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IOL News
2 days ago
- Politics
- IOL News
Jeffery's Red Scare: The NDR, Manufactured Panic, and the Defence of Racial Capital
Anthea Jeffery warns of a covert socialist agenda in South Africa, framing the National Democratic Revolution as a Marxist threat. This article critically examines her claims, revealing the ideological warfare at play and the implications for democracy and capitalism. Image: IOL Anthea Jeffery has spent much of her career warning that South Africa is on a covert march to socialism. Her vehicle of choice is the so-called National Democratic Revolution — a theoretical construct she treats as hard evidence of an unfolding Marxist programme hidden inside government policy. The ANC's reform proposals, however diluted, are presented as proof of a long-haul conspiracy to unravel capitalism, property rights, and democracy. This isn't analysis. It's ideological warfare crafted for a constituency anxious about redistribution. The National Democratic Revolution in its original conception was a phase-based process towards liberation: political rights first, economic reorganisation later. But what Jeffery refuses to acknowledge is that the ANC never implemented its second phase. The so-called revolution halted at the moment of elite pacting. The language remained. The politics shifted. The ANC's alignment with the SACP and COSATU allowed it to maintain liberation credentials, while its actual policies became increasingly orthodox. By the mid-1990s, the alliance had internalised market logic. Redistribution gave way to stabilisation. GEAR formalised this. Privatisation followed. State entities were corporatised. Public services were costed and commodified. Jeffery omits this history. Or she wilfully misrepresents it. She uses the NDR as a container for all post-apartheid policy that inconveniences capital. Land reform, healthcare expansion, employment equity — these are treated as dangerous incursions into free enterprise. She isolates phrases from ANC conferences or SACP newsletters and holds them up as definitive proof of a creeping totalitarian project, while ignoring the decades-long collapse of anything resembling a radical economic agenda. Her institutional base — the Institute of Race Relations — supports this position through a stream of publications designed to conflate moderate state intervention with revolutionary intent. It claims to stand for classical liberalism. In practice, it operates as a cultural and economic firewall for the beneficiaries of apartheid's economic structure. Its function is not to analyse power, but to secure it. Jeffery's periodic references to 1976 are calculated. She acknowledges the significance of the uprising, but removes it from the insurgent currents that animated it. The student protests were not simply a spontaneous reaction to Afrikaans in schools. They were a political rupture. They revived Black Consciousness, anti-capitalist critique, and a pan-African worldview. Many students were detained, tortured, or killed. Others went into exile and carried their radicalism with them. Some joined the ANC. Others looked elsewhere — to the PAC, to newer formations, or to community organising beyond party structures. The UDF, which emerged in the 1980s, institutionalised much of this activism. But its formation marked a shift away from the militancy of 1976. It embraced the Freedom Charter and sought to build broad-based alliances under its framework. It functioned as a civic force rather than a revolutionary front. COSATU, too, while initially militant in worker organising, had by the mid-1980s begun engaging foreign donors and adopting development project language. USAID funding flowed into union education and policy platforms. The edges of resistance were being managed. The revolutionary demands were being absorbed into programmes. The SACP followed a similar trajectory. From its exile-era anti-capitalist declarations to its post-1994 parliamentary positions, the shift was clear. It offered ideological cover to the ANC's pragmatic manoeuvring, describing every compromise as a tactical delay. But the delays became permanent. The economic structure of apartheid remained intact, with new faces at the table. Jeffery does not mention these shifts, because her narrative relies on exaggeration. She needs the ANC to be a radical actor so she can frame even the mildest policy adjustment as evidence of Marxist capture. Her entire thesis depends on mischaracterisation. Redistribution becomes dispossession. Affirmative action becomes racial engineering. Healthcare equity becomes state control. She constructs an ANC that no longer exists and warns against an agenda that has already been abandoned. Her real objective is to delegitimise any challenge to racialised wealth. She is not defending democratic values. She is defending historical advantage. This is evident in the way she treats land. Expropriation without compensation, a policy with strict constitutional limits and very narrow application, is presented as the first step toward Zimbabwe-style collapse. This ignores decades of failed restitution, government inertia, and the market-driven nature of land policy since 1994. The threat, for Jeffery, lies not in the reality of land injustice, but in the idea that it might one day be resolved. AfriForum echoes this approach. Its spokespeople describe land reform as an attack on white farmers and frame any social policy as a threat to white survival. Their version is more