Pieces of stolen memorial found

2008-03-08 10:52

Cape Town - Pieces of a stolen bronze memorial to two struggle heroes have been discovered in a Cape Town scrapyard, the head of the city council's metals theft task team said on Friday.

Pieter van Dalen said a scrap metal dealer in Epping phoned him on Friday morning to say the memorial was there.

"So I went there and we confiscated the pieces. It's not all of it," he said.

His team, known as the Copperheads, recovered 300 kilograms from the scrapyard, for which the thieves had been paid R9000.

The team now had pictures from the scrapyard surveillance system of a blue bakkie driven by the thieves and were busy tracking it down.

"We are hot on the trail of the perpetrators, we really are," he said.

"I will not stop until I get them."

The memorial consisted of life-sized statutes of student activists, Coline Williams and Robbie Waterwitch, who died in 1989 when a bomb they were handling near the Athlone Magistrates Court exploded.

The memorial was a stone's throw away from the Athlone police station.

'Heroes of our struggle'

It was erected in 2005 as a "mayoral project" by the city's then African National Congress administration, and according to Van Dalen cost the city R330 000 at the time.

It was reportedly stolen on Monday night by a group of men who used ropes attached to a bakkie to topple it.

Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool said in a statement on Friday afternoon he was shocked and dismayed at the desecration of the memorial.

"Coline and Robbie were heroes of our struggle against apartheid who sacrificed their own lives for our freedom," he said.

"(Their memory) should live on and serious consideration should be given to replacing the memorial."

He warned that scrap dealers should not trade in stolen goods and would be prosecuted if they did.

- SAPA