Chris Barnard (no relation to the heart surgeon) has been attacked at his home near Nelspruit and tied up. He has been injured but apparently not seriously and was treated by paramedics.
The 73-year old writer refused to go to hospital. Mr. Barnard is a famous Afrikaans author who has received the Hertzog Prize twice, in 1973 for his novel Mahala and the short-story collection Duiwel-in-die-bos, as well as for his life’s work in 1991.
His film director wife, Katinka Heyns, was not at home during the attack. The assailants made off with Mr. Barnard’s Isuzu pick-up truck, commonly called a bakkie in South Africa.
According to Sandra Jacobs, the marketing director for the Innibos National Arts Festival in Nelspruit, he was “very traumatised by the incident and did not want to speak to the media”.
A number of Afrikaans authors and intellectuals have been murdered in recent years, including geologist Louw Rabie, brother of the Sestiger Jan Rabie, André Potgieter, Lisbé Smuts-Smith, head of the Afrikaans department at the University of Cape Town, Pieter Pieterse, actor Randall de Jager, among others.