In his obituary Mr. J Elsegood refers to the late Colonel, a distinguished soldier, as:
“one of only two men to win the Van Riebeeck Decoration (DVR) – for distinguished service in the field against the enemy – and also the Southern Cross Decoration (SD)”.
Without any other qualifying awards stated and attributed to late Colonel to justify his statement, Mr Elsegood is patently incorrect. Three examples of historical fact demonstrate Mr Elsegood’s inaccurate missive and can be found on a simple source such as Wikipedia:
• Major Arthur Walker HCG and Bar, SM (February 1953 – 28 March 2016) was a South African Air Force helicopter pilot who was twice awarded the Honoris Crux Gold decoration during the South African Border War. The Honoris Crux Gold was the highest military award for bravery awarded to members of the South African Defence Force. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Walker_(Pilot)
• Andrew Frederick Weatherby (Anthony) Beauchamp- roctor, VC, DSO, MC & Bar, DFC (4 September 1894 – 21 June 1921) was a South African airman and a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. He was South Africa’s leading ace of the First World War, being credited with 54 aerial victories.
• Adolph Gysbert Malan, DSO & Bar, DFC & Bar (3 October 1910 – 17 September 1963), better known as Sailor Malan, was a South African fighter pilot and flying ace in the Royal Air Force (RAF) who led No. 74 Squadron RAF during the Battle of Britain.[1] He finished his fighter career in 1941 with twenty-seven destroyed, seven shared destroyed and two unconfirmed, three probables and sixteen damaged. At the time he was the RAF’s leading ace, and one of the highest scoring pilots to have served wholly with RAF Fighter Command during the Second World War.
All three were air war recipients.
So, to the publication by Mr. J. Elsegood – anyone can write what they like, yet if opining on historical fact, it may be prudent for a Wikipedia search, something that even a year one undergraduate student is advised not to use. Or he could just reference this site and an accurate source article on the highest and most decorated South Africans written by Peter Dickens – link as follows; South Africa’s top military medalists
No shortage of information out there!
Written for the Observation Post by Dr. Garth Benneyworth
So, talking Olympics, but in a military context, who are South Africa’s greatest medalists?
Unfortunately we have to separate this into two sub categories as the National Party in 1948 decided that anyone fighting for the Allies under the banner of the “South African Union” was somehow “British” (so too their medals – the “Commonwealth” bit to these decorations mattered not a jot to the Nats) and anyone fighting for the ‘White’ Apartheid Republic they brought about in 1961 was somehow more “South African” – and they created a whole new set of medals in paramount to the “British and Commonwealth” ones – declaring these as “foreign” medals – which meant a simple peacetime SADF ’Skiet medal” (shooting proficiency medal) would be more senior than a Commonwealth decoration for wartime gallantry.
Naturally this caused a lot of distress for our WW1 and WW2 veterans at the time, some refusing to allow basic service medals to precede their hard earned combat medals – and it also caused lots of confusion. True, the Nationalists had to change them as South Africa was kicked out/left the British Commonwealth, no choice – but they did not have be sinister and give paramountcy over the Commonwealth medals.
Adding to this confusion is the current ANC dispensation who took the position in 2003 that medals awarded by the Apartheid Republic were for “Aparthied soldiers” and they created a whole new set to replace them for SANDF soldiers of a “democratic” South Africa – one thing they did right is they did not make them “paramount” to the SADF medals which maintain seniority (which the Nats did not do). To say this is a messy subject would be an understatement.
We also need to understand who is the South African with the “most” medals – like an Olympian who has won the most medals of any category – Gold, Silver or Bronze as opposed to the South African who has won the most “highest” medals for gallantry- again like an Olympian who has won the most “gold” medals.
Now to announce the winners:
The winner of the “most” medals i.e. the most decorated South African of the “Union” period is ….. Field Marshal Jan Smuts – here’s his rack:
Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts OM,CH,DTD,ED,PC,KC,FRS
Order of Merit (OM) – British and Commonwealth (WW2)
Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) – British and Commonwealth (WW1)
Dekoratie voor trouwe Dienst (DTD) – ZAR Republic (Boer War 2)
Efficiency Decoration (ED) – South Africa (Interwar and WW2)
Privy Council (PC) – British and Commonwealth
King’s Counsel (KC) – a legal appointment post nominal
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS)
Bencher of the Middle Temple – a legal appointment
South African Republic and OFS War Medal – ZAR Republic (Boer War 2)
1914/15 Star (WW1)
British War Medal 1914 – 1918 (WW1)
Victory Medal (WW1)
General Service Medal
King George V’s Jubilee Medal – 1935
King George VI’s Coronation Medal – 1937
1939 – 1945 Star (WW2)
Africa Star (WW2)
Italy Star (WW2)
France and Germany Star (WW2)
Defence Medal 1939 – 1945 (WW2)
War Medal 1939 – 1945 (WW2)
Africa Service Medal 1939 – 1945 (WW2)
Order of Merit (U.S.A.)
EAME Campaign Medal – U.S.A.(WW2)
Order of the Tower and Sword for Valour, Loyalty and Merit (Portugal)
Grootkruis van die Orde van de Nederlandsche Leeuw – Netherlands (WW2)
Grand Cordon of the Order of Mohamed Ali (Egypt)
Grand Cross of the Order of the Redeemer – Greece (WW2)
Grand Cross of the Order of Léopold II – Belgium (WW2)
Croix de guerre – Belgium (WW1)
Légion d’honneur Croix de Commandeur – France (WW1)
La Grand Croix de l’Ordre de L’Etoile Africane Ster – Belgium (WW2)
King Christian X Frihedsmedaille ‘Pro Dania’ – Denmark (WW2)
Smuts is unique in the sense that his two Boer War Republican medals pre-date his Union medals.
Field Marshal Jan Smuts and ribbons
The winner of the “highest” medals i.e. the highest decorated South African of the “Union” period is …. Captain Andrew Beauchamp-Proctor – here is his rack:
Captain Andrew Beauchamp-Proctor VC,DSO,MC&Bar,DFC
Captain Beauchamp-Proctor
Victoria Cross (WW1)
Distinguished Service Order (WW1)
Military Cross and Bar (WW1)
Distinguished Flying Cross (WW1)
1914 – 1915 Star (WW1)
British War Medal (WW1)
The Victory Medal (WW1)
Captain Beauchamp-Proctor is not unique in the sense that all his highest medals were earned whilst fighting in British military constructs as a South African Union citizen – which was perfectly acceptable then.
The South African winner of the “most decorated” South African in the “South African Republic” SADF period is ….. General Bob Rogers – here is his rack:
General Bob Rogers SSA, SM, MMM, DSO, DFC&Bar
General Bob Rogers
Star of South Africa (SSA) (South Africa)
Southern Cross Medal (SM) (South Africa)
Military Merit Medal (MMM) (South Africa)
Korea Medal (South Africa)
Pro Patria Medal (South Africa)
Good Service Medal, Gold (30 Years – South Africa)
Good Service Medal, Silver (20 Years – South Africa)
Union Medal (South Africa)
Distinguished Service Order (DSO) (WW2)
Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar (DFC and Bar) (WW2)
1939–45 Star (WW2)
Africa Star (WW2)
Italy Star (WW2)
War Medal 1939–1945 – Mentioned in Dispatches (WW2)
Africa Service Medal (WW2)
Distinguished Flying Cross (USA)*
Air Medal Bronze with Oak Leaf Cluster (USA)*
Order of Military Merit (Korea) (Chungmu cordon) with Gold Star
United Nations Service Medal for Korea
Korean War Service Medal
Grand Star of Military Merit (Chile)
Army PUC Presidential Unit Citation (USA)*
*American awards issued to 2 SAAF Squadron members under their command in the Korean War.2
23 Total
Note: General Rogers’ medal set are a combination of SADF (Republican) and UDF (Union) medals and decorations, and like Smuts some foreign ones too.
The winner of the “highest decorated” South African in the SADF “Republic” period is …. Major Arthur Walker – here is his rack:
Major Murray Walker
Major Murray Walker HCG&Bar, SM
Honoris Crux (Gold and Bar) – South Africa
Southern Cross Medal – South Africa
Pro Patria Medal – South Africa
Southern African Medal – South Africa
General Service Medal – South Africa
Good Service Medal Bronze – South Africa
Zimbabwean Independence Medal 1980 – Zimbabwe
General Service Medal – Rhodesia
United Nations Medal (Mozambique – United Nations)
Major Walker is unique in that won the Honoris Crux Gold (HCG) twice – the only South African to have a “Bar” to a HCG.
Overall Winning Medalists
So, of these four great medalists – who are the winners of the “most” and the “highest” given the grade and total sweep of the medals on offer – the answer:
Field Marshal Jan Smuts is the overall winner of the “most decorated South African”.
Simply because he has more decorations and medals (36) than Bob Rogers (23).
Andrew Beauchamp-Proctor is the overall winner of the “highest decorated South African”.
Simply because he has a Victoria Cross (VC) and his raft of decorations for gallantry serve to qualify it further – his DSO, two MC and DFC, putting him ahead of the other South African VC recipients – the highest gallantry award for the SADF was the “diamond” Honoris Crux (HCD), it was meant to be on the same level as a VC (albeit not the same as the VC is a stand alone, there is graded degree of bravery as there is with a HC set)- and nobody ever received a “diamond” Honoris Crux (HCD) in any event, it was never awarded, and no one ever will, it has been discontinued.
Of the new SANDF “Highest” decoration is the Nkwe ya Gauta – Golden Leopard – it replaced the Gold Honoris Crux (HCG) and like the HC set it is part of graded gallantry decorations going up in importance and there is no “diamond” Leopard – whereas the Victoria Cross is still a stand alone decoration and has no equivalent – so Beauchamp-Proctor still remains the “highest” decorated – and will remain such well into our living memory. So far there have been 3 recipients of the Nkwe ya Gauta – Golden Leopard – all of them posthumous.
Proccy – bravest of the brave
Please note this is not meant to degrade any one over the other – all four of these men are great South Africans.
Written and Researched by Peter Dickens
Jan Smuts by his son Jan Smuts, Heinemann and Cassell, 1952 – awards list ↩︎
Bob Rogers – his personal story as told by Roger Williams ↩︎
Intelligence and Counter Intelligence Operations against the South African Liberation Movements, 1960–1965.
By Garth Conan Benneyworth
Abstract
The road and rail pipelines operated by the liberation movements in Bechuanaland (Botswana) were known as the ‘road to freedom’. An aerial pipeline enabled high value South African political refugees and freedom fighters to move through the Protectorate as fast as possible. A mini-airline called Bechuanaland Air Safaris, it was financed by Bechuanaland’s government and a local millionaire businessman. Set up to support the needs of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), this air bridge enabled close surveillance of potential security issues within Bechuanaland by the SIS, whilst simultaneously assisting organisations that would one day gain political power. This made it a key intelligence target for South Africa’s security establishment, who penetrated this operation. Through surveillance and informants, notably Captain Herbert Bartaune, the company director and operator of Bechuanaland Air Safaris, they interdicted the activities of key personnel involved in liberation struggle operations. This paper examines this air bridge, some of its key personnel, surveillance operations by the South African Police, counter-intelligence actions by the British authorities connected to supporting this pipeline and its use by prominent leaders, including Joe Matthews, Nelson Mandela, Michael Dingake and Patrick Duncan.