racialised, more openly defensive, but the logic is aligned. Both formations reject historical responsibility. Both see equity as a threat. Both amplify fear to protect capital. Other institutions mirror these concerns in more bureaucratic language. Security think tanks publish briefings about instability. Business forums call for restraint. Liberal columnists urge balance. The message is consistent: do nothing that might disrupt the ownership patterns of the last century. Jeffery's argument about the NDR gives this position an intellectual cover. By citing speeches, strategy documents, and ideological jargon, she creates the appearance of serious critique. But it is a formula. She substitutes policy analysis with ideological projection. She avoids the fact that economic transformation has not taken place. She avoids the structural continuity between apartheid and post-apartheid capital. She avoids the reality that Black suffering in South Africa today is largely the result of state capitulation to business interests — interests that she and her institutional network continue to defend. There is no NDR in motion. There is a collapsed developmental state, a political class aligned with private capital, and a society in which poverty and violence have become structural conditions. The state has outsourced its duty to govern. The mines still poison water. The banks foreclose on homes built on land stolen a century ago. And the IRR tells us to be afraid of communism. The youth of 1976 would not recognise this landscape. They would not recognise the bureaucratised opposition that now speaks in their name. Their courage did not come with conditions. Their rejection of the apartheid order was rooted in the knowledge that legal inclusion without material justice is a performance. Their politics, forged in struggle and sharpened by violence, called for redistribution, for accountability, for dignity grounded in structural change. Jeffery does not engage this legacy. She instrumentalises it. She cites it when useful, silences it when it exposes her distortions. Her entire body of work is premised on protecting a system that never addressed the foundational crimes of this country. To suggest that the ANC, in its current form, represents a threat to private capital is absurd. It has managed capital's interests with discipline. It has sacrificed its own popular base to maintain investor credibility. Its ministers tour the world reassuring markets. Its budgets mirror austerity regimes elsewhere. It has enacted neoliberalism while speaking of revolution. The NDR functions now only as a symbolic reference. It is evoked at party conferences, in commemorative speeches, in SACP resolutions that never materialise. On the ground, it has no programme. What exists is a vacuum — filled by private sector partnerships, donor-driven governance, and a mass population structurally locked out. Jeffery chooses to see danger in the symbolism. She ignores the vacuum. She warns of an ideology whose time has passed, while legitimising the system that replaced it. Her contribution is not neutral. It fortifies the walls around wealth. It tells those who suffer to be patient — or to be silent. History did not vindicate the ANC. Nor did it vindicate the defenders of capital. It left the struggle incomplete. The question remains open — who will finish it, and how? Jeffery offers no answer. She only repeats the warnings of old men who saw equality as chaos. * Gillian Schutte is a well-known social justice and race-justice activist and public intellectual. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
IOL News
3 days ago
- Politics
- IOL News
From Alliance to Independence: The SACP's Path Forward to Reclaim Revolutionary Integrity
Newly elected secretary general of South African Communist Party (SACP) Chris Hani (left)) and former secretary general Joe Slovo (right) walk together after addressing the media on the third day of the first SACP legal congress inside South Africa in 41 years, in Soweto on December 07, 1991. Image: WALTER DHLADHLA / AFP Dr. Reneva Fourie The South African Communist Party's celebration of its 104th anniversary, from 30 July to 1 August, occurs at a groundbreaking moment in its history. Its decision to contest elections independently is not merely a tactical adjustment. This decision reflects a sober assessment of the country's political realities and is a necessary response to the multiple crises affecting it. The original basis of the Alliance – currently comprised of the ANC, SACP, COSATU and SANCO – rested on the shared understanding that racial oppression, patriarchy and class exploitation were intertwined. National liberation, as envisaged in the Freedom Charter, was viewed as a prerequisite for the socialist transformation of society. The Alliance was a strategic vehicle for mass mobilisation towards this shared vision. But alliances, as Lenin reminded us, are historical constructs that must serve a revolutionary purpose and require constant re-evaluation. Since 1994, South Africa has undergone a political transition without an economic transformation. The commanding heights of the economy remain in the hands of monopoly capital. The post-apartheid state inherited the formal architecture of democracy while leaving the structures of capitalist accumulation intact. The ANC-led government primarily embraced neoliberal macroeconomic policies that prioritised global capital over national interests, limiting the state's ability to effectively promote development for the benefit