‘Two years ago, the Ikageng police station was voted the best station in the country. Today it is the second station in the country when it comes to domestic violence reported cases. Sadly, the victims are women.’
These are the startling words of a SAPS hostage negotiator, Tebogo Diphoko, based at the Ikageng police station.
He related real-life incidents to a crowd of 400 women at a women’s month commemoration event held at the Madiba banquet halls recently.
He told the audience that he sometimes deals with hostage situations where men want to kill their families. Being a hostage negotiator, he has to talk sense into the men holding the guns.
Diphoko said in most cases, the victims are women who are physically abused by their boyfriends and husbands. ‘I talk to a woman today, tomorrow that man has killed her. When we come to her house we find a number of protection orders that she didn’t take to court. They defend their husbands, fearing that he might lose his job. Stop staying in abusive relationships for the sake of financial security, cars, and houses. Put your lives first,’ he appealed to the women.

‘We have come across corpses of women whose lovers have inserted objects in their private parts.

‘We are tired of picking up corpses of women who, after taking out protection orders against their boyfriends, only later withdraw them. There was a case of a woman who chased away police officers from her home when they went to arrest the abuser. She told the police that her husband had recently bought her a car. We had to leave. The following week, the car was repossessed. That weekend, the husband killed her. We found four protection orders under the mattress,’ he said, shocked.
However, Diphoko says there are instances where women misuse their protection orders by sending their boyfriends to jail for the weekend so that they can go out with a ‘blesser’.
He highlighted abuse within the police and army forces. ‘You see women failing to salute their higher ranking officers because the arm is broken after being beaten by their husbands.’
‘Come to the police station. We will deal with those perpetrators,’ he urged them.
Stop withdrawing protection orders against the abusers
WO Johanna Motladile supported Diphoko’s statement of the high incidence of domestic violence in Ikageng. She says it has reached an unacceptably high level.
Motladile, who also deals with domestic abuse cases, says elderly women are also abused in Ikageng. ‘Our grandfathers are abusing our grandmothers. They don’t report these abuses because they do not believe in the Domestic Violence Act,’ she said.
‘A North West victimisation survey which was carried out in Potchefstroom last year made the following significant findings with regard to violent crimes. Physical abuse stood at eighty per cent, sexual abuse was seventy per cent, intimidation was sixty per cent, and harassment was fifty per cent,’ she said.
‘I am appealing to you, the police cannot fight abuse if you do not fight it. Stop withdrawing protection orders,’ she said.
It is a cycle until he kills you
In the words of a 22-year-old domestic violence survivor the Herald recently interviewed: ‘After every beating, he promised to kill me. He also threatened to scar my face for life so that no man would look at me again.’
Ultimately, her 30-year-old ex-boyfriend stabbed her more than twenty times. This occurred after he had accused her of leaving him for a male congregant and friend.
The woman urges women living in abusive relationships to stop settling for so little. ‘When he starts slapping you, you must know that he is not going to stop.
He does not mean his apologies–he’s only trying to free himself from the guilt. It is a cycle until he kills you. You must leave that toxic relationship,’ she said, almost begging.