‘IT’S TAKEN ME 20 YEARS TO GET OVER THE NIGHT MY EX NEARLY KILLED ME’
Tracy Going opens up about horrific abuse
ONCE she puts her mind to something she does it – come hell or high water. That’s just the kind of person she is. It probably explains why Tracy Going was once one of South Africa’s most loved broadcasting personalities. And why she’s got two Comrades medals under her belt.
But for years there’s been something else she’s yearned to do: write a book. She wanted people to understand what happened to her one hellish night 20 years ago so she could finally get closure.
Yet try as she might she couldn’t find the words – it was too big and scary, like a giant shadow hanging over her life. How could she explain the traumatic circumstances that had led to her stumbling into a Johannesburg police station, bruised and battered, to lay a charge of assault against her boyfriend.
At the time Tracy (then 30) was one of the most recognisable faces in local broadcasting but away from the cameras her personal life was in turmoil – she was involved in a whirlwind romance which was becoming steadily more abusive. And then on the night of 25 October 1997 the unthinkable happened.
South Africans were aghast when pictures appeared on newspaper front pages of the golden girl of TV beaten so badly one of her eyes was swollen shut. For 20 years what happened at her Parkhurst home on that horrific night has haunted her. But it was watching the lengthy murder trial of Paralympian Oscar Pistorius that finally spurred her into action.
“I went into a very dark space with the Oscar case,” Tracy tells us. “There were a lot of parallels. The trial sent me almost completely over the edge.”
While people will forever be left wondering about the events that unfolded at Pistorius’ Pretoria home on that night in 2013, which left his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp dead, Tracy was determined that her own harrowing story would no longer be cloaked in mystery.
She’s convinced that had a neighbour not kicked down her door after hearing her terrified screams as she lay on the floor being attacked by her partner she wouldn’t be alive to tell her story.
“He could’ve killed me,” she says, her dark blue eyes welling up with emotion as she chats to us at her home in Cape Town’s southern suburbs.
After a year spent delving into what happened, her memoir Brutal Legacy is ready to hit the shelves and she looks visibly relieved to have it all behind her.
“I was surprised at times when I burst out crying as I was writing. There were a few parts where I had to walk away for an hour, a day and sometimes even three weeks.”
TRACY hadn’t been looking for love when the charming businessman invited her to lunch. A divorced, single mother, her focus was on raising her son, Chase (then 6) while juggling a highly demanding career which saw her presenting three TV programmes as well as reading the news on the Radio Metro (now Metro FM) breakfast show. So she was amazed when romance blossomed so unexpectedly.
“We met to discuss a marketing plan for his business and he was so witty, funny and delightful.”
But within months his temper
emerged. At first it was verbal outbursts but it soon snowballed. Having grown up in an abusive household in which her father frequently beat her mother, Tracy always promised herself she’d never let the same thing to happen to her. But when her Prince Charming started lashing out at her she tried to find reasons to justify his behaviour.
“We’d been together for five months at that point – it sounds short but it’s actually quite a long time. I thought I loved him. My son and the accused actually got along really well. But that’s not really a good excuse, is it?”
One evening after an argument he deliberately crashed her car, with her inside it, into a concrete pillar in her garage, screaming, “Tonight you’re going to die”. He dragged her into her house by her hair, choked her, disconnected her phone and held her hostage in her bedroom until she apologised.
Even though she took out a restraining order he kept phoning her, begging for another chance. He sent her flowers, bought plane tickets so she could take her son on a healing holiday, and slowly succeeded in whittling down her resolve.
Although she was traumatised Tracy desperately wanted answers. “I needed him to explain why it had happened because I wanted to understand it.”
So when he showed up at her door one night she let him in. They talked briefly and when she made it clear that their relationship was over he lashed out, punching her in the face.
He went on a rampage through her lounge, overturning a TV cabinet and threatening to cut her face with a glass shard from a coffee table which he’d smashed.
Tracy was powerless. He pinned her down against the floor and punched and kicked her repeatedly. It was at this point that a neighbour heard her screams and intervened.
Although relieved to be alive, little did she know that this was just the start – that decades down the line what had happened would still haunt her. She pressed charges and a two-and-a-half year court case ensued with her ex doing everything he could to avoid jail, even fleeing to Zimbabwe. He was extradited back to South Africa to face the music.
While the court case dragged on her career suffered. “At that time I was negotiating to start reading the main evening TV news on SABC but that of course ground to a halt. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with me.”
She says there were many times when it felt as if she were the one on trial.
“I was on the stand for three days. He was on the stand for three hours.”
