A budding photographer is demanding action from the police regarding her complaint of assault, saying she was told nothing could be done to the people she was accusing until she has a case number. 

“I am traumatised,” Zamantungwa Khumalo told News24, as she detailed her frustration in getting the police to help her.

Khumalo tweeted earlier on Saturday that she had not wanted to go public, but after getting the runaround over the case number, she had had enough.  

She tweeted that an argument over who had caused an electrical fault at home escalated into her being beaten so severely that she was even hit on the head with a scrubbing brush. 

It started with the electricity tripping on Thursday, and an argument over whose appliance was causing it. 

She tweeted that she was held down and beaten and her braids were also pulled out. 

Another relative came and rescued her as she was unable to break free on her own.

“I had to have 18 stitches,” Khumalo told News24 by phone. 

She said that after the attack, she went to the Jabulani police station in Soweto, covered in blood, to report it. 

Khumalo was given a ‘J88’ form – a form the justice department uses as a record of injuries in criminal matters – and told to go to have it completed by a doctor. 

She went to a private doctor who referred her to the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. 

She said staff there told her the form could only be completed on Monday, much to her frustration.

Afterward she went back to the police station to tell them she had been to a private doctor, and to offer them the number of the staffer who she saw at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital to confirm the administrative problem.

She then wanted to know what the police were going to do in terms of investigating the attack or apprehending the people she was accusing. 

“They said: ‘Let’s wait for a case number,'” she explained.

She alleged that that was not the first time she had been hit at home by the relatives she lives with, with apologies accepted by her previously.

But now she is at a point where she didn’t want to “move out in a body bag” and is determined to see the matter through this time.

However, since mustering up the courage to take the matter further, she is frustrated by the apparent hold up caused by a case number yet to be generated.

In an update later on Saturday she said a persistent aunt had eventually obtained a case number for her, and she hoped this would spur the police into action.

Police spokesperson Captain Mavela Masondo said two people, aged 53 and 55, were arrested on Saturday.

Masondo said the suspects are expected to appear in Protea Magistrate’s Court on Monday on charges of assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm.