'Raped, nearly decapitated, given devastating diagnosis now I have to relearn everything'

A mother who survived unimaginable trauma has shared the “miracle” second near-death experience which forced her to “re-learn everything” after she survived being nearly decapitated during a gang rape.

A traumatic year in 2024 saw Alison Botha’s attackers released before she was diagnosed with a burst brain aneurysm. At one point she admitted: “I can’t even inspire myself at the moment, which is very frightening.”

It remains uncertain whether the condition developed as a consequence of the many physical traumas she has suffered.

At just 27, Alison was kidnapped and subjected to a horrific rape. Her attackers disembowelled her, leaving her clutching her own intestines while her near-totally severed head “flopped backwards and almost rested between [her] shoulder blades”.

Originally from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Alison was employed as an insurance broker when, on December 18, 1994, after an evening out with friends, she headed home.

She remembered that “I had just turned off the engine and flicked off the headlights – it was so routine that I didn’t all in one swift movement”. As Alison reached for her washing on the passenger seat, she was left stunned when a fair-haired man suddenly forced his way into her car.

Frans Du Toit, the son of a police officer, threatened to kill her while claiming he meant no harm and just needed the car for an hour.

Alison recalled feeling “strangely immobilised”. Du Toit made the chilling declaration: “You live in number one don’t you”.

She suggested he simply take the vehicle, yet he insisted he “wanted company”, according to Morbid. Du Toit drove past a group of people before encountering Theuns Krugeras.

Du Toit, operating under the false name “Clinton”, shifted the driver’s seat forward as Krugeras climbed in, presenting Alison as “meet my friend Susan” — yet another fabricated identity.

The drive towards a suburb outside Port Elizabeth was disturbingly silent until Du Toit broke it with, “Theuns doesn’t speak good English.” Du Toit slowed the vehicle and pulled up on the sand. Krugeras climbed out, and Clinton then raped Alison.

Krugeras began to assault her too but abruptly halted, crying out “no I can’t do this” and inadvertently calling his accomplice “Frans”. Alison committed this name firmly to memory.

Frans then warned Alison, “if we take you into town now you’ll go to the police”. Du Toit posed a deeply sinister question: “what do you think Oom Nick would want us to do with her.”

Oom Nick is an Afrikaans reference to Satan. Krugeras replied, “I think he wants us to kill her.” The pair ordered Alison to remove her jewellery and clothing before Du Toit strangled her into unconsciousness, muttering apologies as he loomed above her.

Upon regaining consciousness, she watched in horror as a man’s arm swept across her face while he sliced her throat.

Recounting the deeply traumatic ordeal, she said she “could hear the flesh slit.”

It subsequently emerged her throat had been slashed 16 times by her attackers, leaving Alison perilously close to decapitation.

Alison managed to roll onto her stomach. She said: “I tried to hold my breath but I realised I had no control over my breathing – I moved my hand up to cover my neck – my whole hand disappeared into it, but it seemed to have worked – the sound was silenced.”

Pretending to be dead, she overheard one attacker query whether she had survived, with the other replying “no one can survive that”.

Desperately fighting for survival and resolute in her desire to see justice done, despite her catastrophic injuries, she carved her attackers’ names into the sand, movingly adding “I love mom.”

In an extraordinary twist, she spotted some lights and realised she was far closer to the road than she had initially thought.

Mustering every last ounce of strength, she hauled herself to her knees and, upon touching her stomach, felt something “tepid, wet and slimy”.

To her absolute horror, she looked down to find her intestines protruding from a wound in her abdomen. Having endured more than 50 stab wounds to her abdomen, she utilised a shirt to hold her intestines in position, while fragments of debris and broken glass cut into her hands and knees. Half of her thyroid was protruding from her neck.

She said: “My head had flopped backwards and almost rested between my shoulder blades. I expected to feel something but was completely taken aback when my hand disappeared inside me almost like I had swallowed myself.”

With one hand supporting her head upright and the other containing her intestines, she succeeded in crawling to the centre of the road and lying horizontally to compel passing vehicles to stop.

Upon spotting the first car, she said she “frantically waved as fast as I could” – but the vehicle swerved around her. The next thing Alison saw was a woman screaming and a young man kneeling over her.

It was 2.45am by the time she was discovered – meaning the period from her abduction to her rescue had lasted just an hour and a half.

Tiaan Eilerd, a vet, was enjoying drinks with friends at a pub when he came across Alison lying in the road.

He immediately assessed her vital signs and successfully repositioned her thyroid back into her throat – a decision Alison would later describe as a “lifeline”.

The vet was astonished that Alison had survived, comparing her appearance to a “creature straight out of a Dickens novel” with her neck horrifically slashed open “almost ear to ear”.

Had Tiaan not acted quickly to reposition her thyroid, she would almost certainly not have survived. Alison remembered that one of her attackers expressed a desire to destroy her reproductive organs.

