ABSTRACT
Annemarie Engelbrecht is a twenty-nine-year-old South African women currently awaiting trial at Johannesburg Women’s prison for the murder of her abusive husband. Interviewed by one of the authors, she observed wryly that nine years in an abusive relationship had prepared her well for imprisonment; her husband’s death had not ended the coercive control she was subjected to but merely changed the source of that control. Like many women who kill in order to defend themselves against violent men, Engelbrecht was not protected by the state. Indeed, in the last few months of his life the deceased would offer to call the police himself, taunting her with their repeated failure to come to her aid. In June 2002, after yet another assault, Engelbrecht handcuffed her husband while he was sleeping and smothered him. This response needs to be placed in the larger context of state obligations to address domestic violence, set out in the Constitutional Court judgment S v Baloyi:
Indeed, the State is under a series of constitutional mandates which include the obligation to deal with domestic violence: to protect both the rights of everyone to enjoy freedom and security of the person and to bodily and psychological integrity, and the right to have their dignity respected and protected, as well as the defensive rights of everyone not to
be subjected to torture in any way and not to be treated or punished in a cruel, inhuman or degrading way.1
