South African Nobel laureate for literature Nadine Gordimer was assaulted and robbed in her own home on Saturday, according to local police. Ms. Gordimer, who is 83, refused to give thieves
her wedding ring, so they attacked her.
He said the Gordimer was robbed of cash and jewelry when three unknown men gained entrance to her home at about 10:30 a.m. local time on Thursday.
Gordimer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, is noted for her novels and short stories about the inhumanity of apartheid. Several were once banned in her own country.
Tsunke said in a statement released Saturday that the unarmed men held Gordimer and her domestic worker up. One of the men took Gordimer to a bedroom and demanded she open the safe.
She handed over cash and jewelry, but would not part with her wedding ring from her marriage to art dealer Reinhold Cassirer, who died in 2001.
"The suspects then locked both Gordimer and her domestic worker in a store room and fled the scene," Tsunke said.
He said the domestic worker, whose name he did not know, had managed to press a panic button, triggering an alert with a security company.
Tsunke said guards arrived about half an hour later and released the women.
He said a case of house robbery and common assault was opened but no arrests had been made.
South Africa has become notorious for its high rate of violent crime and there is concern about the negative publicity about the country before the soccer World Cup it will host in 2010.
Perhaps the officials should worry less about the negative publicity and more about protecting honest citizens from criminals.
