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Portia Max, 28, was dragged by her boyfriends car on Sunday after an argument between the two in Protea North. Max reported her ex-lover to the police, who have arrested him. Photo: Dumisani Dube

Portia Max has had enough. After enduring years of alleged violent physical and emotional abuse, opening and then closing assault cases, breaking up and then making up, her lover and tormentor is finally behind bars.

On Sunday, Thabang Ntshangase, 32, allegedly drove to Max’s family home in Protea North to confront her after she had broken off their turbulent three-year relationship a few days before.

“I had just come back from the grocery store with my sister, and she had already gone inside the house while I was still in the car. He (Ntshangase) drove up our driveway and parked next to my car. I told him to go away but he didn’t want to. My sister came out from the house and he started swearing at both of us,” she said.

After pleading with him to leave them alone, Ntshangase started his car.

“He pulled my right arm, reversed the car and dragged me as he drove out to the street. I tried running along with the car, but after almost three minutes he released my arm,” she said.

When he let go, she fell on the road and slid along the tar surface. She sustained serious abrasions on her breasts, shoulders and face.

“Everyone saw it. All my neighbours,” she said.

“He just drove off, just like that. I went to the Protea Glen police station to open a case of assault against him almost immediately after the incident. He kept calling to say ‘Let’s fix this’ and asked to take me to the doctor,” Max said.

But it was too late for apologies. This, for Max, was the last straw. “The first time the abuse started was while we were driving along a freeway in 2009 and he threw me out of the fast-moving car. I was once pregnant with his child, and during an argument, he kicked me on my stomach and I miscarried,” she claimed.

But why did Max keep going back to him? “He’d always beg and beg and beg… He would apologise and tell me he loved me. And I loved him. I did everything for him. But the abuse got so bad that I had to quit my job in the city because he’d threaten my boss because he thought I had an affair,” she said. The abuse, however, didn’t traumatise only Max, but her entire family as well.

Tears ran down her older sister Dudu Dlamini’s face as she spoke of the threats that Ntshangase allegedly put her family through. “I cautioned my sister so many times about this man,” said Dlamini.

“Even when our mother was still alive we both warned her and begged her to leave him.

“He is so disrespectful. My six-year-old child is traumatised because he would come to our home and threaten us and swear at us.

“He told Portia that even if he was arrested, he had friends in the police service and his other friends outside would sort Portia out,” she said, sobbing.

Ntshangase appeared briefly at the Protea Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday on charges of assault with intention to do grievous bodily harm.

The matter was postponed until Friday for his formal bail application. He remains in police custody. - The Star