The mother of former South African and now Australian rugby player Clyde Rathbone was recovering from injuries sustained during a burglary at her home on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast on Wednesday morning, her husband said.
This comes less than a week after a newspaper article quoted her son as saying that since he had moved to Australia, he had a ”total lack of stress” and never worried about the safety of his fiancée, whereas in South Africa he constantly worried about his family’s safety.
Rathbone was part of the Australian rugby team that was defeated by the Springboks in the Tri-Nations tournament in Durban on Saturday. Before he emigrated, he captained the under-21 Springbok team.
Glynis Rathbone, who was a member of the Amanzimtoti community policing forum, and her husband Alan, were asleep at their Warner Beach home when they were suddenly woken by screams from their teenage son Luke at about 3am.
”He said he saw a head popping up at the foot of his bed,” said Alan Rathbone.
”He thought he was dreaming, but then the head popped up again and he let out a loud scream and my wife and I jumped out of bed.”
”Glynis thought they were trying to take Luke so she ran past me towards him and the next I saw she was hanging over the balcony and then she disappeared. She just went for them. She was screaming and she has a very loud voice,” he chuckled.
”When I looked over she was lying on the ground motionless. I thought she was dead.”
The Rathbones’ business is downstairs and their living quarters are upstairs.
A doctor friend and an ambulance were summoned and she was taken to the nearby Kingsway hospital for treatment to five broken ribs and a fractured hand.
”She is fine, she is stable,” he said.
He dismissed suggestions that the burglary might be related to comments by his son on crime, carried by the Saturday Star newspaper.
He is reported to have said in a Fox TV interview: ”When I’m away from home and my fiancée is in Canberra, I don’t have to worry about her… whereas in SA wherever she’s going or my brothers or my mother or any part of my family, you are constantly worried. That’s just the reality about living in certain parts of SA.”
Alan Rathbone added: ”This is not about Clyde, this is about his mother. It was a burglary and it could have happened anywhere in the world.”
He said the police had been ”fantastic”.
”It was such a shock. One moment I was sleeping and the next, everyone was screaming around me. It all happened so quickly.”
The burglars are still at large.
Police spokesperson Captain Vishnu Naidoo said the robbers took a cellphone and clothing, but later dropped the clothes when confronted by a neighbour. – Sapa