ANC Ward 87 - Jeannette Schoon Branch, Johannesburg (2026)

15/03/2026

Join us at 5pm on Sunday 15 March for an online BGM with the Johannesburg Elections Manager, Vasco Setelele to discuss the Local Government Elections. Click https://teams.live.com/meet/9360408627689?p=nB9tNLqzBsHzKWFLjy to join.

30/10/2024

‘Operation J’ (Aventura) Cadres Eventually Arrested – Part 3

On the morning of 28 June 1972, Theophilus Cholo, Sandi Sijake and Nicholas Kombele, the second group of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) “Operation J” that had landed in Swaziland on 26 June 1972, were riding on the back of a lorry with a black driver who took them to a rest place across the Swaziland-South African border, where they got something to eat.

Later on that day, they were in Ermelo, where they bought train tickets to their respective destinations, with Sijake and Kombele boarding a Germiston train at 18:00, while Cholo got into another carriage destined for Johannesburg.

Meanwhile, Justice Mpanza and Petrus Mthembu took a taxi from Piet Retief to Glencoe, where they took a train to Pietermaritzburg. Having failed to track the other cadres, on 29 June 1972, Alexander Moumbaris decided to drive Gladstone Mose from Piet Retief to the Transkei.

On the way, just after passing Pietermaritzburg, Moumbaris stopped the car and offered to lend Mose some articles from his suitcase. Instead, Mose refused to be burdened with a lot of clothes and items, preferring rather that Moumbaris should help retrieve some of the documents and items, such as passports and money, that he lost in Nairobi.

Moumbaris promised to request London to look into the matter and they agreed that a message would be placed in the Daily Dispatch, after which contact would be made via a courier fourteen days later. The message that was to be in the newspaper, which was written by Marie-José, Moumbaris’s wife, was: “Mrs H. Caulincour, anyone knowing her address please write to Queenstown”. She further wrote that “If someone else Time magazine”, which meant that if the courier would be somebody else besides Moumbaris, that other person would be carrying a copy of Time magazine for identification. Mose was then dropped off on the road seven kilometres from Umzimkhulu.

On Monday, 3 July 1972, Nicholas Kombele surrendered himself at Maclear Police Station, in the Cape Province. Following Kombele surrendering himself to the apartheid Security Branch, Moumbaris left South Africa on 6 July 1972 through the Kopfontein border post with Botswana.

A farmer who was based near the border with Botswana phoned his local police station to report a white Mercedes Benz that was travelling regularly in the area, driven by a white man and often carrying Africans. The matter was then considered for observation by the apartheid Security Police.

On 18 July 1972, Moumbaris walked towards Fanele Mbali at Gaborone Railway Station and asked him where he could buy a copy of Time magazine, since Mbali was carrying one and a plastic shopping bag from London. Mbali responded that the shops were closed and he could not buy the magazine anywhere.

At the same time, Phumelele Menye was dressed as a priest at the Gaborone post office. Menye was known for having had differences with MK Army Commander, Joe Modise, regarding the joint military campaigns with the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) in the Rhodesian Wankie-Sipolilo Campaigns. He was also carrying a copy of Time magazine and a London shopping bag.

On 19 July 1972, late in the afternoon, Mbali and Menye were in the company of Mfeketho Radebe and “Ntasarashu”, all of them being MK cadres, they entered a vehicle driven by Moumbaris, as he drove them towards the border between Botswana and South Africa.

Before reaching the border, Moumbaris stopped the car, pointed to a hill and said they should continue in that direction. He then added that at around 18:30, they were supposed to meet him at a specific point on the road a couple of kilometres inside South Africa. If it happened that he was late, they were supposed to proceed on foot on the road away from the border.

Later that day, Captain Johannes van Niekerk of the apartheid Security Branch, travelled to the Kopfontein border post, accompanied by Major van Rensburg, Captain Dloi and a number of other policemen, in order to intercept the "white Mercedes Benz that was travelling regularly in the area, driven by a white man and often carrying Africans". (To be continued...)

Castro Khwela
Good evening fellow Compatriots!

30/10/2024

Eugene de K**k Sentenced for More Than 200 Years in Prison

On 30 October 1996, Eugene de K**k was sentenced to 212 years in prison and his application for amnesty was denied. The judge described him as "a chilling and revolting agent for apartheid", however, a psychologist who served on the TRC, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, stated that de K**k seemed to show remorse during her interviews with him.

