MK “Operation Cetshwayo” Landmine Warfare Unit Arrested
On the evening of 22 June 1986, Simon Dladla was driving a green BMW registered SD 026 to Swaziland from Johannesburg, with Acton Mandla Maseko and two other Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadres. Ominously, the vehicle was stopped at a roadblock in Edenvale, and the police constable who arrived at the car noticed a strange-looking object in Maseko’s overalls. When the police officer demanded to search Maseko, he refused and a struggle ensued, resulting in a hand-grenade and a Makarov pistol being found in his possession. All the four combatants were then arrested.
On 8 June 1986, Dladla and Maseko entered South Africa in a beige Datsun registered SD 314. Two days later, they planted a mine on the dirt road near Bloemhof farm in the Volksrust district, in the perimeter between south-east of the Transvaal and north-western Natal. They then returned to Swaziland to report to the Transvaal Implementation Machinery. On that morning, at approximately 07:20, eighteen-year old Martin Coetzer was on his way to school in a bakkie when, about a metre from the gate to his parent’s farm, there was an explosion under the vehicle. He was thrown in the air by the impact, with both his legs, his right arm and his jaw were broken, and he also suffered a skull fracture. On the same day, at about 10:15, a farmworker, Elias Shabangu, who was aged twenty-three, and Lucas Lushaba, who was twenty-five, were driving a tractor on a dirt ro
