Mom of MK comrade a hero – Nkosi Mandela
The mother of fallen MK hero, Robbie Waterwitch, has died after a long struggle with muscular dystrophy.
|||Cape Town - The mother of fallen Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) hero Robbie Waterwitch, Henrietta Waterwitch-Coetzee, 68, died at the weekend after a long struggle with muscular dystrophy.
Her son was killed in July 1989, along with his comrade Coline Williams, in mysterious conditions, when their dismembered bodies were found opposite the Athlone Magistrate’s Court.
The courts were regarded as legitimate targets by MK because they were used to register voters in that year’s tricameral elections.
Waterwitch, 20, was a first-year BA student when he was killed. The two were part of MK’s Ashley Kriel Detachment, named after the youth leader who died two years earlier at the hands of apartheid officer Jeffrey Benzien.
On Sunday, Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandla Mandela, visited the family in Athlone to express his condolences and spoke to them about his grandfather’s legacy.
The younger Mandela told the family of Waterwitch-Coetzee that his grandfather’s legacy was not about his personal sacrifice but that of many other individuals who sacrificed more.
Mandela called Waterwitch-Coetzee a hero and acknowledged the family’s sacrifice.
Waterwitch’s comrades released a statement on Sunday expressing their condolences at her death and their gratitude for her unconditional motherly love.
“Hettie your compassion has inspired us. As a dedicated Catholic your life was committed to the service of the most vulnerable. Children from Leliebloem Youth Care Centre, to which you dedicated your working life, the poor who knocked at your front door for food and never went away empty-handed, and charities close to your heart,” read the statement.
Waterwitch-Coetzee grew up in Goodwood, but like many families of the time she, her parents and her siblings were forcibly removed to Athlone.
Beatrice Snayer, her younger sister, said they were moved from their big house in Goodwood to a tiny house in Gleemore Road, Athlone.
Waterwitch-Coetzee was the second oldest of her siblings and attended St Augustine’s primary and secondary schools.
She became a seamstress after high school, working for most of her adult life at the Leliebloem Youth Care Centre in Belgravia Estate.
She was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy as an adult and when she could no longer work on the sewing machine, she focused on embroidery.
Her youngest son, Brandon Coetzee, died in 1996, aged 20, also from muscular dystrophy.
Snayer remembered her sister as “very friendly, very talkative and good on the piano”.
Her brother-in-law, Basil Snayer, said Waterwitch-Coetzee had taken the knocks she had been handed in life and absorbed them, adding: “She was a spirited woman.”
Waterwitch-Coetzee will be buried on Friday at the St Mary of the Angels Catholic Church in Lawrence Road, Athlone.
quinton.mtyala@inl.co.za
Cape Times