Nicknamed “Prime Evil” by the press, Eugene Alexander de K**k, was born on 29 January 1949 and became a South African Police Colonel, torturer, and assassin, active under the apartheid government. De K**k was born to Lourens Vosloo de K**k, a Magistrate and personal friend to former Prime Minister John Vorster.

Eugene’s brother, Vosloo “Vossie” de K**k, later described him as a “quiet” boy who “wasn’t a violent person”. He also recounted how their father, a member of the Afrikaner Broederbond, indoctrinated the boys in Afrikaner nationalist ideology and taught them “strict Afrikaans” as they grew up.

De K**k developed a long-time ambition of becoming a security officer. In 1967, after completing high school, he performed his year-long national service in Pretoria at the Army Gymnasium. During this time, he and the rest of the Gymnasium’s six companies were deployed to Rhodesia’s border with Botswana to confront militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), incursions. De K**k graduated from the Gymnasium as an infantry soldier in the apartheid South African Defence Force (SADF).

However, he decided not to proceed to the Officers College (now SA Military Academy) in Saldanha Bay because of a stutter, and declined to pursue a Bachelor of Military Science (B. Mil) degree. He joined the South African Police’s uniform branch in the Eastern Cape and later reported to the Police College for an officers’ course. He was thereafter promoted from warrant officer to lieutenant.

In May 1978, De K**k was transferred to South West Africa (now Namibia) and joined the Security Branch in Oshakati. In 1979, he co-founded “Koevoet”, a counter-insurgency unit tasked with combating the South West African People’s Organisation’s (SWAPO’s) People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) during the Border War.

Koevoet was regarded as "a highly effective" counter-insurgency unit, but committed atrocities against civilians and was implicated in other human rights violations. Its exaggerated "successes" in tracking and killing PLAN guerrillas prompted the apartheid police to consider setting up a similar division in South Africa.

In 1983, the apartheid SA Police transferred De K**k to C10, a counter-insurgency unit headquartered at a farm called Vlakplaas, which was located 20 kilometres west of Pretoria. De K**k, who had established a reputation for commitment during his exploits in Rhodesia and Namibia, was two years later promoted as the unit’s commanding officer. Under his leadership, C10 – later known as C1 – became a death squad, which hunted down and brutally killed militant opponents of the National Party and the apartheid system.

Upon being convicted on 30 October 1996, De K**k was sentenced to two life sentences plus 212 years in prison for crimes against humanity. The eighty-nine charges included six counts of murder, as well as conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, assault, kidnapping, illegal possession of a firearm, and fraud. De K**k served his sentence in the C Max section of the Pretoria (Kgosi Mampuru) Central Prison.

On 30 January 2015, the then Justice Minister, Michael Masutha, announced that De K**k had been granted parole, but that the date of his release would not be made public. According to then Minister Masutha, De K**k had expressed remorse for his crimes and had cooperated with the authorities to recover the remains of a number of his victims. He was nonetheless designated to remain on parole for the rest of his life.

Was this really a matter of justice for all those who were maimed and murdered by the likes of De K**k?

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!

29/10/2024

‘Operation J’ (Aventura) Cadres Eventually Arrested – Part 2

On 13 June 1972, cadres who had been earmarked for the aborted Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) “Operation J”, Justice Mpanza, Gladstone Mose and Petrus Mthembu, were seating together in a safe government house in Mogadishu, when Chris Hani arrived.

After the greetings had been done, Hani called Mthembu aside to inform him that there was a person Mthembu had to meet in Swaziland. He then gave Mthembu a yellow tie, which he said the man will recognise Mthembu by. Afterwards Hani gave each of the three cadres money for their new engagements. Hani gave Mthembu R600 and a reference book with his picture in it. Mose was then given a Lesotho passport.

On the same day, the three were taken to Mogadishu Airport, where they took an Air Somali flight to Nairobi. On 19 June 1972, the three took a connecting flight from Jan Smuts Airport, in Johannesburg, to Swaziland, where they were taken to the George Hotel, in Manzini.

At the George Hotel, Mthembu put on his yellow tie and took a copy of a Newsweek magazine to the entrance of the hotel. Later on, he returned to the room and informed both Mpanza and Mose that he had met the contact. The “contact” that Mthembu was referred to was Alexander Moumbaris, who was staying at the Swazi Inn Hotel.

