Imaginary constructions and forensic reconstructions of fatal violence against women: Implications for community violence prevention

Abstract

The almost exclusive media focus on political violence in South Africa has deflected attention from the high levels of interpersonal violence in areas of socioeconomic deprivation. In order to explore the tension between an at-risk community's perspective and the current reality of violence against women, imaginary constructions of their own violent death produced by 45 African female interview respondents were examined in conjunction with forensic data relating to 73 African female homicide victims in Cape Town, South Africa. The prototypical account of an imagined homicide involved a female commuter being approached by a group of men, taunted and assaulted, raped and then killed. The majority of actual homicides occurred at or in the vicinity of the residence of the victim, with the attacker being known to the deceased. Whilst only 1 of the imagined homicide narratives depicted the use of alcohol by the victim, over half the actual homicides had elevated postmortem blood alcohol levels. These and other disjunctions and convergencies between lay and forensic constructions of violent female death should be viewed in the wider context of enmeshment in social circumstance, and could provide some understanding of how at-risk communities perceive violence against women, thereby providing a foundation for appropriate prevention programmes.