SHE SURVIVED THAT!
A woman whose intestines were ripped out in a savage knife attack relived her nightmare in court this past Tuesday in Palapye.
Kelebemang Raletsholo (44) finally set the record straight about a brutal incident that once trended online with wild claims that it happened in Gaborone Phase 4 while others claimed it never occurred in Botswana, given the grim contents of the video.
It has now been confirmed that the incident happened in Extension 1, Palapye, in October 2024.
Testifying before Magistrate Lentlhabetse Willie this Tuesday, Raletsholo faced her ex-lover and alleged attacker, Tswelelo Kgaolo, whomshe says turned a bitter argument into a bloody near-death ordeal last October.
Taking the stand as the trial kicked off, Raletsholo detailed how on the 18th of October 2024, she told Kgaolo that she was heading to Boikago ward while he claimed he was off to work in Extension 9.
By 7 pm, she was back home, but found Kgaolo still not yet back. She left the house key at their usual hiding spot and went out for drinks at Serumula Bar.
Returning around midnight, Kgaolo was still not in, but the key had vanished, a sign he had come and left again.
Tired of waiting, Raletsholo grabbed a taxi to a nightclub and only returned home at dawn.
She knocked, but Kgaolo refused to open up.
Peering through an open window, she saw him lying awake on the bed, ignoring her.
She left, sought help from neighbours and police. After much back-and-forth, police forced him to open up so she could collect her belongings.
But the nightmare was far from over.
Exhausted, Raletsholo dropped her bags at a neighbour’s house and lay down behind an unfinished house to rest.
Moments later, she heard a commotion. Her neighbour’s voice shouting, “Where are you taking that knife? You want to kill someone?”
Before she could react, Kgaolo pounced.
He stabbed her right arm, then twice in her right breast. She grabbed the blade with her bare hand, but it sliced through her fingers and toes as he yanked it back.
Then came the lethal blow; he plunged the knife into her abdomen, slicing it open and spilling her intestines out onto the ground.
“He stabbed me again on my thigh and buttocks. After that, everything went dark. I could just hear voices... the ambulance people lifting me onto something like a bed,” she told the court.
Raletsholo was rushed to Mahalapye Hospital, then transferred for further treatment.
Months later, she still struggles; her bent finger will not move, and her abdomen throbs with pain every time the weather turns cloudy.
Cross-examining his victim, Kgaolo did not deny the horror.
Instead, he grilled her about why she had not come home that night.
“When you said you were going to Boikago, did you mean you were going to sleep out?” he asked coldly.
She shot back, saying she had told him about her intentions to go to the club.
Kgaolo even tried to cast doubts, saying she was probably too drunk to recognise him, seeing that she had been partying all night, but she calmly replied that she knew it was him by his clothes.
The court also heard chilling claims that Kgaolo had threatened to kill her before.
The vicious stabbing shocked Palapye and the entire Botswana community. To this day, many shake their heads in disbelief, wondering how Raletsholo survived such a vicious attack.