Stabbed for handbag

A Cape Town businesswoman was attacked and stabbed at the Ballito Junction centre on Monday night – after she shared her pizza with a beggar.

After eating at Mamma G’s restaurant, Anja Visagie was walking to her car when she saw a young beggar asking for food.

She gave him her leftover pizza, which he took and walked away. Suddenly he turned around and grabbed her handbag.

“I did not want to let go, because all of my belongings were in the bag,” said Visagie, who had landed in Durban that morning for a business trip.

When she did not want to let go, he pulled out a homemade knife and stabbed her in the arm.

“He held up the weapon and looked straight at me, which is when I felt that he might stab me somewhere else and I let go,” she said.

He ran towards the Lifestyle Centre through the cordoned-off road works section and although she followed him at first, she quickly realised that it was pointless.

“The MammaG’s staff were very helpful and phoned my family and they took me to the hospital,” she said.

She had to get five stitches, three on the one wound and two on the other, but luckily they was not too deep, because the weapon was quite blunt. Visagie also got a good look at her attacker.

“The young, black man was about 1,8m tall and thin, wearing an orange long-sleeved collared shirt, grey pants and a floppy type of hat,” she said.

Her handbag contained the rental car keys, as well as her own car keys, phone, wallet with all her cards and drivers licence.

Her husband will have to fly up from Cape Town with her passport, so that she can fly home, as her ID was also in the stolen bag.