The following morning, Busiswa woke up and prepared a warm bath for Mandla, packed his lunch, and waited for him to leave for work. For the first time since marrying her husband, she was serious about leaving him. As soon as she was alone, she started packing some of her clothes and other important stuff. She then called her friend who stayed in Johannesburg.

“Nonhle listen, I am coming over today,” Busiswa said to her friend. “I have had it with Mandla, and if I stay here, I will surely die. I will tell you everything when I get there, and please don’t tell anyone about this because not even my mother knows about it.”

It was around 09h00 in the morning when Busiswa boarded a bus at the Durban bus station. She was scared of the decision she had taken and doubt was crippling her, but she knew that this was something she needed to do for herself and her safety.

As the bus laboured on the freeway towards Gauteng, Busiswa fell deep into thought. She thought about Mandla and how sweet he had been before they got married and during the early years of their civil union. In the beginning, Mandla was a loving man with dreams of having a better life for both of them and their kids. But when Busiswa could not conceive and he got a demotion from a managerial role to a low paying general labour position at work, he began changing. It started with emotional abuse, and slowly grew into a few slaps here and there, and eventually grew into full blown emotional and physical abuse. But during that period of their lives, Busiswa really hoped that Mandla was just going through a rough patch and he would go back to being the Mandla she once knew, and not this monster he had become.

While she was thinking about that period of her life, Busiswa fell deeper and deeper into thought and eventually fell into deep sleep. By the time she woke up, the bus was entering Johannesburg Park Station.

Just as she was stepping out of the bus, Busiswa switched on her phone. She had switched it off in order to avoid Mandla’s calls and save the battery so she could call Nonhle to come pick her up. Just as she was about to dial Nonhle’s number, her phone rang, and it was her mother’s number. “Hello Ma,” she said.

To Busiswa’s surprise, instead of hearing her mother’s voice on the line, she instead heard the voice of a male. “Busiswa, this is not your mother. I am Constable Hlengwa from Langa police station…”

“Constable Hlengwa, what’s wrong? Where is my mother? Why is a policeman calling me from my mother’s phone?” Busiswa asked.

“I am afraid you will have to come home from wherever you are. It’s about your mother and your husband, Mandla,” the constable responded.

It has been five years since Busiswa’s mother passed away. Mandla had strangled her to death. He had wanted to know where Busiswa had gone, and when she said she didn’t even know that Busiswa was gone, he did not believe her and strangled her to death. After committing the crime, Mandla had tried to escape, but a neighbour had seen him running out of the house and chased him down with the help of other community members. When they eventually caught him, they served him a bit of mob justice before calling the police. He is now serving a life sentence in prison and Busiswa no longer suffering any abuse, but her freedom came at the expense of her mother’s life.

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