After putting herself through all of that she was dumbfounded when her ex walked free from court with just an order to pay a R5 000 fine and a 12-month suspended sentence.
For Tracy it felt as if he’d just been given a slap on the wrist but there was nothing more she could do. With the court case over, her career picked up and she went on to host Morning Live on SABC2. She found love with Arnaud Ducray, who’s in the lighting and sound industry. They wed and have two children, Ashleigh (15) and David (13).
But she never got over what had happened. Despite years of therapy she still has flashbacks.“I was standing here in this room next to this window,” she says, pointing to a giant pane overlooking a garden. “My husband was talking to me and I suddenly thought, ‘You could ram my head through that glass if you wanted to.’ You realise how vulnerable you are. Even with my husband where I’m totally safe I sometimes think, ‘Oh my goodness, he could hurt me.’”
Although she often gets recognised when out and about she has no intention of returning to our TV screens. “No that’s done, that’s in the past. I’m done – there are new faces, new voices,” she says firmly. “I was lecturing for Afda film school but stopped last year to write the book.”
Dredging up all those painful memories was hard but she’s glad she stuck with it. “I didn’t realise how healing it would be to write a book. The writing process can be very powerful,” she says.
She says the book has given her something her court case never did: closure.
“I started writing this book for others; to try to explain how easy it is to be lured into an abusive relationship, to be consumed by it and destroyed by it but eventually I realised I was writing it for myself,” she says.
“Still, I can’t help but wonder whether I wasn’t given my story to one day tell it.”
‘I was on the stand for three days, he was on for three hours’
SHE was so terrified of her abusive ex that she took out a restraining order. So why when he showed up at her home did she let him in? In this extract from her memoir, Brutal Legacy, Tracy explains what was going through her head when she pushed the remote control button and opened the door . . .
‘ IT HAD been three weeks since the family court interdict had been implemented. I’d secured a restraining order, a piece of paper that prevented him from being anywhere near me or my property. It stated clearly that he wasn’t allowed to threaten me or harm me in any way, nor was he allowed to make any contact.
When the sheriff of the court served the papers on him, he’d laughed.
“Not worth the paper it’s written on,” he’d scoffed. But he’d left me alone. Then he phoned. I ignored it. He phoned again. And again. I broke the restraining order as I answered. I listened as he gave me the words I so desperately wanted to hear. Needed to hear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.”
Then he phoned daily, hourly even. Court records would later show it was 58 times. Always apologising, often coaxing, sometimes shouting and threatening. I took his calls. The first bruises had long faded and although I was still confused by his anger and unpredictability, I’d become increasingly lulled by his endless calls of remorse and regret, the flowers, the air tickets and the offers to repair and pay for damages to my property. His words, his kindness, his generosity, were making me feel whole again. I didn’t want to believe I was caught in a vortex of destruction. I wanted to believe I was above that, that I was more. And for this I needed him to explain it all away, to minimise it, so I could rationalise my horrible hurt. I needed his reassurance of a new beginning, and the certainty of a promised shift in his behaviour. I wanted him to look me in my eyes and ask for my forgiveness so I could validate my worthiness. I wanted to understand. Why? Why had he done this to me? To us? Why? On that evening of 25 October 1997 I stood quietly on my veranda, listening to his desperation, his brokenness. He was outside my house, calling on his cellphone. “Please . . .” he said. “I need to talk to you.” He was on the other side of the wall . . . in municipal no-man’s land . . . neutral territory. Surely, I’d be safe. Surely? “I’ll come out to you,” I’d said. “I’ll be there now.” It was then that I executed the very smallest of motions, an almost imperceptible gesture that left no indent in the hardened plastic casing of the remote for the garage door. Just an invisible thumbprint. But noth- ing is ever truly invisible.
I opened the garage door . . . and he slipped in. I rushed forward, my fingers flicking pathetically in the afternoon air, gesturing to him not to enter my property, reminding him I’d said I was coming out. But he’d already cut the distance between us with no more than a few strides.
I played the conversation over in my head. “You’re not allowed here.”
And I heard his response again and again: “I don’t give a f**k.” And with reflection, he was so right. He didn’t. He really didn’t.
ONCE inside her home he tried to talk her into taking him back. When she told him their relationship was over he smashed up her lounge and beat her black and blue. But Tracy says she doesn’t believe he was in a blind rage.
“I think often abusive men are aware of what they’re doing. They build up toward it and create the circumstances so it can happen again. I definitely saw the anticipation in his eyes before he beat me up. He came there to destroy.”
‘I didn’t want to believe I was caught in a vortex of destruction’