Sunday Times, South Africa - July 4, 1999
Michael Schmidt

Christa de Jongh van Arkel believes she was attacked for helping put an armed robber behind bars.

Since the attack, terrifying flashbacks of death threats by a gang of armed robbers have come flooding back to haunt her.

To add to her terror, De Jongh van Arkel now has to wait an agonising six months to hear whether the attacker infected her with the AIDS virus when he stabbed her in the hip with a syringe containing blood and an unknown substance.

Last Friday's incident has police baffled. Now residents of Meyerton, south of Johannesburg, are afraid the syringe attacker may strike again.

This week De Jongh van Arkel, 38, said she had suffered a campaign of intimidation ever since she helped put a robber in prison for 10 years.

In 1997 she arrived at the Meyerton Golf Club, where she works, and was confronted by the robber and his gang.

"I had just unlocked the gate of the club when three men ran up to me. One was armed with a gun, one with a knife and one with a rope.

"They took my handbag and jewellery, then forced me to open the safe and took between R30 000 and R47 000. They then tied me up and fled in my car - driven by a fourth man. It was later found abandoned."

In what appeared to be symbolic of the gang's callous disregard for the law, they gagged De Jongh van Arkel with the national flag during their ransacking of the clubhouse.

"But I identified one of the robbers as a caddie who worked at the club. He was arrested and put on trial. I testified against him and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison," she said.

However, the ordeal wasn't over. Her testimony led to threats against her and her family.

"Before the trial even started, we started receiving telephonic death threats," she said. "The police tapped our phones. To our shock, the wiretapping showed that the calls had come from the Meyerton police station. But there was no way the investigators could identify the actual callers.

"Our cars were also broken into and stripped. My husband, Kosie, and I eventually sold our house and moved. We also got an unlisted telephone number. Then one day, I got a call from a man who threatened to kill my daughter, Chantell."

Chantell, 15, said this week that she believed the man who stabbed her mother was one of the three robbers who are still at large. "If I had been there I would have caught that guy and hurt him," she said.

De Jongh van Arkel explained how upset her daughter had been after the attack. "Chantell was very worried. She wanted to know if it was all right to hug and kiss me."

Although she was given a shot of the anti-AIDS drug AZT and a course of antibiotics, and even though preliminary tests indicate she is not HIV-positive, De Jongh van Arkel will only know for sure if she is in the clear when her final results become available on Christmas Day.

Until then, she will undergo regular tests to monitor her health.

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