*Boyfriend arrested in connection with grisly incident
A 40-year-old mother-of-seven from Tonota is currently bed-ridden in Nyangabgwe Hospital after being cut down with an axe, allegedly wielded by her boyfriend.
Gosegomang Ramanganeng suffered a broken left leg and deep cuts to her lower right leg during the frenzied attack, which took place in the early hours of Saturday morning at her parent’s home in Tholotsane ward.
“I am lucky to be alive; I see his plan was to kill me. I only survived because I managed to grab the axe so he does not finish me off,” a weary Ramanganeng tells The Voice from her hospital bed.
Her boyfriend of over six years, the father of two of her children, Tikologo Moremi has been arrested in connection with the incident.
The 47-year-old appeared before Francistown Magistrates Court on Tuesday charged with causing grievous bodily harm.
When asked if he had anything to say, Moremi requested bail, telling court there was no-one to take care of his livestock.
“I did not hack her with an axe. I beat her with the behind of the axe,” added the accused, who was remanded in custody and will next appear in court on 24 February.
The news that her lover has been locked up, at least temporarily, causes Ramanganeng to smile for the first time since the interview started.
“Tikologo has been harassing me for a long time. Last week he told me he would leave me crippled,” she says, glumly looking down at her two legs, which are bound in thick white bandages, before adding with a sad sigh, “And it has happened!”
The injured woman has just received an injection to numb her pain and is in a talkative mood.
Casting her mind back to the night of the incident, Ramanganeng says, “I was sleeping with our children at their house as my instincts warned me not to sleep in our room. He thought I was not home. When he found me he took an axe and hit me.”
Describing her boyfriend as an abusive man with a fiery temper, Ramanganeng claims she reported him to both Tonota Police and the Customary Court ‘many times’.
“But they did nothing!” she exclaims bitterly.
“Sometimes, when he is angry, I am too scared to sleep. When he comes home he just kicks the door open and demands to know where ‘my boyfriends’ are; he is always accusing me of cheating!”
With one broken leg and the bones in the other badly splintered, Ramanganeng, the family breadwinner, is fearful for the future.
“I just feel for my six children I left with my 23-year-old daughter. We have been surviving from the money I got from doing piece jobs, washing and cleaning for people. Now I wonder how we are going to survive when I am crippled. I have a disabled child who gets food from the social workers but that won’t sustain us,” she ends miserably, desperately blinking back tears.
Meanwhile, when contacted for a comment, Tonota Station Commander Oteng Ngada told The Voice, “It was reported that they fought when the man assumed the girlfriend was cheating after she came home in the night. The woman is said to have gone drinking and came around 3 in the morning and the fight ensued.”
It was a comment that Ramanganeng angrily refuted.
“No, that’s not true. I was at home sleeping with my children,” she insisted.
