DURBAN - After escaping death as her boss’s three pit bulls ripped off her nose, lip, ears and savaged her thighs, legs, and hands, Selina Kokolosi now faces another challenge as her grandchildren cannot recognise her and are avoiding her because of how she looks.
Speaking to the Daily News through her nephew, Tebogo Kokolosi, who helped translate his aunt’s exact words, Kokolosi told of her worst challenge – that some family members feared her now because of how she looks after surgery.
“I may have survived death, but sadly, I now have to live with the fact that I am not the person my grandchildren knew. They fear being around me, they cry when they see me because they do not believe that I am their grandmother.
“The young ones who used to love me are struggling to accept me because the grandmother they knew had ears, lips, nose and looked like other human beings. Now I look completely different and like young children.
“I now need assistance to do basic things such as eating and holding food in my mouth.
“My life has been destroyed… I do not believe anyone would want to employ me as a domestic worker because they will be scared of how I look. All I want is justice for what happened to me. My former employer never showed any remorse. They did not even call or visit me in hospital.
“I cry each time I think of how my boss was only concerned about the dogs and not my life,” she said.
After spending several weeks at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital where doctors had to perform various surgical processes, including skin grafting to repair Kokolosi, she finally rejoined her family in Blomhof, North West, after being discharged on March 11.
She is expected to return to the hospital on May 9, where she will be undergoing another surgical process for her ears and lips.
Previously her employers, the Mosters, refused to comment when the publication approached them after the horrific attack.
On Sunday when Marno Moster was contacted he said it was a Sunday and that he must not be disturbed this way. He provided a number of a lawyer to be contacted.
However, when dialled the number does not exist.
After the newspaper published the Kokolosi story on February 2, Godrich Gardee Attorneys reached out to the Daily News with an intention to offer their services pro bono and litigate on behalf of Kokolosi.
“We were told last week that the previous lawyer for the Mosters had since terminated his services, but we would like to believe that there would have been a handover. We are waiting for their response, if it doesn’t come, we will begin the process of litigation,” she said.
In January, Kokolosi found herself in the jaws of the three pit bulls when she reported for work at the home of her boss, Chandre van der Linde, and her partner, Marno Moster, in Potchefstroom.
The dogs are always locked up but, for some reason, that day the dogs were loose and she was attacked as soon she entered the house.
According to ER24 spokesperson Russel Meiring, ER24 and Mooirivier Beskerming arrived at 8.26am to find Kokolosi lying helplessly inside the Moster’s home by the front door.
Meiring said that, according to the information at their disposal, the dogs had tried to attack a man who had tried to jump over the fence to rescue Kokolosi.
He also said that bystanders on the scene explained that the man shot at the dogs because they had tried to attack him.
Meiring said that the dogs had tried Kokolosi had been working for the Mosters as a domestic worker for three years and was paid a monthly salary of R1 000.
Daily News