RT Duncan Reyburn: Three men with a single gun and two knives between them broke into my home in Pretoria twenty years ago. I was held captive with th...

RT Duncan Reyburn
Three men with a single gun and two knives between them broke into my home in Pretoria twenty years ago. I was held captive with those I was living with. After nearly two hours, aware that I and others were likely to be executed, I found a gap, grabbed a stupidly inadequate shower curtain pole as a weapon, and fought back. Actually, that pole turned out to be a better weapon than I expected.

To cut a rather messy story short, in the midst of a flurry of activity, I got shot at, at close range. By God’s mercy, I didn’t get hit. I should be dead, honestly, given that the gun was fired so close, just over a metre away, but the bullet miraculously ended up embedded in the wall opposite me. (I still can’t explain this although I have more speculations about the presence of the supernatural now than I did before this happened to me.) I continued in close combat because, thank heavens, that one bullet was the only one the attackers had. Unfortunately, one of them stabbed me (adrenaline is amazing — I only realised this later), but I still managed to chase them out of the house. (Thumping miscreants at full force with a steel pole worked wonders.)

A few years later, I saw a photograph of the gunman who’d shot at me in a newspaper — he was a Mozambican who’d been sentenced to life in prison for murdering someone else (RIP) who lived not far from me. So many of my friends have stories like this, and worse. Fighting to live is fine. And that’s all I’m gonna say on this.