Looking back, I can trace the first seed of fear to 2021. At a family gathering meant to resolve a dispute around initiation school attendance, my late father played a leading and peaceful role, trying to restore unity and calm. In that same gathering, one family member became visibly angry and made a threatening statement about my father in isiXhosa—words that witnesses later confirmed were repeated to others, alarming a close family friend so much that she immediately phoned my mother to warn her.
When my mother told my father, I remember his pained confusion. He asked, “Kanti ubhuti undifun’ antoni?”—“What does this brother want from me?” That question has haunted me. Because when a family threat is spoken out loud, witnessed, and then ignored, it doesn’t disappear. It waits. It grows legs. It finds a new target.
Years later, in 2025, a woman from that same household would threaten my life using the same phrase about “acting like a bull.” For me, the repetition was chilling—not because I need anyone to believe in coincidences, but because patterns like that are how intimidation reveals itself: not once, but repeatedly, as if the goal is to remind you that you are being watched, measured, and marked.
Then came 2022, a year of illness and heartbreak that still feels unreal when I speak about it out loud. In June 2022, my father suffered his first stroke. He partially recovered, but he was never fully stable again. In October 2022, I suffered a stroke myself.
I was healed through prayer and treatment at St John’s Apostolic Faith Mission Church in Philippi, Cape Town, and two days after my recovery my father suffered a second stroke, more severe than the first. Believing that the same place of worship that helped me might also help him, I called my parents to Cape Town so he could be prayed for. When they arrived, they went straight to the church.
I still remember the moment I reached the church and found my father lying helpless on the floor, unable to speak, unable to move. That image is burned into my mind. Despite every prayer and every effort, my father passed away on 9 November 2022. Our family was devastated, and my mother—his widow—was forced to become strong at a time when she had no strength left.
Two days after my father passed, a family meeting was convened at our homestead without consultation or permission from the elders in our yard. Even in mourning, my mother tried to keep things orderly and respectful.
She informed the gathering, through our elders, about who would officiate the funeral—a reasonable and lawful decision that belongs to a widow. Instead of being supported, she was met with anger and hostility. Certain family members demanded control of the burial arrangements, furious that they would not be officiating the funeral, and even threatened not to attend.
What disturbed me most is that, in the middle of grief, their response was not compassion, but suspicion and power struggles—so intense that witnesses later reported comments suggesting they felt accused of my father’s death even though no such accusation had been made. It was as if my father’s death became a stage for dominance rather than a moment for family unity.
After the funeral, something happened that still makes my stomach turn when I remember it. A T-shirt belonging to my late father was secretly taken through intermediaries. When my mother discovered this, she immediately called elders to intervene.
The item was retrieved and burned in accordance with our cultural beliefs about such acts and the possibility of sinister intentions attached to them. The reaction from next door was explosive. There were fence-side outbursts, shouting into our yard, and old debts revived and weaponised at a time when my mother was still struggling to breathe through grief.
To outsiders, a T-shirt might seem like a small thing. But in a mourning home, where every item holds memory and meaning, acts like these feel like spiritual and psychological violations. That incident marked the beginning of continuous harassment and intimidation against my mother and our household—harassment that did not cool down with time, but seemed to intensify as the months passed.
In 2023, my mother tried to do what many widows do: keep peace for the sake of family. When she returned to the village to remove mourning clothes, she extended an invitation to those who had been hostile to her, in the spirit of reconciliation and respect.
They ignored her. Instead, demands for repeated family meetings began under the pretext that my mother must answer a rumour that she had accused someone of killing her husband. The rumour did not originate from her, but that truth did not matter. What mattered was the opportunity to corner her, humiliate her, and pressure her.
When she explained she was not emotionally ready for meetings and would attend when she was able, that boundary was not respected. Instead, social and cultural pressure was escalated through formal letters to her maiden family, painting her as uncooperative. Even traditional structures raised questions about why a bereaved widow was being pushed like this, yet the harassment continued.
Throughout that year, the insults became public—at gatherings, funerals, weddings—demeaning words thrown at my mother in front of others. Rumours were spread suggesting she was involved in an affair with a respected elder who assisted our family, with details that collapsed under basic questioning.
By the end of 2023, it was clear to me that the goal was not truth-seeking. The goal was shame. Isolation. Emotional exhaustion. And the kind of fear that makes a woman doubt her own right to exist peacefully.
