The Church Street bombing was a car bomb
attack on 20 May 1983 in theSouth African capital Pretoria by Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of theAfrican National Congress. The bombing killed 19, including two perpetrators,
and wounded 217, was one of the largest
attacks engaged in by the ANC during its armed struggle.
The attack consisted of a car bomb set off outside the
Nedbank Square building on Church Street at 4:30 pm on a Friday. The target
was 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 went off ten minutes
earlier than planned, killing two of the perpetrators, Freddie Shangwe and
Ezekial Maseko. At least 20 ambulances took the dead and wounded to hospital.
ANC MASTERMIND CAMPAIGN JUSTIFIES PRETORIA CHURCH STREET
BLAST
The 1983 Pretoria bomb blast which killed 19 people was an
attack on a military target aimed at showing the apartheid regime that their
forces could also bleed, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard in the
capital on Wednesday.
Ten former Umkhonto, we Sizwe
members, were applying for amnesty for a series of bomb attacks they
committed as part of an African National Congress campaign to demoralize the
apartheid government in the 1980's.
One of the applicants, Aboobaker Ismail, 43, has admitted
planning and orchestrating the attacks, including the Pretoria bomb blast while he was commander of the ANC's
Special Operations Unit.
Ismail, 43, recalled in his testimony to the TRC's amnesty
committee that according to newspaper
reports after the bomb blast there had been a "sea of blue" in the
rubble, referring to the blue uniforms of the killed or injured Air Force
staff. He said this convinced him that the attack on the SAAF headquarters had been an "overwhelmingly
military target".
Ismail, who masterminded the Church Street
bomb blast, said although he regretted the deaths of innocent civilians,
the ANC's policy was that they should not be deterred from striking at the
apartheid state "for the sake of a few civilian lives".
The Church Street attack on May 20, 1983, killed 19 and injured more than 200 people when a car with
40kg of explosives was detonated outside the SAAF headquarters. Two MK cadres,
who were in the car at the time, were also killed because the bomb exploded two
minutes early.
Ismail said the bomb was aimed at the military personnel
leaving the SA Air Force headquarters. He had personally selected the building
as a target. However, he said, the planners of the attack knew that the
location of the target inside an urban area posed a threat to civilians.
"We did not target civilians. However the policy of the
ANC at the time was that we could not for
the sake of saving a few lives be prevented from striking at the power of
State, the apartheid state," Ismail said.
He also quoted former ANC president Oliver Tambo as
justifying the attacks even though civilians were often killed.
Ismail said the ANC was determined to strike back at the
security forces and to make them bleed.
"They could not think they could go on doing anything
they wanted because they had the guns. (By way of the Church Street bomb) the
enemy forces of the apartheid regime to bleed he say
Nelson Mandela.
He was the president of South Africa loved by the world, but he was a terrorist.
The hero of the anti-apartheid struggle was not the saint we want him to be.
The hero of the anti-apartheid struggle was not the saint we want him to be.
The image of Nelson Mandela as a selfless, humble, freedom
fighter turned cheerful, kindly old man, is well established in the West. If
there is any international leader on whom we can universally heap praise, it is surely he. But get past the halo
we’ve placed on him without his permission, and Nelson Mandela had more than a
few flaws which deserve attention.
He signed off on the deaths of innocent people, lots of them
Nelson Mandela was the head of UmKhonto we Sizwe, (MK), the
terrorist wing of the ANC and South African Communist Party. At his trial, he
had pleaded guilty to 156 acts of public violence including mobilizing
terrorist bombing campaigns, which planted bombs in public places, including
the Johannesburg railway station. Many innocent people, including women and
children, were killed
by Nelson Mandela's Mk terrorist.'
Terrorism did not stop when the ANC/Communist alliance officially ended its terror war. The former terrorists had been given South Africa, lock, stock and barrel, by a spineless De Klerk government, but their slogans 'Kill a Boer, kill a Farmer', and 'One Settler, One Bullet' were and are still being screamed out, the clenched fist is still raised, and anyway, old terrorist habits die hard. While the words 'peace', 'democracy', 'reconciliation' and 'justice' is gushing out like verbal diarrhea from politicians' mouths, something totally different is gushing out from countless defenseless, innocent victims: Blood and guts. Now classified under the euphemism 'crime', the terror continues unabated, - if anything, worse than ever before.
To drive out the white man and to intimidate all opposition,
white and black. The focus is still on lonely farms, and on the weak and helpless: Especially the elderly, women, even
babies are brutally attacked, beaten, raped and killed. The politically
correct, fawning media reports the 'crime' on page 4, it even makes clucking noises every now and then, - but none
dare calls it what it is: Terrorism in its pure, unadulterated form. Terrorism aided and abetted by the Regime in its many
forms and variations: Be they Ministers like Peter Mokaba shouting 'Kill the Boer", Missies Mandela
screaming out hate-speech, hit-squads slaying opposition politicians, or the
gullible mob doing the butchering on the streets, inside houses, at the workplace,
or on farms. By the end of 2001, 7 years into ANC/Communist rule more
than 1150 mostly white farmers have already been murdered in the so-called democratic new South Africa
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