A quarter century on, St Elmo’s bombing survivor celebrates life

Sunday, 28 November 1999 was a big day for Olivia Milner. The 16-year-old had just landed her first job, a gig manning the takeaway station at St Elmo’s pizzeria in Camps Bay, Cape Town, and it was her first shift.

“I remember walking down there, from our house on Central Drive, down to the beachfront, through the promenade,” Milner told Daily Maverick this week.

“I think I remember that. And then … I just remember waking up.”

Olivia Milner in hospital. after being injured in the St Elmo's bombing (Photo:Supplied)

Trauma and the passage of 25 years have erased all other details of that day for Milner.

“One of the most impactful moments of my life, I have no memory of. I really tried, I tried to remember. I’d try to go back there. Like even [through] meditation, hypnosis … I had nothing. There was nothing there.”

International media reports can only fill some of the gaps.

“A pipe bomb exploded inside a crowded beachfront restaurant near Cape Town today, wounding at least 43 people, the police said,” ran an article in The New York Times the following day.

“Neville Malila, a police captain, said by telephone that the pipe bomb had been placed under a table inside the St Elmo’s pizza restaurant in Camps Bay, just south of the city.”

Milner’s mother, Elana Newman, would later write her recollections of the day.

“It was one of those glorious, windless summer afternoons when locals and tourists descend in droves upon the beach, and throng the shops, restaurants and pavement cafés. The bomb, concealed in a backpack and left at a table on St Elmo’s crowded patio, was clearly intended to kill and maim as many as possible. A waitress innocently brought it inside to the counter where Olivia, just 16 and working her first shift of her holiday job, was standing. She bore the brunt of the explosion,” wrote Newman years later.

She described hearing the blast from her house two streets away and sprinting down to the beachfront.

“Where St Elmo’s had been, there was a black hole,” she wrote.

Among other terrible injuries, Milner’s right leg had been blown off below the knee.

Milner describes waking up in hospital and being told that she had lost her leg.

“I said to my mom: ‘I think I’m gonna try screaming. I think I’m gonna scream.’ Because I just didn’t know how to express it. It was like this weirdly rational moment,” recalled Milner this week.

“At that exact moment, I was like: I know this is big, but I cannot express the magnitude. Let’s try screaming.”

Milner let out a primal howl to the heavens. Doctors came and sedated her.

1990s Cape Town racked by terrorism

It is easy to forget this now, but in the late 1990s, Cape Town was a city at war.

About 400 bombings rocked the city between 1996 and 2001, with the peak between 1998 and 1999.

“Cape Town became pockmarked by bombings, sometimes several in a day,” wrote criminologist Mark Shaw in his gripping 2023 account of the bombing campaign, Breaking the Bombers. Police would sometimes race from one explosion site to the next.

The weapons of choice were pipe bombs, which “could be relatively easily mass produced using a piece of pipe, an angle grinder and explosive material,” wrote Shaw.

“Nails and bolts were added to achieve maximum damage.”

The bombs initially targeted gangsters on the Cape Flats, but the violence spread to the city’s well-heeled tourist spots. The bombing of the Planet Hollywood restaurant at the V&A Waterfront in 1998 made global news, killing two people and maiming many more — including British tourists.

Weeks before St Elmo’s was bombed, the Blah Bar on Cape Town’s gay club strip was targeted, injuring six.

It appeared that those behind the attacks were seeking out venues associated with US imperialism and decadent Western values.

With the bombing campaign threatening to imperil Cape Town’s tourist industry, desperation on the part of police to bring the attacks under control led to the establishment of the elite crime-fighting unit the Scorpions.

“None of the core group of bombers was ever arrested and convicted [of the bombings], including those that were involved in the St Elmo’s bombing,” Shaw told Daily Maverick this week.

Today, it is generally accepted that most of the bombings were the work of individuals linked to Pagad, the People Against Gangsterism and Drugs group which became notorious for marches culminating in vigilante attacks against gangsters.

“I think there’s little doubt that a core group within the broader Pagad environment carried out the bombings. Were they all members of Pagad? Of course not, but there was a core bombing group radicalised and organised by the leadership,” said Shaw.

25 years on, Milner celebrates her Life Day

Milner, now 41 years old, spoke to Daily Maverick this week from her home in San Diego, California. Her family emigrated to the US two years after the bombing; Milner ended up missing so much school as a result of her injuries that passing matric seemed impossible, and a high school equivalency diploma in the US was the more attainable option.

Olivia Milner on the day of the interview. (Photo: Supplied)

Today she is married and works as a biomedical designer in medical 3D printing, with a side hustle reviewing electric vehicles on YouTube. She describes both with the same kind of infectious positivity she clearly brings to all aspects of her life; spending any time in conversation with her is a humbling experience.

Reflecting on the time directly after the bombing, Milner chokes up for the first time when talking about the outpouring of love she received from Capetonians.

“People wrote me letters and beautiful cards. Teachers had their classes make cards for me. There was so much support from complete strangers, and it’s an incredible thing. And I can’t thank you all enough for doing that because I think about you guys, and I think about the people out there who don’t have that,” said Milner.

“I know people must go through terrible traumas of their own and not have that kind of support. And the fact that I had this community support behind me, to this day is something that makes me emotional. And I still have everyone’s cards. They’re up in my attic now, in a carefully taken-care-of box.”

Today, she celebrates 28 November as her Life Day: the day she survived.

About 15 years after the bombing, Milner experienced worsening pain in her hip. Doctors were at a loss to explain it — until she had an X-ray which revealed that a nail from the bomb was still embedded inside her.

“When [the nail] popped out of my thigh, I felt this weird fondness for it. And in a way it felt like the way that I’ve embraced the bombing, that I’ve embraced that darkness; let’s take all of this on as an adventure, because … what are the choices you have, right?”

Sixteen years to the day after the bombing, Milner went back to Camps Bay beach and gathered sand and shells. She arranged them in a frame she painted in the colours of the South African flag, with the nail as the centrepiece.

“You know, on the same day that I was on the beachfront, there was a sculpture there. It was just the words: ‘Live On’. And I later found out that when you looked at it from the beachfront, it said Live On. But when you looked at it from the ocean, it said ‘No Evil’.”

Milner lifts her arm to the camera to show a cursive tattoo of the words.

“Yeah, I live on. That’s what I try to do.” DM