A frantic phone call from a concerned counsellor alerted Khensani Maseko's family that she might be about to take her own life. They rushed home but it was too late - the 23-year-old student had done it.
Details of Maseko's last day have emerged. The young woman took her life at her home in Alberton on Gauteng's East Rand last Friday.
Just five days earlier, she had told authorities at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, where she was a third-year BA law student, that her boyfriend had raped her in May.
Her death - just days before South Africa commemorated Women's Day - sparked an outcry over rape and violence against women.
The Sunday Times has learnt that Maseko had been allocated a counsellor by Rhodes University after she reported the rape on July 30.
University authorities said she had been "hysterical" and they were concerned about her frame of mind and that she might harm herself.
"During the first interview with Khensani, her state of mind was assessed," a source at the university said.
"If they feel you will harm yourself, they will monitor you in different ways to make sure you don't harm yourself."
The university informed her parents on the day she reported the rape.
The counsellor continued to monitor her social media posts, even after Maseko's parents fetched her the following day and took her home.
On the day of her death, Maseko posted her birth date and her "death date" on her Instagram account.The counsellor saw the post and phoned Maseko's mother, Thembi, to alert her. The call went to voicemail, so the counsellor called another relative.
She asked: "Are you with her? I am seeing these messages and I am alarmed. I think she might harm herself. Is there someone with her?"
The Sunday Times understands that in rape cases, university officials will constantly monitor victims, pay them random visits, speak to their friends and check their social media posts.
Maseko reported the rape on July 30. She said it had happened on May 8. It is understood that she was still involved in a romantic relationship with her alleged rapist up until the time she lodged the complaint.
"From May to July, all aspects of their relationship continued," said a source. "They were living together. Basically they were a happy couple until July 30."
A spokesperson for the Maseko family, Palesa Gcwensa, declined to comment on the counsellor's interaction with the family.
"I don't have anything to say about that. There's nothing else that they [the family] really want to say about her death."
Rhodes University spokesperson Luzuko Jacobs said: "We respect the family and will never do anything to add to their pain. As a university we are not at liberty to comment on professional counselling-related questions."
He said the suspect had been e-mailed a notice of suspension. The university had not done it earlier because it was waiting for Maseko to give a detailed statement.
"We couldn't take a statement from Khensani at the time as we needed the family to stabilise her," said Jacobs.He said the university was pushing for a police inquest into the circumstances leading up to Maseko's death.
Jacobs said the director of student affairs, Nomangwane Mrwetyana, had been in constant communication with Maseko's parents from the time their daughter reported being raped.
Dr Ramneek Ahluwalia, CEO of the Higher Education and Training Health, Wellness & Development Centre, said Maseko "had to live with the perpetrator in the same classroom, on the same campus, every day without anybody actioning anything".
A policy on gender-based violence, which will be gazetted soon, makes provision for higher education institutions to transfer alleged perpetrators to another class or residence.
Ahluwalia said the university would also be looking at offering women students a course in self-defence.
Twenty-nine cases of rape and four of attempted rape have been reported since June 2017 at six of the seven universities that responded to a snap survey by the Sunday Times this week. The seven universities recorded 25 cases of sexual assault in the past year.
The highest figures were reported at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where 11 rapes, three attempted rapes and eight cases of sexual assault and sexual harassment were reported. The Cape Peninsula University of Technology said it had registered 10 complaints of rape and five of sexual assault...