Vuyelwa Gwebane Mpambo’s bedroom that was never hers

“We first met when I was 17 and he was 26. We got married when I was 20. The abuse started about two years later,” says Vuyelwa Gwebane Mpambo.

“I was working the nightshift as a nurse, so I would knock off at 7am and he would expect me home by 7.45am. If I was late, he would beat me.

“There was one night I told him that, before I came home the next morning, I would go to the shop to buy a new stove, because we were remodeling our kitchen. He agreed.

“The following morning, when I came home, he was very angry. He didn’t go to work. He told me that I knocked off at 7am but now I’m coming back at 10.30. I told him I went to Game and they open at 9am so I had to wait for them. I showed him the papers as the proof that I was there. “But he was really angry.

“We had a nanny at home because my son was still young and we were both working. She was there that day.

“I walked to the bedroom. I had begun to take off my clothes. I wanted to take a bath and sleep. I was from night shift and I was tired. I was in my bra and panties. But he stopped me from going to the bathroom.

“He closed the bedroom door and he took off his belt first and then he started hitting me with it. I ended up in a foetal position on the bed. He was getting angrier and angrier. I still have marks on my back because he used the buckle as well.

“He then threw the belt away. He pulled me by my hair and threw me on the floor and that’s when he started kicking me violently with his big safety boots. He worked in machinery maintenance so he had these big boots for work.

“He kept on repeating: ‘I’m fixing my family.’

“Afterward, the tone would change. He would say: ‘You’re provoking me, I love you so much.’ It was blaming me for his abuse.

“He kicked me on my left temple, the neck and all over the body. I waited until he was finished then I got under the covers. We had sex afterward.

“To me it was never rape. It was ‘I’m the wife so I must submit’.

“So now, when people [are] talking about rape, I ask, ‘Have I been raped so many times?’

“We separated in 2015 and divorced on February 28 2019. It took so long for the divorce because there was also court battles.

“When he left, I took all his clothes from the bedroom and threw it in the garage. Everything in that room had him all over it.

“Now, it felt like it was my space for the first time.”

*A pseudonym