16 day ceasefire is not enough

I sought clarification:

‘You mean as in hurt her?’

‘No, he killed her. She is dead.’

I could not believe he meant Thomas. Not a dread-locked street-sleeper, with clothes bundled up in a garbage bag, spitting insults at the full moon or the village idiot who relieves himself in the communal well. But the same Thomas, to whom my feet had carried me, several times, when I needed business and personal advice. The very same Thomas, who had poured the sagest marriage advice into my ear after my wedding. But then I recalled how I met Thomas.

It seemed a normal summer 2004 afternoon when somebody pounded on the door in a manner that demanded that I hastily open it. My neighbour, Marygold, stood biting her nails and casting glances over her naked shoulder. She wore only a java wrap. Without invitation, she pushed past me. ‘It’s my husband, Thomas. He’s gone crazy! Can I hide in here? Please!’

She sat on the sofa, biting her nails. I was uncomfortable having another man’s young wife in my flat, dressed in only her wrap-around cloth.

‘Is there anyone you can call, a relative to intercede perhaps?’

‘My aunt.’

I allowed her the use of my phone. The long wait for the arrival of the tete, who lived a good 15km away was awkward and I was afraid that the crazy husband would decide that I was a factor in their marital disharmony. So leaving her alone, I went outside where I found Thomas. He did not appear to be the husband-gone-berserk that his wife Marygold spoke of.

‘Dude, your wife’s in my flat. Can you come and get her please?’

Marygold did not seem eager to go. With fingers firmly wrapped around her wrist he ominously offered, ‘Come back and finish what you started.’

I shut the door and, like Pontius Pilate, washed my hands of their mess.

The following day, they smiled and waved a greeting to me across the courtyard, as they walked hand in hand out of the gate. Things seemed normal for the following five years, in which Thomas and Marygold gave no indication of problems at home. I envied their good looks and the constant hand-holding, like school kids in love. I envied them greatly. Until the middle of 2009 when Thomas was taken away to spend a weekend in jail, even though he said he had ‘only shaken her by the shoulders.’

Marygold, wanted a divorce and got a peace order against Thomas saying the constant beatings and verbal abuse she had endured were enough for this lifetime. Marygold remained at the flat. Thomas moved out but would visit their 18 month old son, Steven, while she was at work. During this period, he and I talked on a deeper level than our usual conversations.

He confessed that he was in therapy. I really thought he was making an effort. At one point he admitted that as newly-weds he was unemployed and felt insecure. So he sometimes secretly followed Marygold to work. Finding no whisper of scandal, he had friends spy on her.

But such insecurities do not evaporate overnight and in the post mortem of this tragic event, I realized that ignoring that confession was my second mistake – the first being the decision to mind my own business, that day Marygold came running to me for help. Then came November of 2009 and the 16 days of activism against violence on women and children. In her statement to the police, the nanny said at about 5p.m, Thomas visited his son. Marygold was home. The nanny heard raised voices then Marygold screaming. She assumed it was ‘their usual arguments’ and did not intervene. Not long after the argument, Thomas must have run out of the apartment complex.

A witness to the flight assumed Thomas was only trying to exit before the electric gate had shut. Some time after midnight, the nanny – noticing that Marygold had not come out of her bedroom – knocked on the door. When there was no response, she entered. A pillow covered Marygold’s sleeping face. When the nanny shook Marygold, she found she her arm was cold. Lifting the pillow off her employer’s face, she discovered the shoulder strap of a travelling bag tied around her neck. All life had left Marygold, seven hours earlier, possibly moments after she screamed, and neither the toddler nor the child-minder had known.

By the time police were informed, Thomas had fled the country. With a father on the run, a mum in her grave, one-and-a-half-year old Steven was off to the worst start in life imaginable. In the aftermath, I tangled myself in speculation. If, in the honeymoon phase of the marriage, she was so terrified of him that she had to seek refuge in a male neighbour’s flat, wearing only her java wrap, then it is safe to say that Marygold endured a lot more abuse than was visible to outsiders. In all abusive relationships, the abuse escalates.

The same cycle; abuse, apology, reunion, abuse, apology, reunion, abuse…. It doesn’t stop. It only ends with either the abused putting distance between herself and the abuser or, as in Marygold’s case, death.

This is a true story, written from a guilt-ridden memory. It made a mockery of the 16 day campaign. The adverts on TV, radio and in the newspapers never got to Thomas. Steven, who is now essentially an orphan, will begin school in a year’s time. Soon he will learn to read and the newspaper archives will tell him that the woman he calls mother is his aunty and that his father killed his mum.

As we commemorate 16 days of activism against violence on women and children, the ZRP has released numbers showing that 664 cases of rape have been reported between January and October 2013, meaning that every day, two men commit the crime of rape. Between midnight and lunchtime, somewhere in Zimbabwe, a man commits rape.

To declare a 16-day domestic violence ceasefire out of 365 days is not enough. For a woman concealing bruises beneath thick layers of make-up, 16 days in a year is not sufficient respite from the hell she lives in the other 349 days. As a nation, we should strive for 365 days of non violence.

To the neighbours that turn up their radio to drown out the screams of the woman next-door, I say neutrality is taking sides. – My pen is capped.