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ADT security officer Zolile Hoyi is used to spotting wild animals at night as he conducts his patrols in the hills of Hermanus in the Western Cape.
During the storm on Friday, he was doing the last of his rounds in the Hemel en Aarde valley when he came upon a cluster of cars with their hazards turned on.
He stopped to help, thinking there had been a crash.
Instead, an elderly woman told him a duiker was in distress in a ditch after it was hit by a car.
One of the people who stopped was Lilani Radley who owns a leather bag business in the area.
"I'm that kind of person - I will stop for a mossie lying in the road," she said.
However, she was scared of snakes and hesitant to climb into the ditch to check on the duiker.
Without hesitation, Hoyi climbed into the ditch through mud and tangled greenery to get to the duiker – in the soaking rain.
"It was difficult to go down there ... yerrr," said Hoyi who lives in Zwelihle.
"As I tried to pick it up, it tried to jump and run away."
The duiker is known for its sudden leaps, its name is derived from the Afrikaans word for dive.
'Beautiful'
But Hoyi held the frightened animal firmly so that it could be inspected for any signs of injury or fractures.
"It was beautiful. It was heavy. My wish was just to help it, just to keep it alive," he said.
The duiker was bleeding from its horn, was conscious and appeared to be recovering from the shock of being hit.
A local veterinary service was called for advice.
Hoyi said they were advised to take the duiker into deep bush as it stood a better chance of survival from what appeared to be a relatively minor injury, as a visit to a hospital might traumatise it and risk its recovery.
It was put on the back of a bakkie, and a man and a woman, whose names are not immediately known, drove the duiker deep into bush to release it.
"It is good to keep animals alive," Hoyi said modestly.
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