By Natalie Thysse
Edited by Imaan Moosa
Author, inspirational speaker and survivor, Alison Botha talks about her experience being a victim of GBV and the healing process.
Trigger Warning: Mentions of rape, brutal assault and depression.
Alison Botha on Afternoon Express
Image sourced from Afternoon Express
Left for dead
He appeared in a blink with a lightweight letter opener-like knife which was later accompanied by a hunting knife with a blade of approximately 20 centimeters. They failed to decapitate her because she survived. Alison Botha chose life.
54-year-old Botha made a speech for Women’s Month at York High School and this was one of the points that hit home because I experience it on a daily basis. She spoke about how she wants to pick up people if she sees them walking alone in an unwatched area. Not to give them a lift, but to give them a lecture. The secret here is not to instill fear into our minds but to make us become aware of our surroundings not because we don’t trust men but for our own safety.
Alison Botha is an inspirational speaker.
Image sourced from Xtraordinary women
She told To EmpowHER that women and even men can never entirely avoid being in a vulnerable situation.
Every time I book a Bolt, I am filled with fear. I fear ‘what if the driver decides to take another route’. I fear ‘what if he threatens me to do something unwanted’.
The fear has become so normalised that I don’t feel safe to book a Bolt when I am at home. I don’t want them to know where I live, so I walk to the nearest supermarket and book it from there. I also get off at that point.
Getting to the supermarket is also frightful, thinking I might be followed. I fear the Bolt driver might make a U-turn when he sees me walking and follows me. This is the kind of personal sacrifice that I must make to have a sense of security but then to also walk with fear and be constantly aware of my surroundings.
Red means you are in full alert mode. The danger is coming. Orange is when you are aware. Alison provided an example of a buck drinking water.
They never just drink water [without looking] up. They will continually lift their heads and look around, continually flipping their ears. Are they sensing danger? They are aware even though they are drinking water and I think that is how we must be when living out in the world.
A perpetrator who is looking for a victim might also look for someone who is unaware; someone who is distracted, half asleep or too drunk to know what they are doing. By making these choices – being constantly aware of our surroundings – potential victims come across as someone who perpetrators wouldn’t pick.
“It’s not ideal to teach people to live this way – being constantly aware. I believe self-defense courses are important. It should be something that’s taught in schools, it should be a natural response for women to have. Yes, on the physical side, men do have the upper hand so I think we need to have whatever we can to combat a situation. Going for a kind of defense that would help you to live in that alert state.”
‘I have life’
In 1994, Botha’s life made a U-turn when she was brutally and sexually assaulted and left for dead. What happened to her in those early hours of Sunday, December 18, 1994, speaks irony. Two men tried to kill her. Another one – a roadside angel – saved her life, another one fought for her in court, and another one investigated her case. She gave birth to two boys.
Yes, not all men are bad and yes, two men attacked me but there were also a lot of men who were there to help me.
Being a single parent and having to raise two boys – with the help of her mother – is such a fortunate thing for Botha. She raised her boys with the values of what it means and takes to be a man without instilling in them patriarchal values.
It’s important for Botha to also include men in the fight against men who rape and kill. Men need to understand that it’s their kind, their sex, who perpetrate most of these crimes and they need to own it.
It’s not theirs but it’s their kind. They need to be doing as much as women are to raise awareness, educate, and change the language spoken to boys that teaches them how to become more of a ‘man’.
The upbringing of children is important and as a society, being enlightened and informed doesn’t always mean you’re teaching your children the right thing.
“It must be something that you’re held accountable for and that’s why I think it’s so important to do it at school because we can’t trust that all parents will do it right.”
Botha says that the time has come for society to accept that it’s not gender equality that we’re after. We’re not the same, therefore, we need to accept and embrace the fact that we will never quite understand what it is to be a man and he will never understand what it’s like to be a woman.
Speaking up and out
Going public exploded in a crescendo of sound.
“I wrote the book with Marianne Thamm and I am so glad I wrote it with someone. She had the experience to write it so well but also, but she took me to places that I might have avoided going if it was just me on my own. She made me explain to her what the fear felt like, she made me explain the night of the attack and what that felt like being in the bush out there alone.
“I know it sounds like a cliché, but it really was a cathartic experience writing the book and facing all those things which I don’t always face in detail during my talks because I don’t need to.”
Author of I have life published in 1998
Image sourced from Penguin Random House South Africa
Choosing to be as open as she was in the book by providing images of her scars and of the perpetrators was a dual decision. She goes into very specific detail about what her body went through during the rape.
“I grew up in an era where sexual encounters or anything to do with that was embarrassing.”
Yet, she was ashamed of what happened to her because ‘we don’t talk about sex’.
It’s so wrong to put rape in that same ‘we don’t talk about sex’ [category] because rape is not sex. It’s a crime and people need to know everything about it. People need to be able to recognise it if they have been raped themselves and they need to know it’s not their fault.
It certainly worked for her knowing that she wasn’t alone. Other people had also felt depressed too and so being able to share details and images brought healing.
The perpetrators did that to her body, she said, so it wasn’t for her to cover it up and be ashamed when doctors would later come to inspect what Frans du Toit and Theuns Kruger did to her. Instead, hiding what they did to her would’ve made her feel shameful and ugly and not in a position to share.
“Yes, it is ugly, but I want to share it because what they did was wrong and what they did was shocking, and I wanted people to be shocked by it and as horrified as I was.”
Did she hesitate to share her story? She’s never fought with the idea of choosing to share her story.
It was not my choice. It was done to me, and I experienced it, but everything thereafter was for the learning benefit of everyone. Sharing my story has been easy in that way.
