Bloemfontein – “We’ve come full circle. What was intended to harm has now been transformed into something positive and productive.”
These were the words of a visibly emotional Yolande Korkie, addressing a packed hall of learners from Grey College in Bloemfontein, the school where her husband, Pierre, had taught English and Biology and coached athletics for 24 years, before going to Yemen to continue his teaching career and assisting with agricultural activities.
Yolande was launching “558 Days”, the book she wrote with the help of Bloemfontein based writer, Maretha Maartens, about her family’s ordeal, after she and Pierre were abducted by al-Qaeda rebels in the city of Taiz in Yemen on 27 May 2013.
She had been released after about eight months after intervention by the South African based humanitarian organisation “Gift of the Givers”.
Pierre remained in captivity for 558 days altogether, before he was killed in a botched rescue attempt by US Navy Seals, who were trying to free American journalist Luke Somers in December last year, allegedly only hours before he was due to be released, following intense negotiations.
Pierre, Yolande and their two teenage children, Pieter-Ben and Lize-Mari, had moved to this war-stricken, desperately poor country on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsuala in 2009. They had their first taste of life in Yemen two years earlier when they spent six months there on an exchange programme offered by the University of Sana’a. At that point the war-ravaged country was looking for English lecturers to help improve the lives of its residents.
“Pierre really had a passion for poor people,” Yolande said on Monday. “We came back from that first visit and realized a part of us had remained behind. At that stage Pierre was already a mature man with over 20 years of experience in teaching. And we asked ourselves what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives. And why we couldn’t go back for five or ten years to really try to help these people re-build their lives. It was ultimately a decision our whole family made. We truly had some wonderful moments there.”
The book starts with the events of that fateful day in May 2013. Ironically the Korkies were finalizing preparations to return to South Africa for Pierre’s father’s funeral, when the al-Qaeda operatives ambushed them on the way to the stables in Taiz where Yolande gave riding lessons and treated and trained horses.
They were plucked out of their vehicle, separated, and taken to an unknown location somewhere in the country’s isolated desert area. They were later reunited and kept together for most of the time. During their captivity, they were subjected to intense interrogation, deprivation and emotional torture.
One of the most difficult things they had to cope with, was not knowing whether their two children were alive and well.
On Monday her son Pieter-Ben, who had been home-schooled by Yolande in Yemen and has just completed his matric, echoed this: “The worst thing on our side was not knowing what was happening, not getting any news from our parents for so long.”
The two Korkie children were initially taken in by family friends in Yemen just after the kidnapping, and were later brought back to South Africa. For Yolande, to have been reunited with them after her release, was the absolute highlight of her 558-day long ordeal.
She applauded Anas Al Hamiti, the Yemen Office Manager of the Gift of the Givers Foundation, who had been instrumental in her release.
“Negotiating for someone’s freedom is like opening a bomb”, Al Hamati said in Bloemfontein just after the launch. He explained how difficult it was to enter into negotiations with al-Qaeda.
“You have to go into places under their control, then try to find the right people to speak to, and then do your best to find common ideas to discuss. They were sometimes very aggressive and didn’t even want to listen to me. The first time I managed to talk to them, they demanded 100 000 US dollars, just to start negotiations. I went to them with empty hands and no experience in talking to kidnappers. But I just knew I had to try.
“We are a South African organisation and these were South Africans in trouble. I wanted to show the world that the Yemenis are actually soft people. Not everyone is like al-Qaeda.”
What made negotiations even more dangerous was the constant presence of American drones operating throughout Yemen.
“More than 2200 Yemenis were killed in drone attacks in 2015”, Al Hamati says. “So many days during the negotiations I really didn’t think I would make it back home alive.”
He agrees that getting Yolande Korkie released without paying any form of ransom, was highly unusual. As to what would have happened if Gift of the Givers did not intervene, he is careful to speculate.
“There are currently hostages from different nationalities being held by al-Qaeda. Some of them have been in captivity for up to seven years.”
Even though she found herself on both sides of the drama – first as hostage and then later as part of a hostage family, Yolande Korkie is hesitant to offer advice about how to act in a hostage situation.
“I would rather want to shift the focus to those standing alongside the family and ask them to consider the following: Please make sure that your role and actions are steeped in unconditional love. Guard your hearts so that no condemnation form on your lips regarding decisions the aching families or the hostage has to take.”
The process of writing the book started during captivity, when Yolande kept a journal of what was happening to them.
“Then after I was released I held back because I knew that the story wasn’t just my story, but it was also Pierre’s story and I wanted to wait for him. And then when Pierre died I realised that the story wasn’t my story, it wasn’t Pierre’s story, this was God’s story. And I sat down and I wrote. I started in February and I finished in September 2015.”
The dilemma of how to convey Pierre’s side of the story during his solitary confinement for 11 months was solved when the American government gave her Pierre’s journals that they had seized during their raid.
African News Agency
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