Pretoria - The former boyfriend of Mpho Chuma made her hang herself by the neck before cutting the rope and stabbing her more than 26 times.
Chuma shared her story during a colloquium hosted by the Department of Correctional Services and Unisa at Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Services Centre in Pretoria.
The event focused on “Towards a victim-centric approach for successful social reintegration of ex-offenders” to ensure survivors of crimes were also given sufficient attention, support and empowerment.
Chuma’s misfortunes have been documented and is streaming on TV as she goes on a journey of healing and prepare to meet the man who nearly killed her. She hopes it will give her closure and help her make sense of the day that was supposed to be her last.
The 28-year-old Soshanguve woman said she would never forget the day Thabiso Mkhonto, her daughter’s father, asked her to choose between a rope and a knife. She had accepted his invitation to his Nellmapius home.
Mkhonto had said he needed her support to help him get over his violent side.
She said at first he was everything she wanted in a man. He treated her well and would do anything for her.
This was before she saw his other side when he had an argument with his mother and started hitting walls with fists and manhandling her in the street. She would break up with him and told him he needed to get help, and that she would accompany him to psychologists.
On one Sunday morning when she returned from working a night shift as a waiter at a night club, he asked her to accompany him to seek help. She went to his home as she still loved him and wanted him to get help. Unbeknown to her, this would be the same day he would attack her.
As she was waiting for him, he asked for her phone and she just gave it to him because she believed they were transparent. He went through the phone and when he was done he said to her: “There is no way you are going to break up with me. The only way we can actually break up is if I take your life.”
“After he locked the door. He tied a rope to the roof and had a knife in his hand. He told me that I must actually choose between the knife and the rope. He told me that that knife was going to go straight to my throat. For me the only option I could go with was the rope.”
As she got on a chair and hanged herself, he kicked the chair, and she started choking and gasping for air. After some minutes, he changed his mind and said he would choose how she dies.
He cut the rope and took out the knife and asked her to say her last words. Luckily, someone knocked on the door and while that person talked to Mkhonto, she managed to escaped and run to the house where his mother was staying.
But he would follow her and tell his mother and sister that Chuma was lying; he denied doing any of that to her.
He would lock his mother in the house and reveal a knife and ask Chuma again to say her last words before attacking her. His mother couldn’t leave the house, but screamed as she watched him stabbed her so many times that she couldn’t feel pain anymore.
The knife was just going in and out of her body as she lay there.
“The way he was stabbing me he was actually aiming for my neck. I was using my right hand to try to block, but now my right hand doesn’t work properly. The community couldn’t enter the yard to save me because the walls were too high. He stabbed me until I had a blackout,” she said.
Chuma has since become a gender-based violence activist and her story touches the hearts of many people. The Department of Correctional Services looks at stories like hers as it works to ensure that victims of crimes are not forgotten and that all the attention is not just given to offenders in prisons.
The department aims to improve significantly the support and empowerment, even skills empowerment, it gives to survivors of crime who have to endure life long and life changing trauma.
The perpetrator, Thabiso Mkhonto, was given a 15-year term in 2018 after being convicted for attempted murder.
Pretoria News