Curtain comes down on Phamotse's Bare series

Novelist Jackie Phamotse has announced that she will no longer publish her series of books titled Bare, which also landed her in hot water with businesswoman Basetsana Kumalo and her husband Romeo Kumalo.

The Kumalos brought charges of crimen injuria against her after a series of tweets about a “sex tape”.

Phamotse, who revealed that she was also raped in Bloemfontein in 2007, said she was not quitting because the storyline is not great. But she has given up too much in writing her stories and that has put her and her family in a difficult situation.

Although she never spoke about the rape, she has incorporated her ordeal in the final instalment of the Bare series. “Talking and writing about this was about educating people on South Africa’s justice system and how rape victims are treated. You go to a police station to report a case and they tell you, you’re fighting a political party, you will not win. You move from one police station to the next. At some point I was interrogated by policewomen and two other men for four hours, telling me I am fighting a losing battle. As a young girl at the time, it scared me off to be interrogated like that,” she said.

Bare: The Blesser’s Game unlocked a door and led to Bare: The Cradle of The Hockey Club known as the biggest secret society in Africa. The series began by telling the story of Treasure, a naïve dreamer tossed into this unforgiving reality. “For me to end the series, I feel like I’m mentally tired. I feel like I’ve put my family through a lot for a long time before the books came out and after. And they’ve reached a point where they can’t protect me anymore and they can’t watch over me anymore,” she said. The final book in the Bare series will be released in June this year.

“For me to end the series, I feel like I’m mentally tired. I feel like I’ve put my family through a lot for a long time before the books came out and after “