Around the time of the start of the armed struggle in South Africa in 1961, an ‘aerial pipe-line’ was established in the then British Protectorate of Bechuanaland (Botswana). This pipe-line was used by important personalities of the liberation struggle from South Africa and Bechuanaland to access assistance outside those countries’ borders. The director and pilot of this aerial pipeline, Captain Herbert Bartaune, is fleetingly mentioned in the autobiographies of those who flew with him and in the literature on Botswana’s pipeline as a sympathiser of South Africa’s liberation struggle. Nelson Mandela and Michael Dingake mention only ‘a pilot’.1 Fish Keitseng, who played a key role in establishing various pipelines in Bechuanaland in the early 1960s, remembered Bartaune by name, describing him as a person who flew many people to safety.2 Ronald Watts knew the pilot and re-established contact in 1990, the pilot having stayed with Watts during September 1960.3 Neil Parsons refers to him by name and describes him as the resident director of the air charter company connected to Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).4
However, this article demonstrates that embedded at the very core of this company were spies and informants who reported on the activities and whereabouts of the liberation struggle personnel, the very same people that this air bridge was meant to assist. It identifies Captain Bartaune, pilot and director of Bechuanaland Air Safaris, as a key operative. This paper uses resources such as Top Secret declassified British intelligence reports and a Department of Justice file in the South African National Archives.5 Both were unavailable at the time that many of the first struggle biographies and other works were produced in the early 1990s, and have not been consulted by other scholars who have written on the subject.
The file contents categorically prove this matter of spies in the aerial pipeline and has ramifications on our understanding of specific historic events – for example, those of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in Basutoland, and the captures of Nelson Mandela and Michael Dingake, amongst others. These events and the broader geopolitical milieu in which they occurred consequently need to be reconsidered and refigured.
This paper will use the examples of three prominent persons who used the aerial pipeline, one of whom was seriously compromised as a result and two of whom were captured after exiting the pipeline. The first case is that of Patrick Duncan which demonstrates how Bartaune compromised Duncan and the PAC. The second is associated with Nelson Mandela’s flights as part of his tour of the continent in 1962 and his return to Bechuanaland later that year, when Britain tried to circumvent South Africa’s Security Branch. Within weeks of his return to South Africa, Mandela was captured. The third is that of Michael Dingake in 1965 and how South African agents linked to the pipeline enabled his kidnapping in Rhodesia and subsequent rendition by the SAP. The paper will also show that the shadowy figure of Bartaune is the common denominator for all three case studies. Before discussing these three cases, the article will outline the political context which led to the establishment of the pipeline, as well as provide previously unknown biographical information about Bartaune which is crucial to understanding his role in the pipeline.
With the banning of the African National Congress (ANC) and the PAC in 1960, numerous people from these organisations sought asylum and refuge in Britain’s High Commission Territories of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland. After the start of the armed struggle in South Africa in 1961, Bechuanaland became the preferred option as it enabled direct transit into Northern Rhodesia and Tanganyika and beyond.
Fish Keitseng was a defendant in the 1956 Treason Trial and deported to Bechuanaland in 1959. He settled in Lobatse and was in charge of the ANC in Bechuanaland. In late 1960 Joe Modise linked up with Keitseng and recruited him into the ANC underground network.7
Fish Keitseng
Modise was one of MK’s founders and participated in its first operations. He helped establish MK infrastructure in various regions, in particular Natal and the Eastern and Western Cape, spending two years working underground. He played a key role in sending recruits out of South Africa for military training before going into exile in 1963. Together with Keitseng they played a key role with the pipeline.8
The aerial pipeline was no ordinary pipeline, such the road and rail networks where the rank and file were taken by Keitseng by train to Francistown from where they then drove to Livingstone in Northern Rhodesia.9 It was the niche operation that moved key South African leaders, political refugees and freedom fighters through Bechuanaland to Tanganyika and Northern Rhodesia (and vice versa). The aim was to transit them by air as fast as possible to protect them from being kidnapped by agents of the apartheid regime. This was a constant danger. For example during March and April 1960 Deputy President Oliver Tambo narrowly avoided being abducted by South Africa’s Security Branch.10
Fish Keitseng’s house in Botswana, now a memorial as the venue where he hosted South African struggle stalwarts
The air bridge ran from Lobatse via Kasane and, until Northern Rhodesia gained independence, then over-flew that territory to Mbeya, where refuelling took place before flying on to Dar es Salaam. The return trip followed the same route in reverse from Dar es Salaam. Called Bechuanaland Air Safaris, this mini-airline was established by Captain Herbert Bartaune as a charter company in 1961 and it linked Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland. Bartaune based himself as the company’s resident director in Lobatse, with his wife Elsie Bartaune as company secretary.11 Bartaune was the main pilot who flew refugees from Swaziland to Serowe, and in some cases from Serowe to Tanganyika.12 His financiers were the Bechuanaland Protectorate government and Lobatse-based meat millionaire, one Cyril Hurwitz.13 Parsons wrote that Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) funded this enterprise and in essence the air bridge functioned as an SIS operation.14 The Resident Commissioner, Sir Peter Fawcus, who reported to the SIS, controlled the pipeline. Fawcus in turned used only his most trusted subordinates, that included the Lobatse based police Inspector John Sheppard, District Commissioner Brian Egner in Kasane and District Commissioner Philippus Steenkamp in Francistown. The designated point man for the aerial pipeline from MK’s side was Fish Keitseng.
Francistown airport – cira 1960
Overtly, the pipeline was a mini airline; yet, covertly, it informally linked agents of the SIS with elements of the ANC, including MK, and of the PAC. To circumvent the SAP, the SIS activated this aerial pipeline in 1961.15 Given the covert world of intelligence operations in Bechuanaland and the surrounding territories, it should be remembered that the security services of the Central African Federation and those of the Portuguese colonies also operated in the region.
For example, the Federal Intelligence and Security Bureau (FISB), the Central African Federation’s intelligence structure, was headed by Bob de Quehen, MI5’s former Central Africa Security Liaison Officer. In 1960 de Quehen described Colonel Prinsloo, the head of South Africa’s Security Branch, as ‘always a good friend of mine’. 16 This statement occurred in the context of an invitation to de Quehen in 1960 to visit Pretoria and assist in the interrogation of ‘hardcore Communists prominent in recent disturbances’.17 In August 1962 de Quehen learned that South Africa was going to establish a central intelligence and security organisation answerable directly to the Prime Minister. The FISB was promised access to long range South African intelligence and de Quehen arranged to hold monthly meetings with Brigadier Retief, who was responsible for creating this new organisation.18
Portuguese intelligence provided South Africa’s Security Branch with surveillance reports about the movements of prominent South African communists traversing Portuguese territories.19 In 1961 Portuguese Naval Intelligence advised the SIS that Ghana was recruiting South Africans for political, military and sabotage training and also supplying funds to South African anti-government groups.20 Consequently any person of interest to the FISB and Portuguese intelligence services would come in for attention and experience a hard time moving around undetected.
Given the profile of the pipeline passengers, who included the senior leadership of the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP), the PAC and possibly other liberation movements, this made it a key intelligence target for South Africa’s security establishment. If they could infiltrate or penetrate the pipeline and recruit its personnel, it would be possible to interdict the various organisations and the activities of their key political activists. This is confirmed in a Bechuanaland Central Intelligence Committee (CIC) report, dated September 1960, which reflects that a SAP officer from the Mafeking Security Branch questioned Captain Bartaune in Lobatse about his recent airlift of Patrick Duncan a member of the Liberal Party who joined the PAC in 1963) and Joe Matthews, a member of the ANC and SACP. 21 On 11 October 1961 a Security Branch officer from Mafeking visited Andrew Rybicki, one of Bartaune’s pilots. British records reflect that the consensus was that Rybicki was recruited as an informer. 22 Rybicki’s role was to forward information about refugee airlifts that he personally flew, some of which Joe Matthews organised.23
Joe Matthews
As for Joe Matthews, the SIS had him under close surveillance. In 1960 Matthews left South Africa for Basutoland with the view of qualifying for a British passport after residing there for a year. This would give him freedom of movement, making him the link between those outside of South Africa and those inside the country.24 As well as being a member of the ANC, Matthews had been active in the underground SACP since 1957 and was soon to become a member of its Central Committee in 1962.25. He was a direct person of interest to the various security services and his activities were being closely monitored by the SIS, the Bechuanaland CIC and the SAP, as it was believed that Matthews was in charge of the ANC’s pipeline.
The freedom of movement enabled by his British passport did not pass unnoticed. In 1962, British intelligence opened a file on Matthews. Classified Top Secret, its documents are marked UK Eyes Only, which means that Britain did not share this information with its strategic allies that made up the rest of the Five Eyes – the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Mandela’s 1962 file was classified Secret, a security grading one level lower than Matthews, suggesting that at this point in time British intelligence considered Matthews more of a threat than Mandela.26 None of Mandela’s file contents are marked UK Eyes Only, meaning information could have been shared with Britain’s strategic allies in the Five Eyes. In the case of Matthews, British intelligence tracked some of his overseas trips and attempted to identify his funding sources and payments made for air charter travel. In November 1960, they monitored him in Moscow, Prague, Tanganyika and the United Kingdom, amongst other destinations.27
Captain Herbert Bartaune, Director of Bechuanaland Air Safaris
Captain Herbert Bartaune runs as a central thread linking the life stories of Patrick Duncan, Nelson Mandela and Michael Dingake to the aerial pipeline. Bartaune was the Director of the air charter company from its inception in 1961 until it was acquired by Bechuanaland National Airways on 1 October 1965. Over a period of approximately four years he flew numerous key people in and out of Bechuanaland and played a pivotal role in the pipeline as its central operator. Yet who was he? A closer focus on the life of the Captain has direct bearing on the surveillance, repression and counterinsurgency operations undertaken by the SIS and South African Security Branch against the liberation movement and its key personnel. Herbert Bartaune was a German citizen who was born in German South West Africa in 1914 and died in Walvis Bay in 1993.28 His wife Elsie Bartaune died in Walvis Bay in 2002.29
Before the Second World War, Bartaune had been active in glider flying in South Africa and obtained his private and commercial pilot’s licence. His exact activities during the war are difficult to trace, yet before the war he was actively involved in aircraft and glider research and experiments in Germany. In 1937 he became a member of the German Research Institute for Soaring (gliders and sailplanes), where he did much research on aircraft air brakes. The institute was located in the Wasserkuppe, the highest peak in the Rhön Mountains in the German state of Hesse. Between the First and Second World Wars great advances in gliding and sailplane developments took place on this mountain.30 It is here that Bartaune specialised his flying skills which would later make him an aviator of choice for the pipeline.
A DFS SG 38 training glider, Wasserkuppe, Germany. Luftwaffe pilot training.
Students from the Darmastadt University of Technology started flying from the Wasserkuppe as early as 1911, yet gliding came into its own after 1918 when the Treaty of Versailles restricted the production or use of powered aircraft in Germany. From 1920 onwards annual gliding competitions were held and in the 1920s the world’s first glider pilot school was established at the Wasserkuppe. By 1930 the competition was an international event drawing pilots from all over Europe and the United States, and Bartaune from South West Africa.
Virtually every German aeronautical engineer and test pilot of note during the 1920s and 1930s spent time building, testing and flying aircraft at the Wasserkuppe, and this period saw advances in new technologies such as flying wings and rocket powered flights. During the Third Reich gliding activities were controlled by the state. As for the Hitler Youth pilots and their instructors, proficiency in gliding was used as the first step towards joining the Luftwaffe, something about which Bartaune later reminisced.31 During the war Bartaune served with the Luftwaffe as a pilot and reached the rank of hauptmann or captain.