of South Africans. The result has been the reproduction of mass poverty, unemployment, inequality and crime. These structural failures have fuelled disillusionment with the liberation movement. The working class, once a leading force for change, is now largely excluded from real political influence. Within the Alliance, the SACP's influence has diminished as the ANC has come to be dominated by opportunist strata, many of whom entered the movement after 1990 to pursue private enrichment. This process has weakened the ANC's historical identity and transformed it into an increasingly bourgeois formation. Joe Slovo warned of such a development. In his essay Has Socialism Failed?, he highlighted the danger of bureaucratisation and class compromise in liberation movements that enter state power without altering the material foundations of oppression. The rise of patronage, corruption and internal factionalism within the ANC has vindicated this analysis. The dissolution of the National Party and absorption of its members, along with those of apartheid-era institutions, further diluted the ANC's progressive character. The working class has borne the brunt of this degeneration. Local government has become a site of elite contestation rather than a means of popular empowerment. Service delivery failures and corruption have alienated communities, while the voices of the poor are increasingly marginalised in national policy discourse. Electoral politics have shifted in favour of well-financed capitalist parties, many of which receive external support from Western-aligned foundations and donors. Much of the media, aligned with elite interests, has played a key role in shaping narratives that delegitimise the liberation movement while promoting the opposition. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad Loading The 2024 general election confirmed this trend. Although the ANC retained the largest share of votes, it fell below 50 per cent and entered a Government of National Unity with the Democratic Alliance. This decision was not the result of democratic will, but rather a response to pressure from capital and foreign interests. The DA's connection to imperialist institutions and its role in advancing neoliberal orthodoxy are well documented. The GNU represents a class project aimed at restoring the full dominance of capital and undermining the last remnants of transformative policy within the state. Faced with this reality, the SACP cannot remain confined to a subordinate role within the Alliance. The decision to contest elections independently is rooted in Leninist strategy. For Lenin, participation in bourgeois institutions was a method for revolutionary agitation and exposure, not an endorsement of the system. The Party's presence in elections is, therefore, a means to assert working-class interests, build political clarity, and offer an alternative pole of power. It is not an abandonment of the ANC, but a necessary correction to restore the movement's revolutionary integrity. The SACP has also advanced the idea of a Left Popular Front. This formation, rooted in the Marxist concept of the united front, seeks to bring together trade unions, community movements and progressive organisations around a common minimum programme. The goal is to build a mass-based movement capable of resisting neoliberalism and advancing a socialist alternative. At the same time, the SACP continues to support the reconfiguration of the Alliance. This reconfiguration must involve democratic engagement, strategic coordination and mutual accountability. It cannot remain an informal arrangement in which the ANC monopolises decision-making. The Alliance must be restructured to reflect the balance of forces within society and the need for a socialist orientation to the National Democratic Revolution. The SACP's role within the Alliance must be recognised not only symbolically, but in the structural transformation of the economy. The pursuit of electoral independence and the building of a Left Popular Front are not contradictory. Both are responses to the changing material conditions of post-apartheid South Africa. The class character of the state has not shifted adequately. Racism, patriarchy and tribalism remain embedded in society. The transition to political democracy was a moment of historical importance, but without economic liberation, it remains incomplete. The second, more radical phase of the revolution demands bold and decisive leadership. The SACP has the historical legitimacy, ideological clarity and organisational roots to lead this phase. Its tradition of struggle, rooted in the working class, positions it to reclaim the revolutionary mandate of the liberation movement. The Party must now deepen its presence in communities, expand its cadre base, and develop the organisational capacity required to contest and exercise power. The ultimate aim is not merely parliamentary presence, but the creation of a socialist society in which all South Africans benefit from the country's wealth. The working class cannot afford further delay. The crisis of capitalism is sharpening. Forces opposed to economic justice are advancing ideologically and institutionally. The SACP must step forward as a unifying agent for the working-class struggle. In asserting its independence, the SACP is laying the foundations for a new phase of revolutionary advancement. * Dr Reneva Fourie is a policy analyst specialising in governance, development and security. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.