Yet, against all odds, she went on to have two children. After extensive surgery, Alison was moved to the ICU.

As news of her ordeal circulated, police discovered that her assailants were already on bail for rape. Both men, who described themselves as Satanists, pleaded guilty to charges of kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder.

Du Toit confessed to attacking another woman but claimed he lost the “desire to kill her” following the assault. However, in October 2024, Alison’s ghostwriter Marianne Thamm revealed to Daily Maverick that the mother had suffered an aneurysm in late September.

The people of South Africa rallied behind her, contributing to her trust fund to help cover the costs of her medical treatment. “I am so grateful for those of you who supported my Gofundme page and now all my medical care, ” she said.

“I am so grateful for how I’ve recovered – its miraculous.” Alison’s BackABuddy campaign now sits at 332,005 Rand.

In July last year she wrote: “Lovely, special people – may whatever you are going through be short-lived and may you take courage from the fact that it is only a ‘patch’.”

She said: “What is wonderful about a ‘patch’ is that you enter on one side – often unexpectedly – but if you keep going – despite the weight and depression of it – there will come a time when you miraculously exit on the other side.”

“Patches always have an end – so take heart and keep moving. Joy, enthusiasm and happiness are at the other end of the patch – for you, for me, and for everyone like us.”

Back in 1995, both offenders were handed life sentences with no prospect of release.

Alison turned to activism when legislation threatened to alter in 2012, cautioning: “can you imagine if just 100 lifers were reintroduced to society without rehabilitation”.

Her advocacy efforts proved instrumental in ensuring such criminals remained imprisoned.

Nevertheless, on 4 July 2023, Du Toit and Krugeras, having served merely 28 years of their life sentence, were freed on parole with Alison not being notified.

Writing on her Facebook page, Alison Botha conveyed her shock: “The day I hoped and prayed would never come. When I was asked ‘How will you feel if they ever get parole?’ – my immediate answer was always – ‘I’m hoping I’ll never find out.'”.

Alison has chronicled her harrowing experience and remarkable survival in her book “I Have Life” and the film “Alison”.

She has spoken to hundreds of individuals, inspiring them with her testimony of how mindset, faith, and determination enabled her to endure. She was bestowed with the distinguished Rotarian Paul Harris Award for ‘Courage Beyond the Norm’ and became the first ever recipient of Femina magazine’s ‘Woman of Courage’ award, while also being named Port Elizabeth’s Citizen of the Year.

On February 4 2025 The Minister of Correctional Services, Dr Pieter Groenewald cancelled parole for Frans du Toit and Theuns Kruger, the convicted attackers of Alison Botha.

Despite being recognised for her remarkable courage in confronting death, she initially had difficulties following surgery in September 2024.

“As a positive person and an inspirational speaker, I find this hard to admit, I can’t even inspire myself at the moment, which is very frightening,” Alison disclosed in a Facebook post.

“And it is only when you are depleted of all your strength and reserves that you recognise your weaknesses. I know from experience that I WILL recover from this too, but I need to accept that it takes time.”

Now, she has detailing her second “near-death experience”, the mother explained why she looked “different.”

Alison said: “2024 was a difficult year for me. It was the year they released the two men who had attacked me in 1994 unexpectedly, and I spiralled into a depression and anxiety, as you can imagine.

Alison is now a public speaker who uses her own survival story to inspire other women. She said: “I tried to carry on with the work I love doing. It was hard though.”

Then one day her life took a turn for the worse once more. She told her TikTok: “I was at home, I woke up with a terrible headache.

“Now, I’ve suffered with headaches ever since my throat was cut during my attack and this muscle has always caused me problems,” she said, pointing to her neck.

She added: “And I think we thought it was just that and a bad migraine or something. But my son eventually found me later that day collapsed on the bathroom floor. We tried to treat it at home – we got some medical advice.

“After a day or two I was taken to hospital and did scans and it was found that I had a burst brain aneurysm .

“I don’t remember any of this. I don’t remember what happened. I’m only speaking to you now on behalf of what I’ve been told. And on behalf of my family, who really had a hard time – it was tough. They were told that I wasn’t going to make it.

“I underwent brain surgeries – they shaved my head which is why I now have the short grey hair. I lost my vision, I couldn’t speak , I couldn’t move – I couldn’t turn myself over in bed.

“My son, who came to see me in hospital, said ‘Mummy, I was speaking to you inside because I knew you were still inside.’ I think that’s part of the reason I pulled through. Because they didn’t give up on me. And I never gave up on me.

“I had several brain surgeries. I was there for months. Eventually, I was released to a rehab facility and I had to relearn everything. Everything I had always taken for granted.

“I had to learn to sit again – I had to learn to walk – first in a walker and then with crutches. I had to learn to eat again to use the bathroom. All those kinds of things had to happen before I could be released back home.”

Released from rehab, Alison continues to recover at home.