of a British businessman, the accused, was murdered in Kayelisha Township in Cape Town by confessed killers who testified in court that they had been hired by the accused to do the job. This testimony notwithstanding, the court ruled that there was lack of positive evidence linking the accused to the murder and accordingly acquitted him. Interestingly, Pistorius and Dewani were decided by female High Court Judges. The older cases betray a similar judicial leniency.63 In S v Ramontoedi,64 the accused shot his wife in the courtroom where she had gone to seek child maintenance. The judge accepted his plea of provocation based on his wife’s alleged infidelity and sentenced him to three years’ correctional supervision. In S v Arnold,65 the 41 year old accused who was infatuated with his 21 year old attractive wife shot and killed her and pleaded provocation. The provoking act was that the deceased bent forward displaying her bare breasts to him and indicated that she wished to return to her work as a stripper. The trial judge acquitted him on the grounds of temporary non-pathological criminal incapacity caused by severe emotional stress and provocation. In S v di Blasi,66 the accused sought out his wife and shot and killed her following her decision to divorce him after he had assaulted her several times and also attempted to kill her. The lower court gave him four years, holding that the accused’s criminal capacity was diminished as a result of his feelings of anger, humiliation and bitterness. The appellate court found the sentence to be inappropriate and increased the sentence to 15 years. Courts are generally perceived, at least by women, to be insensitive when adjudicating cases involving deadly assault on women. A 2003 report sketches some of the pertinent issues: Women who suffer abuse at the hands of the deceased are severely disempowered by the deceased. They are fearful of the abuser, knowing he is capable of harming them at will. The sheer size of differential between the woman and her abuser and the socialisation differences between them impact on her fear of her abuser and her feelings of helplessness. All of these factors keep many women from acting in the heat of passion that typically mitigates men’s sentences. Yet, the courts are only willing to understand what are typically men’s responses to emotional stress and provocation. … Women who kill their abusers in non-confrontational situations have great difficulty accessing criminal defences to murder. These findings suggest that courts do not understand women’s experiences with violence and the effect of abuse on them.67 It is believed that in cases of that nature judges tend to convict and sentence for mere assault rather than for the very serious crime of murder. It is also believed that judges tend to refrain from passing the fully-deserved sentence against convicted males who kill their female partners presumably because judges have been socialised to believe 62 CC 15/2014) [2014] ZAWCHC 188 (8 December 2014). Bronthuys & Albertyn (n 25 above) 340-341. 64 1996 WLD Case No. 199/96, unreported. 65 1985 3 SA 256 (C). 66 1996 1 SACR1 (SCA). 67 H Ludsin ‘South African criminal law and battered women who kill: discussion document 2’ (CSVR: Johannesburg 2003) 61 www.csvr.org.za/docs/gender/ southafricancriminal2.pdf (accessed 13 October 2017). 63