TIL a white South African named Rodney Wilkinson worked with the ANC to bomb a nuclear plant being built by the Apartheid regime

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/05/the-man-who-blew-up-a-nuclear-power-station-koeberg-south-africa

https://web.archive.org/web/20260506011916/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/05/the-man-who-blew-up-a-nuclear-power-station-koeberg-south-africa

Read this article today and was amazed. A former fencing champion named Rodney Wilkinson joined up with the ANC. Rodney had been working at the plant which was under construction. A black draftsman he worked with looked the other way when he took the plans for the plant to copy. He was trained by the ANC in espionage tradecraft, and was given 4 limpet mines to place around the reactors. Since the plant was under construction, there was no nuclear material on site. To minimize the risk of casualties, the operation would occur on the weekend. Rodney was successful and escaped and was able to return to South Africa after the fall of Apartheid.

Really incredible story!

125 points · 10 comments · view on lemmy.world

10 Comments

Aatube@kbin.melroy.org · 4 pts · 118d (3 replies)

fellow bisexual newsletter subscriber!!

Eric@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 118d (1 reply)

There's a bisexual newsletter?

Aatube@kbin.melroy.org · 2 pts · 114d

i meant the guardian newsletter lol

quick_snail@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 117d

I want in.

quick_snail@feddit.nl · 3 pts · 117d (2 replies)

It's really sad to me how low effort screenshots of tweets get upvoted to heaven on Lemmy, and amazing quality journalism like this only occasionally make it into my feed.

Thanks for posting.

Aatube@kbin.melroy.org · 3 pts · 114d

there's some commags like !longreads@sh.itjust.works and !longformindepth@lemmy.world you might be interested in

Eric@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 117d

No problem! I felt I had to share when I came across it on another site. I will try to post more quality longer reads as I find them.

muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com · -2 pts · 118d (2 replies)

Didn't the anc do all sorts of war crime level torture to people notably putting a tire around someone's neck filling it with petrol then setting it on fire. Go google the pictures of that and the number of people they subjected to this and tell me they where the good guys again will you.

NOT_RICK@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 118d

It was never directly endorsed by the ANC, and generally condemned by them, albeit not the individuals accused of the practice. They referred to the practice as “necklacing”. The closest I am aware of an endorsement of it was from Nelson Mandela’s wife Winnie who said in 1986:

"With our boxes of matches, and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country".

All that said, I’m never surprised when state violence is thrown out liberally that there is a counter effect. If you treat people like animals for long enough they will eventually oblige you.

TheOctonaut@piefed.zip · 2 pts · 117d

Yes the people fighting apartheid were the good guys

This isn't hard, and that wasn't news to most of the world when we sided with them.