Eyewitness News
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Eyewitness News
Juju Valley informal settlement residents voting for party that will formalise area
POLOKWANE - Residents from the Juju Valley informal settlement in Limpopo said they are voting for a party that will formalise the area. The residents are likely to play a deciding role in who wins Wednesday's by-election for Polokwane's Ward 13. ALSO READ: - Ahead of Polokwane ward vote, Juju Valley residents say they feel used - ANC, SACP due to face off in hotly contested Polokwane by-election - ANC appeals to Seshego residents to give the party another chance in by-elections The informal settlement, built on private land, is named after Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema. The residents said it is in honour of Malema's famous speech a decade ago when he rallied South Africans to occupy vacant land. A few metres from the Juju Valley voting station is a single communal tap that services a large portion of the area. Elderly men and women carry large containers of water as they walk past political party volunteers making promises of bringing piped water to their homes. Resident David Maphalle said while he is despondent about the future of Juju Valley, he's still going to vote. 'I need to quickly take the water home because my children are hungry, but after I'm done, I'll come back to vote. I have to vote.' Another resident, Johanna Maluleke, said she's voting for change. "I want services. I live in a shack. I want a normal bathtub, a house, water. We are struggling. I think these elections will change things. They will change our area, Juju Valley." The Limpopo government, which is run by African National Congress (ANC), has told residents it is in the final stages of purchasing the land Juju Valley is built on.
Eyewitness News
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Eyewitness News
ANC, SACP due to face off in hotly contested Polokwane by-election
POLOKWANE - The gloves are off in Polokwane, Limpopo, as alliance partners, the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), are due to face off in a hotly contested by-election. This is the first time the SACP has fielded its own candidate in an election since resolving in 2024 to no longer contest under the ANC banner. ALSO READ: - ANC appeals to Seshego residents to give the party another chance in by-elections - Polokwane SACP doesn't believe its lack of experience, resources will be a factor in by-elections - Obed Thabana SACP's first councillor candidate for contested Polokwane ward On Wednesday, voters from Polokwane's ward 13 will be casting their vote for a new councillor following the expulsion of Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) member Mafiwa Leballo for not attending council meetings. SACP councillor candidate Obed Thabana said poor service delivery, water shortages and billing discrepancies are the order of the day in the ANC-run Polokwane municipality. 'Then you have got the Juju Valley VD [voting district], very interesting one - an informal settlement where recently the ANC-led municipality went to demolish the shacks of the people of Juju Valley, saying they are not supposed to stay in Juju Valley.' ANC Limpopo secretary Reuben Madadzhe said formalisation of the Juju Valley informal settlement can only be brought by the ANC. 'What we're assuring the voters is that, give us some time, a chance as the ANC, so that we can link the ward councillor with our government. We are the leading party in the municipality and in the district and provincial administration.' Meanwhile, EFF leader Julius Malema is due to cast his ballot on Wednesday afternoon, as this is his home ward.