Stuka dive bomber – benefiting from air brake technology
After the war Bartaune continued gliding, this time with the gliding club of the British Fourth Armoured Brigade in Germany.32 Here he was the Chief of Aviation before returning to South Africa in 1946, where he continued his career as an aviator. In 1953, Border Watch, an Australian newspaper, reported that he resided in South West Africa and owned two small aircraft. On 25 July 1953 the paper reported that he was flying in Australia, undertaking research into rain-making experiments for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, an Australian federal government agency responsible for scientific research in Australia. His method was based on injecting silver iodide into the exhaust pipe of a light aircraft and then releasing this into cloud formations. According to the article, Bartaune met all of his expenses for this project.33
In September 1960 he resided in Bulawayo, worked for Air Carriers Bulawayo and regularly flew into Francistown and Maun. According to a telephonic interview by Watts with Bartaune in 1990, at the time aged 76 and retired in Walvis Bay, Bartaune said that in Bulawayo he ‘made enemies because people thought he was a liberal’.34 Bartaune flew all the Southern Rhodesian Prime Ministers including Lord Malvern, Garfield Todd and Ian Smith as well as Dag Hammarskjold, the Secretary General of the UnitedNations, before his fatal crash in September 1961. He considered himself a ‘taxi driver’ and said in 1990:
‘taxi drivers don’t ask the business of their clients.35
However, it was his activities and those of his wife during the Second World War that have a bearing on the pipeline. With the outbreak of the Second World War private pilots’ licences in South Africa were suspended and a registered letter was sent by the Office of the Director of Civil Aviation in Pretoria to Bartaune informing him of this. It was returned undelivered to Civil Aviation, which then referred the matter to the Commissioner of Police, prompting a police investigation into his whereabouts. According to a file in the South African National Archives, the SAP established that Herbert Bartaune left Walvis Bay on 22 July 1937 for Germany, before the outbreak of the war.36
Two documents in the file, dated 21 May 1946, refer to both Herbert Bartaune and his wife Elsie – then residing in Johannesburg – as being on the Official Card Index of Nazi Party members maintained by the German authorities and which was obtained by the Rein Commission during 1946. Other correspondence by the SAP in this file refers to them as ‘enemy aliens’.37
In other words, both the director (Herbert Bartaune) and the company secretary (Elsie Bartaune) of Bechuanaland Air Safaris were former Nazi Party members and the South African authorities knew this at the time the pipeline was being set up. Given that the British were part of the Rein Commission in post war Germany, they must have known this too. As former Nazi Party members, it is likely that the two central pipeline operators also harboured anti-communist sentiments with obvious bearings on the airlift passengers Herbert Bartaune transported.
Bartaune, Duncan and the PAC’s uprising plans
Declassified British Foreign Office documents provide another insight into Bartaune and his role in undermining the PAC’s plans for a general uprising in 1963 and again in 1964 staged from Basutoland. These documents also prove beyond doubt his role as a multiple intelligence services operative.
Following its banning in South Africa and the arrest of most of its leadership during the 1960 anti-pass campaign and the emergency, the PAC regrouped in Basutoland under the direction of a new Presidential Council. 38 They planned a national uprising in South Africa for 7–8 April 1963. This failed to materialise s a result of a series of raids on the PAC by the Basutoland police and the mass arrest of PAC activists by the SAP in South Africa.39
Bartaune was connected to these security operations and the failure of the 1963 uprising through his espionage activities. On 21 April 1963, Bartaune wrote a report in Lobatse for the Bechuanaland Protectorate Special Branch which was then classified Top Secret. This report was forwarded from the Resident Commissioner in Mafeking to the Deputy High Commissioner in Cape Town. Its Top Secret covering note (Savingram) reads: ‘I enclose report by Capt. H. Bartaune to [Bechuanaland’s] Special Branch. I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this statement. I have not informed the Central Intelligence Committee of its contents.’40 It was then forwarded together with a Top Secret dispatch on 3 May 1963 by the High Commission in Cape Town to the Colonial Office in London and also copied to the Foreign Office. Read together these documents provide clear evidence of just how penetrated the pipeline was and of Bartaune’s role in establishing it, running it and compromising its passengers and their political organisations.41
J.A. Steward of the High Commission wrote that:
The Special Branch of the South African Police are known to use Bartaune, but this does not necessarily mean that he is altogether to be disbelieved and we propose to act on the assumption that though the report may well be accurate, it may also have gone to the South Africans and perhaps to C.I.A. as well as to ourselves.42
The report details discussions that Bartaune had with Patrick Duncan, then a member of the PAC, during the evening of 12 April 1963 at Bartaune’s residence after Duncan was flown in from Maseru by one of Bartaune’s pilots. Duncan asked if Bartaune would transport arms and ammunition by air through Bechuanaland to Basutoland in return for attractive remuneration. Bartaune claimed that his first instinct was to decline, yet he decided to have the discussion as he may ‘get more information from him’.43 Duncan’s plan was for Bartaune’s aircraft to smuggle the weapons from lonely pans in the desert where Bartaune could arrange for aircraft refuelling depots. They would then at night overfly South Africa and either land or drop the cargo in Basutoland. Duncan suggested that should Bartaune not be prepared to do the flying, then he could at least aid foreign aircraft with secret refilling bases on these lonely pans. His thinking was to use the Dakota or similar aircraft for this purpose.
Patrick Duncan – Pan African Congress
Duncan also told Bartaune that he felt that Basutoland would be an ideal base for an uprising against the Republic. Its central positioning and rugged mountainous areas would provide ideal hiding places for armed activity. Such a centre would be safe as South Africa would not dare to invade any High Commission Territory as this would constitute an act of war against the United Kingdom. Bartaune was not the only person Duncan spoke to about his idea, for example he mentioned this to Peter Brown and other Liberal Party members who visited him in 1962.44
The weapons, Duncan told Bartaune, would come either from Egypt or Ghana, and not China or the Soviet Union. He was particularly seeking FN semi-automatic rifles. Funds would not come from behind the Iron Curtain and Duncan hinted to Bartaune that his backers might have been North American. This reference to the North America is interesting as two months later in June 1963 Duncan toured the USA with Nana Mahomo, a member of the national executive committee of the PAC and one of its chief representatives abroad after 1960. Duncan and Mahomo persuaded, on the basis of the PAC’s anti communist stance, the American Federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial Organizations to give money to the PAC.45
Duncan outlined the plan to start an uprising on South African soil from bases in Basutoland which would force the Republic to counter measures. He explained it thus:
Once the fighting starts and Africans were shot at a larger scale, it would create a tremendous outcry in the rest of the world against South Africa, and this would force the United Nations forces to step in for reasons of world security. The whole thing would then develop more or less in the line of a second Congo.
Duncan stated that the aim was to outflank the communist element in South Africa as it had happened in the Congo, where he viewed the events of 1961 as a victory for the West which prevented the communist bloc getting a hold in Africa.46 Shortly after this conversation, Bartaune reported the details of it to Mr Forrest, the Chief of Special Branch who, ‘begged me to cooperate with them and make Mr Duncan believe that I was agreeable to his suggestions. I was asked to do everything in my power to get information on further details’.47
On 14 April 1963 during a flight with Duncan from Kasane to Elizabethville, Bartaune suggested to Duncan how this gun-running operation could work. He said that the idea of night flying and secret refuelling should be abandoned. The weapons should be dismantled into the smallest possible parts and concealed in used suitcases and travelling bags of various sizes. The flights should leave from Mbeya via Bechuanaland to Basutoland in broad daylight and the baggage accompanied by one or two passengers to deceive the authorities. Even though Zambia was soon to become independent, the country was to be avoided as European airport personnel could not necessarily be trusted. Lobatse was to be used as a refuelling point before flying on to Maseru or an airfield close to the proposed hiding place in Basutoland. Duncan suggested as a first delivery approximately 40 rifles with ammunition probably as a sort of pilot scheme.
Air Charter companies operating in Francistown circa 1960. Bartaune operated three such Twin Engined Pipers.
Duncan offered 55 South African cents per mile against Bartaune’s normal quota of 35 cents plus a personal danger bonus of R2000 per flight, to be paid in advance in South African bank notes. Duncan advised that he was then on his way to Europe to collect sufficient funds to purchase and transport the arms and that he intended to return in about three or four months’ time. He would in all likelihood accompany Bartaune with the first consignment. The reason Bartaune suggested open flights was:
To gain the full confidence of Mr Duncan because he was expecting my advice and knowledge in these technical matters. Secondly, such flights carried out quite openly and in day time, create less suspicion to the authorities and to the general public of every Southern African country concerned. Thirdly, it gives an easy opportunity for the BP (Bechuanaland Protectorate) Police authorities to intercept such a shipment here in Bechuanaland or, better still, watch it safely going through Basutoland so that the Basutoland Police can take over there, and get more information on the hiding places and on the rest of the organisation.48
In his report for the Bechuanaland Protectorate Special Branch Bartaune claimed that he suggested to Duncan that:
The length of the supply line from Mbeya for instance, provides more opportunities to make certain whether the first shipment contains arms and ammunition. There is a possibility that on the first flight various kinds of hardware such as nails, bolts and stuff could be carried in order to test the reliability of this channel49.
Did Bartaune think up these ideas all on his own? Is there evidence as to why Duncan could trust Bartaune? On balance the hypothesis is that this method of gun-running was given to Bartaune during his initial discussions with Bechuanaland’s Special Branch so he could suggest it to Duncan. In effect Bartaune was working for the Special Branch and actively handling Duncan. As for Duncan trusting him, Bartaune reported the following:
In the past few years I have flown a number of political refugees and leaders of various factions. Although these flights were carried out completely legally with the international air navigation regulations, and with the full knowledge of, and consent of the appropriate authorities, these facts were hardly realised by those passengers, being hunted on one side of the border and assisted on the other side, which played a psychological part in their mental outlook. Over and above stands the fact that all passengers are treated and cared for to the best of my knowledge and ability, irrespective of race, social standing or political attitude, which instils confidence and trust. Mr. Duncan has flown with me since several years.50 Once, on a scheduled flight over Bechuanaland, I even possibly saved his life by swift action, when he by accident opened the door of the aircraft and was very nearly sucked out. My concern for him as for any other passenger must have given him the feeling of myself being a sympathiser with his political course.51
In other words, Bartaune not only had won the trust of the very same people who were being pursued by the South African authorities, he also broke it. From the documentary evidence it is clear that he was feeding information into at least three (Bechuanaland Special Branch, SIS and South African) and possibly four (CIA) intelligence systems about them. The possibility exists that he assisted the FISB as well.
The High Commissioner in Cape Town who forwarded Bartaune’s report to London stated that they had corroborated from other sources that his information was accurate.
In his last days in Maseru, Patrick Duncan was in a very overwrought state and the substance of this report seems to us likely to be genuine. You may have seen amongst the documents taken to London recently by Captain Willoughby a map of the mountainous area in the south of Basutoland and in the adjoining Eastern Cape. This map Patrick Duncan left behind in a drawer in a friend’s house in Southern Basutoland. Taken together with the location of Mr. Duncan’s trading stores; his theory of a ‘trigger’ war and of United Nations involvement (all of which was confirmed by Ntloedibe).52 These details tend to corroborate Bartaune’s report and are by no means out of keeping with Patrick Duncan’s present declared position and known political and psychological attitudes.53
This report by Britain’s High Commissioner in Cape Town is linked to the neutralisation of the PAC in Basutoland. The SIS were aware that PAC supporters were entering Basutoland to register as political refugees in order to receive military training before infiltrating South Africa. Duncan had purchased two trading stores in the Quthing district to be used as military training grounds for PAC recruits.54 These were the same stores referred to by the High Commissioner in Cape Town.55
On 12 May 1963 Duncan and his two sons met their pilot at Maseru airport and were flown to Bechuanaland by Bechuanaland Air Safaris. The pilot is described in Duncan’s biography as a white supremacist and former mercenary from the Congo. 56 On 4 June 1963, while Duncan was in the United Kingdom, the British authorities declared him a prohibited immigrant in the High Commission Territories.57 All Duncan’s plans hinged on him being based in Basutoland. The cause of this unexpected blow convinced Duncan that it resulted from pressure by the South African authorities who knew about his flight to Bechuanaland, yet allowed it on condition that he did not return.58 On balance they did know of this flight and Duncan’s discussions with Bartaune around weapons smuggling. Bartaune passed this information on to the South Africans, as suggested in his report to Bechuanaland Special Branch.59
On 21 August 1963, P.K. Leballo, the PAC’s Acting President and head of the Presidential Council, left Basutoland by chartered aircraft for Salisbury from where he then boarded a second aircraft to Accra. 60 The chartered flight was from Bartaune’s company. As British and South African intelligence driven operations closed down on the PAC network, its plans for a general uprising first in 1963 and then in 1964 were ultimately thwarted and its leadership forced out of Basutoland.