By 2025, the intimidation extended directly to me. In April 2025, I returned to my village to implement my WOSSO Fellowship Advocacy Project—work that engages men and boys to prevent gender-based violence and promote accountability. The first dialogue was a success, and I felt proud that my work was landing in the community.
Later that day, I accepted a lift from my cousin’s friends and stopped at a local venue to watch soccer. There was no confrontation there. There was no fight. I was civil, sober enough to remember everything clearly, and I even tried to avoid any tension by simply changing my drink when I felt uncomfortable. Yet the next morning I heard rumours of a “big fight” that never happened, and I dismissed it as village gossip—until Good Friday, 18 April 2025, when I was woken up with alarming news.
A woman from the household next door had stormed into my uncle’s house and forced him to listen to a voice note she claimed was my voice insulting her and her husband. After playing it, she made direct threats against my life, calling me a “child who joined the family late” and saying I would not “see tomorrow.” Those words were not figurative to us.
They were a threat, delivered with conviction, and my uncle came immediately to warn us because he feared for my safety.
At that time, I had never heard the voice note myself. I asked to access it because I knew I had said no such things. We were advised to approach the iNduna to assist because our households do not visit each other. Instead of a simple request, the iNduna convened a community meeting. I did not ask for a public spectacle—I asked for clarity. At that meeting, the voice note was played, and it was immediately clear to those present that the voice was not mine.
The recording contained the voices of the neighbour’s daughter and her friend. Even the person who had been accusing me later acknowledged to my uncle that the voices were not mine. Yet the meeting did not bring safety. It became another platform for hostility. I raised concerns about technology-facilitated abuse and reminded those present of past stalking on Facebook—how the same young woman had attempted to access me online through multiple accounts, and how I had blocked her.
When confronted, she initially resisted, but fell silent when I stated I had proof. While all of this unfolded, the same woman continued threatening me publicly in front of elders and villagers. I remember asking, in disbelief, whether the meeting would continue while someone was openly threatening my life. Only then did her husband plead with her to stop.
The humiliation of being falsely accused, publicly exposed to a malicious recording, and then threatened in the same space was deeply distressing. It did not feel like confusion. It felt like a calculated attempt to destroy my reputation, provoke fear, and isolate me in the community.
Around this time, another defamation incident surfaced involving the local school principal—someone I had worked with professionally to support a child with a mental disability needing placement at an appropriate special-needs school.
We had a positive working relationship, and he had expressed appreciation for my support. Then suddenly, I was told he believed I had insulted him on Facebook—something I had never done. I immediately suspected impersonation or a fake account created to sabotage my standing. I tried repeatedly to reach him, to clarify, to resolve it respectfully. He refused to engage.
That experience reinforced a painful reality: someone was working to damage my name using social media as a weapon, because in a rural community your reputation is not just personal—it is your safety, your work, your credibility, your ability to exist without being targeted.
I eventually took formal legal action. On 23 April 2025, I opened a criminal case at the local police station (CAS 27/04/2025) for threats to my life and for defamation of character arising from the false voice-note allegations and online impersonation.
The investigating officer assigned to my criminal case handled the matter with professionalism and encouraged me to submit evidence. Shortly afterward, in retaliation, a protection order application was opened against me containing allegations that I insulted the respondents on social media and spread rumours of witchcraft.
These claims are false, and I have reviewed my public posts and found no references to them. In court, the presiding magistrate asked about the voice note, and the applicant confirmed that the recording was available and stored on multiple devices, promising to bring it. Yet later, the investigating officer informed me that when she requested the same recording for the criminal investigation, the respondent claimed her phone was lost or broken.
This contradiction was not treated with the seriousness it deserved, even though it goes to the heart of evidence and accountability. When a recording is used publicly to accuse you and threaten you, and then suddenly becomes “unavailable” when law enforcement requests it, it does not feel like coincidence—it feels like strategy. It feels like obstruction. It feels like an attempt to control the narrative by controlling the evidence.
Because I have nothing to hide and wanted the truth to prevail, I took the extraordinary step of sending a public voice note offering a R500 reward to anyone who could bring me the recording so I could immediately hand it to the investigating officer. I did this because in my mind, if the evidence exists, it must be produced. I wanted transparency.
I wanted the lies to collapse under the weight of the facts. That is why I offered the reward. I believed that truth, once exposed, would end the madness. And for a brief moment, it seemed as though it had worked. After the reward was issued, the voice note miraculously resurfaced again.