IOL News
13-07-2025
- General
- IOL News
Attack on Koeberg: How MK's Special Ops unit shattered the apartheid regime's invincibility
'When I got through the vehicle gate, I could, while driving slowly to the office, with my gloved left hand, unscrew the dash, get the bomb into the shoulder bag, rescrew the dash panel, while driving with my right hand. And then get to the office before anybody else and lock the bag in my steel desk drawer.' He used a screwdriver to loosen the panel underneath the Renault's cubbyhole and put the limpets inside the dashboard. He had practised the unscrewing a lot to make sure he had sufficient time between the two security areas to get the limpets out. He took one limpet bomb at a time from their hiding place on the beach on 11, 13, 14 and 16 December 1982. With about two weeks before reactor 1 was to come online, Wilkinson had to move swiftly to get the limpets onto the site. There was a tunnel from the unclean area to the clean area, with two pipes running along the wall. A panel of plywood and plastic stopped the dust from going down the tunnel. But the plywood was cut out to let the pipes through. And between the pipes, there was a gap big enough for a limpet mine. So, Wilkinson decided he would pass the limpet through that gap, go through the change room, and collect it on the other side. 'To get from the unclean to the clean area, you had to go through a change room and wear paper overalls with overshoes and a silly hat. You got searched and you weren't allowed to take a sandwich, matchbox or anything in. If there was dust in there, you could inhale it and become a source of radiation.' 'I was having sleepless nights about how to get a limpet mine into reactor 1. But I finally found a solution. I could get it to pass through the airlock and collect it on the other side. The Koeberg nuclear power station was getting ready to go online with reactor 1. So, certain areas had to be absolutely clean and free of any dust. Sections were being closed off, and the cabling conduits sealed. Security was being tightened. Rodney Wilkinson recounts: For over three decades, the remarkable story of Umkhonto we Sizwe's Special Operations Unit has remained largely untold. Formed under the direct command of ANC president Oliver Tambo and senior ANC and SACP leader Joe Slovo, this elite unit executed some of the most daring and high-profile attacks against the apartheid state in the 1980s. In this groundbreaking book by ANC and SACP activist Yunus Carrim, the history of Special Ops is brought to life through the voices of its surviving participants. This is an account of the unit's daring attack on the Koeberg nuclear power plant. MK Special Operations operative Rodney Wilkinson narrates his unit's attack on the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station in Yunus Carrim's book titled "Attacking the heart of apartheid." Koeberg as then was made up of two islands – the nuclear island towards the sea and the turbine island against it. The nuclear island produces highly pressurised, extremely heated steam, which the turbine island turns into electricity. There are two control rooms. The main control room manages the reactors and the generation of power. The other control room manages the fuel and waste. Underneath the control rooms are hundreds of cables that carry out these functions. There are two containment buildings, one for each reactor, to limit radiation leaks and contain possible explosions. The reactor is the key component, containing the fuel and its nuclear chain reaction, along with all the nuclear waste products. It is the heat source for the power plant, just like a boiler is for a coal plant. Uranium is the dominant nuclear fuel used in nuclear reactors, and its fission reactions produce the heat within a reactor. Wilkinson aimed to put a limpet on each of the reactors and under each of the control rooms. The fire from the explosions would spread through the cables under the control room. To get to reactor 1, he had to go through three security checks: first, a car search at the gate, then walking past the security guard with a dog at a pedestrian gate, and then a check at the change room before entering the clean area of the nuclear island. For the other limpets, for reactor 2 and the control rooms, he had to go through only the first two security checks. Wilkinson's office was between the car entrance and the two islands. 'I went with the limpets on four days through the first car gate where they could search your car, but hardly ever did,' he says. 'There were dogs. A mirror to stick under your car. But they just waved me on.' He had two canvas shoulder bags. He brought the limpets in one of them, while the other, which he usually used, was left in his office drawer. He would put his work drawings in with the bomb in the bag and walk to the toilet nearby. He'd put the limpet into his belt. He had two belts so the bomb wouldn't wobble as he walked casually through the gate, hands in his pockets, to cover the bulge, and a bag on his shoulder. The security officers would rarely check the bag. On the 11th, he took the first limpet to reactor 1 and hid it under a big boron tank, to later put it on the reactor head. 'As reactor 1 was about to start up, I decided to use two bombs on it to make a stronger political point. But after I passed through the third security check, collected the limpet and walked towards the entrance to reactor 1, I saw this guard at the entrance, who was watching me with some suspicion. As reactor 1 was supposed to go online, there was probably no need for anybody to access it. And this guy made me so scared. 