In 1962 Nelson Mandela travelled through Bechuanaland to Tanganyika as the first leg of his mission into Africa. Mandela linked up with Joe Matthews in Lobatse, before flying to Dar es Salaam. Bartaune’s aircraft was chartered, the payment monitored by the SIS in Dar es Salaam.62 On 11 January 1962, Mandela arrived in Lobatse to find that his flight was delayed. He stayed with Fish Keitseng in Peleng village.63 On 22 January 1963 Britain’s High Commissioner in Cape Town reported that on 19 January 1962, Bartaune air-lifted Mandela into the pipeline.64 The High Commissioner reported that while Mandela stayed in Lobatse South Africa’s Security Branch was unaware of Mandela’s presence in Peleng (the Lobatse location where Keitseng lived) yet an informant had advised them of Mandela’s flight details.65 This is worth noting, as this informant could have been Bartaune given the information regarded flight details.
Nelson Mandela in 1960 (Treason Trial)
Nelson Mandela’s return journey through Bechuanaland provides a glimpse into attempts by British intelligence to counter South African clandestine operations against Mandela once he was inside the protectorate. For part of Mandela’s return trip, starting from Dar es Salaam, then Prime Minister Julius Nyerere provided a private plane to Mbeya in southern Tanganyika66. Fish Keitseng then travelled to Mbeya and met with Mandela and Oliver Tambo, taking with him three other people who needed to travel onwards. Keitseng recalled:
I took them and rented a charter from Bartaune, who had earlier flown Mandela to Tanganyika. He was a big chap who used to fly a lot of our people to safety. Others were also dealing with him. Once, when I was at our headquarters in Lusaka I found him discussing payments with (Tennyson) Makiwane. On this trip another pilot who worked for Bartaune flew. So many people were flying that Bartaune had bought an extra plane.67
David Motsamayi travel document
Keitseng told Mandela and Tambo that aside from informants, South African Security Branch were all over Lobatse. He suggested that that it would be safer to land in Kanye rather than Lobatse. After spending the night in Mbeya, they flew to Kanye, where the District Commissioner of Gaborone and a Bechuanaland Special Branch officer intercepted Mandela. They brushed aside Mandela’s use of a false name and threatened his arrest if he incorrectly identified himself. The Special Branch officer stated that his instructions were to provide help and transportation.68 Mandela replied;
‘If you insist that I am Nelson Mandela and not David Motsamayi I will not challenge you’.69
The Special Branch officer accompanied by the District Commissioner then drove Mandela and Keitseng to Lobatse where they rendezvoused with Joe Modise and Jonas Matlou.70 Both were members of the MK team sent to collect Mandela.71 The Special Branch officer advised Mandela that the SAP were aware of his return and suggested that he leave the next day.72 Mandela decided otherwise and left that night for Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia, where he arrived the following day.
Mandela’s falsified David Motsamayi travel document
In just over a week after exiting the pipeline Mandela was captured. Were his movements reported by Bartaune and other informants embedded in the pipeline? Very likely given that they could recognise Mandela, having interacted with him before and having access to the passenger manifest and the timing and destination of his flight. The pilot whilst airborne would have radioed his route, position and timings to Bechuanaland air control. This signals traffic would have been monitored by the South African military and aviation authorities. Given that the SIS knew Bartaune was passing information to the SAP, this could explain the rerouting of his flight to Kanye. Within days the British were being challenged by the SAP about Mandela’s passage through Bechuanaland. It was decided that elements of the pipeline were in jeopardy so Inspector John Sheppard and District Commissioner Brian Egner, two key British intelligence operators involved with the pipeline, were quickly transferred out of the Protectorate to prevent their potential kidnapping by the SAP.73
Top Secret British colonial office documents tracking Nelson Mandela
Michael Dingake
Michael Dingake, a Bechuanaland national, joined the ANC in 1952 and served in various roles in the organisation’s structures. He took part in all the campaigns of this period from the Defiance Campaign to the anti-pass campaign and the burning of passes after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960. Dingake went into hiding after the Rivonia raid and captures to lead the ANC underground. In 1964 he left South Africa and became the external contact with the underground machinery in Johannesburg.74
Michael Dingake
His account of his 1965 capture in Rhodesia and subsequent rendition to South Africa in his new autobiography Better to Die on One’s Feet offers another insight into the pipeline. When his written account is combined with information he shared during an interview with the author about this in 2015, a picture emerges of the hidden hand of South African intelligence in his capture through access to informants embedded in the pipeline.75
Towards the close of 1965 Dingake visited the ANC office in Lusaka. For his return journey to Lobatse, the organisation chartered a plane to fly him and Duma Nokwe, the Secretary General of the ANC, who was scheduled to meet his wife who had just fled South Africa to Lobatse. For landing rights to be obtained, the Bechuanaland authorities required a passenger manifest together with all their passport details. It was presumed that there would be no difficulties given that Nokwe was not a prohibited person and Dingake’s passport was in order.76
However, a delay followed, which seemed unusual. The air charter company advised that they take off from Lusaka airport in anticipation of a positive response whilst they were airborne, as the company believed it would be impossible that a Bechuanaland citizen would be denied landing rights in their own country. Dingake recalled that;
‘it was a very small aircraft, could seat about four’ and that it was ‘the two of us (himself and Nokwe) and the pilot’.77
According to Dingake’s account, they took off and the pilot kept in radio contact with the company offices. Whilst airborne they kept checking with the pilot what the status was and he kept replying ‘no, not yet’.78 Later when they asked the pilot where they were he advised that, much to their consternation they were about to land in Salisbury, Rhodesia, for which the pilot had been cleared by the Rhodesian authorities. Dingake and Nokwe told him to return immediately to Livingstone as ‘Salisbury would not have been safe for either of us’.79 Dingake remembers that ‘He didn’t argue, he turned back to Livingstone’.80
On landing in Livingstone the company advised that their landing rights had been refused and Dingake could proceed to Bechuanaland by other means of transport. He was assured that he could take a train through Rhodesia without hindrance. Dingake wrote to the High Commissioner of Bechuanaland berating the authorities for not allowing a bona fide citizen to return to his home country. To his surprise, he received a prompt and very polite reply claiming misinformation about his identity. The politeness disarmed Dingake, and he set off by train.81
On 8 December 1965, he was captured inside the train at Figtree, Rhodesia, while carrying his Bechuanaland passport. Dingake’s wife through her lawyer wrote to Seretse Khama to intervene, yet this letter was not handed to Khama in time by his personal secretary. As Dingake recalls, ‘it seemed all the dice were inauspiciously stacked against me’.82
Lt. Dirker
Dingake was detained for just over a month before being driven to Beit Bridge where he was handed over to South African Special Branch. The Rhodesian BSAP officer went through the motions of returning Dingake’s passport. Lieutenant Dirker, a notorious Security Branch officer, snatched the passport from the Rhodesian officer’s hand. When they drove through the border post into South Africa Dingake was forced to lie down on the back seat of the car with a gun to his head. There were no witnesses to his entering South Africa.83 Detained and tortured, in 1966 Dingake was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment on Robben Island.
On 19 November 2015, during an interview with Michael Dingake in Gaborone, he was asked about the pilot who attempted to land him in Salisbury.
Author: May I ask you about the pilot? I know that this is a long time ago, can you recall what his nationality was?
Michael Dingake: I think he was British, I think he was British. Yet was he British? Anyway it was a funny sort of name. I’d better not commit myself to saying he was British.
Author: Was the surname Bartaune?
Michael Dingake: Ah! Yeah! That’s right. That’s right Yeah, that’s right. That’s the name. Yeah.84
Dingake was very clear about this point during this discussion. At the mention of Bartaune’s name he was decisive in his reply and in recognising the name. He literally clapped his hands together at the mention of the name. Bartaune was the pilot during this incident.
Conclusion
Bechuanaland Air Safaris was a key part of the various pipelines established in Bechuanaland to facilitate transport across that territory for the South African liberation movements. It connected Bechuanaland to Basutoland and Swaziland and was established by the SIS in partnership with Captain Herbert Bartaune. During its existence, many prominent leaders of the liberation movements flew with it and interacted with Bartaune. It appears that in certain instances, as that of Patrick Duncan, Bartaune won the trust of a number of people.
Yet his past suggests more about Bartaune. Aligning himself with the forces of Nazi-fascism, he served with the German armed forces in the Second World War and, along with his wife Elsie, he was a Nazi Party member. However, according to the British intelligence system he was, some time before the Rivonia raid, providing information to the SAP.
British documents state that they assumed that the information in his report to the Bechuanaland Special Branch was also passed on to the SAP and possibly the CIA. Whether this means Bartaune passed it on to the CIA directly, or that the SAP passed this onto the CIA through their channels remains unknown.
As for Patrick Duncan and PAC activities in Basutoland, Bartaune compromised them to the British, South African and possibly US intelligence systems. Duncan’s relationship with Bartaune reached back several years and, according to Bartaune, he had even saved Duncan’s life on one occasion. Duncan trusted Bartaune and shared his plans for smuggling weapons with the aviator. Yet, unbeknownst to Duncan, Bartaune had no hesitation in using this information against Duncan.
In the case of Nelson Mandela, Bartaune personally flew him from Lobatse to Tanganyika. Mandela’s return to Kanye in one of Bartaune’s aircraft resulted in diversions from the original route to Lobatse due to the risks involved as a result of increased South African surveillance around Lobatse. When landing at Kanye, Mandela was assisted by the District Commissioner of Gaborone and a British aligned security official to reach his rendezvous team for his journey back to South Africa. This in a way thwarted South African agents. However, very shortly thereafter Mandela was captured. It is known that the CIA assisted the South African Security Branch in his capture. If Bartaune at that stage was assisting the SAP, he may have played a role in the events leading up to his capture by reporting on his intended travels through Bechuanaland, prior to airlifting Mandela and Keitseng from Mbeya.
In the case of Michael Dingake, his capture in Rhodesia was part of an orchestrated plot between the South African and Rhodesian security services. According to Dingake, there was no apparent need to deny landing rights to a Botswana citizen with a valid passport, yet that is what happened. During this flight Bartaune attempted, for no apparent reason, to land his passengers in Salisbury, which would have resulted in Dingake’s and possibly even Duma Nokwe’s arrest. He would have literally delivered them to the Rhodesian security services. When they remonstrated, he returned to Zambia. Dingake was then forced to travel overland through Rhodesia, resulting in his capture by the BSAP, who then illegally handed him over to the SAP.
The penetration of the aerial pipeline by the apartheid regime has a bearing on our understanding of the events and personalities described in this paper. After Mandela’s capture, key persons connected to the pipeline were transferred out of Bechuanaland. However, the pipe-line continued functioning with Bartaune betraying Patrick Duncan and the PAC in 1963 and 1964 and up until Michael Dingake’s capture in 1965. As the company was taken over by Bechuanaland National Airways in October/November 1965, Bartaune’s role in Dingake’s capture may have been one of his final acts of betrayal at that time. Information supplied to the intelligence and security services of various countries by Bartaune (and other informants) impacted negatively on the liberation movements. This was part of the apartheid state’s surveillance, repression and counterinsurgency objectives, as the cases of Matthews, Duncan, Mandela and Dingake discussed in this article show.
