By Mohalenyane Phakela
QUTHING – A member of women’s rights group, She-Hive, ‘Mamakhethe Phomane, last Friday touched people’s hearts with her true-life story during a Sesotho Media and Development’s film-screening in Mafura, Quthing.
Phomane narrated the abuse she endured at the hands of her husband and how she nearly lost her life in the process.
“I got married in 1992 and, like any marriage, there would be minor problems now and then. But things got worse about seven years down the line when my husband started having affairs and started ignoring my sexual needs as his wife,” said Phomane.
“I tried to involve his parents but this never changed anything. In fact, it made matters worse as he would insult me as soon as they left.
“Later on, in 1999, he started to be the husband I had fallen in love with, loving and caring, until I got pregnant the same year. The situation turned for the worse once again as he would not make his affairs secret anymore.
“I remember getting a call from one of his girlfriends, who told me that my husband was now her man.
She asked when I was going to leave the house Victim narrates touching tale of domestic violence
Members of the Quthing community watch A Miner’s Tale last Friday Great Personality winner ‘Mamoruti Malie with Mpiti Mopeli so she could come and stay there. After that long argument on the phone, I looked at my husband who was lying beside me on our bed and he was laughing out loud.
“After the child was born, I felt so isolated that I would drown my sorrows in a bottle of liquor.
“I still believed my husband would change till the day he strangled me, until I could hardly breathe, for reading the text messages on his cell-phone. I managed to free myself, but he chased me around the house as he tried to stab me with a knife. “I was only saved by our neighbours when I ran into their yard just wearing a panty. That was when I decided enough was enough because I
realised that if I continued to stay with him, I would leave that house in a coffin one day.”
Phomane’s story followed the screening of a Mozambican documentary titled A Miner’s Tale which she said somehow related to her story.
The documentary is about a miner from Mozambique working in South Africa and blowing money with South African women while his family suffered back home. The man’s son is even told his father died in one of the mine accidents.
The communities of Quthing and South Africa present at the screening said they had been
touched by what they had watched and heard, and urged more such gatherings in future.
