As Ansie Nel sat bound next to her badly bruised 84-year-old mother, Miemie du Toit, and domestic worker, Sophie Mpila, a man armed with a gun told her he would cut her fingers off one by one until she told him where the safe was.

Nel had been in her kitchen on a farm in Mara just outside Mbombela on Friday March 11, when five armed men stormed her house and overpowered her at about 13:00.

Her husband, Hendrik, was still working out on the farm at this time.

“They came into the kitchen, held a gun to my head, grabbed a knife from me, held it to my side and told me to be quiet. One of the men said he had killed before and would do it again,” Ansie said.

She said the robbers had tied her up and took her to a room in the house, and then brought Mpila in as well.

“I heard my mother enter the house. She is 84 and very frail. I could hear her struggling as they man-handled her, and then they just threw her into the room we were in. I had to go and pick her up off the floor. “They told me they would cut off my fingers one by one if I did not tell them where the safe was.”

Ansie said they were in the room for half an hour before Hendrik arrived back from working on the farm.

“They were waiting for him. I heard the door open and then I heard them beating my husband. They held a gun to his head. Hendrik had a gun on him, which they ripped off him. They were so brutal that they ripped his pants in the process,” she said.

Ansie said Hendrik went to the safe and luckily found the key to open it. “I think that if he had not found the key, the situation could have been much worse.

“My mother was taken to the hospital. She has since been released, but she has bruising all over her face and arms. I am pleased we are all alive, but I feel terrible for my mother,” said an emotional Ansie.

She thanked Bossies Community Justice, Hi-Tech, ER24, the police as well as several other members of the community who had supported and helped them following their traumatic ordeal.

The Nelspruit police confirmed the incident and said three firearms as well as other items had been stolen from the house.

The police spokesperson, Constable Bongani Mokoena, said the incident was still being investigated and no arrests have been made at this stage.