at bay
Ferial Haffajee
It is a peaceful Saturday afternoon at a women’s shelter in the inner city in Johannesburg. Two women sit in the lounge and chat to a friend who is ironing.
There is a calm about the place – it is here that battered women find refuge from abusive relationships and forge new lives for themselves. The bedrooms are immaculate, with teddy bears on the beds for the children who accompany their mothers.
Thembi Zikhali is cleaning her room, straightening the bunks where her two children sleep. Her outward calm belies her nervousness.
Zikhali says she is on tenterhooks, waiting for the next volley from her husband who has threatened to kill her.
She explains: “It happened last week. He waited for me downstairs at the Carlton Centre where I work. He said he was giving me a week to come home, failing which he was going to kill me. He said he was going to lose me … and my boyfriend is also going to lose me.”
The following day Zikhali’s husband telephoned her at work.
“He said he was going to wait for me downstairs. I stayed at the office till nine that night. My boss gave me a lift back to the shelter,” says Zikhali.
After this incident, shelter manager Jeannette Sera persuaded Zikhali that it was time to enforce the interdict that she had brought against her husband several months ago.
Zikhali alleges that for several years her husband regularly abused her. The couple lived with four children in a bachelor flat in Soweto. Zikhali says the beatings usually followed her refusal to have sex with him because of the lack of privacy.
There was also tension because two of the children were not her husband’s own and he resented having to support them, she says.
Contraventions against interdicts – which dictate that an abusive spouse may not go near the victim – must be reported to the police who are obliged to arrest the offender.
Zikhali alleges that her attempt to get police assistance went horribly wrong.
“It was as if we were lying,” she says.
Her case had been assigned to Sergeant Elmarie de Beer at Johannesburg police station, whose opening gambit, says Zikhali, was: “Why do you want your husband to be arrested? It’s revenge isn’t it? It’s because he didn’t want to speak to social welfare.”
De Beer was allegedly joined by a colleague, both of whom questioned Zikhali and told her to go home and think about things.
The following day Zikhali returned to the police station with Sera, who by this time “… was pissed off”.
“They’re not supposed to ask questions. They must just arrest him,” says Sera.
De Beer allegedly told the two women that she had attended a course on body language and that it appeared to her that Zikhali was not telling the truth. She added that she would charge Zikhali with perjury if she was found to be lying.
De Beer also allegedly threatened to check Zikhali’s telephone calls because her husband had claimed that it was she who would not stop telephoning him.
The police have chosen not to respond to specific allegations.
On July 31, Zikhali’s case was thrown out by a magistrate because of lack of evidence.
“He [the magistrate] said to me: `If you have witnesses come to me and I will arrest him,'” says Zikhali.
Sera is taking legal advice to appeal the decision because it could set a precedent.
Says Sera: “It’s important that he [Zikhali’s husband] knows that the system works.”
Police representative Captain Francois Grobbelaar says the police acted procedurally by arresting the offender. (Zikhali’s husband was telephoned and asked to come into the police station).
Grobbelaar added that any delay in enforcing the interdict occurred because Zikhali first brought photostat copies of the interdict and warrant of arrest to the police station. Police only accept the original documents.