They left her with 30 stab wounds and a throat cut 16 times. She held her own head together and crawled toward life anyway.
They left her with 30 stab wounds and a throat cut 16 times. She held her own head together and crawled toward life anyway.
It was December 1994 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Alison Botha, 27, was pulling into her flat after a quiet evening with friends when a blade pressed against her throat. Before she could scream, she was forced into her own car. A second man appeared. They drove her into the darkness, far from the city, to a place where no one could hear.
What happened in that remote bushland was designed to erase her. She was attacked with a violence meant to ensure she’d never speak of it. Stabbed more than 30 times. Her throat slashed 16 times, so deeply her head was barely attached. They left her in the dirt, certain she was gone.
But Alison Botha wasn’t gone.
With her throat gaping open, she made a choice. She placed one hand against the wound, physically holding herself together, and began to crawl. Every movement was agony. Every breath a rebellion. She dragged her shattered body across the dirt toward the road, refusing to let the darkness win.
A passing driver saw her and couldn’t believe she was alive. Doctors couldn’t either. But Alison survived the surgeries, the trauma, the psychological wreckage of that night. And then she did something even more extraordinary—she refused to let it define her.
She became a motivational speaker. She wrote her story. She stood in front of audiences and said: I am still here. Her attackers were caught and sentenced to life in prison, but Alison didn’t wait for justice to reclaim her life. She took it back herself.
Her name isn’t whispered with pity. It’s spoken with reverence. Because Alison Botha didn’t just survive—she proved that even when everything is taken from you, the one thing no one can destroy is your will to keep going.
Some people endure the unthinkable. Alison Botha walked through it and came out the other side carrying a message: You are stronger than what tried to break you.
