Cape Town - While the Grimwood family of Newlands are at peace after finding the body of their missing daughter and sister Sakina Grimwood, they said the pain and heartbreak of her death would never leave them.
Grimwood’s body was found on Friday at the bottom of a steep cliff
at Platteklip Gorge on Table Mountain after she apparently slipped and
fell. Her funeral was held on Sunday morning.
The 32-year-old was last seen leaving her home in Newlands at around 1.30pm on Wednesday.
Her sister, Zahira, said it would take the family a long time to deal with the trauma of losing someone who had “so much potential”.
“Our family is devastated because Sakina was really a darling of the family. She was very different - not materialistic and passionate about human rights and the environment. She’s the reason I got involved in civil society.
“My family made loads of sacrifices during the Struggle for us to go to good schools and she never asked for a cent from them to go to university,” said Zahira.
Sakina attended Westerford High School and obtained an MPhil focused on environmental law from the University of Cape Town in 2011, after completing her law degree two years before.
She was a law lecturer at Varsity College and also worked as an attorney at law firm Webber Wentzel.
“She’s always been very argumentative and passionate about the environment. There wasn’t a thing she wasn’t good at and she was the kind of role model I would have wanted my children to look up to and the world is suffering because of her loss.
“She was also very musical and was a great solo singer in the high school jazz band and I always remember her singing the line, ‘The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return,’” said Zahira.
A ceremony was held for her sister at the Muir Street Mosque in Zonnebloem on Saturday.
Broadcast journalist Erin Bates posted a tribute to Grimwood on her Facebook page and said while the
two had not been close in recent years, she remembered Grimwood fondly from when the two went to school together.
“So many people are so sore because they loved you. It is so terribly sad. It might seem a bit trite but I know it is right to remember you had a full, rich, hard, beautiful life.
“And I just wanted to say that am so very glad to have known you. Rest in deep and lasting peace,” wrote Bates.
Western Cape police spokesperson Sergeant Noloyiso Rwexana said that a case was opened following the discovery of Grimwood’s body.
Grimwood is survived by her sisters Zahira and Nuha and her parents Muhdni Grimwood and Gabeba Hassan.