On 23 June 1972, Moumbaris phoned Avis’s car rental station in Bezuidenhout Street, Johannesburg, to hire a Mercedes 220, which he requested to be sent to Swaziland.

Meanwhile, on 26 June 1972, Sandi Sijake, Nicholas Kombele and Theophilus Tloi Cholo arrived by plane at around 10:00 in Swaziland, and took a taxi to the George Hotel. After they had checked-in at the hotel, they went to the Manzini post office, and Cholo had a red handkerchief in his top pocket, while at the same time carrying a copy of the Cape Times newspaper. Later that day, Cholo was wearing a red cloth around his neck, and was met by Moumbaris near the Manzini Post Office.

At their meeting, Cholo and Moumbaris agreed that the group that arrived earlier, which consisted of Mthembu, Mpanza and Mose, were supposed to cross the border immediately into South Africa after receiving a fresh supply of money and clothes, as they had lost their luggage in Nairobi. The Cholo group was to follow afterwards.

On 27 June 1972, in the early hours of the morning, Moumbaris transported Mthembu, Mpanza and Mose to Goedgegun in Swaziland, where he dropped them off and gave them a compass, a snakebite kit, a pair of binoculars and a map. He also gave them each a pair of shorts. The arrangement was that after they had crossed the border on foot, they were to wait a while, and then proceed to the roadway and wait for him there. He was then going to pick them up after driving through the border with his car.

After crossing the border as arranged, they waited for Moumbaris on the road just inside South Africa that evening. As it was becoming darker, it was becoming difficult for them to identify Moumbaris’ car. After waiting until midnight, they decided to call it quits and opted to continue on foot to Piet Retief. While they were marching, Mpanza was suffering, as his feet were swollen and he was freezing, thus causing their movement to be very slow.

After reaching a certain homestead along the way, Mpanza suggested that they should rest for him to recuperate. Mose declined to rest, saying that he was still able to continue, and anyway he was meant to split from the two, as he had his own way to go. He then left the two behind and walked through the night towards Piet Retief.

Approximately thirty kilometres from Piet Retief, he saw Moumbaris approaching in his Mercedes 220, with his wife, Marie-José, on board. When the car was close by, Mose told Moumbaris that he left Mpanza and Mthembu behind at a homestead along the way, as Mpanza was suffering with his swollen feet. Moumbaris informed Mose that he failed to make contact with the other group as well, and they then drove back to the homestead to collect Mpanza and Mthembu. (To be continued...)

Castro Khwela
Good evening fellow Compatriots!

28/10/2024

Reggie Hadebe is Assassinated

On 27 October 1992, African National Congress (ANC) Deputy Chairman and Regional Executive Committee member in the Natal Midlands Region, Reggie Hadebe, was gunned down in an ambush on the Richmond-Ixopo road. Hadebe was travelling with other prominent ANC members, Mr Shakes Cele and Mr John Jeffries, a lawyer. They were returning from an aborted peace meeting, which was scheduled to take place in the Ixopo area.

John Jeffries, who survived the attack recalled, “We’d been at a peace meeting at Ixopo with the IFP (Inkatha Freedom Party) to discuss violence in the area. After that meeting we had a meeting with the South African police to discuss some of the security problems that were being experienced in the area and after lunch proceeded back to Maritzburg along this road. I believe that the people who had been at the meeting must have had some involvement in it, so I believe we must have been monitored."

According to Jeffries, "This spot that they chose was a very good one. The car had to go quite slowly as it’s a hairpin bend. There’s a low wall. There was a very loud bang. It was almost as if there was a fire cracker going off. They hit Reggie with the first shot. They must have known where he was sitting in the car and it all indicated it was fairly carefully planned.”

There were two versions of how Reggie Hadebe’s vehicle was ambushed. The first one was by the alleged IFP hit squad mastermind Daluxolo Luthuli, who claimed he was involved in the October 1992 assassination of Hadebe. Luthuli, a former Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) soldier, a Veteran survivor of the Wankie Campaign and IFP field organiser, as well as Commander of the IFP’s armed wing, the Self-Protection Unit (SPU), fled his Ulundi home and entered a state witness protection programme to disclose damaging secrets about the IFP’s network of killers.

Luthuli said in his testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that Phumlani Mshengu and Bongani Sithole, who were trained in the Caprivi area by the apartheid South African Defence Force (SADF), killed Hadebe. Luthuli claimed that Phillip Powell and David Ntombela – both IFP members of the KwaZulu-Natal legislature – knew about the plans to murder Hadebe. Phillip Powell said he had read Luthuli’s statement and did not take it seriously because it was full of “inaccuracies and inconsistencies”.

