On this day 25 years ago in the ANC and Robert McBride’s bomb attack on civilians at Magoo’s Bar on Durban's Marine Parade, three young white women were killed and many bar patrons were wounded when former MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe - the former armed wing of the ANC) operative Robert McBride planted a powerful car bomb outside Magoo's on June 14, 1986
Apart from the three women ‒ Angelique Pattenden, Julie van der Linde and Marchelle Gerand ‒ who died in the bombing, 73 people were wounded in the explosion outside the popular Durban beachfront Magoo's Bar.
In June 1986, McBride taped together more than 100 pounds of explosives, attaching a mine with a 15-minute timer as his trigger, and swaddling this propulsive charge with bags of machine-gun bullets and metal scraps for shrapnel. He secreted his lethal contraption in the spare-wheel well of a powder-blue Ford Cortina, which he parked one Saturday night on a crowded beachfront esplanade in Durban.
The bomber was out of earshot when his device exploded into two busy white bars.
Magoos bar and the nearby "Why Not" bar were targeted because they were believed to be frequented by apartheid security force personnel, who were regarded as legitimate targets in the ANC's armed struggle against the former government. Few, if any, of the victims were members of the security forces.
That was not the first time the ANC had used car bombs and it was not the last time.
McBride and a companion were convicted of the bombing, and McBride was sentenced to execution three times for his part in the attack. A pardon negotiated by Nelson Mandela saved McBride from death row. In 1999 McBride was released and granted amnesty for the Magoo’s Bar terror attack by the TRC due largely to the fact that the ANC claimed it had ordered McBride to attack the pubs, contrary to its initial denials that it was involved in the bombing.
McBride, one of the most famous saboteurs in the furtive military underground of the ANC, then became a diplomat in the new SA government, then was recalled for sexual indiscretions (he sexually abused white female staffers at the Malaysian embassy where he worked). His reward was to be appointed as Police Commissioner for the second largest Urban Metropolitan police force in South Africa... a position from which he was suspended for four years due to a drunk driving charge.
Yet another fine example of a black history maker....
The Constitutional Court recently ruled that 'Bomber' McBride may be called a murderer because of the cold-blooded multiple murders which he committed although he had received amnesty for the incident. But he still stands by the bombing, saying that if he was in the same situation, he would do it again.
So, on this sad anniversary, our thoughts are with the next of kin of those victims who died and the 73 innocent victims who were injured in the deadly blast that night 25 years ago.
The total number of people killed or injured in the 30 years of MK's campaigns is not known exactly. MK launched its first guerrilla attacks against government installations on 16 December 1961 and was subsequently classified as a terrorist organization by the South African government and the United States, and banned. Ten leaders of the ANC were tried for 221 acts of sabotage in the Rivonia Trial.
Details are not available, but it is estimated that the MK High Command co-ordinated over 190 acts of sabotage between October 1961 and July 1963. A study by Tom Lodge of the University of the Witwatersrand estimated that there were 150 MK attacks between 1976 - 1982.
SEE HERE FOR List Of MK Operations
0 comments:
Post a Comment