Footnotes
N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (London: Abacus, 1995), 344; M. Dingake, Better to Die On One’s Feet(Cape Town: South African History Online, 2015), 102. ↩︎
F. Keitseng, Comrade Fish: Memories of a Motswana in the ANC Underground (Gaborone: Pula Press, 1999), 55. ↩︎
R. Watts, ‘Memoirs of the Refugee “Pipeline”: The Serowe Route, 1960–1961’, Botswana Notes and Records, 29 (1997), 115. ↩︎
N. Parsons, ‘The Pipeline: Botswana’s Reception of Refugees, 1956–68’, Social Dynamics, 34, 1 (2008), 20–21. ↩︎
National Archives of the United Kingdom (hereafter NAUK), FO 371/167528, South Africa: Export of Arms to South Africa: Smuggling and Gun-running Activities, 1963 (hereafter NAUK, FO 371/167528 South Africa: Export of Arms); National Archives of South Africa (hereafter NASA), JIC, Vol 62, Elsie Bartaune, 1939–1946. ↩︎
This section on the setting up of the aerial pipeline and its monitoring by various intelligence agencies is partly drawn from G. Benneyworth, ‘Armed and Trained: Nelson Mandela’s 1962 Military Mission as Commander in Chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe and Provenance for His Buried Makarov Pistol’, South African Historical Journal, 63, 1 (2011), 81–84. ↩︎
Ibid. Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu describes a similar incident also in 1961 which Ndlovu cites from the Botswana archives. It records that ‘information from three different sources in Bechuanaland reported that between the 8 and 11 December 1961 two South African Police Special Branch agents were operating in the areas of Palapye and Serowe. When one of them was asked what the SAP special branch were doing in the protectorate, they replied that they “were going to arrest refugees”. They were traveling in a Johannesburg registered car’: Ndlovu, ‘Heritage Routes’, 502. ↩︎
SADET, The Road to Democracy in South Africa Volume 1 (1960–1970) (Zebra Press, Cape Town, 2004, 22. . ↩︎
NAUK, DO 119/1229, Vincent Joe Matthews (VJ), 4 July 1962–4 October 1962. ↩︎
According to two Walvis Bay residents who remembered Bartaune, his final employment was with the fish oil depot in the harbour. According to one of them, Bartaune had at one point been Haile Selassie’s personal pilot. A member of the local shooting club, Bartaune was an ardent gunsmith and built a few handguns for himself. He refused to speak Afrikaans. Conversation with two Walvis Bay residents, 7 May 2016. Both individuals asked to remain anonymous ↩︎
Bartaune was a member of the Swakopmund gliding club, where in 1968 he spoke of the Hitler Youth and of how glider flying prepared them for conversion as pilots in the Luftwaffe. He related that the Hitler Youth launched their gliders by a catapult system: Conversation with R. Swart, Kimberley, 8 March 2017. Mr Swart was also a member of the Swakopmund gliding club and remembered Bartaune and the discussions he had with him. ↩︎
P. Ariane, H. Kuckuk, K. Pophanken and K. Schalipp, Ein Jahrhundert Luft- und Raumfahrt in Bremen: Von den frühesten Flugversuchen zum Airbus und zur (Falkenberg, Rotenburg Edition, 2015), 343. ↩︎
‘More “Rain Makers” Here For Experiments’, Border Watch, 25 July 1953. ↩︎
NAUK, FO 371/167528, South Africa: Export of Arms. ↩︎
This distinction of several years is important in that this means that Bartaune flew Duncan before he established Bechuanaland Air Safari’s. This would presumably have been in the Central African Federation and Belgian Congo. ↩︎
NAUK, FO 371/167528, South Africa: Export of Arms. ↩︎
NAUK, FO 371/167528, South Africa: Export of Arms. ↩︎
NAUK, CO 1048/521 Basutoland Intelligence Report, October 1963 and July 1964. ↩︎
Mandela’s use of the pipeline and return to South Africa is also described in Benneyworth, ‘Armed and Trained’, 84, 94–95. ↩︎
NAUK, DO 119/1478, Nelson Mandela, 1962. Secret Telegram from High Commissioner to the Secretary of State for Colonies and the Resident Commissioner Bechuanaland, 22 January 1962. ↩︎
Joe Matthews arrived the day before and flew out with Mandela. ↩︎
NAUK, DO 119/1478, Nelson Mandela, 1962. Secret Telegram from High Commissioner to the Secretary of State for Colonies and the Resident Commissioner Bechuanaland, 22 January 1962. ↩︎
Matlou had opened the ANC Office in Bechuanaland in 1961 before moving to Tanzania and then Algeria, where he helped to bring in South African youth for military training. ↩︎
The police raid on Liliesleaf on 11 July 1963 is understood to be the result of informants within the liberation movements either breaking down in detention or “selling out” and providing information about the farm with its safe house and its people. This paper, while acknowledging that there were informants inside the liberation movements, maintains that this was only a fragment of a kaleidoscope of events culminating in the raid and subsequent Rivonia Trial. Rather it was a covert investigation undertaken since 1962 that resulted in the blow delivered by the combined security agencies, that shattered the underground networks opposing the apartheid state. It was an investigation which relied extensively on the principles of the mythological Greek Trojan horse; it used persons and technology that aimed to undermine and overthrow their opponent, to subvert and defeat it from within, while appearing non threatening. This paper identifies three Trojan horses. A human spy concealed behind the innocent look of a child who fronted for sinister forces. Electronic warfare deployed by the military and linked to an innocuous caravan park; and finally a laundry van to deliver the surgical knockout strike. Yet all this subterfuge has eluded the narrative for 53 years.
The build-up, 1963
By June 1963 the state crackdown was relentless. Political organisations, such as the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), together with their activists were under banning orders, restricted from almost all social and political contact with others, rendered incommunicado, detained, driven into exile, or serving prison sentences. The PAC’s resistance had been neutralised, numerous political trials were underway and of the various methods exhibited by a growing security police state, one was increasing brutality.
It became increasingly difficult for the members of the underground to operate. Informants were rumoured to be everywhere and the pressure of living beneath the radar became unbearable. At some point a fatal mistake might be made or the sheer weight of the security apparatus might find a leak in the dyke, bursting through to flood into the underground networks.
Dennis Goldberg recalled that there were two sides to operating in the underground.
“It really was as exciting as I imagined it would be. I was a fulltime revolutionary. I felt invincible: on the brink of something great. There was a constant rush of adrenaline”.1
However this came with a price. Goldberg recalled living under this terrible strain:
“What happens when you are working underground is that you’re constantly working under the pressure of discovery; you’re constantly having to think about it. It becomes a terrible anxiety. The pressure of being underground, it was wearing and wearing … and you’re forced into making mistakes. This is what the pressure does, it forces you into mistakes. I am talking about the way the security forces pressure you.2
And this is the lesson to be learnt from it, there is always too much to do, you’re always in a hurry, the revolution must happen today, if not tonight, and so you make mistakes. What it plays on is that eventually you become so lonely, you give yourself away … It’s like a boil. That is part of the psychology. That might not necessarily be the whole thing. But we don’t train our people for this, you only learn it when it’s too damn late.3
Lionel ‘Rusty’ Bernstein – mugshot
There was a nuance of change taking place; one that the movement was slow to detect. Some members had become complacent, lulled by a false sense of security, which appeared to be presented by the façade of the safe house. After all, once inside the perceived guerrilla zone, the hostile world lay beyond its boundaries. Rusty Bernstein saw it as “evident that the ‘safe house’ syndrome was at work. Liliesleaf farm seemed to be the easy option for every hard choice. It was after all safe.”4
Kathrada recalled his emotions when he arrived at Liliesleaf:
“I’m living in another world. The comrades here were completely divorced, Soweto was just a few miles from here, they were completely divorced from reality. And drawing up very fancy documents. They had even forgotten that when MK was formed, no one had the idea that MK was going to overthrow the government. At the very most MK was going to be a pressure group. The goal remained that MK would be one of the pressure groups together with the political struggle, together with the international pressures, to force the enemy to the negotiation table.”5
In 2006, according to Vivien Ezra who owned the front company, Navian Ltd, established by the SACP to purchase Liliesleaf, there were no internal security arrangements within the cells to resist infiltration. 6 Structures just did not exist whereby suspicions could be reported. In short, there was no structured counter intelligence mechanism in use by the underground. 7 Naïve is a persistent word that crept through all the interviews conducted by the author in the period from 2004 to 2006.
Nothing illustrates this better than the fact that although Mandela was captured in August 1962, Liliesleaf continued to be used by the allied organisations, including the SACP, the ANC, MK, members of the Congress Alliance, South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and members of the Indian political organisations, right up until the raid, eleven months later.
Liliesleaf farm – aerial photo taken after the raid, note the thatch roof room top left connected to rear farm quarters and buildings – this room was used by Nelson Mandela. Brenthurst Library.
One would have thought that once South Africa’s most wanted fugitive was captured, these organisations would have tried to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Liliesleaf, given that Mandela had used the farm as his base of operations. He had travelled throughout Africa and the United Kingdom, yet it would appear that no one considered the possibility that his movements might be tracked back to Liliesleaf, or that had he been under surveillance, which he was, thus compromising the farm around August 1962 when captured. Mandela claimed that he concealed a revolver and notebook within the upholstery of the front seat of Cecil Williams’s car before being arrested and taken into custody.8 The hypothesis is that the police found this notebook, which enabled them to investigate his activities in South Africa after his return from Ethiopia. The impending danger was that by using this information the security branch could hone in on Liliesleaf. In fact, it appears that that the underground activities and the use of Liliesleaf by the liberation movement actually increased after August 1962 and continued to do so until the 1963 raid. It is possible that more leaders of the underground and operatives sought shelter at Liliesleaf after August 1962, than at any other time in its history before this date. Walter Sisulu, Raymond Mhlaba, Wilton Mkwai, Andrew Mlangeni, Govan Mbeki and Ahmed Kathrada certainly did, to name but a few. Meetings of MK’s high command, the Secretariat and the SACP’s central committee were held there, and quite possibly also the ANC’s NEC and various MK committees such as those dealing with intelligence, logistics, transport and housing.
Police searching the living room at Liliesleaf farm – main house, police photograph.
It is widely understood that the meeting of the Secretariat on the day of the raid was the last meeting held at Liliesleaf and that thereafter other venues would be used. Some had serious reservations about returning there believing the farm to be compromised. Bernstein was vehemently opposed to returning to Liliesleaf. 9 Other senior leaders, such as Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba and Wilton Mkwai no longer stayed there, having moved to Trevallyn, a smallholding near Krugersdorp, purchased shortly before by Denis Goldberg under a fictitious name. Meanwhile, Liliesleaf was to be used solely for accommodating the MK high command and those immediately involved in its functioning.10 However this was not the case for that one fateful meeting. The Logistics Committee was due to meet the night of 11 July 1963. So in fact two meetings were intended at Liliesleaf on the day of the raid. All of those captured during the raid concur that because an alternative venue couldn’t be found, it was agreed to meet at Liliesleaf one last time.
Yet other parallel activities were occurring, such as a scheduled Logistics Committee meeting, planned to take place inside the main house after the Secretariat concluded its business in the thatched cottage. One of its members, Denis Goldberg was already seated in the lounge reading a book when the veranda door swung open to initiate his capture. Another member, Arthur Goldreich, drove home into the raid with a copy of Operation Mayibuye concealed behind his vehicle’s hubcap. A third, Hilliard Festenstein, walked into the house punctually that night to attend the meeting which never happened – straight into the arms of the police. The chairman of the Logistics Committee, Wilton Mkwai, narrowly avoided capture when approaching the farm as scheduled and saw the raid already in progress. A fifth member, Ian David Kitson, escaped due to a bout of flu which had kept him in bed; while the reasons for Lionel Gay’s non-show remain unknown.
All those at Liliesleaf that day were arrested. The exceptions were six children, three black and three white. Together with other members of the liberation movement who were serving jail sentences or who were arrested elsewhere, those arrested stood trial in what became a watershed moment in South African history. Rivonia.
Leakage
Liliesleaf was leaking. A few weeks before the raid some MK members had visited the farm and were arrested. It was a matter of time before the security branch broke them. By July 1963, there were numerous security lapses so it was inevitable that if the police hadn’t already done so, they would soon find the farm. Apart from which, “we were total amateurs. You cannot cross both worlds, indefinitely”.11
The concept of security had broken down. Too many people were using Liliesleaf. Its numerous visitors included people who were known to the security branch and foreign intelligence agencies, such as Joe Slovo, Ruth First, Jack Hodgson, Bram Fischer, Lionel Bernstein, Harold Wolpe and many others. Lionel (Rusty) Bernstein described this osmosis from the safe house:
“Later people who had been overseas for military training would arrive back in Bechuanaland without any proper planning. The first thing we would know was that they were in Bechuanaland and wanted come back. So we’d bring them back and they would stay for a few nights … Rivonia came into sudden use in a way that had not been foreseen.
