I remember the day well. My family and I lived in the then magnificent Schubert Park, just up the road from the blast. My dad worked in the building that was targeted and had left work a few minutes earlier that day. He just walked through the door when the bomb went off.
On May, 20th, 1983, two terrorists from MK - then the paramilitary wing of the ANC - detonated a 40kg bomb in Church Street, during rush hour. In the "glass rain", these two and 17 others were killed and 217 were wounded and maimed. Among the victims were children, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. They were teachers, students, shopkeepers and office workers, all united in their tragic fate. The ANC avoids that day, which it has never regretted nor apologised for. BUT this organisation knows that they were unmasked on that day. They would never bring reconciliation nor liberation. They do not know how. Their rule was bloody, economically devastating and diplomatically a woeful embarrassment; with a predictable outcome 42 years later: mass migration from SA, refugees to America and an emergency meeting in Washington. The Church Street bomb was the writing on the wall. We should have known. Now, let us never forget...