It’s been 30 years since married couple Enid and Reynold Rhoode attended a Kenilworth church service that turned into a nightmare for them and hundreds of others.
Last week, St James Church commemorated the three decades that have passed since that Sunday night on July 25, 1993, when Azanian People’s Liberation Army (Apla) gunmen fired machine guns and threw two hand grenades covered with nails at a racially mixed congregation of over a thousand people.
The attack killed 11 people and injured 58.
Those killed were Guy Cooper Javens, 52; Richard Oliver O’Kill, 17; Myrtle Joan Smith, 45; Wesley Harker, 13; Gerard Dennis Harker, 21; Denise Gordon, 30; Marita Maria Ackerman, 46; Oleg Karamjin, 55; Andrey Katyl, 25; Valuev Pavel and Valentin Varaska, 40.
Among the dead were four Russian seamen and a fifth Russian seaman who lost both his legs and one arm.
According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report, three of the four Apla operatives involved in the attack, Gcinikhaya Makoma, Thobela Mlambisa and Basie Mkhumbuzi were subsequently granted amnesty. A fourth, Sichumiso Nonxuba, died in a 1996 car crash.
Mr and Ms Rhoode, of Retreat, were in their early 40s at the time and they were seated on the right-hand side of the church towards the middle benches when the attack happened.
“I recall the one man carrying a grenade which he released and then he fired his gun afterwards,” says Ms Rhoode, who is now 71.
Mr Rhoode, who is now 72, says the congregants had been waiting for a couple to sing but instead they had heard shooting. “Initially I thought who was throwing firecrackers in the church?”
He adds: “I heard a big explosion and gunfire. I told my wife to get her head down. I did not know what was happening; I thought the roof was going to fall in.”
When the Rhoodes eventually got out of the church and into the parking lot, they found two teenage girls who were crying.
“The one girl’s mother was injured inside the church, and we told the mother we will take them home,” says Mr Rhoode.
After dropping the two girls off in Claremont, Mr and Ms Rhoode came back to the church to see if they could help and they saw the police and ambulance on the scene.
Ms Rhoode says she and her husband were left traumatised by the attack and they had to consult their doctor for counselling.
Ms Rhoode attended the 30th anniversary of the attack with her daughter, Melissa Philander, who was 2 at the time of the attack and had stayed home with a babysitter.
“It was a moving ceremony; it was very sad,” says Ms Rhoode.
She has moved on from the horrors of that night, she says, but from time to time, and especially on the anniversaries, it returns to her thoughts.
Another survivor, Hayley Tubman, 45, of Kenilworth, was 15 at the time of the attack. Seated near the back of the church, she says she saw the door open and a man with an automatic weapon throw a grenade.
“Everything that happened lasted a few seconds, though it felt like a very long time,” she says.
Ms Tubman says her mother was unharmed even though the gunmen appeared to be shooting in her direction at one stage. Her brother was at the church’s children’s centre and he made sure it was locked when he heard the noise.
“Once the attack was over, there was a silence in the church. When I got up, there was still smoke from the gunfire and grenade that went off,” she says.
Everyone in the church tried to remain calm and help where they could, she recalls. “Our minister, Ross Anderson, kept a calm presence and a voice to the people to help them,” she says.
The associate rector at St James Church, Reverend Scott Tubman, the husband of Ms Tubman, led the commemoration service.
“It was a very moving ceremony. Many of our parishioners who came here were in church 30 years ago when it happened,” he says. “We will always commemorate July 25 as a church in memory of those who died, for the sake of their family and friends.”
That St James has remained open through all these years, he says, is “a powerful testimony to the country that forgiveness will always triumph over revenge”.