So this place became a sort of centre, if you like because Sisulu and Mbeki were the two senior ANC people at large at that time. [Since] both of them were [also]participating on the high command, they began to use it for MK high command activities, both for keeping documents and holding meetings, and they were bringing people to their meetings who were not in the high command, not living underground and so on. So the place really changed from being a really closely kept secret to being something of a centre.”12
Even Thomas Mashifane, the foreman, could sense the inherent danger building up. “What are you folks doing? The way motor cars are coming in and out, the next thing the police are going to come.”13 No one was prepared to listen. The question is, where others listening with a more sinister intent? Had those with a little more intellect than ascribed to them, applied themselves as opposed to the thuggery displayed by the police? Had the proverbial Mr Plod finally caught up?
Rear view aerial image of Liliesleaf farm – Police photograph post raid, Brenthurst Library.
The central thread that runs through the literature is that the security branch experienced a lucky break when they raided Liliesleaf farm. Starting in 1965, Strydom has it that an informant offered to tell what he knew about activities at the farm, yet had only a vague idea where it was. Accompanied by a detective and after driving about the area for some time, he eventually recognised the property.14 Frankel has it that Lt. Van Wyk who led the raid was advised by a colleague that he had an informant with information to sell. Apparently he knew where to find Walter Sisulu and half a dozen other important leaders of the Umkhonto high command. For a large payment he would take the lieutenant there.15 According to Frankel the informant took Van Wyk to Liliesleaf, enabling him to plan the raid which he sprung the following day. After the raid the informant received R6 000.16 More recent works, for example that by Smith, have the security branch depicted as a proverbial Mr Plod staffed with bumbling policemen who eventually caught up with the activists.17 If so, who was listening in besides the SAP and its security branch?
This paper will show that at least three parallel lines of investigation by three separate security agencies took place between 1962 and the day of the raid. There could have been other agencies but these remain unidentified. The three agencies were the SAP’s security branch, using its methods of informer recruitment and information collected; Republican Intelligence (RI), using informants and information trading with foreign intelligence organisations (later better known as the National Intelligence Service or NIS); and the South African Communications Security Agency which was linked to the South African Defence Force (SADF).
Investigating Liliesleaf, 1962-1963
There is no doubt that captured operatives gave the police information. Examples include Bruno Mtolo, Patrick Mthembu and Bartholomew Hlapane.18 However, this paper will identify one informer whose role the author uncovered in 2005 by locating this informant’s 1963 statement to the SAP. A copy was provided by the author to the Liliesleaf Trust in 2005 and is included in an unpublished research report to the Trust in 2007.19 All subsequent references to this informant are drawn from the author’s prior work. Within weeks of Nelson Mandela’s capture on 5 August 1962, the security branch had a ten-year-old informant who had access to the farm. His name is George Mellis. His parents owned the Rivonia Caravan Park directly across the road from Liliesleaf. He was the perfect Trojan horse. He could literally breach the sanctity of the safe house undetected, much like the mythical Trojan horse parked outside the gates of Troy. No one gave the boy so much as a second glance when he arrived to play with his friends Nicholas and Paul Goldreich, or wandered around near the outbuildings while covert meetings were underway.
On 5 August 1963, George Mellis made a sworn statement to Sergeant Fourie who commanded the Rivonia police station.
“About a year ago, one day when I was playing in the yard of the Goldreichs’ place, I saw a number of white and Bantu males together in the thatch-roof building next to the main house. These people were talking and I saw some shaking hands with each other. This seemed strange to me and I told my parents about it. On some occasions that I went there I saw a lot of cars parked in the yard and one occasion, I took the registration numbers of all the cars parked in the Goldreich yard and handed the numbers I had written down, to the police at Rivonia.” 20
Sergeant Fourie forwarded Mellis’s number plate list and his information to the security branch. Mellis tried to elicit further information from his Goldreich playmates whom he joined inside the main house for lunch. On one occasion, he said, “I asked Nicholas about the persons on the premises but Nicholas said that he was not allowed to tell me anything”. 21
In his 1963 statement Mellis identified Walter Sisulu Raymond Mhlaba, Denis Goldberg and Ahmed Kathrada from police photographs. His Goldberg reference is pertinent in that Goldberg first visited Liliesleaf in May 1963. This means that Mellis was spying on Liliesleaf from the time of his first report (about a year before the raidand soon after Mandela’s capture), through to when Goldberg visited Liliesleaf between May and July 1963. Mellis spied right up until the raid.
Photo of Nicholas and Paul Goldreich who befriended George Mellis, this photograph was taken at Liliesleaf farm and is in the private collection of Arthur Goldreich and shared with the author.
Sergeant Fourie assisted the security branch too. In December 1962, Fourie received a summons for a parking offence from the Alberton magistrate’s court which he had to serve on Arthur Goldreich. Fourie held back.
“Aangesien ek bang was dat dit met die ondersoek mag inmeng het ek die lasbrief nie laat uitvoer nie maar het die agterwee gehou [Because I was afraid that it might interfere with the investigation, I did not serve the summons but held it back.]”.22
Fourie instructed his policemen that any action against anyone at Liliesleaf, for example serving a summons, should first be cleared with him. No policeman was to go onto Liliesleaf for any reason without prior authorisation, because an investigation was underway. The farm was sanitised from any official physical interruption.
On 14 January 1963, Colonel Hendrik van den Bergh was appointed head of the security branch of the South African Police. His orders were to reorganise the South African security establishment and it was he who created the first national intelligence service, originally known as Republican Intelligence (RI). The government needed an intelligence organisation that could function along the lines of America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). The RI, together with the security branch, were instructed to smash all organised resistance to the minority regime.
According to Gerhard Ludi the RI’s primary focus was the South African Communist Party (SACP). Ludi, one of RI’s first agents, has suggested that the RI identified the SACP as the primary problem confronting the apartheid regime. Ludi has said that the CIA assisted RI and provided intelligence about financial assistance that Russia provided to the liberation movements. The CIA also indicated who the KGB operatives in South Africa might be and pointed out some of the local communists to the RI.23 RI fed intelligence to both the CIA and the SIS on a weekly basis and these agencies reciprocated. This foreign intelligence feed also included information about Operation Mayibuye and Radio Freedom, both implicitly connected to Liliesleaf.24
Ludi related that RI took the approach that, “if one learned about the cores of the Communist Party, one would learn about the why and where and the role the Soviets were playing in this”.25 Persons of interest who formed their intelligence target were Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Michael Harmel, Lionel Bernstein, Hilda Watts, Harold Wolpe and Ahmed Kathrada. Ludi said that Mhlaba, Bernstein and Harmel would be of particular focus for RI.
Liaison between the apartheid regime and other regimes in Southern Rhodesia and the Portuguese colonies was improved and intelligence sharing became the established modus operandi. Cooperation with the Portuguese extended into their Angola and Mozambique colonies and surveillance reports were provided to government about the movements of known South African communists such as Ruth First, Hillary Plegg, Ben Turok, V.W. Mkwai, Moses Mabida, Julius Baker and P. Beyleveldt who were travelling through Portuguese controlled territories.26 The Portuguese assisted the SIS in monitoring MK activities. In 1961 Portuguese Naval Intelligence transmitted an intelligence report to SIS that Ghana was recruiting South Africans for political, military and sabotage training and supplying funds to SouthAfrican anti-government groups.27
Documents photographed at Liliesleaf in one of the out buildings – Police photograph
Ludi claimed that RI was, “instrumental in pin pointing Rivonia through the radio”. 28 This was the radio transmitter linked to Walter Sisulu’s Freedom Day, Radio Freedom broadcast on 26 June 1963. It is important to note that this broadcast did not occur at Liliesleaf although the radio equipment was tested there. Ludi claims that one of his agents was an electrical engineer; he was connected to the SACP transport manager who knew someone who ran a dry cleaning operation and whose vans were used to transport underground operatives around the country. This link to a dry cleaning van is another Trojan horse. Someone connected to the underground structures used a vehicle like this one, and inside the van lurked an RI agent. This also shows that the routines at the farm were already under surveillance. They were understood, mapped and logged; a Trojan horse disguised as an innocuous laundry van was the modus operandi when the knockout blow was delivered.
The agent met the go between at a bus terminus where he was tied up and blindfolded inside the van. Driven to Liliesleaf he was shown the radio and commented, “This is the most antiquated piece of rubbish I’ve seen in my life.” He couldn’t do anything with it, but the information assisted RI who now knew that somewhere in that area:
“There was a place where things were happening and I believe that after we fed that information to the police that they then started driving … patterns in that area looking for something they thought must be happening there and that’s how they actually found Rivonia, plus of course somebody also gave them information.”29
Who gave the police information is a moot point – informants or another process? While the role of the security branch and RI is known, what is not known is the role of the SADF and its electronic warfare capabilities in locating Liliesleaf. Research and development into electronic warfare began in the early 1950s in response to SACP underground radio broadcasts. By the early 1960s their direction finding technology was on par with the British and Americans.
In about 1955/56, the Radio Section of the engineers’ section of the general post office (GPO) was tasked to assist the SAP to locate the source of Radio Freedom broadcasts that transmitted on short-wave wavelengths. The SACP transmitted on Sunday evenings at 20h00 for 15 minutes. The Radio Act No. 3 of 1952 stipulated that a conviction could only result if the police caught the perpetrators in the act of broadcasting. 30 As the SAP and the Union Defence Force (later the SADF) had no direction-finding capability to comply with this stipulation of the Act they turned to the GPO. The Derdepoort Radio Station based at Hartebeesfontein farm near Pretoria was given the task. Having no direction finding equipment they then developed their own.31
Transmissions were identified as coming from Natal. They then built a mobile direction finding facility and installed it in GPO vans and undertook the search. After nine months the operation halted without success. During early 1956 the transmissions resurfaced in the Johannesburg/Pretoria area. Each transmission came from a different location thus requiring greater mobility. Derdepoort’s technicians developed man-pack equipment which could be carried while walking. The SAP flying squad drove these operators (known then as chase teams). Three vehicle mounted direction finding units and five man-pack units were deployed. Included in the chase teams were technicians from Derdepoort station. The security branch supported the operation. 32 On Sunday 12 August 1956, they identified 363 Berea Street Muckleneuk, Pretoria and raided the house, seizing the transmitter and other equipment along with a pre-recorded taped broadcast. The four accused were convicted of violating the Radio Act No.3of 1952, a relatively minor offence, and sentenced to a fine of ₤50 or six months in jail. 33
Following this the engineers’ section acquired more sophisticated equipment to facilitate their direction finding methods. In 1958, they imported the Adcock System from the USA, the most advanced of its kind at the time. Located at Derdepoort, this static system included an all-round direction finding capability. 34 Cooperation on direction finding operations between the GPO and SAP was not unusual for this era. Britain’s Security Service MI5, used British post office technology in its counter intelligence operations, both in the United Kingdom against Soviet agents and operations, and also during military operations against independence movements in its colonies, such as in Cyprus.35
The role of the SADF and South African Communications Security Agency
In 1960/1961 the SADF established an overarching telecommunication function, the South African Communications Security Agency (SACSA). SACSA fell under the directorate of telecommunications, and its director was accountable to the prime minister at the time, H.F. Verwoerd. SACSA’s duties were enabling secure and un-compromised communications between all government departments. This included all arms of the SADF, the Department of Foreign Affairs, military attaches abroad, and between the SAP and its agents. 36
During 1963, SACSA played a key role in locating and spying on Liliesleaf. On 1 April 1963, Captain Martiens Botha was transferred to defence headquarters Pretoria to work for the chief telecommunications officer. Included in this small team was Captain Mike Venter of the South African Air Force (SAAF) who was proficient in Morse code. One of his duties was monitoring radio transmissions that the authorities deemed as subversive. Venter detected suspicious Morse code messages inside the country and showed them to Botha. Venter’s information was reported to the security branch and to RI. 37
SACSA borrowed a direction finding vehicle from the post office telecommunications section and pinpointed the location to within a few blocks of where the transmitter was located. This was enabled because, according to Captain Venter, the Morse code transmitter burst its signals more than once from Liliesleaf. SACSA then searched for visibly suspicious equipment such as antennas on properties in the area. Liliesleaf had two lightning conductors next to the main house. 38
SACSA observed and noted all these activities. Mary Russell and her husband lived in the Rivonia Caravan Park directly opposite the Rietfontein Road entrance into Liliesleaf. After the 1963 raid, Russell later shared her observations with her family, saying that, she “knew something was going on across the road”.39 In 2005, Russell’s nephew, Gavin Olivier, shared this account with the author. According to Olivier, Russell was an avid birdwatcher and used binoculars to observe the birdlife from her veranda. Prior to the raid, she saw postal workers standing on ladders erected against telephone poles along Rietfontein Road, working on the telephone lines. For Russell, it was odd that they stood atop for long periods of time and used binoculars. Russell recalled what she described as “mysterious bread delivery vans” parked inside the caravan park several times a week for the entire day. Strange, she said, “we don’t have a shop that sells bread in the caravan park.”40 Yet there they were opposite the driveway into Liliesleaf. Paul Goldreich also recollected men working on telephone cables outside the farm.41
The view of Liliesleaf farm in the valley to the left taken from the caravan park by Mary Russel (photographing a shrike) and the road and telephone lines on which the bakery van operated.
