UMDONI’s most famous holidaymaker Steve Hofmeyr has hit back after ‘horrific’ comments on social media which portray him as a ‘pariah’ rather than ‘victim’ after he and his wife, Janine, were burgled at their Pennington home recently.
“I didn’t rob. I was robbed,” he said when the Mail interviewed him this week.
Instead of sympathy, he was castigated by many for his angry comment in other media shortly after the burglary: ‘The stench still lingers in my home’.
“The comments that followed on social media were horrific,” said Mr Hofmeyr. “Some people said I should have been shot and killed.
“My culture and family do not scale fences to rape the elderly at midnight. Those nasty comments boggle the mind, but they go to prove that, mostly, we don’t have the mind-set nor civil sensibilities to make this a better country… not as long as the criminal is glorified and reality is slovenly smeared with a politically correct veneer.”
Mr Hofmeyr said their sausage dogs, Ouma and Trompie, played a big role in alerting them to the intruders and chased the robbers off.
He and his wife, Janine were home alone that night after they had taken their children to the airport the day before, as they had to start school.
The robbers gained access into the house about 3am by breaking the security door open with a screwdriver.
The dogs’ barking woke him up and he went to investigate. The robbers had already fled with a television, X-Box console with games, a DVD player and some remote controls.
Mr Hofmeyr said they were lucky that nothing happened to them, but admitted that they were quite unnerved.
“I have owned this holiday home for a decade and nothing like this has ever happened before. A person is not safe anywhere.”
He said the event would not cause them to cut their holiday short.
With Pennington being a known ‘hot spot’ for crime, he suggested that radio communication between residents might help.
He would also like to see the re-introduction of commandoes and for home-owners to be given more rights to protect themselves inside their walls.
He has no plans to sell his home after the incident.
“Pennington remains paradise compared to what happens elsewhere in South Africa.”
