Breaking Free from the Cycle of Family Abuse: A Daughter's Journey. A memoir

A harrowing roller-coaster of a memoir, which is a true story told by a brave Zulu woman - years after her abuse at the hands of her Zulu mother, supported by family and community members. The author and all characters has been anonymised to protect the family and relatives.

The story closes on a positive note, as the author manages to reinvent herself and overcome her harrowing circumstances by engaging in further study at various South African universities. She completed her PhD and is engaged in the media and research environment.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

  "The tale is one of psychological exorcism … . It is unrelenting in its harrowing narrative, … regularly punctuated with delightful gobbets of humour, compelling insights and exquisite turns of phrase that help to lighten the author’s inner darkness … . These insights reveal an affirming self-awareness and coming to wider understanding."

"There is a wider story implicit here: the encounter of a traditional and culturally and socially disoriented family with the relentless condition of modernity.  … (D)omestic violence seems to be sketched as communal, cultural, and traditional.  It is one that reveals causation as being inherent to particular groups … doing the best they can to cope within inherited social circumstances, even as they tend to self-destruct as they become their own worst enemies, while hurting everyone around them".  

" … well written, engaging and illuminating. The familial conditions being navigated are not opportunistically and instrumentally blamed on external forces like Apartheid, Western Imperialism or Colonization, but as resulting from internal cultural and domestic Zulu clan and family relations"

" … a refreshing, rare yet very compelling, autobiographical narrative of trying to fit into various, familial, social and institutional arrangements. The key takeaway for me is one of personal liberation from communal tyranny".

South Africa’s high rate of gender-based violence and abuse against women and children is currently at an alarming peak. This book offers an unexpectedly powerful source of inspiration thanks to the brave voice of a girl who had to endure more than anyone can reasonably be expected to endure.

This remarkable true story tells of the lived experiences of a woman who repeatedly had to suffer abuse at the hands of her closest family members. As the victim, she speaks with brutal honesty and directness. This is the harrowing story of how she had to live in a nightmarish world. Ordinary community members from social workers, members of the police, medical staff and even church members all became part of a psychologically twisted mother’s plot to inflict ongoing abuse against her own daughter. Everyone seemed to turn their back on her.

Due to the endless string of abuse perpetrated by this community, all names in the book and that of the author were changed. In this way, the unfolding story speaks on a universal level  - and to an even wider circle. Every one of us who is aware of a community member inflicting abuse on another, becomes complicit, if we do not speak out and protect the victim. Our communities have been insidiously protecting the perpetrators of abuse against the vulnerable and the weak. African traditional dispute resolution systems seem to fail the abused.

Miraculously, despite the continuous waves of onslaught of childhood abuse and setbacks, the author shows her resilient spirit by empowering herself through education. Our heroine eventually obtains a PhD degree and turns her life around, to emerge victoriously – and to bravely tell a difficult story of true grit and inspiration.