Deaths
- 24 January – Sgt Makhulu, a policeman is killed in grenade attack on his home in Mamelodi
- March – Moses Mabhida dies of a heart attack following a stroke while in exile in Maputo
- 18 March – Constable Sinki Vuma is shot dead at his home in Mamelodi
- 11 April – Peter Nchabeleng, former president of United Democratic Front, dies while in police custody in Schoonoord, Lebowa
- 6 June David Lukhele, former minister of KaNgwane and his sister-in-law are killed in his home in Mamelodi, while watching television by African National Congress members, Neo Griffith Potsane, Jabu Obed Masina and Frans "Ting Ting" Masango
- 9 October – Lt Victor Raju, a policeman, is killed in a grenade attack on his home in Durban
- 19 October – Samora Machel, President of Mozambique, dies when his Tupolev Tu-134 plane crashes in South Africa
- 31 October – Detective W/O Seleka is killed in grenade attack on home
Read more about this topic: 1986 In South Africa
Famous quotes containing the word deaths:
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)
“I sang of death but had I known
The many deaths one must have died
Before he came to meet his own!”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Death is too much for men to bear, whereas women, who are practiced in bearing the deaths of men before their own and who are also practiced in bearing life, take death almost in stride. They go to meet death—that is, they attempt suicide—twice as often as men, though men are more “successful” because they use surer weapons, like guns.”
—Roger Rosenblatt (b. 1940)