The second version was by one prisoner, IFP (SPU) member Sibusiso Richard Mbhele, who was serving a life sentence plus 31 years in the Westville prison for murder, two counts of robbery and two counts of illegal possession of fi****ms. He told The Natal Witness newspaper how members of his unit planned Hadebe’s assassination and how Hadebe, Harry Gwala’s right hand man, was identified to the killers.

Mbhele said a prominent tribal figure in the Ixopo district, Chief Xhawulengweni Mkhize, his two sons, two members of the KwaZulu Police and himself were watching the evening news on television during which Hadebe said he would be attending the peace meeting in Ixopo the following day.

He said the Chief pointed Hadebe out and said: “This is a man who we must kill”. Mbhele said it was then discussed that Hadebe’s car should be ambushed at Umkomaas and the one son formulated a plan to “block and attack” Hadebe.

The Amnesty Committee of the TRC on 11 October 1999 heard how a SPU Commander and IFP member, Bheki Phepho Mkhize, bragged about killing ANC member Reggie Hadebe in the early 1990s. The allegations against Mkhize were contained in the amnesty application of Sibusiso Richard Mbhele, which was heard at a TRC hearing in Pietermaritzburg on 11 October 1999. He claimed that after the assassination Mkhize appeared very happy and told him he had finished Hadebe.

However Bheki Phepho Mkhize, at the same TRC hearing on 11 October 1999, denied the accusations, saying he only knew the applicant, Mbhele, as Sosha, someone he understood to be “terrorising everyone in the area”.

Balibulala iQhawe leSizwe! Makhulukhulu!

Castro Khwela
Good evening fellow Compatriots!

27/10/2024

Long live the Spirit of Oliver Tambo. Long Live!

27/10/2024

MK Special Operations’ Rogerio Chamusso is Arrested

On 27 October 1981, at around 08:00 in the morning, Captain Urban Strydom of the apartheid police led a group of policemen to a smallholding called Keerom, which was on the road to Steelpoort, approximately ten kilometres outside Middleburg. While Strydom was walking around the huts, he came across a black man, whom he asked to identify himself. The man responded that he was Rogerio Chamusso and he was immediately arrested. Strydom had identified Chamusso from a photograph that he was carrying with him.

On 11 October 1981, Aboobaker Ismail (aka “Rashid”) met with Rogerio Chamusso (aka “Patrick Shange”) in the presence of Joe Slovo and “Christie”, while Chamusso was still recovering from his scars that were caused by splinters during the Matola raid. The meeting was about discussing the next target that Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Special Operations Unit had to attack.

In front of them was a map with the town of Evander, in the Eastern Transvaal, being conspicuously marked on the overlay. Chamusso knew the area very well, having been previously employed as a driver at the nearby SASOL complex in Secunda during the June 1980 MK attack. The apartheid security forces had wrongly imprisoned and tortured him on suspicion that he was involved in the raid, and this treatment led to him leaving the country to join the African National Congress (ANC). Slovo then ordered Chamusso to meet with “George” in Swaziland and how to get to Transalloys.

On the evening of 21 October 1981, in Evander, Chamusso cut a V-shape in the security fence outside the town’s main electricity substation, which was completely deserted at that time. He bent open the V-shape in the security fence and then went into the building inside the premises, where he placed five limpet mines on each of the transformers. He then left the premises, and at around 20:45, a huge explosion happened in the substation, which could be heard fifteen kilometres away.

During the same evening, towards midnight, Chamusso was hiding himself on a conveyer belt that was carrying coal from a mine inside of the in-construction SASOL complex in Secunda. He then headed to the water treatment plant inside the complex and placed a limpet mine there, with the intention of causing an explosion that was going to lead to the evacuation of the plant and thus avoid civilian casualties when the principal blast occurred at a reactor in one of the main plants.

After leaving the main treatment plant, he went straight to the main plant and placed a limpet mine on the reactor. During the explosion of the first limpet mine on the water pipeline just after midnight, Chamusso left the complex with the other employees that were being evacuated. Before the second mine could explode, about fifteen minutes later, it was defused by the apartheid police, who had arrived promptly at the scene.

