An optimal control problem of static plasticity with linear kinematic hardening and von Mises yield condition is studied. The problem is treated in its primal formulation, where the state system is a variational inequality of the second kind. First-order necessary optimality conditions are obtained by means of an approximation by a family of control problems with state system regularized by Huber-type smoothing, and a subsequent limit analysis. The equivalence of the optimality conditions with the C-stationarity system for the equivalent dual formulation of the problem is proved. Numerical experiments are presented, which demonstrate the viability of the Huber-type smoothing approach.