MK Special Operations Koeberg Explosions

On Saturday, 18 December 1982, four explosions occurred at Africa’s only nuclear power plant, Koeberg, situated north of Cape Town. The banned African National Congress (ANC) accepted responsibility for the attack which was designed to hit at the heart of apartheid South Africa and its security apparatus, delivering a humiliating political and economic blow.

The Koeberg attack took place during a new armed phase, which used small Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) operational units to, inter alia, target state-owned energy facilities. The ANC described the bombings as a “Salute to Our Fallen Heroes”. The reference was to 30 members of the underground movement who were among the 42 people killed by apartheid forces in a pre-emptive raid on Lesotho 10 days before.

The ANC appointed Aboobaker Ismail, a ‘Dolphin’ MK Commander of Special Operations, as Rodney Wilkinson’s ‘handler’, who planted the limpet mines in the nuclear power plant. The bombing was described as one of the only successful attacks on a nuclear base in world history, and is still listed by the ANC’s military wing MK as one of its greatest triumphs in the struggle against apartheid.

Wilkinson and his ANC handlers, Mac Maharaj and Aboobaker Ismail, had determined that they wanted the damage to Koeberg to be substantial and expensive to fix. But most critical was the principle that no civilians should be harmed, so the explosions needed to take place before the work on Koeberg was completed.

According to Wilkinson, “It was obvious from early on that there was no way we could permanently damage Koeberg…It was just too big, and anything we did, they could counter. So it had to be a political statement. And it had to be done safely before the startup.”

The chosen weapons were limpet mines, which Rodney Wilkinson needed to be trained to install and detonate. The chosen locations were the nuclear reactor heads, a section of the containment building and a cluster of electric cables under the main control room.

Ahead of the chosen day, Wilkinson and his wife, Heather Gray, collected four limpet mines from hidden locations in the Karoo. Wilkinson concealed the mines in a secret compartment in his Renault, drove on to the site, and from there carried the mines into the power plant concealed in his overalls. After he’d set the bombs, he left the plant as usual: the bombs were set to explode 24 hours later, when Koeberg would be almost totally empty.

By the time they detonated, causing at least R500 million (in 1982 value) of damage and delaying the Koeberg project for 18 months, Wilkinson was gone. He had ridden to safety on a bicycle across the Swaziland border after being driven there by his sister. He was never caught, which he believes was the result of a deliberately sloppy investigation, since authorities stood to be further humiliated if the truth came out.

“Salute to Our Fallen Heroes!”

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!