On 9 January 1986, a limpet mine exploded and damaged a substation in Jacobs, Durban. Later a second limpet exploded and killed a policeman and injured others and two electrical workers who arrived at the scene of the first explosion.
On that day, 9 January 1986, Gordon Webster arrived with a colleague, Nazeem Cassiem, at a workshop called Factorama in Durban’s industrial district of Wentworth, which belonged to Robert McBride’s father, Derrick McBride. Webster requested Robert McBride to drive them to Rossdown Road, Wentworth, the home of Webster’s brother, where he left them with Cassiem.
Robert McBride had met Gordon Webster in November 1985, as Webster came back from training abroad. Webster gave McBride information about the African National Congress (ANC) and started recruiting him into the Movement, thus bringing him into his Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Special Operations Unit.
On the evening of 9 January 1986, at around 21:15, while apartheid Police Sergeant Vincent Zimmerman was parking his car in Durban’s Yellowwood Park suburb, he heard a huge explosion. He then decided to drive towards the direction of the blast. Ten minutes later as he arrived at the Jacobs substation, on the corner of Chamberlain Road, in Wentworth, he found the place being cordoned off and a fire engine on standby.
Sergeant Zimmerman then decided to enter the station through the front gate, followed by Mervyn Dunn of the Durban electricity department and Detective Constable Roelo
