Writer tells of sorrow for men who robbed her

As an 82-year-old woman confronted by four fit young men out to rob her Johannesburg home, Nadine Gordimer might have been paralysed by terror.
But Gordimer won a Nobel prize for literature in 1991 for her insights into South Africa's racial and economic divides. So as the thieves grabbed the author and her 66-year-old domestic worker she was overcome more by sympathy than fear. 'One grabbed me and had his arm across me. It was a muscular, smooth arm and I thought, 'Shouldn't there be a better use for these hands, this arm, than robbing an old woman?' What a waste of four young men. They should have jobs,' she said.