WATCH | ‘I am bruised, hurting and shaken,’ says woman after hotel assault
“Right now South Africa doesn’t feel like home to me. I’m ready to leave. South Africa feels like a place where I have been handed another trauma to carry … I am bruised. I am hurting. I am shaken.”
These are the words of Mpho Boadia, who, after rebuffing the unwanted advances of a strange man at a hotel bar, claims she was assaulted and treated badly.
Boadia, a South African who lives in Luxembourg with her husband, was at the City Lodge Hotel in Fourways with her twin sons, their cousin and a friend while on holiday in SA visiting family.
Police and security officials in the parking lot at City Lodge Hotel Fourways where a man is alleged to have assaulted a woman and her son. At about 11pm on Saturday, Boadia’s sons went to Montecasino, leaving their mother chatting with a Danish woman and her sister when the man approached them.
WATCH | Mpho Boadia tearfully identifies the man who had approached her and her friends at a hotel on Saturday and claims, “This is the man who beat me up. He beat me up because he was making me uncomfortable,” before claiming to be a policeman. pic.twitter.com/WIGjPCfRnu— Times LIVE (@TimesLIVE) September 28, 2026
“He came up to me and commented right in my face, ‘I know you.’ I responded, ‘Excuse me, but you don’t know me,’ and one of the other women yelled at him, ‘F*** off, you c***’,” Boadia told the Sunday Times.
She reported the matter to hotel security. “I told them I wanted to report him, and he started calling us whores and prostitutes.”
Boadia phoned her 18-year-old twin sons to come back to the hotel because she did not feel safe. She then asked hotel staff to call the police as the man started to leave.
He allegedly returned and assaulted her when he noticed her recording him on her phone. “He hit me like I was a man,” Boadia said.
Her sons arrived, and police also came to the hotel but declined to take a statement from Boadia on the grounds that she had been drinking alcohol.
Believing herself to be well under the legal limit, she asked to be breathalysed but was told to wait until the next day to open a case and make her statement.
During the interaction, one of the twins became involved in a skirmish with the man, whom he accused of hitting his mother.
WATCH | Mpho Boadia reacts as the man who had allegedly approached her and her friends at the City Lodge Hotel Fourways with unwanted advances walks away after she reported him to security. pic.twitter.com/9jmMOYg4V2— Times LIVE (@TimesLIVE) September 28, 2026
He was able to make a statement and opened an assault case at Douglasdale police station.
On Sunday, Boadia went to hospital for a check-up and to get a J88 medical report on her injuries. She was told her statement would be added to the case her son had opened.
“The police said they would not arrest the guy and released him on a warning, even though everything I said happened took place in front of witnesses and will be on security cameras,” Boadia said.
Businesswoman Mpho Boadia, who lives in Luxenbourg, says South Africa no longer feels like home after she was assaulted at a hotel bar after rebuffing the advances of a strange man. Gauteng police spokesperson Colonel Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi confirmed that a case of common assault had been opened and was under investigation.