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Cape Town - Former Springbok hooker Naka Drotske has been "through hell and back" after being shot in a robbery last week, his brother Tinus has said.
Drotske underwent a successful operation to his right arm on Monday, the second operation since the shooting incident at his brother’s smallholding outside Pretoria last Thursday.
He was shot in the chest, abdomen and arm, before being rushed to a Pretoria hospital where he underwent emergency surgery to his abdomen.
His wife Marzanne earlier said doctors had to remove "lots of small fragments of bone" in the second operation, which took four hours.
Tinus spoked to Jacaranda FM on Thursday morning when he described the ordeal in more detail.
"I think he’s been through hell and back, with the reconstruction surgery on his elbow. He was in theatre for about four and a half hours. I’ve seen the pictures of the arm, and it looks like Robocop inside there," Tinus told the show’s host Martin Bester.
Tinus said the attack started just started just as they were sitting down to eat dinner.
"Suddenly, four armed robbers were standing in the opening by the sliding door, just shouting and screaming, spraying teargas and waving guns around in our faces...
"It was chaos all around, they were wearing balaclavas, they were so panicky and looked very disorganised, and my first thought was that they were going to open fire."
Os du Randt, a former Springbok prop and Drotske's business partner, was present at the time of the robbery and Tinus said he got the impression that the robbers were zoning in on Du Randt to "neutralise" him.
This was when Drotske charged the suspects, tackling them out of the house, before being shot three times.
"The first shot went through his stomach after they had the gun pressed right up against him. That was the leader... the other two shots could have come from the other robbers... Naka never even fell down."
