The Church Street bombing was a terrorist car bomb attack on 20 May 1983 in the South African capital

Pretoria Pretoria ( ; ) is the Capital of South Africa, administrative capital of South Africa, serving as the seat of the Executive (government), executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to the country. Pretoria strad ...

by uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the

paramilitary A paramilitary is a military that is not a part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the use of the term "paramilitary" as far back as 1934. Overview Though a paramilitary is, by definiti ...

wing of the

African National Congress The African National Congress (ANC) is a political party in South Africa. It originated as a liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid and has governed the country since 1994, when the 1994 South African general election, fir ...

. The bombing killed 19 people, including the two perpetrators, and wounded 217.

Attack

The attack consisted of a car bomb set off outside the Nedbank Square Building, which was rented by the

South African Air Force The South African Air Force (SAAF) is the air warfare branch of South African National Defence Force, with its headquarters in Pretoria. The South African Air Force was established on 1 February 1920. The Air Force saw service in World War II a ...

, on Church Street West, Pretoria, at 4:30 pm on 20 May 1983. The target was supposedly South African Air Force (SAAF) headquarters, but as the bomb was set to go off at the height of rush hour, those killed and wounded included civilians. The bomb exploded ten minutes earlier than planned, killing two of the perpetrators, Freddie Shangwe and Ezekial Maseko, along with 17 other people. At least 20 ambulances took the dead and wounded to hospitals.

Truth Commission hearing

In submissions to the

Truth and Reconciliation Commission A truth commission, also known as a truth and reconciliation commission or truth and justice commission, is an official body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state ac ...

(TRC) in 1997 and 1998, the ANC revealed that the attack was orchestrated by a special operations unit of the ANC's Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), commanded by Aboobaker Ismail. At the time of the attack, they reported to

Joe Slovo Yossel Mashel "Joe" Slovo (23 May 1926 – 6 January 1995) was a South African politician and Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist. A Marxist-Leninist, he was a long-time leader and theorist in the South African Com ...

as chief of staff, and the Church Street attack was authorised by Oliver Tambo. The ANC's submission said the bombing was in response to a South African cross-

border Borders are generally defined as geography, geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by polity, political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other administrative divisio ...

raid into

Lesotho Lesotho, formally the Kingdom of Lesotho and formerly known as Basutoland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Entirely surrounded by South Africa, it is the largest of only three sovereign enclave and exclave, enclaves in the world, t ...

in December 1982, which killed 42 ANC supporters and the assassination of Ruth First, an ANC activist and the wife of Joe Slovo, in

Maputo Maputo () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Mozambique. Located near the southern end of the country, it is within of the borders with Eswatini and South Africa. The city has a population of 1,088,449 (as of 2017) distributed ov ...

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

. It claimed that 11 of the casualties were SAAF personnel and hence a military target. The legal representative of some of the victims argued that as administrative staff including telephonists and typists they could not accept that they were a legitimate military target. Ten MK operatives, including Aboobaker Ismail, applied for amnesty for this and other bombings. The applications were opposed on various grounds, including that it was a terrorist attack disproportionate to the political motive. The TRC found that the number of civilians versus military personnel killed was unclear. Police statistics indicated that seven members of the SAAF were killed. The commission found that at least 84 of the injured were SAAF members or employees. Amnesty was granted by the TRC in 2000.

Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela ( , ; born Rolihlahla Mandela; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South Africa f ...

, who was serving time in prison at the time of the terror attack, wrote about its violent nature in his autobiography: “It was precisely because we knew that such incidents would occur that our decision to take up arms had been so grave and reluctant.”Nelson Mandela, ''The Long Walk To Freedom'' (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1994) p. 88.

References

{{coord, 25, 44, 47, S, 28, 11, 26, E, display=title, scale:5000_region:ZA_type:event 1983 murders in South Africa 1983 building bombings Building bombings in South Africa Attacks on military installations in 1983 Car and truck bombings in the 1980s Car and truck bombings in South Africa Opposition to apartheid in South Africa History of Pretoria Attacks attributed to uMkhonto we Sizwe Mass murder in 1983 1980s massacres in South Africa 1983 crimes May 1983 in Africa Terrorist incidents in Africa in 1983 Terrorist incidents in South Africa in the 1980s South African Air Force Events in Pretoria

Attack

Truth Commission hearing

See also

References