- A Cape Town mother shares her experience of surviving an abusive marriage.
- She highlights the lack of resources for GBV survivors, particularly shelters.
- Her story is a call for greater support and action against GBV.
“If I hadn’t walked away, I don’t think I would be alive. It would have ended badly.” So explains a Cape Town mother of two – and gender-based violence (GBV) survivor.
As the curtain comes down on the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children campaign today (10 December), many women and children still live in fear with growing calls for more to be done to protect them.
The woman, who does not wish to be named, said her marriage started great and she could never have imagined that she would become a victim of abuse.
“I grew up in Port Elizabeth and lived a comfortable life. Then I moved to Cape Town and met my husband. Everything was great as it always is with narcissists.
“Then slowly but surely, he started isolating me, and then came the physical, mental, and emotional abuse. He made me believe that I deserve it. That carried on for five years. Eventually, my best friend and my parents stepped in because they wanted me to get away.”
Difficult
She explained that she then moved to a shelter that supports GBV survivors, where they helped her get a job.
But she adds that getting out of the marriage was not that easy.
“It wasn’t easy to get out. I had to start my life all over again. I was a housewife. When I left him the first time, I ended up going back to him for two years and then I decided I was done, and I walked away.
“He didn’t like me having friends. When I became friends with people and started sharing with them, I realised what I was going through was not normal.
“One of the things he told me was that he refused to divorce me even though we were separated. He told me ‘If I can’t have you, no one can have you’. He told me that if I got someone else, he would find him and kill him.”
She said she could never have imagined how her life would turn out.
“I would read about these things and think ‘How can they let that happen to them?’ Until I landed in the same situation.”
The mother of two explains that this not only affected her but also their son. Her daughter was living with her parents.
“He secluded me from my family. My son was emotionally scarred, luckily my daughter was raised by my parents.”
Support needed
As a GBV survivor, she says more support is needed for women seeking help.
“There is not enough being done. It’s one of those subjects like depression, where people talk but no one steps in and does anything. Whether it be funding from government, they are so busy focussing on other things and they don’t understand the repercussions, especially if there are children involved.”
She also laments the lack of shelters for survivors. “They should have more places for women to go to. There are minimal places and the places that are there are full. What happens to all those other women?”
The victim encourages women to seek help and to take charge of their lives again.
“It is hard but don’t give up. You deserve better. Think about what you are teaching your children. Especially if you have daughters, you are showing them that they deserve those things because they see what you are going through. And you are teaching your son it’s okay to do that, ‘If mommy allows it to happen, then it’s okay if I do that’.”
Lucinda Evans, the founder of Philisa Abafazi Bethu, a non-profit organisation (NPO) working with abused women and vulnerable children in Lavender Hill, said politicians used GBV as a catchphrase in their memorandums and made promises during elections that have yet to materialise. “The 16 Days of activism campaign is a government tick-box exercise, and a waste of expenditure with glamorous politicians speaking about it. But in the translation to everyday life, 124 rapes are reported every day in this country.”
