WARNING: The picture in this post may upset some readers.
The 80-year-old Boesmanskop farmer’s wife in the Zastron district, who was barefooted and left in the cold by four armed farm attackers in Lesotho on Friday morning, is in the high-care unit of Rosepark Hospital in Bloemfontein.
This is after she spent 17 hours in the hospital’s emergency room only to be tested for Covid-19 and had to wait for the result.
This is what her daughter, Lize du Plessis, has reported. She has been overwhelmed with calls as people from around the country inquire about the well-being of her mother, Daleen van der Hoven.
She says her mother is currently in stable condition in the hospital’s high-care neuro unit, where she is being treated for, among other things, brain hemorrhage after being admitted at 2am on Saturday morning.
“There is blood on the right side of the brain for which she is receiving the necessary medication and treatment, after her attackers beat her with a ripper tooth several times .
“My mother from the farm Wanatha in Boesmanskop near Zastron is an angel of a woman, who maintains a very good relationship with her workers. She is so good to the workers and usually picks them up when she goes to town. ”
Du Plessis says her brother, Wally van der Hoven, who lives with their mother on the farm, told the workers to look after her carefully because he had to go to Bloemfontein for an appointment on Thursday.
“My mother was unarmed and never wanted to carry a weapon because she always says they are going to kill you with your own weapon. In addition, the workers love her so much that we thought everything would be fine. ”
Du Plessis says the information must have leaked that her mother was alone on the farm.
Four armed robbers first broke open the first security gate at 2am on Friday morning and then the second security gate near her room. This was done with the tear-off tooth.
“When my mother woke up, she saw that they were in the room with her. They hit her with the ripper tooth two or three times . She says when they first hit her, she only saw stars. They held her and demanded money all the time.
“My mother unlocked the small safe for them, from which they took the few thousand rand in it. They found the keys of the large safe in the small safe and then unlocked the large safe.
“My father, the late Naas van der Hoven, was a Springbok shooter in 1975. His two rifles and shotgun that he was using at the time were in the large safe. They took it too. “
She said afterwards they asked for the keys of the Ford and Audi cars.
“They knew exactly what the cars were doing.
“They dropped the Ford’s keys and then took the Audi. They put my mom in the middle on the back seat between them, while the other two sat in front. “
Du Plessis said her mother had stopped the car for a while and seemed to be unable to drive.
“They also have valuable jewelery stolen from family heirlooms.”
Later, the farm attackers asked her to drive the car up the mountain pass because they couldn’t do it themselves.
They dropped her off in the Lesotho side without glasses, barefoot and in her sleeping clothes in -5 ° C, Du Plessis says.
From here, she stumbled to a hut where people opened a huge hut for her and folded her in warm blankets.
A neighbor, Tommie Rautenbach, was then called, who gathered other farmers and fetched her, Du Plessis says.
She says she rushed to Life Rosepark Hospital in Bloemfontein with her mother and was there at 9am on Friday morning.
“She had to lie here in the emergency department from 09:00 to 02:00 Saturday morning before she could be admitted to the high-care unit because she had to be tested for Covid-17, among other things, and had to wait for the result of the test,” said Du Plessis.
