The Attack and Incredible Survival of Alison Botha
- Dec 18, 2024
- 8 min read
Updated: Jul 23
On December 18, 1994, 27 year old Alison Botha was driving home after a beach day with friends in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Within a couple of hours she'd be raped, stabbed dozens of times, disemboweled and left for dead on the side of the road. She survived anyway, and the story of how she did it, what her attackers turned out to be, and what's happened to her since, is one of the most remarkable in modern true crime.
Who Alison Botha Was Before the Attack
Before December 1994, Botha's life was unremarkable in the best way. She'd been head girl at the Collegiate High School for Girls in Port Elizabeth, then spent a few years travelling after finishing school. When she came home, she settled into work as an insurance broker and a quiet routine of friends, family and weekends at the beach. Nothing about her life up to that point suggested she'd become one of the most recognized survivors in South African history.
A Normal Night That Turned Into a Nightmare
Botha had spent the afternoon at the beach, then gone back to her apartment with friends to eat pizza and play Balderdash. Around 1am she dropped a friend home and returned to find her usual parking spot taken. She pulled in under a tree instead, in a dark patch of street, and reached over for her laundry bag on the passenger seat.
That's when a man yanked her car door open. He was tall, thin, and holding a knife. "Move over or I'll kill you," he told her, in a low, matter of fact voice. She did what he said. He climbed into the driver's seat and told her he just needed her car for an hour, nothing more. Botha, still hoping to talk her way out, gave him a fake name, Susan, and invented a boyfriend waiting for her at home. The man called himself Clinton. His real name was Frans du Toit.
Du Toit drove for a while before picking up a second man, Theuns Kruger. Both had form. The two of them had already abducted and raped two other women together, one of them pregnant at the time, and du Toit was out on bail for that attack when he climbed into Botha's car.
What Happened in the Bushes Outside Port Elizabeth
Du Toit and Kruger drove Botha to an isolated spot and raped her repeatedly. When strangling her didn't kill her, they stabbed her in the abdomen more than 30 times. Botha later said du Toit specifically tried to destroy her reproductive organs, but somehow missed. When her leg twitched, the two men decided she needed finishing off, and slit her throat sixteen times.
"All I could see was an arm moving above my face," Botha recalled years later. "Left and right and left and right... it was the sound of my flesh being slashed open." She remembered feeling almost nothing, saying the pain didn't register even though she knew, with total clarity, that it was really happening.
When the men finally stepped back, she heard them talking to each other in Afrikaans. "Do you think she's dead?" one asked. "No one can survive that," the other answered. They left her in the dirt, certain of it. Before she tried to move, Botha scratched her attackers' names into the sand, and beneath that, wrote "I love Mum," in case it was the last thing she'd ever leave behind.
It wasn't. Despite a slashed throat and her intestines spilling out of her abdomen, Botha got up. She held her organs in with one hand and her own head steady with the other, since her neck could no longer support it, and stumbled toward a road in the distance. She fell more than once but kept getting up, and finally collapsed on the white line at the road's edge, reasoning even then that it was the spot most likely to catch a driver's headlights.
A young veterinary student named Tiaan Eilerd, in town on holiday, found her there. He used what training he had to tuck her exposed windpipe back into place and called for help while they waited for an ambulance. "God put me on that road that night for a reason," he said afterward.
Botha was rushed into surgery. One of her doctors, Alexander Angelov, later said he'd never seen wounds that severe in sixteen years of practicing medicine.
The Ripper Rapists Trial
Botha survived surgery and, while still in hospital, picked her attackers out of police photographs from memory. Du Toit and Kruger were arrested quickly, and the press dubbed them the Ripper Rapists. Both pleaded guilty to eight charges, including kidnapping, rape and attempted murder, in what became known as the Noordhoek Ripper Trial.
Botha waived her right to anonymity and testified in public, almost unheard of for a South African rape survivor at the time. Judge Chris Jansen sentenced both men to life in prison in August 1995, telling the court he needed to make it plain they were a threat to society who should never be released.
They were released on parole anyway, in July 2023, after 28 years, without anyone consulting Botha first.
