Sasol bombs: ‘It was like an earthquake’

At about 23:40 on 31 May 1980, massive explosions rocked Sasol  1 in Sasolburg. About five minutes later, there were major explosions four kilometres away at the Sasol Natref plant. At about 00:20 on 1  June, less powerful explosions shook Sasol  2 in Secunda, 198 kilometres away. And two days later, about 113 kilometres from Sasol  1, in Springs, three bombs were defused, one barely minutes before exploding near the offices of Fluor, the US company building Sasol  2 and 3.

Sasol was formed to produce oil from coal because the country didn’t have large crude oil reserves. In a major technological leap, Sasol became the only company in the world to achieve this. Natref is the National Petroleum Refiners of South Africa.

The explosions at Sasol 1 were heard several kilometres away and the flames rose hundreds of metres, lighting up the night sky.

Residents of nearby Zamdela were thrown out of their beds as the explosions shook the ground. “It was a tremendous explosion which even rocked my bed,” said Reuben Tshkeli. “Everything in the house was shaking … When I looked through the window, I saw a mixture of smoke and flames high in the air … there was a lot of pandemonium.”

Aaron Melato shot out of bed and ran into the street, but the heat was so intense that he couldn’t go further. People fled when they “saw a ball of fire coming towards the township”.

Elsewhere people were also shaken from their sleep. Anna Roth said, “It was like an earthquake. I thought it was all over with us .”

Fire engines, with sirens screaming, raced to the blazing tanks. So fierce were the flames that people several kilometres away could feel the intensity of the heat.

Eddy van Baalen, Sasol’s safety and fire officer, said: “There was a flash and it was suddenly brighter than daylight as the flames reared up. You could see the hairs on your arms. It felt like all day but it was probably just for a few seconds that we endured the intense heat.”

Shortly after 23:55 there were about 400 firefighters tackling the biggest fire ever in South Africa. An air force firefighter described it as “a scene from hell”.

Police immediately set up roadblocks and began to look for those responsible. At about 03:30 the Sasolburg Commando and about half an hour later the South African Defence Force (SADF) arrived. About 15 minutes later, General Kobus Visser, head of the Criminal Investigation Division, and Brigadier Jan Grobbelaar of the SADF turned up. 

FW de Klerk, the minister of minerals and energy at the time, said “we are faced with a sophisticated attack, which is evident by the fact that there were three separate attacks on three separate installations almost simultaneously”.

Journalist Carlos Pais said he and his team flew “between the seven-thousand-feet pillar of raging smoke from Sasol’s sabotaged petrol tanks and felt the heat of the fires below us stinging our faces. Clouds of smoke covered the plane in a thick film of soot and our lungs smarted as we breathed in the fumes of the blast.”

Huge plumes of black smoke darkened the Sasolburg sky and drifted more than 80km into Johannesburg’s southern suburbs.

The columns of smoke resembled “two gigantic volcanic eruptions as enormous orange billows of flame looking like a mass of molten lava erupted to a height of over 30m”, noted Peter Moscardi and Merilyn Cohen in an article headlined “Like a volcano gone mad”. The burning tanks, looking like “mangled heaps of scorched rubble, stood silently in a sea of foam which had been used to extinguish the blaze”.

As international sanctions were increasingly imposed on South Africa from the late 1970s, Sasol became important to the country’s strategy of economic and military self-sufficiency. It was a valued project of the apartheid state, and so the attacks shook business and the state.

The attack was carried out by the ANC’s uMkhonto weSizwe Special Operations unit, which specifically aimed to carry out high-impact, high-visibility attacks against strategic economic and military targets. Hitting the country’s fuel supplies was to convey the vulnerability of the economy and the apartheid regime. The attacks were timed to coincide with the 31  May Republic Day celebrations. 

A select team of operatives was identified for the operation by Montso Mokgabudi (MK name: Obadi) and trained by Aboobaker Ismail (MK: Rashid). Barney Molokoane commanded the Sasol  1 and Natref unit. It included Velaphi Msane, Jackie, Solly Mayona, Scorpio and Tebogo Kgope. Victor Khayiyana commanded the Sasol  2 unit, which included Moisi, Mochudi and Sipho Thobela.

The Fluor operation was carried out by Phiwe. Where the real names of the operatives are not known, their MK names are used. 

Materiel for the Sasol 1 operation was infiltrated into the country by the MK’s Transvaal Urban Machinery, commanded by Siphiwe Nyanda (MK: Gebuza).

At about 15:00 on 25 May the operatives crossed the Swaziland–South Africa border fence. Msane and Khayiyana received them. Msane drove a Ranchero, which carried the units going to Sasol 1 and Natref, and Khayiyana a Chev Firenza, with the unit heading to Secunda.

