Robert McBride (police officer)

Robert McBride MMS CLS (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 paramilitary wing of the African National Congress. For his actions against the apartheid regime, he was convicted of terrorism after he carried out a bombing operation against Magoos Bar, a busy Durban night club frequented by apartheid security forces, in an attack that killed three people. This conviction was "for all purposes...deemed not to have taken place" under the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, which recognized that resistance against apartheid was legitimate.

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 in McBride v Minister of Police. He has been appointed as head of the Foreign Branch of the State Security Agency from 1 July 2020.