by Tracy Going
“No!” I shout, clutching my phone to my ear. “Where?”
“Zimbabwe. He’s been arrested.”
It is unbelievable. It seems he’d been arrested on unrelated assault and drug charges. He had apparently been detained for about two weeks in prison before anyone realised he was a fugitive from South Africa and wanted by Interpol. He was escorted back to Johannesburg and detained at the Parkview police station for a few days before appearing before the magistrate.
I have no need to attend court. I have no interest in seeing him arrive shackled at the courtroom. I do not hanker after his humiliation; I want only accountability and justice, so Sheryl attends his court appearance on my behalf.
“You’re not going to believe it,” she announces soon after.
“What?” I ask over the phone.
“He’s out.”
“What do you mean he’s out?” I am astounded.
“The magistrate said, ‘I believe this man deserves another chance.’”
“Another chance?”
I am outraged but not surprised. I am not in the least bit taken aback that the magistrate thinks this man deserves another chance.
I read in a newspaper the next day that even the accused’s new attorney appeared stunned by the outcome of the application for bail. I, however, am not. I am not amazed at all.
I then read in The Citizen that “the proceedings were attended by Ms Going”. But they weren’t. I hadn’t attended. It is yet another inaccurate report by the paper’s court reporter. The reporter goes on to explain that the accused has been given bail and that “Ms Going appeared less than pleased at this prospect”.
How could I have appeared less than pleased when I wasn’t even there, I fume.
I had long since given up taking umbrage at some of the media reports that left me feeling sullied, but this particular court reporter and her reporting is without doubt the most offensive. She titles her stories disrespectfully, headlining with: ‘Tale of lovers’ fury retold.’
And then she commences the piece with: “Further evidence of the soured relationship between radio and TV personality Ms Tracy Going, and beverage company owner XXX, with volatile scenes worthy of the best soap operas, unfolded yesterday …”
I am incensed, insulted. I feel my throat closing up. This is not a soap opera – it’s my life, and her acerbic words dirty me more. I’m further offended and degraded when she writes of “the airing of dirty laundry”.
The latest report detailing the accused being released on bail is titled ‘Guilty plea now to attacking TV girl’. I am insulted – I’m not a girl. I’m a hard-working, successful woman, a responsible, caring mother, and I am fighting to reclaim myself.
I am aggrieved when she presents the defence’s allegations as ‘fact’ and offsets them with my denial. My observation is strengthened by the headline: ‘Presenter “seeking financial gain”’. It immediately creates the impression that I’m doing it all for the money, and anything beyond that is thus irrelevant. Even if I repudiate it, undoubtedly the image in the reader’s mind remains that I am seeking to gain financially from this entire ordeal.
As a journalist and as a woman, she has a moral and ethical obligation to respect my pain as the victim. I am being stripped bare and exposed in the courtroom and her slanted hostility revictimises me and further rubs my nakedness in shame. I consider her reporting to be reckless, but her enmity had already been apparent in the courtroom.
I would watch her out in the courtyard with the accused, hear her throaty smoker’s laugh as she threw back her head at his fascinating, funny words. I would see the ritual of the knowing look, the colluding smile, before she tipped her bottle-blonde head and he flicked the lighter to her thin cigarette. I would feel the chill down my back as they stood close, inhaling deeply together, before breathing out as one.
She is an ageing court reporter, her face heavily lined beneath a yellowed fringe and cheeks creased with bitterness, perhaps with life in general. It seems her resentment and disappointment bleed through her words, but her writing is so skewered and so inaccurate and I am so humiliated that I cannot let it go. I feel obliged to address it, a responsibility to not allow this to happen – to me, to anyone.
Charlene is equally outraged and through her I am given the opportunity to voice my objection. She contacts the editor of The Citizen newspaper and demands some form of apology or retraction. Then she further commands the opportunity to address the insensitivity of the judiciary overall, and the media in particular.
She writes a lengthy article on how the media, when their reporting is irresponsible and reckless, put women at risk and how the bias of the ‘observer’ means that there is no safe haven for women in danger. She questions the role of the media when they claim to “report in the interests of society” and yet they “blithely criticise”. She asks the media to consider what their role has been in reducing the incredible trauma of survivors of violent crime and in combating criminality. She then poses the question: “Is the media lazy, or does it fit in with the general insensitivity we ascribe to the judiciary – of not realising that violent crime does not happen on a particular day, at a particular time. For survivors it has traumatic long-term effects that last months or years.”
I am so grateful to have Charlene at my side, and I will be alongside her through her rape trial that had already got underway.
I hadn’t known her before. I was familiar with who she was, given her high profile as a journalist, but I only got to know her after I started following her harrowing rape case in the media. It was a photograph emblazoned across the front page of a newspaper, of her walking out of court, that had touched me so. I had been drawn to her instantly. It was the pain in her eyes. Perhaps I saw myself in her wretchedness. I sent an enormous bouquet of flowers. I thought she deserved some beauty and gentleness. She had phoned to thank me and we had connected.