It was bitterly cold. So, astonishingly, Molokoane’s unit went to a police station, said that they were looking for work, handed over their forged pass books and asked for an empty cell to sleep in. The police agreed, little knowing what their guests would be up to the next day.

Late on the night of 31 May (Republic Day), Molokoane’s unit split into two groups to hit Sasol 1 and Natref. They cut the outer perimeter fence with wire cutters and slipped into the plants. They were in Sasol overalls and makarapas (hard hats) and had false access cards. Hidden in their clothes were the limpet mines. At Sasol 1, they headed for the fractionating towers. But there were too many workers there. So, they planted the limpet mines on the fuel tank farms.

Just before 23:40, guards at Sasol 1 saw a hole in the fence. While they were investigating, the first explosion ripped through a butadiene tank containing liquid and gas. It was completely destroyed and set off one big and three smaller fuel tanks.

At Natref, the first blast was under a tank containing semi-refined fuel. Two aviation fuel tanks exploded shortly afterwards.

At least eight huge fuel-storage tanks were ablaze. Seven tanks were still burning two days later. A white mist shrouded Sasol 1.

As the unit to hit Sasol 2 in Secunda got going, Moisi said that at “some point we stopped talking to one another. It was an unsaid thing. You felt that you were intruding into someone’s spiritual wellbeing. One calmed oneself thinking of the heroes who had died in the struggle.”

Once they got into the plant, they “saw this Sasol guy; it was an awkward spot to walk. He came closer in a 1400 Nissan bakkie and realised we’ve got access cards and makarapas and left.

The unit’s main target was the fractionating tower.

“Hey, but there was a point in the area of the fractionating tower, you realise that, no, this is a mistake — the noise! I can’t hear you even if you are very close. We should’ve had some gadgets to be able to hear each other there.”

So they went to the refining area where they placed the limpet mines on the gasifier unit and the hydrogen cylinders. They then “drive off, flying to safety”.

The unit drove through the border fence.

“You cut the fence at the right lines, then you’re able to lift it up and drive the car through. And then we met Obadi and Rashid, and off we drove to Maputo. We were listening to the news … we heard on the BBC that ANC nationalist guerrillas just bombed Sasol. I almost felt like singing. Obadi laughed with joy, saying, ‘We did it!’”

Phiwe had put three limpet mines at the Fluor offices in Springs. Two schoolboys saw the limpets in the hall and sounded the alert. Hundreds of people watched from a distance with their “hearts in their mouths” as the bomb disposal experts got to work. 

The morning after the operation, Rashid and Obadi met a very excited Joe Slovo, who said he’d been standing on the balcony of his Maputo flat looking out in a southerly direction to check if he could see the Sasol 2 explosion.

The units briefed ANC president Oliver Tambo. Said Moisi: “OR [Tambo] prefers listening, especially to people who were from the front. Obadi tried to explain, but Tambo said, no, let them explain.

“OR wanted us to know how important what we did was. We didn’t know why we were chosen for such an important and historical mission … OR’s speech was inspirational, and he was in a celebratory but dignified mood. You know OR, he’s not overwhelmed by excitement.”

Moisi says that after the Sasol attacks many youths left the country to join MK.

The attacks “struck at the heart of South Africa’s vital fuel-from-coal installations in one of the most daring urban attacks yet”, noted The Star. The Second Police Amendment Act was legislated to limit media coverage of “terroristic activities” and the security forces’ activities.

In 2009 when British foreign secretary David Miliband was asked by BBC Radio whether violence could ever be justified to achieve political goals, he replied: “The most famous ANC military attack was on the Sasol oil refinery in 1980. That was perceived to be a remarkable blow at the heart of the South African regime. But I think the answer has to be yes — there are circumstances in which it is justifiable, and, yes, there are circumstances in which it is effective — but it is never effective on its own.

“The importance for me is that the South African example proved something remarkable: the apartheid regime looked like a regime that would last forever, and it was blown down.

“It is hard to argue that, on its own, a political struggle would have delivered. The striking at the heart of a regime’s claim on a monopoly of power, which the ANC’s armed wing represented, was very significant.”

In retaliation, in the early hours of 30 January 1981, apartheid security forces raided three ANC houses in Matola, Mozambique, killing 15 ANC members, Obadi among them. Rashid escaped as he was in Swaziland dealing with tasks Slovo had given him.

The 1980 Sasol operation is often regarded as the best of the MK operations in its almost 30-year history. It was spectacular. Pure drama. It made international headlines. The operation inspired people’s confidence in MK and the ANC. And it boosted morale in the ANC.

The success of the operation led to the NEC (national executive committee) deciding that Special Ops should continue under Tambo’s guidance as a separate structure within MK with its own reporting processes.

Attacking the Heart of Apartheid is published by Penguin Random House.