A mother's enduring GBV grief: 'I forgave Africa's killer'
Sharon Mathala - Laone Choeunyane | Wednesday December 17, 2025 06:07
Gladys Ramothwa shares that it is a pain she says has never faded, even after more than two decades.
“It was painful... it is still painful today,” she says. Africa was killed in January 2003 by her fiancé, Lebogang Mothudi, at a time when conversations around GBV were muted, often confined to whispers within families and communities.
She was just 22 years old, a budding undergraduate with a future ahead of her, preparing for marriage. Her death did not provoke the sustained national discourse that similar cases prompt today. Instead, it settled into a painful silence, borne most heavily by Ramothwa, the woman who had given her life.
Her voice trembles, but her resolve remains firm. Sitting in the living room she once shared with her deceased daughter.
For Ramothwa, the years since have not been defined by forgetting, but by survival. The loss of a child fractures time itself; life becomes divided into before and after. Friends move on, seasons change, and the world insists on normalcy, whilst a mother learns to carry grief in largely invisible ways.
“She was young, full of promise. She had plans and dreams,” she recalls. Ramothwa vividly remembers the final days before her daughter’s death. On January 23, Africa called her mother at work with a simple request.
“She called me at my office, asking me to buy her a cellphone,” she recollects. Moved by the request, Ramothwa says she altered her routine that afternoon. “I left the office around 4:45pm. Normally, I would stay much longer than that in the office,” she says.
She left early in an attempt to catch Orange business hours, known as Vista at the time, but when she arrived, the shop had already closed for the day. It would be the last errand she ever attempted for her daughter.
The following day, January 24, she was back at work when her world collapsed. Africa was killed that day. Ramothwa opens up about the devastation of losing her daughter to violence, the unanswered questions that continue to haunt her family, and what she describes as an 'injustice' within the justice system. According to her, Africa’s killer effectively served only four years in prison after sentencing, as his sentence was backdated to the period he had already spent in custody.
“You call it a passion killing, and say he was under duress, like he claimed during mitigation. But to me, I lost my daughter most horrifically. She was stabbed many, many times. Some of the wounds were four centimetres deep. Sometimes I can only imagine the pain she went through,” she says.
She recounts how, in the days before her death, Africa had expressed doubts about her impending marriage. The young woman had told her mother she wanted to postpone the wedding, though she never explained why. Africa’s concerns, it later emerged, may not have been isolated. Ramotlhwa reveals that on the day her daughter was killed, chilling warnings had already been issued.
“One of her friends was called and told that today, I am going to kill Africa. Then later that afternoon, the same girl was called and told that Africa is dead,” she says.
The brutality of the murder has left deep emotional scars on the family. Ramothwa describes the moment her world collapsed, how an ordinary day turned into a nightmare, marked by shock, disbelief and a pain she says defies language.
“If I had attempted to keep anything to myself, I wouldn’t be here today; I would’ve died. This thing was traumatic, this thing was terrible, it was painful, it is worse than words could describe,” she says.
“No parent is ever prepared to bury their child. Especially under such violent circumstances,” she adds. Africa, she remembers, was full of life and hope, eagerly planning a future she would never live to see. Wedding preparations were underway, dreams carefully mapped out, all of it erased in a single act of violence, Ramothwa says.
Faced with overwhelming grief, Ramothwa reveals she reached a crossroads. “I had two choices. Either to become a mental case, or to forgive, and let God (take over),” she says. Her decision to forgive, she explains, was shaped by her faith. She cites Philippians chapter 2, verse 5. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” and 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 5, as scriptures that guided her through the darkest period of her life.
Rather than allowing tragedy to consume her, Ramothwa rebuilt her life slowly and deliberately. She raised her remaining children, worked, prayed, and learned to live with a wound that never truly heals. Strength, for her, was not loud activism or public confrontation. It was endurance.
“I had to live not because the pain ended, but because my life did not end with hers,” she says.
Today, though still carrying her loss, Ramothwa says she is driven by a sense of purpose to ensure her daughter is remembered as more than the manner of her death, and to speak honestly about the lifelong impact of GBV on families left behind. Her only consolation, she says, is her faith. “One day, he (Mothudi) will answer before God,” she says.
Twenty-three years after Africa’s untimely death, her memory remains painfully relevant. Her story echoes in the lives of other women lost to intimate partner violence, and in the families still navigating the aftermath of trauma and loss. Her mother’s strength stands as a quiet testament to endurance and a reminder that behind every statistic is a family forever changed, and a pain that time alone cannot heal.