He wasn’t too afraid, the little boy says bravely, “even if it was pitch-dark inside the hole - just like inside a crocodile’s stomach”.
JOSUA BESTER (4) doesn’t know how close he came to dying the day he fell into a 70 m deep borehole - and by sheer luck became stuck 3,5 metres down the shaft.
With one hand caught in a loop of rope the boy hung in the dark for nearly four hours while up above his dad clung to the rope, aware that he held his son’s life in his hands.
“It was a miracle from God,” says an emotional HENNIE BESTER, the former Democratic Party leader and provincial minister of community safety who quit politics in 2002 and now farms near Victoria West.
Without the swift action of the community the outcome could have been tragically different for his son.
Ironically, this isn’t Josua’s first narrow escape. He was barely a year when he walked away from a bad car accident with his mom, Hanelle.
When his parents asked him how he’d ended up in the borehole Josua said, “The wind blew me in.”
It later emerged he’d removed a cover from the borehole - but it had indeed been a windy day when Hanelle visited a friend, Estelle Human, in Victoria West.
The kids were playing outside when Josua’s sister, Danielle (7), raised the alarm. “I heard him calling so I ran to the hole and saw only his hands and hair down below,” she says.
In the hours that followed the town pitched in to rescue the boy.
First Estelle’s husband, Floors, and Hennie fixed the rope around his hand.
Reinier Oosthuizen, of the farm Sandaar, says he’d seen similar situations on Discovery Channel and “kind of” knew what to do.
With the help of several other people and a mechanical digger a hole was dug next to the borehole and then the borehole was widened on the side of the new hole.
“We lowered an oxygen mask onto Josua’s head. I also had to suck up the dust so he wouldn’t suffocate or get hurt,” Renier says.
As night fell a dusty Josua was freed from the borehole - bloodied but otherwise unscathed.
“I thought if he has to lose an arm or a hand, if that’s the only way to save him, we’ll accept it,” Hennie says.
Hanelle adds, “Josua believed us when we said we’d get him out.”
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