Grootboom blames family for 'laying a trap' for slain student

SABC presenter Noxolo Grootboom caused a storm when she accused the family of slain University of Johannesburg student Palesa Madiba’s friend of laying a trap which led to her death.

Grootboom, who was a programme director at the memorial service of Madiba yesterday, made these astonishing remarks during the service held at the university’s Soweto Campus where she was a student.

“When Palesa walked into her friend’s home she didn’t know she was walking into a death trap. She never knew that death’s locomotive was patiently waiting for her. Only to emerge two years later in a white plastic bag as a skeleton marking an end to her future,” said the revered Xhosa news reader.

Gootboom pulled no punches as she tore into the Mkhwanazi family, where Madiba was last seen when she visited her friend Tshidi.

“Worst of all, Palesa’s grave was under their washing line where they hung their clothes and other stuff, trampling on her unmarked gave everyday, ” said Grootboom.

Scores of mourners, including her extended family and childhood friends, thronged the university’s auditorium to pay their last respects to Madiba.

Madiba went missing in August 2013 when she was 22 after she had spent the Women’s Day long weekend with her friend Tshidi at her home in Phiri, Soweto.

Her disappearance baffled both family and police and the frantic search yielded no results.

Her skeletal remains were discovered on December 16 in the same house she was last seen alive and DNA tests confirmed that the remains were hers.

Moroka police had acted on a tip off that led to the discovery of her body buried behind the outside rooms of the Mkhwanazis in a shallow grave.

Mpho Madiba described her niece as an angel of God who was in the prime of her life at the time of her death.

We never stopped looking for this child for all these years. We looked everywhere for the beautiful angel of God and our prayers have been answered,” she said.

Madiba’s elder sister Lerato said people should not only concentrate on how her sister died.

We should not allow the enemy to steal that from us. As siblings we would sit down, dream and share our fantasies on how our lives would become. I truly believe all those fantasies will come through for my sibling. My heart is painfully bleeding for my little sister’s life,” said Lerato.