Pretoria - Dr Hannelie Groenewald had been in a meeting in Kabul strategising about an anticipated attack in their area later that day, when the Taliban targeted her own home and wiped out her entire family in a hail of bullets.
She had been expected to be part of a medical team to respond to any possible future violent attack.
“An attack was expected on that day. Little did I know it would take place a few hours later at my house, killing everybody I dearly loved,” she told a media briefing on Friday.
“It was the deafening sound of the launch, and the blast from the ‘clean-out’ rocket that alerted her that an attack had taken place.
“It was procedural for the police to destroy a building in which attackers had entered, to make sure none survived.
“Everything was burnt to the ground, and it is only by a miracle of God that I had bodies to say goodbye to,” she said.
The doctor’s husband Werner, their son Jean-Pierrie and daughter Rode, were killed when the Afghanistan militants stormed their compound, killing a security guard before entering her house with guns blazing. “My husband was in a meeting in the basement when they shot him. The children were found dead in Jean-Pierre’s room,” she said.
Two men had entered the house, heavily armed and wearing suicide vests.
They had killed another person hiding in her consulting room before going upstairs to find and kill her children, whose bodies were riddled with bullet wounds.
“I find consolation in the fact that they died instantly,” the mother said.
The Groenewalds had been living in Kabul for almost 12 years when they were attacked on November 29.
On Friday she said they had known of the dangers in Afghanistan when they moved there, but had never anticipated being victims.
They loved the place and its people and had raised their children there.
“If I had to choose again, I would do exactly the same,” she said.
Groenewald had been a pastor in the Pretoria East Moreletapark Ned Geref Kerk before they left, and was the director of the local branch of US-based organisation, Partnership in Academics and Development, which provides education and training for children, orphans and others in need.
Hannelie worked in a local hospital, and also had a consulting room at home and provided health care needs to victims of the strife.
She explained: “When a country is in war, the medical and education sectors are the first to break down.”
“We had stepped in and served the people of Afghanistan in their pain and poverty after being inflicted with war for over 30 years,” she said.
Her children were “very happy”, and had a broader view of the world because they had grown up in a country torn apart by war and poverty. She said: “They saw what we did and the satisfaction it brought, and kids are happy when their parents are happy.”
They were typical South African children who loved their braai, boerewors and rugby.
Hannelie prepared South African meals and they lived like a South African family.
Hannelie spoke to the media before a memorial service at the church, where relatives, friends and congregants paid tribute to the family for the ultimate sacrifice they had made. Dominee Hendrik Saayman told mourners the Groenewalds had selflessly served the people of trouble-torn Afghanistan and sacrificed their own lives.
“They gave up a comfortable life, gave up their professions to go and serve in Afghanistan, in the service of humanity and for others.
“How humble is that?” he asked.
He dedicated the ceremony to the entire family and their response to a higher call to work in development and aid, and spoke of the hardships they had lived through, in a ruined country where poverty was rife.
Saayman spoke of a visit he made to the family five years ago, and said the experience of survival in extreme destruction had humbled him.
After the memorial service the coffins were put into waiting hearses and taken for a private funeral.
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Pretoria News