After an ordinary night out with her friends, Alison Botha drove back to her apartment in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. But as soon as the 27-year-old parked her car, a man with a knife forced his way inside.
The attacker ordered Botha to move to a different seat, trapping her inside her own vehicle. He then drove her car to pick up an accomplice. And it was immediately clear that the two men had sinister plans for her.
Botha’s captors — later identified as Frans du Toit and Theuns Kruger — took her to a deserted area on the outskirts of town. There, they brutally r@ped her, dis€mboweled her, and sl@shed her throat so deeply that she was nearly decapitated.
The two men, who had a history of violence against women, both r@ped her. And they were soon determined to kill her as well. At first, they tried to suffocate her. But even though she lost consciousness, Botha clung to life.
Frustrated, du Toit and Kruger took their brutality to the next level. They stabbed Botha at least 30 times in the abdomen. Botha later recalled that du Toit specifically wanted to mutilate her reproductive organs. But somehow, the attackers missed those specific parts of her body.
When Botha’s leg twitched, du Toit and Kruger decided the job wasn’t quite done yet. They then slit her throat — 16 times.
“All I could see was an arm moving above my face,” Alison Botha later recalled. “Left and right and left and right. His movements were making a sound. A wet sound, it was the sound of my flesh being slashed open. He was cutting my throat with the knife. Again and again and again.”
Botha’s mind struggled to make sense of what was happening to her. “It felt unreal but it wasn’t,” she said. “I felt no pain, but it was not a dream. This was happening. The man was slashing my throat.”
As the men finally stepped back, Botha heard them admiring their work and speaking in Afrikaans. “Do you think she’s dead?” one of the attackers asked. “No one can survive that,” the other replied.
Apparently satisfied that they had killed her, du Toit and Kruger drove away. But little did they know that Alison Botha was still breathing.
Alison Botha said; “I realized my life was too valuable to let go of,” she later said. “And that gave me the courage to survive.”
Botha soon realized she might have a chance to survive. In the distance, she could see headlights streaking through the bushes. If she could just manage to get onto the road, someone might be able to help her.
When she moved toward the headlights, she realized the full extent of her injuries. As she pulled herself up, her head started to fall backward — since she had nearly been decapitated.
Meanwhile, Alison Botha could also feel something slimy protruding from her abdomen — her intestines. She had to use one hand to keep her organs from spilling out and the other hand to literally hold on to her own head.
Alison Botha recalled, “As I struggled forward my sight faded in and out and I fell many times but managed to get up again until I finally reached the road.”
There, she collapsed along the white line. Even in her disoriented state, she knew that this was the best position to attract the attention of a motorist.
Fortunately, Botha didn’t have to wait for long. A young veterinary student named Tiaan Eilerd, who was visiting Port Elizabeth on vacation from Johannesburg, saw Botha lying in the middle of the road and stopped.
“God put me on that road that night for a reason,” Eilerd later said.
Alison Botha was rushed to the hospital, where doctors were stunned by her horrific wounds. One doctor, Alexander Angelov, later said that he’d never seen such severe injuries in his 16 years of practicing medicine.
Botha was on the brink of death. But she managed to pull through — and she also remembered everything about her attackers. She was soon able to identify them from police pictures while she was still in the hospital. This led to the speedy arrest of the “Ripper Rapists,” as they were called in the press.
But even though the worst was behind her, Alison Botha still suffered from both physical and emotional scars from the ordeal. In order to recover, she decided that she needed to face what had happened to her.
Alison Botha soon began traveling around the world, telling her story in at least 35 countries. One of the first women from South Africa to speak publicly about rape — in both her home country and abroad — she helped inspire other survivors to come forward and tell their stories as well.
“The attack has put me on this path where I get to travel the world and help inspire other people,” said Botha.
In 1995, Botha won the prestigious Rotarian Paul Harris Award for “Courage Beyond the Norm” and Femina magazine’s “Woman of Courage” award. She was also honored as Port Elizabeth’s “Citizen of the Year.”
