Memorial pieces recovered at Cape Town scrap yard

By Henry Booysen
08 March 2008

The memorial statutes of two student activists were found at an Epping scrap metal dealer on Friday.

The statutes those of Coline Williams and Robbie Waterwitch were discovered after the dealer of the scrap yard phoned Pieter van Dalen the head of the city council’s metals theft task team.

“So I went there and we confiscated the pieces. It’s not all of it,” said van Dalen.

The Copperheads which is the metals theft task team recovered 300 kilograms from the scrapyard of which the thieves were paid R9000 for.

Van Dalen elaborated that at the scene a surveillance system had pictures of the perpetrators who were driving a blue bakkie.

“We are hot on the trail of the perpetrators, we really are. I will not stop until I get them,” he said.

The memorial of the student activists were erected near the Athlone police station in 2005 as part of a “mayoral project” by the city’s then African National Congress administration. The activists died in 1989 while handling a bomb which exploded at the Athlone Magistrate’s court.