WATCH | ‘I’m bruised, hurting, shaken’: woman after hotel assault left her ready to leave SA

“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 another woman who, after rebuffing the unwanted advances of a strange man at a hotel bar, claims she was assaulted and treated badly.

Mpho 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 South Africa 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. She stayed at the hotel, chatting to a Danish woman and her sister, who were visiting for a show-jumping event, when they were approached by the man.

“I was having a gin and tonic when he came up 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 Sunday Times.

“We were going to leave then, because we felt uncomfortable. But I decided to rather go and speak to security and they accompanied me back to reception where he was checking in. I told them I wanted to report him, and he started calling us whores and prostitutes.”

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

Unnerved, Boadia phoned her 18-year-old twin sons to return 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 started walking away and so I began filming him. He saw me doing it and so he turned around and came for me. He hit me like I was a man,” Boadia said.

Her sons returned and the police also arrived at 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

“When this man turned his aggression towards my boys, I tried to get between them and pull this giant of a man away from my children,” she said, describing footage in which she can be heard yelling at the man and using her foot to push him away from her son as they wrestled on the ground.

The boy was able to make a statement and opened an assault case at the Douglasdale police station. He turned 19 the day after the incident.

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,” she said.

Businesswoman Mpho Boadia, who lives in Luxembourg, says South Africa no longer feels like home after she was assaulted at a hotel bar after rebuffing the advances of a strange man. “Why does a woman have to be physically injured, or worse yet dead, before the system can respond? Why does the evidence have to be on our bodies before our fear is taken seriously? Why does it have to get this far?”

Angry and disappointed, Boadia posted her story, pictures and videos on social media, prompting other women who recognised the man to comment that they too had allegedly been abused by him in the past.

Some posted his identity and the company he works for — which police have not confirmed to be correct.

“I had to protect myself and my kids against a man bigger than all of us! I am trying to process the fact that tonight, a stranger decided that he had the right to put his hands on me … he did it in front of my children,” she wrote.

“Why do some men feel entitled to hurt women? Why are women expected to simply become another statistic? I don’t want to be a statistic. I want to be safe. I want women to be able to stand up for themselves without wondering whether doing so will make them a target.”

“What happened to me tonight was not okay. And I refuse to stay silent about it.”

Gauteng police spokesperson Col Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi confirmed that a case of common assault had been opened and was under investigation.

The City Lodge Hotel Fourways manager, who declined to give her name but said she was the hotel manager on duty on Monday and the person in charge, said the hotel was unable to comment or provide any information regarding the incident or the social media postings about it.