July 1963 was a cold winter, yet shortly before the raid, from at least May 1963, Denis Goldberg recalled there being a single caravan inside the park. Its presence made him feel uneasy.
“There was only one caravan there most of the time, and this area was so far out of Jo’burg, it was deep countryside … And there was this caravan park, which was bare red earth with what I remember as one caravan. A very sleepy police station around the corner. I believe they said they watched the place, this is what I am basing it on … it would have been the obvious thing.” 42
The Trojan horse was literally across the road, parked inside a caravan park owned by the Mellis family, who were actively assisting this investigation. There is other evidence of electronic surveillance activity, all intersecting towards July 1963. In 2005 the author interviewed an individual who wished to remain anonymous. This person claimed that in 1963 he had supplied the security branch with RM 401 hearing aid microphones together with long life batteries which lasted about a month. The microphones and their batteries fitted into a human ear, making them ideal for covert listening. These bugs could be disguised and planted anywhere and were small enough to be inserted into a pen and worn by an informant during a conversation; three or four such devices fitted into a matchbox. The microphone and transmitter worked at low frequencies, and the range was as much as 1⁄2 km to a listening station located within a line of sight.
The receiver for these devices was very powerful. The signal did not need to be very strong and the microphone did not require a large opening, a pin hole would suffice, as in a standard hearing aid. The listening station required a sizable aerial, about one metre in length. It could be erected in a tree; run along telephone wires; concealed inside a roof; or tucked out of sight inside a caravan. It could even masquerade as a car aerial if parked nearby.
If inserted inside a building then transmission distanced would be reduced and to compensate for this, some type of aerial would have to be attached to boost the transmission. An option was a shortwave radio, working at 10 MHz, providing there was a good receiver on the receiving end. If the transmitter was outdoors the range would increase and the only limitations would be caused by background noise. These transmitters picked up sound in an entire room, and the next room as well. The bug could be concealed in a light switch and fitted by an electrician or plumber. It could be hidden beneath a car or anywhere else and camouflaged to resemble any type of contextual object. Lightning or electrical activity did not affect its performance.
Police purchases began with a phone call to check for available stock; followed by a visit from two plainclothes policemen. Payment with was cash and no receipt was required. Prior to the raid, as many as 1 000 units may have been supplied. When news of the Liliesleaf raid broke, the salesperson thought, “So that’s where all our microphones were going! Damn sure in my own mind – bloody hell, so that’s where our microphones went!” 43
Surveyor General map of Rivonia
In 2004 the author uncovered additional tangible evidence of a surveillance operation. In 1961 the surveyor general updated the cadastral maps and the Rivonia area was aerially re-photographed to produce maps in 1962. Each photographic contact sheet covers a vast area and nothing distinguishes a particular property from the next unless the sheets are significantly enlarged. The next photographic series dates to 1964. The author scanned the sheets depicting Liliesleaf in the 1961 and 1964 mapping process in high resolution. One of these sheets revealed a trace of the SACSA direction finding andelectronic warfare operation. (None of the 1964 photographs reflect any tampering). Three microscopic red dots and a pencil cross (x) emerged when a high resolution electronic scanner was used. Two red dots are on a neighbouring property. One red dot marks the approximate centre of Liliesleaf farm and the pencil cross on the sheet marks the dirt driveway leading into Liliesleaf, directly across the road from the caravan park. 44
Tampering on the surveyor general cadastral map of the Rivonia area to show sophisticated electronic triangulation intelligence and X marks the spot on the Liliesleaf driveway.
Someone involved in this investigation examined this contact sheet and made the markings before returning the sheet assuming that the microscopic tampering would remain invisible. Not only was the SADF proficient in electronic warfare. The technical skills of the SAAF, the second oldest air force in the world, were on par with its international counterparts. In combat operations in Africa, Madagascar and Europe during the Second World War, the SAAF made extensive use of aerial photo reconnaissance. Nor were their skills of electronic warfare neglected in the post-war years.
In 1957, the SAAF acquired the Avro Shackleton MR Mk3 which it used for long range maritime patrolling and naval surveillance operations. 45 Between 1962 and 1964 the SAAF acquired 16 Mirage IIIC fighter aircraft from France, followed by four Mirage RZ fighter reconnaissance aircraft. 46 In late 1963, SAAF took delivery of the Canberra B (I) Mk 12 heavy bomber and photo reconnaissance aircraft from Britain. It was adding to and upgrading its technological capacity. Consequently, in 1962 to 1963 the only agency with the technical skills capable of identifying targets from aerial photographs of Liliesleaf was the SAAF.47
Thursday 11 July 1963
A meeting on Saturday 6 July 1963 to discuss Operation Mayibuye at Liliesleaf deadlocked. The plan was not approved and it created deep divisions within the Secretariat and amongst members of the SACP’s Central Committee. The plan had to be either approved by the political structures, which did not happen, or be sent back for further work. However, the next part of the problem was a practical one: where could the Secretariat meet and when? The matter had to be speedily resolved, yet the issue of a venue was becoming contentious and downright dangerous.
Denis Goldberg’s mugshot after his arrest and one his drawings on the working of a grenade recovered from Liliesleaf farm, evidence used in his trial.
There were a number of people who did not want to return to Liliesleaf. According to Goldberg:
“They had earlier taken the decision not to bring people who were not living underground to the place where others were living in hiding. Too many people had been to Liliesleaf farm. The security risks were great. We urgently needed a different place and the task of buying somewhere new was given to me because I could legally buy property.” 48
A number of the senior leaders, such as Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba and Wilton Mkwai no longer stayed at the farm, having moved to Trevallyn, a smallholding near Krugersdorp, recently purchased by Goldberg under a fictitious name and which was to be used solely for accommodating members of the MK high command and those immediately involved in its functioning. 49 Goldberg later wrote that “the last meeting of the High Command at Liliesleaf was one too many”.50 Goldberg remembered:
“They didn’t have time to arrange a new venue, so we had to come back here, knowing that it was dangerous to come here. The decision had been taken, no more meetings at Rivonia. Yet we had one more, because of the pressure of Rusty’s house arrest.”51
Kathrada recalled:
Ahmed Kathrada after his arrest – JHB Fort.
“A number of us started feeling uneasy about the continued use of the Rivonia farm. We were well aware that the need-to-know principle had not applied to Liliesleaf for some time, and that far too many people – one of whom was Bruno Mtolo, a saboteur from Durban and leader of the Natal branch, had visited the farm. But there was no avoiding one final meeting in Rivonia. In the days leading up to this crucial gathering, I became more agitated and afraid. The only person who I could share my views with was Walter Sisulu, whose views coincided with my own.”52
As for Bernstein, he was not in favour of holding the meeting there. He had lost faith in Liliesleaf as an uncompromised venue:
“I don’t even remember who convened the meeting. I know I didn’t want to go to it. I was afraid of the place. It was Hepple who persuaded me. [He said] “Okay, you don’t want to go to this place, just this one last time”. Famous last words.53
The next issue was the timing of the meeting. Which day might be appropriate? Thursdays were delivery days. Produce from the butcher and grocer were delivered; dry cleaning collected and dropped off; cars came and went – these goings-on were an established routine. Because these activities had doubled up as a screen for meetings before, Thursday it would be. However, these routines were known and identified, all watched and listened to inside the Trojan horse parked innocently in the caravan park.
Nothing untoward happened during the day except for Bob Hepple’s encounter with an unidentified individual which alludes to a covert investigation.
“On the morning of the 11th July, a man came to my chambers. He was an Indian. I had never met him before. And he said to me, “I have got a message for Cedric from Natalie.” Now I knew that I regularly received letters addressed to me at my chambers. Inside was an envelope sealed from Natalie for Cedric. And I knew these were for the leadership and I would deliver them personally to Liliesleaf Farm. And I wondered what was going on because Cedric was the codename for the centre and Natalie was the code name for the Natal district. And I knew these names on letters would come to my chambers addressed me. I would open them …and would take them over. Who was this guy? I had no knowledge of him. I fobbed him off. I said I don’t know what this is about but I’ll look into it and see. So I realised he was bringing some message. But I didn’t know if he was genuine, he could have been a police spy. And I was deeply suspicious. I feigned ignorance and said I have to go out now and sent him away and said come back to me tomorrow morning. My idea being to make enquiries if anyone knew what this was about. So the result, I was very worried and it was one of the things when I did go there that afternoon that I was worried about. So on my route there I was extremely nervous, I kept thinking maybe I am going to be followed.” 54
This encounter unnerved Hepple. According to him there were already suspicions that the CIA had had a hand in Mandela’s capture. For what reason and by whom was this visitor sent? 55 Hepple told Kathrada about his suspicious visitor and Kathrada confirmed that he too had received a garbled message from someone who mentioned Cedric. After ten minutes of exchanging pleasantries, the six took their seats inside the thatched cottage, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Walter Sisulu, Lionel Bernstein, Bob Hepple and Ahmed Kathrada. Their agenda was to discuss the impact of the 90 days arrests and to continue the discussion on Operation Mayibuye.
Walter Sisulu after his arrest – JHB Fort
Bernstein held the Operation Mayibuye document on his lap so that he might refer to it and started his critique. No sooner had he commenced when they observed a dry cleaning van, bearing the logo Trade Steam Pressers through a rear window driving down the driveway. It drove up and parked next to the house. Bernstein looked out the window and exclaimed. “Oh my God, I saw that van opposite the police station this afternoon!”56 The Trojan horse was in position. Perfectly timed and synchronised to the exact moment that the meeting started. Certainly no coincidence. Coordinated by another Trojan horse parked inside the caravan park and listening in. Suddenly the rear doors of the dry cleaning van opened, disgorging the security branch police with their attack dog. While the raiders encircled the main house, Govan Mbeki snatched the Mayibuye plan from Bernstein and tried to burn it but without matches it was useless. Mbeki then shoved the plan into the stovepipe chimney.
Mbeki, Sisulu and Kathrada leapt through a rear window but were immediately caught. The remaining three hoped to bluff their way out. Detective Kennedy opened the door and rushed inside. “Stay where you are. You’re all under arrest!”57
Arthur Goldreich after his arrest – JHB Fort
The three were then escorted outside. Hepple recalled that by this stage the place was piling up with police and dogs. This suggests that the dry cleaner’s van was the initial probe – the Trojan horse. Once it had breached the gates and parked inside, its occupants would disgorge to secure the buildings while the main body, already in position on Rietfontein Road would then swoop in and overwhelm the farm, while securing the perimeter.