Who Were Frans du Toit and Theuns Kruger
Court documents that surfaced during the 2025 legal fight over their parole gave a much fuller picture of both men than the original trial ever did. Du Toit was diagnosed in prison as a psychopath with narcissistic traits. Kruger was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
Du Toit grew up in Jeffreys Bay, raised for years by a single mother who cycled through abusive relationships. He said he witnessed her being assaulted and was hurt himself trying to intervene. He was later adopted by a stepfather who tried to instill better values in him, but du Toit described feeling like an outcast because of his family's poverty. He dropped out of school after failing a grade twice, drifted toward a local gang, and by his own account started targeting women for rape at fifteen, telling a psychologist that the shame and secrecy around reporting rape made it an easy crime to get away with.
In prison, du Toit reportedly held a senior rank inside the 28s gang, equivalent to a Koning, and cycled through Satanism, the occult, Rastafarianism and Christianity at different points. According to prison visitor records, no friends or family ever came to see him. A psychologist's report also noted he'd made grandiose and deeply disturbing claims about the attack, including that he believed the assault was the reason Botha's marriage later ended.
Kruger's path was different but just as troubled. He left school at Grade 10, drifted through the army and a security job, and was reportedly shaken badly after being ordered to clean up following a colleague's suicide at a workplace. He grew up moving frequently because of his father's job, showed behavioral problems from a young age, and was also flagged for a history of abuse and neglect.
A Life Rebuilt
In the years after the attack, Botha became a bestselling author and international speaker. Her memoir, I Have Life, written with journalist Marianne Thamm, became a bestseller and was later adapted into a documentary. She travelled to more than 30 countries telling her story, picking up honors along the way including the Rotarian Paul Harris Award for courage and Femina magazine's Woman of Courage award. She also went on to have two sons, despite her attackers' attempt to destroy her ability to have children.
She never stopped opposing her attackers' release. In written submissions to the parole board over the years, Botha described the physical toll that never fully went away: chronic pain, impaired breathing from the damage to her throat and neck muscles, and ongoing gastrointestinal problems from the abdominal injuries. "My body still carries the visible scars," she told the board, "and I have to choose daily not to allow this to negatively affect me."
That made it all the more painful when the parole board released du Toit and Kruger anyway in 2023, reportedly justified in part because Botha had declined to take part in a victim offender dialogue program with the men who'd tried to kill her. The stress of that decision contributed to a serious health crisis of her own.
Two Brain Aneurysms and a Fight to Recover
In September 2024, Botha suffered a brain aneurysm and underwent emergency surgery to stop the bleeding. Family and friends said the stress of her attackers' release was a factor. She spent weeks unable to sit up, stand or walk on her own, and had to relearn basic movement with her right arm.
A second aneurysm followed, and doctors later inserted a stent in her brain to drain fluid that had built up. Botha had no private medical aid, and the public raised money for her care after her attorney and supporters spoke out about the cost of ongoing treatment. In one update from her hospital bed, she wrote to supporters that she was still nervous about the road ahead but reminded them, "I have been through worse."
She was eventually discharged from rehab and sent home, though attorney Tania Koen said she'd need close monitoring going forward given the continued risk of bleeding on the brain. By late 2025, reports described her as a "walking miracle", still in rehabilitation more than a year on.
Her Attackers Go Back to Prison
On February 4, 2025, Minister of Correctional Services Pieter Groenewald announced that he'd cancelled du Toit and Kruger's parole and had both men reincarcerated. Groenewald said the decision came after a review of legal opinions, and that his main consideration was protecting the public, particularly where violence against women was involved. It was reportedly an unprecedented move, the first time a minister had stepped in to reverse a parole board decision of this kind.
The psychologist's parole report on du Toit also captured how he'd tried to justify the attack, arguing to a social worker that the crime had somehow benefited Botha since her book, film and speaking career had gone on to help other women avoid rape. He reportedly couldn't understand why she wouldn't forgive him. Botha's own response, delivered to the parole board years earlier, was blunt: the consequences of that night were hers to carry for the rest of her life, whatever came after it.
Why Her Story Still Gets Told
Survival stories built around impossible odds tend to stick with people, the same way Barbara Jane Mackle's 83 hours buried alive has held onto readers for decades. Botha's case did something more specific too. She was one of the first women in South Africa to testify publicly about rape at a time when survivors almost never did, and that choice reshaped how the country talked about sexual violence for the decades that followed.
Thirty years on, she's still recovering, still speaking when she can, and still, by every account, refusing to let two men define the rest of her life.
Sources
3. Minister Pieter Groenewald cancels parole for Alison Botha's attackers — South African Government
5. 'Walking miracle' Alison Botha continues to fight a year after devastating brain aneurysm — News24
