MK Special Operations Combatant Marion Sparg is Arrested

MK Special Operations Combatant Marion Sparg is Arrested

Forty years ago, on 7 March 1986, after the apartheid President PW Botha had lifted the state of emergency during a speech in which he claimed that there had been a discernible drop in the levels of violence in South Africa, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Special Operations guerrilla, Marion Sparg (aka “Michelle”), was arrested. Apartheid policemen arrived at Sparg’s apartment, where one of the officers mentioned that they had come to arrest her in connection with the bombing of police stations.

While they were conducting a thorough search of the premises, the policemen found three limpet mines, as Marion Sparg casually commented that she thought they were there because of the Hillbrow bomb. After they asked where she placed the bomb in the Hillbrow Police Station, she told them that it was inside a plastic bag in the toilets. Immediately the apartheid senior police officers sent a team to Hillbrow station, where they performed a controlled detonation of the limpet mine.

The day following the killing of the Gugulethu Seven, on 4 March 1986, at approximately 09:00, Marion Sparg applied for a gun licence at John Vorster Square Police Station in central Johannesburg. Afterwards, Sparg made a detour to the stairway between the second and third floors of the police station, where she placed a limpet mine.

As the mine exploded around midday, it shattered windows up to the fourth floor, scattering glass rubble over a wide area, and blowing a ten-metre hole in the wall. Two officers from the motor-vehicle theft unit, who were inside the building, were injured. Furthermore, two pedestrians who were walking outside the building also got injured.

Umkhonto we Sizwe had always intended to attack this building which was notorious in the black communities as a diabolical symbol of apartheid colonialism. John Vorster Square was regarded as the edifice of the Gestapo racist police, wherein a number of anti-apartheid activists were brutally tortured, murdered and maimed after being betrayed by their fellow struggle operatives who had turned against them. However, because of the horrible mysticism linked to the building, as well as the fear associated with its history, and the fact that it was largely a white run and secured facility, it wasn’t easy just for any guerrilla to approach it with the aim of causing damage to that bulwark of white racism.

Marion Monica Sparg was one of the few white women to join Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), during South Africa’s apartheid period. Marion Monica Sparg was born on 13 September 1958 in East London as one of six children of a white middle-class English-speaking South African family in the Eastern Cape, with German and Irish origins. Marion’s father was a travelling salesman, and her mother was a bookkeeper and a legal secretary.

After completing her studies in journalism and politics at Rhodes University, Marion worked as a journalist for the “Daily Dispatch” and the “Sunday Times” newspapers. During her studies, she became fascinated with the brutality associated with the death of Steven Bantu Biko, who was the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), and a martyr of the South African struggle. One of the stories she covered while working as a journalist was about Umkhonto we Sizwe three cadres’ fascinating encounter with the apartheid security forces at a bank in Silverton, near Pretoria, which became famously known as the “MK Silverton Trio”.

One of her colleagues in journalism, Arnold Geyer, who worked for the Rand Daily Mail newspaper began a Marxist-oriented discussion group, which often engaged in material that was banned in South Africa. Marion, together with another friend who also joined the group, Damian de Lange, agreed with Arnold that they should be involved in some action against the apartheid regime.

They then fire-bombed the Progressive Federal Party’s (PFP) offices on 1 June 1981 in Ivy Road, Norwood suburb, Johannesburg. They did the same at Oxford Galleries at 240 Oxford Road. They maintained that as the “South African Liberation Support Cadres”, they were so outraged by the failure of the Progressive Federal Party (PFP) to boycott the Republic Day celebrations.

Following this incident, Marion Sparg and Damian de Lange left South Africa in 1981, with the assistance of Dr Beyers Naudé, and went into exile in Botswana where they made contact with the ANC’s Marius and Jeanette Schoon, while Arnold Geyer headed for London. From Botswana, Sparg then left for Lusaka, in Zambia, from where she was sent to Angola, as “Michelle” to receive military training at the MK’s Caxito camp. Sparg was the only white South African and sometimes the only woman undergoing training in the camp, from January to August 1982.

The killing of 32 ANC members and 19 civilians in the 1982 Lesotho Raid by the apartheid South African Defence Force (SADF) strengthened her resolve to fight against the apartheid racist regime. In August 1982, Sparg returned to Zambia where she edited the “Voice of Women” (VOW), an ANC publication, which was a feminist journal published by the ANC Women’s Section from 1976 to 1989. It was the only regular ANC publication that was primarily produced by and targeted at women.

In March 1984, Sparg met with Reg September in Lusaka, who agreed with her to partake in MK operations inside the country. After she was ready to get back into military action, September arranged for her to meet with Chris Hani. After speaking to Hani, Sparg returned to Angola for more specialised training in Pango camp. The training was earmarked to prepare her to become part of the MK’s Special Operations (Special Ops) Unit.

On 18 February 1986, Sparg, who had ultimately joined MK’s Special Operations Unit, entered South Africa from Lesotho, as Mary Woods, where she worked with Edwin Mabitsela. She went into the country in the company of Stephen Marais, who was working in a village near Herschel, on the border with Lesotho. When they were stopped at a roadblock, they posed as a couple on holiday, while they had eight limpet mines and detonators hidden in the door panels of their hired car.

On 19 February 1986, Marion Sparg placed two limpet mines in the toilet at Cambridge Road Police Station, in East London, which exploded, causing massive damages. The radio control room and police vehicle were reported to have been hit hard by the blast, but no casualties or injuries were mentioned. She had gone to the Cambridge police station to apply for a gun licence, and then requested for a bathroom, where she placed the limpet mine in the cistern.

Following her arrest in March 1986, Sparg was found guilty of treason and arson in a trial that lasted from 3 to 6 November 1986, at the Rand Supreme Court. She had been accused of planting limpet mines that exploded at police stations in East London and Johannesburg in February and March of 1986, as well as a third bomb, which she said to have been planted and exploded in a controlled detonation at Johannesburg’s Hillbrow police station. On 6 November 1986, she was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for treason and 5 years on other charges of arson and attempted arson.

Commander of the Special Operations Unit, Aboobaker Ismail (aka “Rashid”), felt that Marion Sparg’s arrest came too soon and was a big loss to the Unit, “Had she survived, we could have built a unit around her and steered it towards bigger operations. We were hoping that she could have supported the comrades who were targeting a military aircraft. Marion was incredibly brave. She was given very limited resources but she tried to do so much. She pushed the limits. I was amazed that she managed to get those ops done.”

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Kevin Jacobs, “White woman saboteur jailed for 25 years”, United Press International, 6 November 1986.
Special to the New York Times, “South African Gets 25 Years in Bombing”, The New York Times, 7 November 1986.
WIP, “Sparg Sets Out ANC Policy On Violence”, https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/WpNov86.1608.2036.000.045.Nov1986.12.pdf.
Allister Sparks, “White S African Rebel Sentenced to 25 Years”, The Washington Post, 7 November 1986.
African National Congress, “Walking With Pride: Court Statements By ANC Cadres On Trial”, 20 March 1990.
Janice Warman, “We lived on the edge for 10 years… you could die any minute”, The Guardian, 1 November 2009.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Marion Sparg, “Guilty and Proud: An MK Soldier’s Memoir of Exile, Prison and Freedom”, Jonathan Ball, 2024.
Yunus Carrim, “Attacking the Heart of Apartheid: The ANC’s MK Special Operations Unit”, Penguin, 2025.

Castro Khwela
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