Robert McBride (police officer)

Robert McBride (born 6 July 1963) is the former chief of the metropolitan police for Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality. During the apartheid era he was a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress, and was convicted of terrorism after he bombed a busy night club.

In February 2014 McBride was appointed as Executive Director of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate. In March 2015 he was suspended from this position by the Minister of Police. The decision was set aside by the Constitutional Court of South Africa in September 2016.

McBride was born in Addington Hospital and grew up in Wentworth, a racially segregated suburb about 11 km from Durban, where his parents were schoolteachers. He attended Fairvale High School in Wentworth and participated in extramural activities like rugby, karate, boxing, chess, hockey and soccer. After he was beaten by an older boy in the neighbourhood, his father taught him martial arts.

He developed political views at an early age due to influence of his father. He was particularly influenced by two books: A.J. Venter's Coloured: A Profile of 2 Million South Africans, which describes the efforts of coloured political activists such as James April, Don Mattera, Jakes Gerwel, Basil February, and his uncle, Rev. Clive McBride; and Soledad Brothers: The Prison Letters of George Jackson, written by a founding member of the American Black Guerrilla Family.

McBride was best known for his leadership of the cell that bombed the "Why Not" Restaurant and Magoo's Bar in Durban on 14 June 1986, an attack in which three white women were killed and 69 people injured. He was captured and convicted for the Durban bombing, and sentenced to death, but later reprieved while on death row. In 1992, he was released after his actions were classified as politically motivated. He was later granted amnesty at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which provided for amnesty in return for complete disclosure of acts of politically motivated violence after the ANC changed its early denials of involvement to a claim that they ordered the bombing. The South African government, at the time, had portrayed the attack as being targeted at innocent civilians.

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