On 23 October 1981, at around 19:00, Chamusso walked through the fence of the ESKOM substation at the Transalloys plant near Clewer, in the district of Witbank (EMalahleni), and placed a limpet mine on a transformer before heading back to his getaway car. Later that evening the mine exploded, damaging the transformer in the plant, striking the lighting diverter as well as making tow radiators to spill a lot of oil.

At approximately 03:20 the following morning, apartheid Detective Warrant Officer Johannes Dietricksen noticed a Datsun Stanza making a U-turn while he was manning a roadblock at the Loskop Dam T-junction on the road from Groblersdal to Bronkhorstspruit. Dietricksen followed the vehicle in the company of Lieutenant Senekal and after pursuing it for approximately four kilometres, the car lights disappeared. Afterwards they found the car being overturned, with no person inside, except for a driver’s licence with the photo of the owner in the name of “Rogerio Chamusso”.

On 6 December 1982, Rogerio Chamusso, 32, was sentenced by the Pretoria Supreme Court to 24 years’ imprisonment under the Terrorism Act following his arrest by Captain Urban Strydom of the apartheid police.

He really placed the apartheid security establishment under a state of consistent panic. Viva MK Combatant Rogerio Chamusso!

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!

27/10/2024

Oliver Reginald Tambo is Born

On this day, 27 October 1917, Oliver Tambo was born. OR Tambo passed on 24 April 1993, at the age of 75. His death came 14 days after Chris Hani's assassination and one year before the 1994 general elections. Oliver Reginald Kaizana Tambo was an outstanding South African anti-apartheid, anti-imperialist and internationalist revolutionary who served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1967 to 1991 and Commander-in-Chief of the People's Army, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).

As a Military Commander, Tambo was directly responsible for organising active guerilla units and successfully straddled the Eastern bloc with the West, the Non-Aligned Movement and also independent Africa, obtaining their support despite his refusal to repudiate non-racialism. He had borne witness to Luthuli’s crafting of the ‘moral high ground’ and retained the principle into the MK’s concept of armed struggle.

The consultative conference at Morogoro in 1969 had confirmed that the armed struggle must not stray from the political along the lines of the ANC’s holistic concept of struggle. At Novo Catengue, Angola, which was one of MK’s largest and most successful camps, ‘the University of the South’, known for its stimulating education programme, Tambo had encouraged “In building up our own popular army”, he explained to the troops “we aim . . . not only at the overthrow of the fascist regime, we aim also at building up a politically conscious and revolutionary army, conscious of its popular origin, unwavering in its democratic functions and guided by our revolutionary orientation.”

Tambo was concerned not only to use “education as a weapon in the struggle”, but also to build an intelligentsia within the army itself. History and political theory were particularly important in developing politically informed cadres in the military. Their key task on their return was to wage a disciplined and conversant guerrilla operation, which would recruit and guide the community in which they found themselves. A grasp of the strategy of liberation as a whole, particularly what was relevant to South Africa, was crucial to the successful outcome of this process.

Infiltration of combatants into South Africa was too slow and there was a need to raise the level of armed struggle. People would ask why the leadership was not deploying cadres. Whenever South African security forces killed ANC cadres, calls would be made for “an eye for an eye”. In fact, between 1977 and 1980, MK initiated the infiltration of ‘hundreds of combatants back into the country’. Their purpose was to contribute to strengthening the underground, assisted by the student soldiers’ links to the community, and to attack the ‘hard targets’, the symbols of apartheid.

Tambo was challenged time and again, squaring up international diplomacy ‘versus’ armed struggle; the inclusive nation of the Freedom Charter in relation to the more sharply nationalistic Africanism of independent Africa and indeed many members of the ANC. With consummate skill, he successfully straddled the Eastern bloc with the West, the Non-Aligned Movement and also independent Africa, obtaining their support despite his refusal to repudiate non-racialism. He had borne witness to Luthuli’s crafting of the ‘moral high ground’ and retained the principle into the MK’s concept of armed struggle.

During an interview in 1973 by Josie Fanon, which was originally published in “Révolution Africaine”, April 1973, then-ANC president Oliver Tambo emphasised that

“What must be understood is that imperialism does not localise its activities. It does not concentrate all its forces at a single point at the same time. It operates on a global scale and exploits every weakness of the anti-imperialist movement. It takes advantage of every gap in anti-imperialist forces to expand and strengthen its positions.”

