Free Untitled by Kgebetli Moele Page B

her.
    The police protected Little Bonolo, but this is not always the case. I know another young girl, Dineo, who suffered at their hands. Dineo does not go to my school but to Ditau High. When she was about thirteen it was said that her boyfriend, a businessman-entrepreneur and a father to multiple children, Pontsho, heard allegations that she was having an affair with one of her teachers. When he asked her about this she denied it and swore on her life. One day the truth came out and Pontsho got very mad and did the young Dineo grievous bodily harm. She regained consciousness in Mapulaneng Hospital, where she had been taken after the attack, and the nurses convinced her to lay a charge against Pontsho.
    Dineo went to the police station and told her story, which needed no telling because it was written all over her face. When she had finished telling the officers what had happened to her, she was told to wait a moment. The police then called her boyfriend, telling him that “there is a girl by the name of Dineo Mashego charging you with assault. She says that you are the one who beat her.”
    He admitted the crime very arrogantly:
    â€œJa! Sebara, se a resa sa motho. A ke sentsha bofebe.”
    Yes! Sebara. “Sebara” refers to one’s in-laws and here at home is popularly used among friends. Yes! Sebara, it is telling the truth. I was extracting the bitch from it.
    Then they, the police, asked him what they should do.
    He called Dineo and when she did not answer her phone he called the police station and asked to speak with Dineo at the charge office. They gave her the phone.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    She didn’t know what to say.
    â€œYou think that I do not know, sefebe? I know where you are. I can see. I have eyes everywhere, watching. Go ahead, open a docket – I will visit jail but you will sleep at the mortuary. Sefebe, I will be out in time to help dig your grave.”
    He cut the call. Dineo didn’t even say goodbye to the police officers, she just walked out, hoping that they would not try and stop her. They didn’t.
    Today, Dineo is mother to Pontsho’s little girl. The law failed Dineo; it betrayed her.
    The law didn’t fail Little Bonolo but justice did. As I understand it, when the investigating officer finishes his part, he passes the case on to the state prosecutor, whose job it is to see that justice is done. But in this case that didn’t happen.
    At their first meeting, Little Bonolo had to go through the whole thing again, in detail, for the prosecutor, which she did. When she had finished, the prosecutor looked at Little Bonolo, then at the paperwork on his table and then back at her.
    â€œI can prosecute and he will rot in jail.”
    He looked into the distance and then back at her.
    â€œThat is what the law says, which is the way white people do their thing, but our ancestors did not do things this way. If a man committed a crime and was found guilty, then he would pay four cows – one to the king, one to the community and two to the victim – and then we would all continue living in peace. The white man’s law will take the guilty party to jail, but you will not get any compensation. Justice will be done, true, but you will still be raped. I am not saying that if we make him pay it will undo the rape, no, but he will be paying you directly for raping you.”
    He looked at Little Bonolo’s aunt.
    â€œWhat I am asking, my sister, is this: can we not just deal with this as a community? Make him pay you a certain amount of money? The white man’s law will put him in jail but I do not think that will satisfy you. Whereas if you make him pay for doing this, he pays and we are all fine.”
    Little Bonolo’s aunt was a cook at a primary school. She didn’t understand that the prosecutor should have been working on behalf of the whole community, not just on behalf of Little Bonolo; that his focus should have been