It was only a year later – after me sitting on a long, wooden bench in court, this time in support of her – that I had come home to Wilhemina’s chilling announcement. She knew I’d gone to court and she’d listened to the news on the radio.
“You know that man, the one who raped your friend, you met him.”
Her words choked me.
“What do you mean, I met him?” I asked incredulously.
She had then gone on to remind me of one languid Saturday afternoon when I had been on my veranda reading and she had walked past me in the garden with her friend and her friend’s boyfriend. I remembered the introduction immediately. It had been mid-afternoon. They were walking ahead of Wilhemina, laughing and talking loudly, holding hands, when she had called them back to introduce them to me. They had stopped, greeted me effusively and then left.
He was Charlene’s rapist. The one who’d smiled so jauntily.
I was nauseated. I felt blemished. I felt as though somehow I’d invited this unimaginable, unbearable, abhorrent violation into her life even though I hadn’t known her then.
But perhaps Charlene’s and my meeting had not been by chance. There have been many times that I thought it was intended, like some inescapable destiny, predetermined, that we would be there for each other, to walk alongside each other as we took action against our personal defilements and the injustice that followed. And her outrage and her action now, against the injustice of the reporter’s pointed pen, offered a ripple of hope and vindication.
Ironically, it is an article by the same court reporter – if her reporting is to be believed – that informs me of the latest developments: the accused, as part of his new bail conditions, is to reside with his brother just a few kilometres away from where I am living.
According to her report, it seems his brother has glibly and seemingly generously undertaken in court to negotiate and make good on ‘reasonable’ claims from me, as part of the motivation for the accused being released on bail. This is the same brother who, along with the accused, and according to the accused, allegedly sued their mother for
their inheritance so many years before. I would never receive any form of ‘reasonable’ restitution. I would receive nothing. My civil trial would come to an end only after the criminal trial, after his guilty conviction, and I would be awarded a ‘reasonable’ compensation by the court, but that was it. No attempt would ever be made by the accused to remunerate this ‘reasonable compensation’ even after a court ruling. And there appears to be nothing in the judicial system that enforces this ruling either. He would never pay.
He would never be made to pay.
In fact, the accused finds no need to even appear in court for the civil trial. It will be his attorney alone on that day. And after the trial, when Sheryl contacts his attorney to finalise the court outcome, he will inform her that he no longer represents the accused and is therefore unable to forward our claim. To me his actions, his response, are dishonourable and shameful.
But by then I have no more fight in me.
For now, however, I am still able to gather myself together and pursue the trial to its weak end.
The accused brings in a new attorney, who changes the plea to guilty. He changes his argument and his new defence is that he has a drug problem. He denies that he had run from justice and, instead, claims that he ran from drugs, to get away from the drug scene. I read in the newspapers that when he is arrested in Zimbabwe, a few weeks earlier, there are unspecified drug charges. But, he tells the court, he is clean of drugs and has been since his ‘fortunate escape’ a year earlier.
It is Friday, 17 September 1999, when he comes before the magistrate to be given bail again and is released with the comfort that he “deserves another chance”. His bail had initially been revoked and a warrant of arrest issued for him on 17 September 1998. It had taken one year, to the day, to reapprehend him and bring him back to court.
The magistrate sets the next court appearance for 25 October 1999. He battered my life apart on 25 October 1997.
It is exactly two years to the day.
Twenty-eight
Today he is testifying.
Today he will take the oath and present his defence.
I have spent much time speculating as to whether the defence attorney will allow his client to take the stand or not. I am part of the prosecution, which means I have no idea in advance as to who will eventually be called to attest. It will be a surprise to us all. But I know that if I was a defence attorney and he my client, I would prefer that he keep quiet. I would find his arrogance disconcerting. I would find his over-confidence, that he can ‘beat’ the system, alarming because that makes him unpredictable. And I can’t think of much worse for a defence attorney than a client who is unmanageable. But I know the accused, and I know he will want to testify – in fact, I believe he will insist on testifying.
I walk into the courtroom, and glance over at the new defence attorney. I have never seen him before. He has brown hair and appears a little thickened around the middle. He tips his head toward me in greeting. I am taken by surprise. This is the first time I have ever been acknowledged by any member of the defence team. It is completely disarming. Perhaps it is a strategy all defence attorneys should use in the courtroom, because from then on I commiserate with him. I pity him having to represent such a despicable man. But everyone is entitled to a defence, I know that much.
I imagine it can’t have been easy to find a new defence attorney half way through a trial, after you’ve skipped the country and been arrested for another violation. I suspect the new attorney must have put certain conditions in place, which is why the accused is now pleading guilty. It is possibly a strategy to minimise the damages of what can only be considered to be a losing matter by many – either that, or the attorney thinks there’s a possibility of a sympathetic magistrate. That would be enormously helpful in defending a man who’s beaten up a woman and run from justice.
Once the court is in session, the defence calls his client to the box. The accused stands directly opposite Sandra and me, a few metres away. He is close, close enough for me to see the expression in his brown eyes.
