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

- DUENNA MAMBANA

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 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.