‘I was as light as a feather. I felt peace’

smelt like Doom. I looked around and found broken lighters in his room. It all made sense, before then I never understood why my house was stinking. I would clean and it would still smell.

“That’s when I put him out of the house. When I did that the smell went away. But there wasn’t a burglar bar that could keep Abie out. He stole everything. I’ve had so many watches, and until this day I still don’t know how he stole the one watch from my arm. We had to buy back the things he stole from the people he sold it to, and then he’d just steal it again.

“But he was my son. I never wanted him out of the house. Some mornings I’d wake up early and make him some food, I had to do it secretly so that my husband wouldn’t see, so I did that skelmpies. But then there were so many times that Abie would just throw the food at me.

“In the beginning, he tried to stab me with a pair of scissors. He was taller than me but I grabbed the sjambok and hit him.

“There were so many things he did. He would put the hosepipe under my door and run water into my room, trying to flood it. He would lock me out of the house and burn the curtains. We didn’t have windows; Abie smashed them all. Another time he took an axe and tried to break the wall down.

“It was horror. We lived in hell. He stole all our clothes. My entire kitchen was in my room. Food was locked up in my room.

“But that wasn’t important; I just wanted my son back and I didn’t know how to get him back.

“Abie and my husband, Odneal, would always fight. The day before I took his life, strangely enough they didn’t fight. I was so surprised. Odneal came back from Abie’s room at the back and he was smiling. This never happened. He just said: ‘Ellen, leave the child.’

“The next day, I was on my way to work. I only had money for taxi fare and Abie asked me for money. He was nagging so much, I just threw the R20 to him, but I said ‘I don’t have money Abie’ so that my husband wouldn’t know I’d secretly given Abie money.

“Of course he bought drugs with the money. “Later I went to ask him if he wanted tea. He was still high. I wanted to ask him why he didn’t appreciate what I was doing for him and why he was hurting us like this.

“I just wanted to scare him. So I took the rope and wrapped it around him. It was just for him to get off tik. I just wanted my son back because I believed he still had a future.

“I was standing in front of his bed with the rope wrapped around his feet and his neck. He woke up and started swearing at me and wanted to hit me. That’s when I pulled the rope a little tighter.

“I begged him to just listen to me and stop with the drugs.

“He said, ‘Ek gaan hoor’ (I’m going to listen). “That’s when I pulled the rope even tighter. I prayed and said, ‘Father, forgive me.’ At that moment a heavy burden lifted from my shoulders. I was as light as a feather. I felt peace. That’s what I was praying for.

“The pain of what happened to Abie is sad, but it’s also not. I know that probably doesn’t make sense. The most painful thing is that I had to do this to be seen by people.

“I was never treated as a real person. As a child, my life as a person was not worthy. I never thought I’d take someone’s life. And now this is how people know me, by the crime I committed.

“There’s a lot that people don’t know about me, it’s not just about Abie. Through my tears and my words I can now tell people who I am. There are a lot of mothers going through this. I’m just here to be a voice to the voiceless.

“Funny enough, Abie sold everything except the radio I bought for him. I look at this radio every day and I remember my Abie. He always made me laugh, even when he was on drugs. He would sing to me, Abie loved to sing. There were so many times that I wanted him to just come and sit with me in the house but every time I did that it was a big mistake because then he’d steal something and he wouldn’t leave.

“The drugs made him a different person, but I’ll always remember Abie with his sunglasses and cap. In Abie, I saw what I went through as a child, I saw myself in him. Rejected. That’s why I always wanted him in the house, to know that I loved him.

“The tik problem is even worse now than it was back then.”

There are a lot of mothers going through this. I’m just here to be a voice to the voiceless