WATCH | He raped me, beat me...but I did not kill him

Ndudula gives judge different versions of marriage to murdered husband

The Ndudulas’ marriage had deteriorated to such an extent that Bulelwa Ndudula had her husband, Sakhekile – now dead at 52 after four bullets were pumped into his body in September 2016 – up in court for rape.
Judge Igna Stretch presided over this new information on Friday, only hours after Bulelwa Ndudula, 46, had told Stretch her marriage to her ANC politician husband Sakhekile had been solid.
Ndudula’s second day in the witness box was mostly spent doling out stories about how seriously problematic their marriages were, though she tried to portray their second marriage to each other – after a divorce – as being for the better.
They had come together in in October 2011, a few days after their six-year old, last-born child had drowned in a bathtub on September 30 2011. In a bizarre exchange, Ndudula told the court that her husband was once “convicted” for raping her in 2007 – the year they separated and later divorced.
Ndudula said so terrible was the experience that she obtained a protection order against her husband before later divorcing him in 2009, because “he constantly assaulted me and abused me by all means”.
Looking mostly calm – and at times jovial – in the dock, Ndudula became emotional as she poured her heart out. She trembled, saying: “The mere fact that we ended up divorcing shows that there were serious problems in our marriage at the time”.
She said the couple were first married in 1996, and blessed with three children, but separated in 2007 after she had obtained the protection order and opened a rape charge against her late husband...

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