But when I finally heard it, my heart sank. It was not the same recording we had listened to at the Induna’s meeting. It was shorter. Sections were missing. The sharpest insults were gone. The venom had been diluted. The recording had been edited.
Someone had interfered with it. What we heard in that community meeting—the full, malicious version that tore my name apart—had been altered into something safer, something less incriminating. The truth had been trimmed down to fit a narrative that could survive scrutiny.
I immediately informed the Investigating Officer of this development. I explained that the voice note now in circulation was not the same one played publicly before the community. I explained that it had been shortened and changed, and that this raised serious concerns about evidence tampering.
Her response was flat. There was no follow-up. No request for the earlier version. No attempt to investigate how a recording central to threats and defamation could change shape so conveniently. It felt as though the case had become too heavy, too complicated, too exhausting. It felt like fatigue had replaced urgency. In that moment, I realised that even when evidence resurfaces, the system can still choose not to see it.
That silence from law enforcement hurt almost as much as the threats themselves. Because when evidence is manipulated and no one cares to ask why, it sends a dangerous message: that truth is optional, and that persistence will be punished with indifference.
I had done everything expected of a law-abiding citizen. I reported. I documented. I cooperated. I followed instructions. I chased evidence not to harm anyone, but to clear my name and protect my life. And still, the burden of proving my innocence felt heavier than the burden placed on those who had threatened me.
What makes this even more painful is that the voice note was never just about words. It was about power. It was about using technology to humiliate, to provoke, to incite fear, and then retreating behind silence when accountability approached.
The altered recording did not erase the threats I had already endured. It did not erase the public humiliation at the Induna’s meeting. It did not erase the fact that my life had been threatened more than once. And it did not erase the pattern that had begun years earlier—after my father’s death—where intimidation escalated whenever control was challenged.
By this stage, the story had stopped being about a single incident. It had become about endurance. About how long someone can be pushed before they are expected to disappear, apologise, or break. It had become about how systems wear victims down—not always through open hostility, but through delay, silence, and exhaustion.
When an investigating officer grows tired of a case, it is the victim who carries the consequences. It is the victim who goes home still afraid. It is the victim who lies awake listening for footsteps, wondering whether the next threat will be acted upon.
Even after court proceedings, the hostility did not end. Outside the courtroom, insults were shouted at us openly. Threats were repeated, casually, as though my life were a bargaining chip in a family dispute. I chose not to respond.
Not because I had nothing to say, but because I understood that engagement was what they wanted. Silence, for me, was survival. Yet silence should never be mistaken for safety. Walking away does not undo the fear. It only postpones the moment when the body finally exhales.
Through all of this, my mother and I have lived next door to the very people who began tormenting us two days after my father’s death. We have not been allowed to mourn in peace. We have not been allowed to exist quietly.
Our home has become a contested space, our dignity something others feel entitled to strip away. And the most devastating part is knowing that this harm did not come from strangers. It came from family. From people who should have shared grief with us, not weaponised it.
I am often asked how I keep going. The truth is, some days I don’t know. I keep going because I refuse to let lies become history. I keep going because my father’s name deserves better than to be surrounded by fear and intimidation. I keep going because my mother deserves to live the rest of her life without being harassed for surviving her husband. I keep going because I know too many women whose stories ended where mine is still ongoing.
This experience has taught me that violence is not always physical. It can be digital. It can be psychological. It can be bureaucratic. It can look like a missing voice note, a shortened recording, an investigator who no longer follows up, a system that quietly steps back and hopes the victim will step down. But I will not step down. I will not pretend this did not happen. And I will not accept that exhaustion is an excuse for injustice.
To date, no one has come forward with the original voice note. But my conscience is clear. I have done everything within my power to recover critical evidence and to cooperate fully with the legal process.
I have chosen truth over comfort, accountability over silence, and courage over fear. And even if the system moves slowly, even if it falters, I will continue to speak—because silence is exactly what those who threaten, manipulate, and intimidate are counting on.
This story is not just about me. It is about what happens when grief is exploited, when family becomes a site of harm, when technology is used as a weapon, and when institutions grow tired of protecting the very people they exist to serve.
It is about how easily women can be left exposed when intimidation is dressed up as “family matters,” and how dangerous that dismissal can be.
I am still here. I am still standing. And I am still telling the truth—not because it is easy, but because it is necessary.
