The Jacobs Car Bomb – 12 July 1984
On Friday, 13 July 1984, newspapers in and around Durban reported that a car bomb hurled shattered glass and shredded metal into a crowded street scene on Thursday, 12 July 1984, killing five people and injuring 27, at least one of them seriously. The blast, Durban’s second car bomb attack in three months, erupted outside warehouses in the Mobeni industrial area at the height of the afternoon rush hour.
The explosion shattered windows over a wide area and blew in the front of a nearby warehouse, reducing the unidentifiable vehicle to thousands of glass and steel projectiles. Cars parked nearby were pock-marked as though by machine-gun fire and glass littered the street. Durban residents said dark smoke still hung over the scene shortly before nightfall while police inspected the cordoned-off site with dogs.
The car bomb that exploded in Durban on 12 July 1984 became known as the “Jacobs” car bomb, according to an application for amnesty by Raymond Lalla. In his amnesty request from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Raymond Lalla, a member of the African National Congress (ANC) and a senior Commander in Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), maintained that this bomb was intended to sabotage military targets in the Durban area, and he understood that these bombs could potentially harm or kill unsuspecting civilians.
With respect to the Jacobs car bomb on 12 July 1984, Lalla stated in an affidavit that he, with his Commander,