“…However, it would be a grave mistake to assume that imperialist forces are not doing everything they can in Southern Africa to consolidate their positions and regain, in these regions, what has been lost in others, to compensate for what they have been forced to abandon by force in other parts of Africa. It is from this point that we must conceive our global strategy, as revolutionaries, and always keep in mind that when imperialism is defeated and driven out in one area, it attacks even more vigorously in another.”

Tambo’s foresight however went beyond the painful imperatives of the present, for he supplemented the steps he took by laying the foundations of a lasting and major accomplishment in post-apartheid South Africa. … He sought instead a democratic solution. For its long-term moral and revolutionary well-being, the movement had to take a principled, collective stand. Proper institutional procedures had to be established so as to forever prevent a reoccurrence of the abuse of power.

According to Tambo, “The only real solution lies in the victory of the revolutionary forces, the dismantling of the apartheid machinery and the transfer of political and economic power to the democratic majority.”

Castro Khwela
Good morning fellow Compatriots!

26/10/2024

Black Council Elections Rocked by MK Bomb Blasts

On 26 October 1988, reporting on South Africa’s municipal elections in the black townships, the Associated Press said the turnout was generally below ten percent, but the apartheid government’s view was that when advance votes were taken into consideration, the total black turnout was going to exceed the 21 percent recorded in the 1983 local elections. For the racist regime, this made the process a qualified success from its own perspective.

Meanwhile, the African National Congress (ANC) also claimed victory in a broadcast on Radio Freedom on 27 October 1988, where it began by saying, “Compatriots, 26th October has come and gone. But the day will remain another milestone in our struggle against apartheid and white minority domination. No matter how much the regime tries to convince the world that it has received a mandate from the black people to go ahead with its apartheid reforms, no matter what percentage the regime claims as its support within the black community, one thing became clear out of the fraudulent elections yesterday. It is that more than 80 per cent of the insignificant number of involuntarily registered voters refused to vote yesterday.”

On 3 June 1988, when Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Army Chief of Staff, Chris Hani, and Army Commissar, Steve Tshwete, were interviewed by journalist John Battersby in Lusaka on the developments in South Africa, Hani mentioned that MK’s key objective in 1988 was to cause the collapse of the municipal elections scheduled for October.

According to Hani, the ANC viewed the elections “as one gigantic step by the regime to restore what our people destroyed three years ago, when in the place of this puppet system our people were experimenting with new people’s administration.” However, “the regime came in, deployed its troops, deployed the police and went out of its way to systematically try to destroy what the people had achieved”.

The apartheid regime, Hani averred, was trying to “bring back the traitors and install them and strengthen the position of the regime in the townships”. Consequently, the ANC was “committed to aborting the municipal elections in October. And it is going to use both political and military methods to stop that.” As promised by Hani, in September 1988, twenty-nine limpet mine explosions were recorded in South Africa, which was then a monthly record for MK.

Addressing the Cape Congress of the National Party, on 5 October 1988, the apartheid Minister of Law and Order, Adriaan Vlok, mentioned that the police possessed “confidential information that a number of terrorist have infiltrated the country” to sabotage the forthcoming municipal elections. On that day the Western Cape was rocked by several bomb blasts, including an explosion at the magistrate’s courts in Wynberg and one in Stellenbosch.

On the afternoon of 6 October 1988, six people were injured, with one critically so, when a limpet mine exploded in a rubbish bin outside the Tembisa municipal offices. This explosion initiated a series of blasts in Tembisa and Duduza on the East Rand, and in Bishop Lavis in Cape Town on the weekend of 7 – 10 October, leaving nine people dead and twelve injured. Four policemen were also injured on the morning of 10 October, when a limpet mine explosion occurred in the apartheid police barracks in Tembisa.

On 12 October, six apartheid security force members that were guarding a hostel in Katlehong were injured when a gunman opened fire on them with an AK-47 assault rifle, and a few hours later, three men were injured by a limpet mine explosion at the Dunnotar Post Office. On Monday, 24 October, a car bomb exploded in Witbank on the corner of Delville and Botha streets at around 08:14 in the morning. The explosion killed two civilians, and injured over forty others, including members of the apartheid security forces and police who were housed in an office block nearby.

The twentieth bomb blast in the month occurred in the morning of 25 October, at around 07:00, at a stairwell of the Eland Building in Kerk Street, Potchefstroom. The building housed security police offices and one officer was slightly injured by flying glass, leading to the building being declared as “unsafe”.

Basebefikile Abafana bakaMdal' uTambo!

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!

ANC Ward 87 - Jeannette Schoon Branch

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