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.
Accordi
I am following you through sharings by other comrades. Continue with your good work. Have you thought of writing a book on our history, victories, challenges, inside and outside the country ? Please do, whilst some people are still alive. The country needs that, otherwise, our history will be distorted if written for us by outsiders.