Convicted woman beater Jaco Swart was handed a R20 000 fine for beating his wife.
Durban - Action SA is set to approach the National Prosecuting Authority after a man was handed a fine and suspended prison sentence for assaulting his wife.
The Pretoria North Regional Court gave Jaco Swart a R20 000 fine and a three-year prison sentence suspended for five years. This despite a video of Swart assaulting his estranged wife going viral on social media. He pleaded guilty to assault with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm. It is further alleged that other abuse against his wife took place in front of the couple’s children.
Action SA's Lerato Ngobeni said the NPA’s prosecutor had "meekly applied to have the surveillance footage admitted to assist in the sentencing of the convicted Jaco Swart."
"ActionSA will be writing to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Advocate S. Mzinyathi, to request that the NPA urgently appeals the inadequate sentence in this case and calls for a thorough investigation into the prosecutor’s conduct.
“Should Advocate Mzinyathi reject our request, we will escalate the matter to the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Shamila Batohi. If this does not result in an appeal being undertaken, we will proceed to our courts or take all other measures available to us," she said.
Ngobeni added they would not back down on the case as long as the scourge of gender-based violence exists in South Africa.
"If the fight against gender-based violence is going to be more than rhetoric, there must be a collective rejection of this kind of absurd sentence in response to such violence and brutality," she said.
According to AfriForum Private Prosecution Unit spokesperson Barry Bateman, head of the AfriForum Private Prosecution Unit Advocate Gerrie Nel, had brought the latest assault incident to the attention of the prosecutor before sentencing, but it was ignored.
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