Beaten but not broken

At the height of her journalism career, more than one million households across the country knew her name and her face.

Her reportage on human suffering and triumph captivated viewers.

Yet Govender, a champion for society's downtrodden, was hiding a shocking story of her own.

She was a rookie reporter at the SABC in 1999. He was a popular presenter at a radio station. They were the perfect pair, or so it seemed. Behind closed doors the bruising punches, the cracking slaps and the beatings, kicking, and strangling were as ferocious as the emotional and verbal abuse he hurled at her.

No one knew the brutal and graphic details of Govender's abuse ... until now. In this memoir, Govender breaks the ranks of a close-knit, conservative community to speak out about her five-year-long hell in an abusive relationship.

Govender tells a graphic story of extreme abuse, living with the pain and how she was saved by her own relentless fighting spirit.