OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday 10.30am.
POLICE on Wednesday said the bomb that blew up the Planet Hollywood restaurant at Cape Town’s Waterfront displayed several similar features to pipe bombs detonated at the offices of the police special task team in Bellville and the Mowbray police station earlier this year.
One person was killed and 27 others injured on August 25 when the bomb exploded at the Waterfront restaurant. In the Bellville blast on August 6, street vendor Nolusindiso Mlolo (37) was killed when a bomb detonated outside the task team offices. Three people were injured. An explosion outside the Mowbray police station about a month earlier caused extensive damage to the front of the premises and shops in the immediate vicinity. No one was injured.
Police spokesperson Senior Superintendent John Sterrenberg added that apart from the similarities between the bombs, investigators have no further leads in the case.
Meanwhile, University of Cape Town academic Ebrahim Moosa, anoutspoken critic of vigilante group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs whose house was bombed in July, is to leave the country with his family in the next few days.
Moosa said he had already planned a sabbatical at Stanford University in California from January to March next year but, in the light of the trauma suffered by his family over the bombing and death threats, he said he has decided to extend the visit.
Moosa criticised the provincial government and said it has “absymally and criminally shirked its responsibility to protect the citizens of Cape Town”. He appealed to all South Africans to “stand up and be counted” in the fight against escalating violence.
Wednesday 10.30am:
SOUTH African National Police Commissioner George Fivaz on Wednesday ruled out international involvement in last week’s Planet Hollywood bombing.
“We believe it is not necessarily … an international syndicate or group of people. We believe it is localised. And we believe if we are making arrests it will be proved that local people were responsible for that specific bomb,” he said in a radio interview.
Last week, Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi said evidence suggests the August 25 blast is linked to the United States embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on August 7. But he did not clarify that statement.
Fivaz says police are closing on those responsible for the bombing.
The police have already abandoned several possible leads in their investigation, and have offered a large reward for information.
It is clear that vigilante group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs must be a target of police inquiries.
Since the restaurant bombings, there have been no pipe bombings on the Cape Flats, an almost daily occurrence in the ongoing war between Pagad and gangsters before August 25.