Sasolburg

On 2 June 1980, Sasolburg was attacked[2] by Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the African National Congress's (ANC) military wing.[3] They bombed two strategically important SASOL (oil-from-coal) plants and an oil refinery.[2] This event was depicted in the 2006 film Catch a Fire.

Kader Asmal, founder of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement, claimed in his memoirs, Politics in my Blood, that the ANC had recruited volunteers from the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) to do reconnaissance on the refinery.[3]

The attack proved to be largely ineffectual in terms of sabotaging the manufacturing processes of the Sasol plant. However the propaganda impact of the attack was significant: the South African government presented the event as the result of a foreign, communist onslaught against South Africa, and not a domestic reaction to the country's racial policies.[2] Police Minister Louis le Grange claimed that the then-exiled Joe Slovo, of the banned South African Communist Party, was a key figure. Newspapers that supported the ruling National Party claimed that, in fact, Muammar Qaddafi had masterminded the sabotage, and that Russians had been training terrorists in Libya.[2]

On 1 October 1987, Sasol 1's management called in police and vigilantes to break up a workers’ strike resulting from a wage dispute. Over the following weeks, 77 workers died, and the 2 400 jobs were retrenched without their due compensation.[4] The ex-workers took SASOL to court as result and, in 1989, the Labour Court ruled in favour of the ex-workers; however, as of 2014, they have yet to receive compensation. SASOL still denies responsibility and, as a result of the refinery's designation as a National Key Point, the actions taken against workers remain secret until today.[1]

In January 2013, residents of Sasolburg's Zamdela township rioted in response to a demarcation proposal to incorporate Sasolburg into the neighbouring Parys's Ngwathe municipality, believing that the merge would result in poorer service delivery and increased corruption.[5] Police were unable to stop the violence, which involved assault, vandalism, and plundering, as they were outnumbered.[6]