Attempted and completed parricides in South Africa, 1990–2019

Abstract

Previous studies of parricide have been carried out predominantly in a Western context, in North America, Australia, and Western Europe. To date, only a handful of studies in parricide have been conducted in continental Africa. Previous studies in Ghana and Zimbabwe note that there may be culture-specific ways in which parricides may be shaped by the norms and cultural beliefs systems within those respective countries. Missing from the literature is an examination of parricides in South Africa. Using newspapers and court records, this article examines the offense and offender characteristics of parricides in South Africa. Our findings suggest that residential patterns of families may shape the offense characteristics found in South African parricides.