Thespian Letoya Makhene says her ex-spouse, Lebogang Pulumo Keswa, is refusing to give back her indumba and clothes and has stolen money from her bank account.
Makhene also accused Keswa of being a vile abuser who left her hospitalised more than once with broken ribs and a badly burned leg that took over four months to heal.
The former Generations: The Legacy actress has also denied being on drugs or drinking like a fish and has instead claimed that Keswa is the one with a drinking problem.
Makhene was speaking to us on Sunday World Engage after this paper reported a month ago that her marriage to the businesswoman had crumbled.
“That is what narcissists do; they will abuse you and abuse you, and then cry victim first,” she said, adding that Keswa lied about her to amass public sympathy.
“I got seen by so many doctors, and my doctors kept saying, ‘Why are you lying and you keep coming back with one injury, showing that your partner is abusing you’. Even then, I was still not intending to go to the police,” she said.
In February, Keswa wrote a letter to the Makhene family requesting a separation from her spouse, alleging that she is abusive and has turned herself into a village bicycle by sleeping with a drug dealer and another woman in Tladi, Soweto.
Keswa said Makhene scalded her with boiling water, bludgeoned her with an ironing board, and also threw a vase at her before damaging furniture and burning down the curtains of their Randfontein marital home on three separate occasions.
However, Makhene flipped the script on Keswa, denying these allegations, claiming that the only reason Keswa spoke out against her was to silence her because she was in fact the abuser who repeatedly assaulted her, sometimes in front of her six-year-old son.
“I was the one on the floor covering my face and just trying to cover parts of my body from the beatings. Have you seen how big she is and how tiny I am?
“She has never seen me take drugs like ever. There is a recording where I said she must go to rehab. Abuse of alcohol was a problem. After I left her, she called me and said she had stopped drinking, which she did for a few days, and then she went back [to drinking] because she realised that she had me where she wanted,” Makhene said.
The actress added that Keswa pushed her son against a wall in March last year after he tried to stop her from beating her up.
“At the time, I was going through a custody battle with his father, and I made a decision and said to myself, ‘This kid is not safe with me’. I took my baby to his dad, and ‘I said please take care of him’.”
Makhene said that despite the abuse, she would take the businesswoman back after every incident because she would apologise. “She would say, ‘I am so sorry. I don’t know why I would do such a thing’.”
The abuse, said Makhene, would not stop and went on to happen in public. She said Keswa pulled her by her hair while she was performing on stage in Pretoria last year.
“I happened to be on stage, and I was about to sing. It was one of those intimate setups, and as my band was playing and we were about to start singing, the audience watched me getting pulled off stage by my hair and getting pulled out of the venue, and I was asking what was going on. She had a fight with her friend, and she wanted us to leave.”
She said there were many times when she went to the police station but could not open the case because she was too embarrassed or felt humiliated for being a victim. She said that in some incidents, she would call the police to come to her house after an incident, but they would not show up.
The actress says she left her marriage in February this year, and in fact, she, not Keswa, initiated the divorce proceedings.
She added that even months after their separation, she still suffers other forms of abuse from Keswa. “She would go to sangomas associations, and she would have sangomas on my back, saying that I am not a real gobela, “ she said.
Makhene confirmed that she wrote a letter to the Keswa elders to intervene in helping her retrieve her belongings, but that did not help.
“This is why there is a letter from me to the family trying to avoid going to the police, where I am saying to the family elders, ‘Please help me get my things back’. She would say I would get them, and then when it was time to bring them back, she would be nowhere to be found,” she said.
“Now she is withholding my indumba, this is part of my finances, she is holding my clothes. At some point, we have had power of attorney over each other’s accounts, and the saddest moment for me was realising how much money of mine she was moving.”
She said she found out that her ex was stealing from her because a payment came through, and then she got a call from her bank saying someone called and asked for the bank account to be closed.
Makhene stated that their legal teams are currently handling their divorce case.
