40 Years After the MK Bombing of the Magoo’s Bar in Durban
On 14 June 1986, exactly a year after the Gaborone Raid, at approximately 19:00, Robert McBride showed up at the house of Matthew le Cordier, and together they went to Durban’s Marine Parade. Just before reaching Magoo’s Bar on Marine Parade, McBride flashed the lights of the blue Ford Cortina he was driving. Following this, Greta Apelgren moved out of a parking space in a greenish-brown Mazda, which McBride occupied with the Ford Cortina.
There were fifty kilograms of explosives in the boot of the Cortina, a limpet mine was placed in the centre to set them off, and a cord that was concealed under a blanket led from the armrest into the boot. McBride pulled the cord, and after ensuring that the pin had been pulled out, he and Cordier than left the car, walking slowly to join Apelgren in the Mazda, and they drove off.
They left the Cortina which was parked just outside one of the Durban’s most popular nightspots, where there was Magoo’s Bar in the adjacent block, the Why Not Bar, Garfunkel’s Restaurant, the Parade Hotel and the Easy Beat Bar at the Empress Hotel. All of them were packed Saturday-night revellers. Just after fifteen minutes later, the revellers saw a white light which turned yellow and then orange, followed by a huge explosion.
A lady, who was walking her dog along the street, saw a blinding flash and the ground shook under her. As she looked to the entrance of Garfunkel’s, two
