South Africa recognises a system of legal pluralism where customary law exists alongside national legislation, creating complex tensions, especially regarding women’s rights. Customary law often subordinates women’s rights to those of men, raising concerns given the South African Constitution’s commitment to gender equality and justice. This study investigates how legal pluralism can address injustices faced by women experiencing Gender based violence (GBV). Using a qualitative systematic literature review, it explores how various factors intersect violating women’s rights. To understand the complex dynamics of GBV within legal pluralism, particularly concerning customary law, the study employs the ecological model. This model illustrates how different factors contribute to women’s rights violations. The findings show that customary laws, rooted in patriarchal traditions, often restrict women’s rights and exacerbate GBV. Addressing these issues calls for significant reform. A promising reform approach is adopting the ‘Ubuntu’ philosophy, emphasising community, interconnectedness, and mutual respect. This principle can serve as a foundation for meaningful legal change in the context of legal pluralism. Furthermore, aligning customary law with national law on women’s rights and South Africa’s constitutional mandates is crucial. Such alignment will protect women’s rights and create a legal environment based on fairness and inclusion. Current and previous volumes are available at: https://ajsw.africasocialwork.net

Homicide remains a major cause of death globally. The global risk differentials are a persistent public health challenge. Africa's homicide rate of 13 victims per 100,000 people is markedly higher than the European average (2.2 per 100,000 people). To understand the causes of such large differences, homicide research needs to move from country-level rates to disaggregated analyses in which homicide is broken down by victim, offender, and incident characteristics. We conducted a pilot study in which the European Homicide Monitor (EHM) coding manual is applied to a South African research location and compared to an extreme point in the Global North, Finnish urban areas. We find differential patterns in the two locations. The high-rate context of South Africa manifests a younger offender and victim age structure, a higher share of criminal and revenge motives and the use of firearms, and incidents in public places. In contrast, the comparatively low-rate Finnish context shows a higher relative share of intimate partner violence and familial incidents taking place in private places. The role of alcohol and drugs appears more salient in Finnish urban homicide, a finding calling for replication. We conclude by discussing the methodological challenges revealed by the pilot comparison.

The outbreak of COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 30 January 2020. Many nations, including South Africa, have seen an increase in COVID-19 outbreaks in their population, including those working in and incarcerated in correctional centres. Re-sponding to COVID-19 in correctional centres is a major challenge, particularly due to overcrowding and limited medical resources. This paper uses secondary data to investigate the spread of COVID-19 in South African cor-rectional centres. It focuses on the problems faced by the South African Department of Correctional Services in preventing the spread of COVID-19 in its correctional facilities. The author proposes measures to be followed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in such facilities. The findings reveal that despite efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in South African correctional centres, the virus spread rapidly among inmates and prison workers.

The pursuit of ending the COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on the surfacing and rollout of vaccines to be utilized by people around the world. However, vaccine nationalism hinders the world’s poorest countries to have access to vaccines. This article puts into perspective the impact of vaccine nationalism on global health. It also underlines its repercussions on the universal rights to health standards and identifies avenues to be followed for equitable access to the COVID-19 vaccine, necessary to the containment of the pandemic. The study makes use of secondary data to gain a better understanding of problems associated with vaccine nationalism. We searched PubMed, CINAHL, and EMBASE databases, websites maintained by the United Nations (like the World Health Organization [WHO]), national and international newspapers, and grey literature using a predetermined search strategy to identify all relevant qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods studies related specifically to the aim of this study. Its findings prove that vaccine nationalism has a negative impact on global health by posing a predicament or a delay in ending the pandemic, and furthermore, it violates human rights to health standards of the global population. Therefore, to encourage the international sharing of the COVID-19 vaccine, enforceable frameworks for vaccine development and distribution are needed and should be managed by an established international platform like the WHO.

The United Nations Mapping Report on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a powerful reminder of the gravity of the crimes committed in this country. This report found that the period between March 1993 and June 2003 is probably one of the most tragic chapters in the recent history of the DRC. A string of major political crises, wars and multiple ethnic and regional conflicts killed millions of people. However, since the publication of this report there has been a shocking lack of justice for the victims because the Congolese justice system has been ineffective in prosecuting the perpetrators. This article is a valuable contribution to ending impunity in that it proposes an alternative approach to justice. This is based on restorative values and principles, such as the Baraza indigenous restorative justice mechanism. This provides justice to victims, restores peace and reconciliation in the region and, most importantly, holds perpetrators accountable for the crimes and human rights violations they have committed.

In pandemic crises such as the COVID-19, violence based on gender grows more acutely and in order to develop and implement effective prevention strategies to combat the increase ofgender-based violence during pandemics, careful consideration has to be given to factors that influence it. This study examines the main causes ofgender-based violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study makes use of secondary data such as peer-reviewed articles and is discussed based on the ecological theory. Its findings prove that since the outbreak of the COVID-19, gender-based violence has increased in several countries around the world due to measures put in place to control the spread ofthe virus. The results highlight the need to develop effective intervention and prevention strategies to reduce gender-based violence during this pandemic.

This chapter focuses on colonialism in Africa, with particular attention to its criminal characteristics. It starts by outlining the conquest of Africa and the birth of the colonial empire. Colonial ideology, propaganda, and its legitimation by Europeans also receive attention. Invested in a civilizing mission, colonialism has been, according to its defenders and promoters, a blessing for humanity. Therefore, the first objective of colonialism is political domination, and its second objective is to make possible the economic exploitation of the colonized country, as shown by both the political and economic theories of colonialism. The global strategy view of colonialism argues that the partitioning of Africa originated from proto-nationalist movements within Africa that were threatening European interests elsewhere. As if that was not enough, colonialism had some demographic impacts on the traditional village community as evidenced by the population explosion among the Black people.

The South African Department of Correctional Services (DCS) has a constitutional mandate to provide rehabilitation programs that address offenders’ criminal conducts. The rehabilitation approach currently used to deliver this mandate is grounded on the needs-based model where dynamic factors associated with recidivism are systematically targeted in the treatment of offenders’ criminal behaviors. In this research, a qualitative research methodology was employed, and a case study research design was utilized. Purposeful non-probability sampling was utilized to recruit participants. Thirty inmates and 20 correctional center officials who met the inclusion criteria for the study were selected to participate. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were used to collect data during the empirical investigation. The findings of this study demonstrated that the DCS’s mission is far from being accomplished due to its failure to implement rehabilitation programs. The research study, therefore, recommends that for the success of a rehabilitation approach in South Africa, a critical review of the strategy meant to achieve this goal is required.

Restorative justice is a holistic philosophy that has become increasingly popular in reformist criminal justice debates and criminological research. However, there is some debate as to whether its programs adequately address victims’ needs. To this end, this paper analyses the effectiveness of restorative justice practices on victims of crime. Drawing on my interviews conducted with victims of crime and legal experts in South Africa, the findings of this study offer support for the effectiveness of a restorative justice approach to addressing victim satisfaction. Restorative justice can enable the needs of victims to be more fully considered during the criminal justice process. This is very different from contemporary criminal justice, which has often effectively excluded victims from almost every aspect of its proceedings despite its continuous reform to protect and promote victims’ rights.