Johannesburg - Neville Clarence, a survivor of the Church Street bombing that rocked Pretoria 30 years ago, is still waiting for the government to compensate him for his injuries.
Clarence, who was a 22-year-old SA Air Force officer at the time, was seated in a car outside the Nedbank Square building, waiting for a colleague.
The car in front of him was carrying the bomb.
Just after 4.30pm - reportedly 10 minutes before its scheduled time - the bomb went off.
It was rush hour.
“Initially, I was confused… I didn’t know what was happening. About 10 minutes after, people told me what had happened,” Clarence said this week.
He found he couldn’t see.
Debris from the blast had blinded him permanently. His eardrums were also damaged and he suffered burns to his arms.
The attack was carried out by Umkhonto we Sizwe’s special operations unit, headed by Ismail Aboobaker.
The targets were SAAF staffers who’d be leaving the building when they knocked off work.
Two ANC operatives, Freddie Shangwe and Ezekial Maseko, who were in the car that carried the bomb, were among the 19 people who died.
Eleven of those killed were SAAF staff members and the rest were civilians. More than 200 people were injured.
Because of his injuries, Clarence could no longer perform his duties. For a while, he worked as a lecturer within the force, but eventually had to resign on medical grounds.
Thus began his battle for workmen’s compensation.
In correspondence to Minister of Labour Mildred Oliphant, dated April 26 this year, Clarence explains the background to his case.
In 1984, his application for workmen’s compensation was approved. “I was unaware of this and called the then office of the accident commissioner.
“I was questioned about the circumstances of the bomb explosion in which I was blinded.
“I then received a letter stating that the claim had been repudiated as I had been off duty at the time of the incident - the explosion occurred about five minutes after 4.30pm,” he wrote.
Clarence sought legal advice, and “despite a strong argument being put forward”, the accident commissioner upheld the decision, saying Pretoria wasn’t an “operational area” and therefore his injuries did not “arise out of and in the course of duty”.
Clarence said that a few years after the incident, he received R50 000 from the then President’s Fund towards independence training and for the purchase of assistive technology.
He also received R20 000 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s reparations committee.
Clarence currently receives a R4 743 monthly pension for time served as an SA Defence Force member.
His request to the Department of Labour is for an ex-gratia award - payment done from a sense of moral obligation rather than because of any legal requirement - for the hardship and indignity he suffered as a result of his injuries.
“For 30 years, I’ve had to endure great hardship due to my blindness, deteriorating hearing loss and extremely severe tinnitus.
“To compound matters psychologically, I have to suffer the indignity of my injury not being recognised as having arisen out of and in the course of my duty, despite having been injured in a military attack by the then enemy targeted at the building of my employer,” he said.
The Department of Labour had not got back to The Star at the time of publication. Spokesman Musa Zondi said it would take time to access the details of the case.
The Star