Petros Molefe

Petros Molefe was born in Kroonstad and moved to Johannesburg and worked as a truck driver. He married Maria Molefe and they had no children.

Amid the many explosions carried out on the night of the 16 December 1961 was a unit from Dube, in Soweto, who attempted to blow up the Municipal Bantu Control Office in Dube, Soweto. Petros Molefe and Benjamin Ramutsi were members of this unit. Their mission was one of several in the Johannesburg area that were planned for the night of 16 December 1961. Similar attacks and attempts at bombing key installations in Durban had been undertaken. Molefe and Ramutsi’s mission was to be the first in Johannesburg.

It has come to light that the kind of explosives the first group of MK cadres used were rather dangerous and risky to manage. For instance, it is believed that dynamite they were carrying was unstable. It is known that while climbing over the fence his bomb prematurely exploded killing Molefe and injuring the late Comrade Benjamin Ramutsi. Official sources suggest that one of them, either Molefe or Ramutsi, managed to get as far as the door of the building where he placed an explosive, a chemical bomb. The explosion blew out the door and shattered windows.