Limpet Mine Explodes Substation in Durban

Limpet Mine Explodes Substation in Durban

Forty years ago, in the evening of 9 January 1986, a limpet mine exploded and damaged a substation in Jacobs, Durban. Later a second limpet exploded and subsequently killed an apartheid policeman and injured others and two electrical workers who had arrived at the scene of the first explosion.

At around 21:15, in the evening of 9 January 1986, while apartheid Police Sergeant Vincent Zimmerman was parking his car in Durban’s Yellowwood Park suburb, he heard a huge explosion and then decided to drive in 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 decided to enter the station through the front gate, followed by Mervyn Dunn, of the Durban electricity department, and apartheid police Detective Constable Roelof van der Merwe.

At the first transformer, Zimmerman shined a torch that illuminated a large, jagged, hole in the scorched metal. According to Zimmerman, the large hole was caused by a limpet mine, as he informed Colonel Robert Welman, who had later joined them. When Colonel Welman moved to the second transformer, Sergeant Zimmerman went to the third, saying that it looked clean, as he shone his light on the grey metal. He then gave the torch to Colonel Welman as he left for the front gate.

At the gate, Zimmerman passed Sergeant Dudley Booyens, who had a patrol dog on a leash. Suddenly there was a second blast from the substation, and its force threw him and Booyens to the ground. As Sergeant Booyens staggered to his feet, he saw three figures emerging, running and screaming. The first figure was Colonel Welman, who staggered past Booyens, with his clothes blazing. Booyens lunged at him and threw him to the ground, rolling him on the grass to extinguish the flames.

The second figure was Mervyn Dunn, from the electrical department, who raced through the fire and made his way to the grass verge where he threw himself to the ground rolling round repeatedly. The third figure, Detective Constable van der Merwe, also came running towards Sergeant Zimmerman, running round in circles, inadvertently fanning the flames. Zimmerman yelled at him, before grabbing him and throwing him to the ground, and then scraping some sand, heaping the sand on the residual flames on his clothes. Colonel Welman died from his injuries three weeks later and Detective Constable van der Merwe was severely burned.

The whole saga began that day, on 9 January 1986, when Gordon Webster arrived with a colleague, Nazeem Cassiem, at a workshop called Factorama in Durban’s industrial district of Wentworth. The workshop belonged to Derrick McBride, who was a father to Webster’s Comrade, Robert McBride. Robert was at his father’s workshop, placing a Dead Letter Box (DLB) into a van. Webster then requested Robert to drive them to Rossdown Road, Wentworth, the home of Webster’s brother, where they left Cassiem, and the two of them walked to the Chamberlain Road substation.

When they reached the substation, they cut a hole in the fence and went in to place the limpet mines they each carried on them. Robert McBride, who took responsibility for the bombing, was quoted in reports as saying: “The first bomb blast was intended to cause economic damage and (act) as a propaganda campaign. The purpose of the second was to intentionally injure or kill security policemen who would converge on the scene to investigate the first blast.” The limpet mines were timed to explode 20 minutes in between each other.

Robert McBride had learned to master the art of planting limpet mines in such a way that they frustrated the apartheid police. Explosive experts within the police were able to defuse the limpet mines by unscrewing the cap and deactivating the timing device. However, Robert used epoxy weld (aka superglue) on the threads of the limpet mine and screwed the cap in order to make it difficult to unscrew. As a result, a lot of money was spent by the apartheid police explosive experts to get an arms manufacturer that could provide them with a device to defuse the mines.

Robert had met Gordon Webster in October 1985, as Webster came back from training abroad. Webster gave McBride information about the ANC and started recruiting him into the Movement, thus bringing him into his Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Special Operations Unit, which was largely intended to disrupt power substations, electricity pylons and oil pipelines. McBride then brought in other comrades with whom he had committed rudimentary operations in the area, such as Matthew Lecordier, Nazeem Cassiem, Alan Pearce and Marson Sharpley, to join the Unit.

The explosion on 9 January 1986 launched the whole of Wentworth into darkness, bringing the residents out of their homes to witness in astonishment the substation in flames. For McBride, the bombings were intended to mark the ANC’s 74th birthday and was in response to the orders issued in the January 8 Statement on the Year of Umkhonto we Sizwe – the People’s Army. The call was clear: “Let us mount a determined mass political and military offensive! Let us retain the strategic initiative! Let us, in struggle, shift the balance of power further in favour of the revolution! Let us turn every corner of our country into a battlefield! Let us weaken the enemy and prepare to seize power!”

Sources:
Oliver Tambo, “Attack! Advance! Give the Enemy No Quarter! January 8th, 1986, Message of the National Executive Committee of the ANC Delivered by President OR Tambo”, Sechaba, March 1986.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Yunus Carrim, “Attacking the Heart of Apartheid: The ANC’s MK Special Operations Unit”, Penguin, 2025.

Castro Khwela
Good evening fellow Compatriots!