HE DROVE OVER ME

As SA reels after the death of Tshegofatso Pule, another victim of gender-based violence shares the horror of her recent assault

IT WAS the opportunity of a lifetime – an interview with the department of health for a job as a social worker, the profession she’d decided to dedicate her life to. But a week before the interview the unthinkable happened. The man she’d been living with allegedly ran her over with his car, leaving her with several injuries, including four broken ribs. He also allegedly set fire to the flat the couple shared. “I’m in nappies because I can’t move or do anything for myself,” Nobuhle Monica Nyati tells YOU on the phone from her family home in Port Elizabeth.

But still, she’s fortunate, she says. Unlike many of her countrywomen, she survived. Recent statistics show a woman is killed every three hours in South Africa due to gender-based violence, and knowing she escaped with her life puts Nobuhle (24) in the “lucky” category.

Yet that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been through hell. In early June Nobuhle broke up with her boyfriend and moved back in with her parents. But it wasn’t long before he came looking for her at her family

BY DUENNA MAMBANA home, begging her to take him back.

He then asked for her keys to the flat they’d been sharing, which she thought was odd as he already had a set of keys. “I pretended to get the keys, went inside the yard and locked the gate,” she says.

Her ex jumped over the wall and ran after her, catching up as she reached the house. “He started choking me and demanding my keys and phone,” she recalls.

He barged into the house, ransacking Nobuhle’s room until he found her keys, grabbed her phone and ran out.

Charging after him to get her phone back, she jumped into the front seat of his VW Polo – but then jumped out again because she was afraid he’d drive off with her. The commotion had drawn a crowd of neighbours into the street.

Nobuhle’s mom, Nomalizo, was there too – and everyone looked on in horror as the man drove his car straight towards Nobuhle. “In that split second while I tried to make sense of what was happening, he came for me,” she says. “He ran me over – his car went over me. All I remember are my mother’s screams.”

Neighbours rushed her to hospital where she spent several days before being discharged to complete her recovery at home. Nobuhle has few belongings left – a fire her ex allegedly started at their flat destroyed most of her things, including the two precious laptops containing all the research she’d done towards her master’s degree in social work.

“I have nothing now,” she says. “Everything was burnt to ashes.”

Police have arrested her ex, charging him with attempted murder and robbery. At the time of going to print he had yet to appear in court and couldn’t be named. Nobuhle has also been granted a restraining order against him.

‘I have nothing now. Everything was burnt to ashes’

Nobuhle and her ex were together for about a year and, like many abusive relationships, everything was good in the beginning. “But he changed,” she says.

“He was violent in the last months of our relationship and I was over it. I never thought I’d become a statistic. This guy was my crush from my teen years, and I was his. Little did I know this was the ending we were headed for.”

NOBUHLE’S story comes at a time when the country is reeling once again from the scourge of gender-based violence. This time the face of horror is Tshegofatso Pule (28), the eight-months pregnant woman who was found hanging from a tree in Roodepoort, Johannesburg. She’d been stabbed in the chest. Her baby died too.

Tshegofatso was looking forward to being a mom, her friends say. She’d chosen a name for her little one – Lesego –and was preparing to go shopping for baby clothes when her life ended in tragedy.

Tshegofatso was last seen getting into a grey Jeep near her boyfriend’s complex, according to reports. She “wasn’t in a good state of mind”, a friend says, and wanted to come home.

She never made it – a day later her body was found in a patch of deserted veld. The story made headlines around the world – yet another senseless murder in a country drowning in gender-based violence.

Tshegofatso’s family are devastated. Among her loved ones is her uncle Tumisang Katake, an attorney who defended Sandile Mantsoe, the foreign-exchange trader who was found guilty in 2018 of murdering Karabo Mokoena. Karabo’s burnt body was found in Lyndhurst, Johannesburg, in April 2017.

“Tshego is Karabo Mokoena today,” Tumisang said at his niece’s funeral. “I know now how it feels.”

He pledged never again to represent anyone accused of killing, raping or molesting women and children. “I know now what Karabo’s family went through.”

TSHEGOFATSO’S family and f r iends closed ranks after the funeral, refusing to speak to the media as police pledged to pull out all the stops to apprehend the suspect. At the time of going to print no

Tshegofatso’s murder has sparked renewed calls for the government to take serious action against perpetrators of gender-based violence.

Sarrests had been made. The circumstances surrounding her death remain shrouded in mystery – but reports point to a complicated love triangle involving the dead woman, the father of her unborn child and another woman to whom he was engaged. The man, an analyst with the Johannesburg Securities Exchange, was apparently the last person to have seen Tshegofatso alive. “We know who we’re wanting now,” police minister Bheki Cele said in the days after the murder. The man’s fiancée apparently knew nothing of Tshegofatso or her unborn baby daughter, and he told his family about her only after she went missing. “I thought I should get an attorney because she was last seen leaving my place,” he told the Sunday Times. Tumisang says the family became frantic with worry when Tshegofatso vanished. When the hours crept by and she didn’t answer her phone or respond to messages, they sent people out looking for her and raised the alarm on social media. The next day the heartbreaking discovery was made. And still the horror goes on. Tshegofatso had barely been buried when the death of another woman was making headlines – this time a 42- year- old stabbed in Eersterust, Tshwane. President Cyril Ramaphosa lamented the number of women dying at the hands of their partners and said the justice system needed to “treat gender-based violence with the urgency it deserved”. But for too many, words aren’t enough.