There is a particular pain that comes from being harmed by criminals. But there is a deeper, more enduring pain that comes from realising that the very institution entrusted to protect you will not.
It is not a sudden pain — it settles slowly, quietly, in your body. It changes how you sleep. How you move. How you assess every sound, every face, every silence.
Only recently, after people began to hear how hard I have been fighting to clear my name and how nonchalant Palmietfontein SAPS has been about enforcing the law, others started coming to me with their own stories. Not months ago — now. As my case became visible, so did a pattern.
People began to speak about delays, dismissals, indifference. Stories that sound different on the surface but collapse into the same truth: a police station that does not take people seriously until it is too late.
My first encounter with Palmietfontein SAPS was in April 2025. At that time, I went to report serious crimes: the defamation of my character by my neighbour’s daughter and her friend, and threats to my life made by my neighbour’s wife.
I walked into that station believing — as many of us do — that the police would do their job. I had no reason then to know how deeply unprepared, unwilling, or incapable they would prove to be.
What followed was not protection, but the slow erosion of trust. My reports were met with a lack of urgency. My fear was treated as an inconvenience. The seriousness of the threats against me was softened, delayed, and mishandled. What I did not yet understand was that this would not be a single failure, but the beginning of a pattern that would repeat itself every time I returned seeking help.
As the situation escalated and court processes came into play, the failures deepened. Notices were served. Protection order proceedings were underway. The law was clear about what constituted harassment and intimidation and about the duty of the police to act when such conduct occurs. Yet instead of enforcement, I encountered minimisation. My case was reframed as a “family matter.”
I was advised to return to traditional mechanisms that had already failed and left me exposed. The law, it seemed, only applied in theory.
At one point, a direct threat was made against my life in front of SAPS members. The words were spoken clearly. One officer acknowledged hearing them. Another said he did not. Everyone else present heard the threat without doubt. No arrest was made. No immediate action followed. In that moment, something fundamental broke inside me — because if a threat spoken aloud, in the presence of police, during active court processes does not trigger protection, then safety becomes an illusion.
When my family’s property was unlawfully entered during an active protection order process, I did what the law instructs victims to do. I reported it. I attempted to open a case. I was refused. I was told to barricade my own property. I was told the police would simply “go and talk” to the people intimidating us.
That moment carries a special kind of cruelty: being told, in the midst of fear, that your safety is now your own responsibility.
Even after final protection orders were granted by the court, the violations did not stop. And when breaches occurred, the response was not swift or firm. Files were delayed. Dockets moved. Incidents went unregistered. Days passed. Then weeks. Case numbers were issued without investigators being assigned.
Silence filled the space where protection was supposed to live. Each delay sent a message to the perpetrators that court orders could be ignored. Each delay told me that my fear was negotiable.
What has been most devastating is realising that my experience is not isolated. Only now, as people watch me fight to prove my innocence and demand accountability, have others felt brave enough to speak. That alone should worry us. A system that silences people until someone refuses to be quiet is not a system that protects — it is one that waits for harm.
I am an anti–gender-based violence advocate, but in this story I am also just a woman asking to be safe in her own home. I followed the law. I trusted the system. I reported early. I documented everything. And still, I was failed by those wearing the uniform of the state.
That failure has forced me to escalate my fight to oversight bodies — not because I want confrontation, but because I want to live.
We cannot continue to speak about gender-based violence without speaking honestly about policing. We cannot encourage survivors to report while allowing police stations to dismiss, delay, and deflect. And we cannot honour the words “protect and serve” while telling victims to negotiate with danger on their own.
Palmietfontein SAPS is not just a station in my story — it is a warning. A warning of what happens when incompetence is tolerated, when accountability is absent, and when indifference replaces duty.
Until we confront this honestly, protection orders will remain paper promises, and survivors will continue to stand alone, holding their fear in silence.
