Durban - After being held up in her ransacked Durban North home by two robbers, a 24-year-old woman was then forced to drive the men to KwaMashu because they didn’t know how to drive and needed a getaway car.
The robbers also gave their startled victim R50, from the R3 500 they had stolen, to buy petrol.
A combination of criminal inexperience on the part of the screwdriver-wielding robbers – one in his 20s and the other a teenager – and the calmness and quick thinking of their victim, photographer Simone Holmes, meant she and her domestic worker Princess Makhaye, escaped unharmed during the robbery last week.
Holmes returned home at about 11.15am, walking in while the robbery was in progress and found that Makhaye had been tied up.
“A guy walked towards me with a screwdriver and gestured to me to keep quiet. He told me not to scream and said if I did not scream he would not stab me,” Holmes said on Wednesday.
Although her heart sank when she saw him, she remained calm.
The intruders stole money, Holmes’s French passport, three laptops, a computer, and some of her and her housemates’ clothing.
When the pair were ready to leave they wanted to lock Holmes in a bedroom.
Holmes, fearing this might lead to violence, quickly said the doors did not lock and they should take her car and go.
That’s when the robbers came unstuck.
“They said they could not drive… and that I must drive them,” Holmes said.
The men told her to take them to “the market” – Warwick Triangle in Durban’s CBD – but Holmes did not know where that was and asked them to direct her.
The pair got lost and they ended up on the N2 north.
“I started to freak out because I had no petrol and told them I was going to run out. So the guy gave me R50 of my money back.”
Making conversation as they drove, Holmes asked the older robber if he went to church. He said no, and then asked if she did.
Remembering that her grandmother had once avoided a robbery by preaching to her perpetrators, Holmes continued: “I told him Jesus loved them and that what they were doing was wrong, but he said God would forgive him.”
The man said they stole her belongings as they also wanted “nice things”, so Holmes advised him to get an education. He said he dropped out of school in Grade 10.
During the drive Holmes negotiated to get her laptop and pocket camera back, which the robbers agreed to. She also kept her phone after telling them she would blacklist it, so it would be useless to them.
Eventually Holmes was made to turn off at KwaMashu and told to stop at the taxi rank.
She then asked the teenager why he was not in school, but he just shrugged.
After unpacking their loot, they told Holmes to leave. Holmes asked them to hand back her laptop and camera as they had promised, but they would not do so.
After reporting the crime to two police officers nearby, Holmes returned with the police to the taxi rank, but the two men could not be found.
Police confirmed that a docket on house robbery had been opened.
Robin Candy, chairman of the Greenwood Park Community Policing Forum, said Holmes was lucky that she had managed to keep her cool and that the criminals were inexperienced.
“These were entry-level criminals, and she is very lucky,” Candy said.
He had spoken to Holmes, who said she had received excellent service from the police.
While housebreaking numbers were down in the Durban North and Greenwood Park area, the nature of these crimes was a concern.
“These criminals are not concerned if people are at home. We get numerous housebreaking reports during the day,” Candy said.
Housebreakers in the area were brazen, smashing down gates and kicking in front doors, before helping themselves to valuables.
“In a recent incident, suspects towed a heavy gate off its rails before breaking into the house.”
Candy said it was sad that people took such incidents in their stride and saw it as “a normal way of life”, while people overseas were shocked at the stories emerging from South Africa. – Additional reporting by Yusuf Moolla
The Mercury