His navy-blue jacket hangs from his shoulders, shapeless, worn and thin, but perhaps it is just me who is tired of seeing it. He is wearing a blue shirt today, but it is the same green-and-red striped tie, the same chinos and the same brown suede shoes.
It strains my eyes to look at him.
He is a terrible witness. He shifts from one foot to another, moving constantly. He has a sheaf of paper in front of him and he keeps knocking the pages off the stand. He bends down a few times to pick up the scattered leaves. He tells how I lunged at him with a knife and how he put up his arm to defend himself. He waves his arms about as he explains. He lifts his arm and brings it over his face to demonstrate how he protected himself against me. He ducks. He raises his leg, his knee is up high; he extends his lower leg, and stretches it forward to indicate how I managed to get beneath him and under his foot to slash it with a knife. As he kicks, he knocks over his papers again. He leans down to pick them up, and as he gathers them together his pen falls from his pocket. It rolls. It keeps rolling. It rolls out the witness box, away from him. He watches it. He stretches, reaches out for it, before resigning himself to the loss. He straightens and tells how his feet were bare. He continues with his testimony. Slowly he becomes more grandiose in the details and braver in the telling. He talks of how I threw vases at him. It is the first I hear of vases and ornaments being thrown.
I turn to look at his attorney; I suspect he would like to cut his client short.
He is nodding curtly. He has no expression on his face; he’s keeping it tight and still. It is a similar expression to the one I use when I try to discourage a guest from talking too much during an interview when time is limited. I nod quickly in rapid succession, a very subtle gesture, to silently encourage an end to a point that is being made. It is a skill I am learning on my new TV show, presenting the national breakfast show, Morning Live.
So, when I see the defence attorney curtly nodding his head, I know he is discouraging his client from rambling on, suggesting he wrap it up, but the accused is completely oblivious. He is talking very long and very loudly.
I whisper again to Sandra that he’s lying.
“Don’t worry,” she says, squeezing my arm.
But I do.
The magistrate is rapt as he listens to the accused. He appears very interested.
The accused testifies that he is a reformed man. He states that he is going for therapy and drug counselling. He blames the past on his drug abuse.
I am exhausted just watching him.
Then it is Sandra’s turn to put her questions to him. I watch her as she pushes her chair out, stands and pulls her black gown forward, away from her shoulders, before pulling it closed in the front. It is her unwittingly cloaking herself in prosecutorial rightness, but I know it isn’t enough.
The transformation in the accused is instant. He lifts his chin defiantly. He clasps his hands behind his back and he thrusts his hips out forward. His lips are twisted thin as he looks down at her. He cuts her words short as he interrupts, sneering and snorting his replies.
“Why did you previously deny taking drugs and now, after all this time, that is your defence?”
He blames his previous attorney and advocate. He states baldly that they advised him that his drug problem was irrelevant. It was their fault entirely.
There is a stir in the courtroom as everyone sniggers disbelievingly.
The magistrate looks around accusingly and frowns at my mother, my friends and the journalists leaning forward on the benches.
The accused then goes on to explain the limitation of his past drug habit.
“The problem with drugs is that it lowers your standards,” he says.
He is unable to contain himself, he glances over at me and smirks. It is a slash across his face. I remain impassive. I want my face unreadable. I don’t want him to know that I still flinch at his brutality.
“She’s not my sort,” he
says, sneering.
There is no end to his insults and rudeness.
“If I wanted a wife I’d buy a wife.”
I am relieved when it is all over.
He has been on the stand for three hours. I can’t help but be bitter at the injustice that I, the victim, had been on the stand for three long, gruelling, torturous days and he, the accused, is only there for three hours.
It is unfair and unjust.
The magistrate adjourns the court for lunch.
Thereafter the defence attorney will call the expert witnesses. The role of the defence has mostly been to cast aspersions on my testimony, to call me a liar and a cheat, but now, as the matter reaches its heady conclusion, the role of the defence is to bring in the independent expert, and to provide paid testimony that might make us question who the real victim is.
It is here that I step back as though I am in a movie. To me it is like a film script unravelling before my eyes:
“Is the real victim not the man who lifted his elbow in defence? Is it not the man who was re-arrested, shackled and humiliated when he was escorted back into the country? Does this man not deserve our empathy at worst and our support at best? Does he not deserve an opportunity to put the past behind him and honour his future?”
It all feels so unreal that I try to escape into the recesses of my mind.
But his psychologist’s words quickly bring me back.
She testifies how I hit him.
She, the expert witness, tells how I hit him.
I grab desperately at Sandra.
“It’s okay,” she whispers.
But it’s not. It is not okay. There is nothing fine about an expert witness presenting hearsay as fact. She then mentions that the accused has, admittedly, also told her of an incident where he had been violent with his ex-girlfriend. It is uttered so quickly it is as though it has never been said.
Then it is the turn of the addiction counsellor.
As her name is called out and she steps into the booth to swear her allegiance to the truth, I recognise her. I know her from a time when I needed to believe in grown-ups.