'My most tense moment. I froze and turned away from going through the entrance to reactor 1, and went back, with the limpet in the bag, as they don't check you at the security entrance when you're coming out of the clean area, only when you go in. I just said I'd be back in half an hour, so they didn't sign me out. 'So, I put that second limpet in the basement under reactor 2. 'I also hid the other two bombs for the two control rooms in the basement under reactor 2. 'On the 17th, my final day at work, between 10:30 and 11:30, I took the limpets from where they were hidden and put them on the two reactor heads and the two control rooms.' In the afternoon, he went back to the limpets, pulled out the pins, and then returned to the office. 'Close to 17:00, I had a few drinks with the pallies at a farewell party, and said I was off.' The bombs were set to go off on Saturday, the 18th, so that the likelihood of anyone being hurt would be minimal. This would be two days after the annual commemoration of the 16 December 1961 launch of MK. Getting away He flew to Johannesburg and put a bicycle on the plane. His sister, Cathy, and her partner, Adriaan Turgel, took him to the Swaziland border. But he couldn't find the fence. A herd boy pointed, surprisingly, to 'a silly little rusty, barbed-wire fence, looking like a farm fence, as the border crossing. 'There was a little stream a few kilometres inside. I was so relieved; it was so hot that I lay in this stream in my clothes. And it was quite a busy path, so people were laughing at me, and I was laughing too. 'The hailstorm of all hailstorms hit. So, I hid under a tree. I was so relieved, though. I felt bloody good.' The Sunday paper reported that two bombs had gone off. 'I still felt fantastic. But I was a bit worried that the other two hadn't gone off.' Wilkinson flew to Maputo. On 20 December, the news was splashed all over the world – Koeberg had been hit by four explosions! 'It really was great. Nobody had been hurt, nobody got caught. It was world news.' Slovo congratulated him and took him to meet Oliver Tambo. 'It was like a big government house. We walked past some MK guards who greeted Joe with such affection. Tambo just hugged me, and we laughed and cried.' Heather Gray, Wilkinson's partner, said that: 'We had just committed a huge and highly secret act of sabotage – surely, we would be sought out by apartheid agents? It was so bloody scary. And, also, concerns about a whole new life opening for me … I think it was also the lying through my teeth to family and friends.' The ANC arranged for them to go to the UK. Wilkinson was keen to get involved in planning how to smuggle arms into the country. With Slovo and others, Wilkinson worked on a plan to transport arms into South Africa in a safari truck ( Regime stunned The Koeberg attack stunned the apartheid regime. Koeberg's losses were about R500 million (approximately R13.5 billion today), said Eskom. The project was delayed by about eighteen months. The government was embarrassed and angered. Some within the state wouldn't accept that the ANC could have carried out such a slick and successful operation. Others didn't want to publicly acknowledge this because it exposed the regime's vulnerability. And others blamed the ANC, wanting to hit back. An editorial in Die Transvaler noted, 'From time to time we are awakened by incidents such as the Sasol and Koeberg attacks. However, it remains doubtful whether we are awake enough to remain vigilant.' Around 1996, Wilkinson, Gray, Aboobaker Ismail (MK Rashid), and others visited Koeberg. An engineer 'congratulated us and told animated stories. He explained how frustrated they were after the first blast, not knowing how many bombs there were and others going off while they were looking for them. They were afraid they might get hurt.' The fuses on the four limpets were set for a twenty-four-hour delay to explode on 18 December, about an hour or so apart. Despite the huge gaps between the explosions, the security services weren't able to defuse a single limpet. JP, the chief investigator of the bombing, refused to accept that the ANC did it, saying that they didn't have 'the skills and know-how to so accurately hit the targets.' Fourteen years later, still a denial! A former Eskom executive, Paul Semark, claimed that they 'knew the ANC would not target Koeberg once nuclear fuel was there, and they would try to attack at a time which would ensure the least loss of life. We even pinpointed 16 December 1982, which was a public holiday, as the likely date.' 'That's a joke. Propaganda,' says Wilkinson. 'Hahaha! Oh, really!' That was Gray's response to Eskom's Ian McRae's suggestion that Baader–Meinhof (a German anarchist group) was behind it. Plum of the establishment Koeberg was, as Rodney says, 'the plum of the establishment, it was the regime's pride and joy, so it was a perfect place to sabotage,' notes Gray. According to Wilkinson, 'It wasn't visually spectacular, you couldn't even see smoke, nothing. It was only spectacular in the news coverage. It must've hurt the security a lot, the feeling they'd been defeated and were vulnerable after all.' It was also 'a story of incredibly good luck'. Rashid sees it as 'A tremendous coup for us. That we could penetrate a major state institution once again showed the weakness of the regime. They didn't have the foggiest idea of where the ANC could get to and when and how. It also showed that the ANC was everywhere.' Most Special Ops cadres interviewed thought Sasol and Koeberg were the most effective operations. No radioactive fallout, no casualties, and Wilkinson was out of the country before the bombs went off. The attack rattled the regime, caught the attention of the national and international media, and was an excellent example of armed propaganda. And it's considered among MK's best operations. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.