The word forgiveness just seems impossible to use in the same sentence recalling what they did to her.
“I don’t recall what it was exactly that changed my way of thinking about it, but I do remember saying no to any invitation, such as going to a braai. I was in a place of saying ‘No, I do not want to see people. I don’t want to talk about what happened to me’ and [as a result], I was sulking and feeling sorry for myself.”
Botha is at a point in her life where she doesn’t look at her scars anymore.
Looking back, being younger, Botha recalls that it was mortifying because she was never going to be the Alison she was. It was in her right to feel sorry for herself. She needed that space even though it wasn’t a space of empowerment.
She needed du Toit and Kruger to say they are sorry for her in order to forgive them because that’s how she was raised. You say sorry and you’re forgiven.
But waiting on them to say they were sorry seemed rather trivial considering the fact that she also doesn’t want anything to do with them.
A lesson on forgiveness
‘Why did you fight so hard to live? You might as well have given up and died if this is how you’re going to live your life.’
It was quite challenging to say these words to herself and she was brave enough to say that herself. She needed to escape from that forbidden space if she wanted to choose life.
“I got bored feeling sorry for myself. I knew there were certain things that I could choose and choosing to forgive them was a big one in the beginning. I did not want to think about them every day. I didn’t want to be angry with them, so the forgiveness was almost to distance myself from them – if I can put it that way.”
She realised that the feelings of anger towards them were fallacious and didn’t affect them in any way because they didn’t feel it. Forgiveness was a choice she made that helped her experience happiness. She didn’t want them to still have a sense of ownership over her life.
I don’t want to be in a place of waiting in my life. I would rather be choosing to move forward and if at some point they choose to say they are sorry then ‘yay’ for them.
She doesn’t go to parole hearings because she feels as though it will help them if they see the victim and she doesn’t want to help them in any way. There’s no unfinished business.
Even though the perpetrators are behind bars, there’s still that fear of what will happen when they are released.
The state took du Toit and Kruger to court, she was just a witness.
It was a choice to be available as a witness and I do believe that as many women as possible should get the chance to do that, whether it is by video, if it’s more comfortable for them.
Botha was taken to the courtroom beforehand as a sort of preparation. She believes that this should be the norm, preparing victims for trial and as a way of protecting and encouraging victims to come forward.
“I don’t have a current profile on Facebook and I try not to put photographs on where I live because it would be a worry.”
When asked about what advice she has for victims to protect themselves should their perpetrators be released she told To EmpowHER:
“Some women would feel the need to change their names if it’s someone that they know. Some would feel the need to move from where they live without worrying. In my case, I know that with the parole hearings I heard, I, as the victim, am asked amongst others – if they do get out – what are the criteria I want to place on them. What conditions do I want to suggest they have and if I suggest they leave South Africa entirely or [never] come out of jail?
“I laugh at that because they were on bail when they did this to me, and they had already been cautioned. They’ve already been told not to rape women, yet they tried to kill me. So, I don’t have any faith that cautions would be adhered to. They are criminals.
“Unfortunately, it’s up to the victim to do what they can to make herself feel stronger, to have some self-defense, to have people around her know what kind of situation she is in. If she keeps it to herself, she alone is going through these things in her mind. If she has people in her community that know about what happened to her, I think that community strength is something that women should be enfolded in and protected.”
Botha believes that financial assistance from our country is required for a committee of active, innovative and interested women who can create a task force to do something about GBV. Although the month of August is Women’s Month, a lot more can be done.
“I do want whoever is reading it, to see that it’s not just me – the victim – who wants Frans and Theuns to stay in jail. Everyone agrees that they should stay there. I don’t think they have spent a lifetime in jail. They need to spend the rest of their lives there because this will be something that will be with me for the rest of my life, and I think that the punishment for these crimes needs to be taken much more seriously. It doesn’t matter how well the victim handled it, it doesn’t matter if she survived her injuries and healed well.”
She encourages victims to share their stories in their own way because it might bring healing. She says it doesn’t necessarily have to be public. It can be written to a counselor, on chat groups, or in support groups.
“When you keep your story and your experience to yourself, a few things happen:
You don’t have the opportunity to gain insight from anyone else so you just have it going around in your own head and your own space.
When you share your story, you might be amazed at how your story has helped someone else and that really is a great help to know that you have helped someone else.
Not sharing tends to make a person feel shame and no victim should feel shame. The shame and the wrong are on the perpetrator. Keeping quiet about it, it tends to go hand in hand with ‘I am keeping quiet because I am ashamed. ‘I am keeping quiet because it was my fault’. ‘I am keeping quiet because I blame myself’.”
Botha doesn’t see herself as much of a fighter but she hopes and trusts that through sharing her story, she is fighting and helping those who are in the fight.
As she emerges from her chrysalis, a mixture of colours appears as she opens her fore- and hindwings and chooses to live.
More about Alison Botha:
“I was just a 27-year-old girl – when it happened to me – living in a very oblivious way to the problems that women faced. It was only when I was raped that I became aware of how big the war is against women.”
She resigned as an insurance broker and started traveling to voice her experience.
“But since having children and wanting to be more home-based, I have had fewer talks. Obviously, as the years go by people don’t really remember my story.”
“When it’s me being the speaker, I might be packing my bag, going and meeting people whoever they are and sharing with them.”
Her story is just as relevant today as ever and that’s why her talk at York High School – specifically to youngsters – is important for her. She believes that there’s something to learn from these stories, so why not share them out of warning and inspiration?
Sign the petition link to vote ‘no’ against her perpetrators to be released on parole.
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