"Just try to keep positive," she told the Sunday Tribune.
The 26-year-old teacher from Mowat Park Girls' High whispered words of encouragement from her hospital bed when she heard that other women had been hijacked in Durban since her ordeal.
Several women poured their hearts out to the Sunday Tribune last week, in the aftermath of a spate of hijackings, saying they and their families were fearful of their driving alone, especially at night. People said they were changing the way they arranged their driving schedules.
KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Mamunye Ngobeni said she was confident the crack hijacking task team that nailed Seevnarain's assailants would hunt perpetrators down and bring them to book.
Ngobeni said she acknowledged the heartache that victims of violence experienced and gave her assurances that the police would not rest until the criminals were caught.
Seven days after she was abducted in Shallcross and flung off a 60m bridge, Seevnarain's determination shone through in an exclusive interview. "I have hope. Thank you, thank you," she said quietly and softly in response to goodwill wishes. "I can't really talk: my ribs hurt."
Wincing as she shifted her petite frame beneath the sheets, Seevnarain said she was sore, but saw light at the end of the tunnel.
"The doctors say I will be out of hospital in four weeks if I can handle a wheelchair."
Stroking the hospital sheets, the once vivacious and confident Seevnarain looked like a child and often turned to her doting parents Jeewan and Anika Seevnarain for affirmation.
"I have to work up the courage to talk about this," she said, her voice quavering.
Yesterday scores of family and friends visited her private ward at St Augustine's. They bore flowers, chocolates and small gifts.
Talking in hushed tones, they each spent a few minutes with Seevnarain.
"She just doesn't want to think about what happened," her mother told relatives.
A cousin told the Sunday Tribune: "She looks amazing now, but you should have seen what she looked like a week ago."
Apart from the emotional trauma of being held up at gunpoint, dragged from her car and driven around by her assailants, Seevnarain suffered a shattered pelvis and broken ribs after her hijackers Sibusiso Dlamini, 29, and Wandile Nsibande, 20, threw her off a bridge on the N2 near Umkomaas.
After a lightning-fast response from police and justice officials, Dlamini and Nsibande were hunted down, arrested, tried and sentenced to 40 years and 25 years in jail respectively.
At their trial an angry Jeewan Seevnarain heaped praise on the police for their work. He described his daughter's assailants as "scum". He said criminals preyed on women because they were soft targets.
In sentencing Dlamini and Nsibande, Magistrate Anand Maharaj said: "Perhaps an effective police service that tracks criminals in a short period of time will act as a deterrent. They will know they have nowhere to hide."
The SAPS director of the hi-jacking unit, Mjabuliswa Ngcobo, this week described the police triumph as "justice at its best".
His second in command, Captain Siven Chetty, said there were between 15 and 20 hijackings in the greater Durban area each day.
A member of his crack, eight-man team confirmed this, saying the team was under strain as hijackings increased before Christmas and criminals chose cars "on order" from car-theft syndicates.
Women, he added, needed to be "paranoid" about safety when travelling alone, especially early in the morning and between 6pm and 9pm.
The officer said: "Young Indian women seem to be the target right now, simply because they appear to be timid or offer less resistance."
He said in the past month 10 women of Indian descent had been hijacked every week.
However, he said criminals would target anyone who drove the vehicle they had been ordered to get.
- This article was originally published on page 1 of The Sunday Tribune on November 22, 2009
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