Earlier, in the lounge, Goldberg looked up to see Lt Van Wyk swing open the veranda door and step inside, only metres away from where he sat. Goldberg leapt from his chair, grabbed his coat which contained his notes about weapons manufacture and manufacturing quotations which he had received – and made a desperate dash to reach a toilet to flush them away. Intercepted by another policeman entering through the kitchen he was overpowered in the entrance hallway and arrested. “It was a disconcerting moment. Actually what I thought was, oh shit, we’ve been caught.” 58
Govan Mbeki after his arrest – JHB Fort
The suspects and farm labourers were handcuffed inside the dry cleaner’s van. At about 17h50 Arthur Goldreich drove down Rietfontein Road in his Citroen. 59 When he drew level with the entrance gate he noticed two men wearing the hallmark raincoats of plain clothes policemen, standing beneath a tree in the caravan park, talking to each other. It wasn’t raining and they weren’t relieving themselves.
“And my first thought was special branch, and my second thought was I am late. I can’t just drive by. Then the third thought of mine was how come the guy who’s supposed to be guarding the gate is not there … and I came down the driveway, there were trees on either side and from behind the trees came some police and some dogs. And they jumped on the motor car, and the guy with a pistol in his hand put the pistol to my head, and I heard someone shout, “moenie skiet nie!” So I switched off the engine and rolled down and came in towards the garage.” 60
Arthur’s car ground to a halt. He got out, hands raised above his head. 61 At around 18h00 after each captive had been shown the contents of the outbuildings, Bernstein and Hepple joined Mbeki inside the laundry van. Goldberg was then brought out of the house, four policemen climbed into the van and the Trojan horse drove them off. Having breached the gates of the safe house the Trojan horse left with its captives handcuffed inside, facing the horrors ahead, fearing the worst, potentially a death sentence. Passing the solitary caravan parked in the red dirt of the park. Into the dark. The Rivonia Trial followed.
Arthur Goldreich, looking very worried and Detective Warrant Officer Carel Dirker. By law Goldreich had to be made witness to the search.
Conclusion
Colonels Van den Bergh and Klindt arrived after sunset. Arthur Goldreich was taken into the main bedroom for a one-on-one monologue delivered by Van den Bergh. Among other things Van den Bergh said:
“The trouble with you, Goldreich, and the trouble with all of you, is you’re amateurs. You always have and you always will underestimate your enemy. And that’s why you’re in the shit.” 62
Colonel H.J. Van den Bergh
Liliesleaf and all that was linked to it was captured. The Rivonia Trial followed and after that more arrests and trials until the internal networks were neutralised. A blow most certainly, yet not one which was terminal to the forces of liberation. In the 53 years since the raid the focus on what led to the raid has always been on the security branch. These accounts claim that the SAP, assisted by informants from within the movement, were able to raid Liliesleaf and were lucky to have achieved the success that they did. Kathrada later wrote that the police had the farm under surveillance for some hours before the raid. However, according to him the no one had ever found out the truth:
“ … every version that has been bandied about over the years is based on nothing more that speculation.” 63
The author concurs with Kathrada’s statement. Starting with Strydom in 1965 and weaving through into the recent past with Frankel, popular notion has it that an informant or informants “gave up” the farm to the security branch and fed their information to Lt. Van Wyk who, on receiving it, literally sprung the raid the following day. In a massive twist of fate and coincidence, good luck for some and horrific luck for others, in a single swoop the raid netted prominent leaders connected with MK, the ANC and SACP, together with a haul of documentary and other evidence. This smashed the leaders of organised resistance to the apartheid regime in one massive lucky break, all a result of informants. The security branch pulled it off all on their own. So the story goes. This article demonstrates that to be a fallacy.
By means of an inter-agency investigation into Liliesleaf, this paper outlines some of the complex ways in which the combined security services used a range of techniques and tactics in an attempt to destroy armed opposition to apartheid. One agency was the security branch; its investigations commenced weeks after Nelson Mandela was captured, and later in 1963, the RI and the SADF joined the probe, which led eventually to an operation culminating in the raid. The hypothesis is that information in Nelson Mandela’s notebook and other sources enabled the security branch to identify Liliesleaf. Evidence of the investigation by the security branch soon after Mandela’s arrest is seen in the actions of the first Trojan horse, a young boy, George Mellis, who was able to observe events from within. He was the perfect spy; he passed on information to the Rivonia police station; no one gave him so much as a second glance. However, he would have been carefully handled both by his parents and the security branch, given that he was a minor. Additional evidence of a security branch investigation in 1962, assisted by the Rivonia police station, was the matter of holding back a summons to be served on Goldreich. By December 1962 a determined investigation was underway, so much so that the police sanitised the farm and there were instructions that no policemen were to enter the property.
Mellis’s parents owned the caravan park which offered an ideal position from which to conduct surveillance. A caravan was the second Trojan horse, innocuous on the outside yet filled with electronic equipment, it listened into conversations held at Liliesleaf via hearing devices and telephone line interceptions. Operated by SACSA the timing of the raid could be carefully calculated, which indeed it was. In position during the weeks leading up to the raid, they also detected the Radio Freedom transmitter being tested when it was switched on. The predictably of activities on a Thursday were all observed and calculated. This Trojan horse in turn linked to other SADF technologies of direction finding, electronic warfare and aerial reconnaissance. Evidence of this was provided by those who saw the “postal workers” equipped with binoculars working on the telephone lines. Postal vans and bread delivery vans were seen parked in the caravan park. They were being covertly used by the SACSA. The contact sheets in the surveyor general’s office bear evidence of aerial target identification and the only organisation with the requisite skills to undertake this task, was the SAAF.
The final deception was the third Trojan horse, a laundry and dry cleaning van. Prior to the raid at least one RI spy had accessed the premises in a similar van, so the tactic of using a laundry van to breach the safe house was the ideal choice. Like the mythological Trojan horse which breached the gates of Troy, it was driven inside the farm to disgorge the policemen and their dogs.
In conclusion this paper demonstrates that there was far more to the raid than what has been written about it since that fateful day. It was not merely a police strike. Key roles were played by the SAAF and electronic surveillance was carried out by the SACSA in the state’s offensive against MK. This challenges the commonly held view that the military was not involved in the counter-insurgency operations of 1962 1964. In conventional accounts of the period, the South African military only became involved in counter insurgency when P.W. Botha gained political ascendancy and together with General Magnus Malan, made the notion of Total Onslaught the apartheid government’s strategic doctrine. This paper shows just how heavily involved the military and the security agencies were against MK soon after its formation in 1961.
Written and Researched by Dr. Garth Conan Benneyworth
References
Bernstein, L., Memory against Forgetting (Penguin, London, 1999).Dingake, M., Better to Die on One’s Feet (South African History Online, Cape Town, 2015). Ellis, S., External Mission: The ANC in Exile (Johnathan Ball, Johannesburg, 2012). Frankel, G., Rivonia’s Children (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 1999). Goldberg, D., The Mission: A Life for Freedom in South Africa (STE Publishers, Johannesburg, 2010), Hepple, B., Young Man with the Red Tie: A Memoir of Mandela and the Failed Revolution: 1960-1963 Jacana Media, Johannesburg, 2013). Kathrada, A., Memoirs (Zebra Press, Paarl, 2004). Mandela, N.R., Long Walk to Freedom (Abacus, London, 1994). SADET, The Road to Democracy in South Africa Volume 1 (1960-1970) (Zebra Press, Cape Town, 2004). Smith, D.J., Young Mandela (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2010). Strydom, L., Rivonia Unmasked (Voortrekkerpers, Johannesburg, 1965). Volker, W., Army Signals in South Africa: The Story of the South African Corps of Signals and its Antecedents (Veritas Books, Pretoria, 2010). Volker, W., Signal Units of the South African Corps of Signals and related Services (Veritas Books, Pretoria, 2010). Wright, P., Spy Catcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (Heinemann, Melbourne, 1987).
Footnotes
D. Goldberg, The Mission: A Life for Freedom in South Africa (STE Publishers, Johannesburg, 2010), p 99. ↩︎
Liliesleaf Archives, Rivonia (hereafter LL), INT 2, Interview with Denis Goldberg, conducted by G. Benneyworth, Liliesleaf, 2004. ↩︎
LL, INT 2, Interview with Denis Goldberg, Liliesleaf, 2004. ↩︎
L. Bernstein, Memory against Forgetting (Penguin, London, 1999), p 249. ↩︎
LL, INT 4, Interview with Ahmed Kathrada, conducted by G. Benneyworth, Liliesleaf, 2005. ↩︎
LL, INT 6, LOT 2 (a-k), Interview with Vivien Ezra, conducted by G. Benneyworth, Liliesleaf, 2006; LL, G. Benneyworth, “Research Report: Rivonia Uncovered”, p 137. ↩︎
N.R. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (Abacus, London, 1994), pp 372–373 ↩︎
National Archives of the United Kingdom (hereafter NAUK), DO 195, 2, SECRET, “Ghana’s Relations with the Union of SA”, 29 July 1960–1962. ↩︎
LL, Benneyworth, “Research Report: Rivonia Uncovered”, Appendix C, Interview with Gerhard Ludi. ↩︎
LL, Benneyworth, “Research Report: Rivonia Uncovered”, Appendix C, Interview with Gerhard Ludi. ↩︎
W. Volker, Army Signals in South Africa: The Story of the South African Corps of Signals and its Antecedents (Veritas Books, Pretoria, 2010), pp 226–227. ↩︎
This website article focuses on Dassault Mirage jet aircraft for Microsoft Flight Simulator and Combat Flight Simulator. At http://www.mirage4fs.com/slides15.html. Accessed 12 December 2016. ↩︎
I have taken a little time to review this book – 20 Battles – Searching for a South African Way of War 1913 to 2013 by Dr. Evert Kleynhans and Dr. David Brock Katz since its launch a couple of months back, time taken because I have savoured just about every battle in the 20 battles outlined in this book. As a military history lover and commentator each battle in the book has given me tremendous insight, even to battles I’ve written on in the past and thought I had a good grip on – only to find out I’m nowhere close.
To find I have knowledge gaps was both refreshing and reinvigorating, and I now have to revisit my Observation Post articles on Delville Wood, the 1922 Rand Revolt, Sidi Rezegh, Tobruk and Cassinga completely – adding to them new insight and understanding – thanks in large part to the work outlined in 20 Battles on these battles specifically. I also must throw my entire draft on Cuito out the window, a good thing too as I really needed better insight and a stronger grip on this very controversial battle.
20 Battles in a nutshell seeks to find and define the “South African way of war” – our preferred methodology for waging war and it tracks the development of this methodology using a historical ‘golden thread’ starting from the inception of the South African Union Defence force (UDF) in 1910 to its current manifestation as the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) conceived in 1994. The book skilfully selects battles South Africans have been involved in, which by design have helped to forge our preferred method of waging war, and it also outlines battles which have been an anathema to our military ‘DNA’ and why that is so.
This can be extremely insightful when you learn for instance, that even our greatest sacrifice and honour, the very crucible on which our budding National Pride as a unified Defence Force was forged – The Battle of Delville Wood – is a complete and utter anathema to the South African way of fighting … even for 1916.
Professor Abel Esterhuyse (left) in discussion with the authors Dr. David Katz (middle) and Dr. Evert Kleynhans (right) at the Military Academy.
For me it is no surprise that 20 Battles finds the ‘Father’ of our military in the form of General Jan Smuts, he was tasked to form the Union Defence Force as the Minister of Defence. What is highly illuminating is just what a force majeure Smuts is in defining our military doctrine and way of war, not only in 1910, but throughout World War 1 and World War 2, Smuts’ fingerprints are still seen in 1981 during Operation Protea in Angola and you can even still find them writ large on the SANDF’s doctrine … even today. I have always thought of Smuts as an under-rated military genius, certainly in his own country and this book goes a long way to validate this view.
It is Smuts’ learnings from The South African War (1899-1902) a.k.a. Boer War 2 that play such a defining a role, at the end of this war in 1902, the Republican Forces emerge as masters of waging effective Insurgency Warfare and the British and Cape/Natal Colonial Forces emerge as masters of effective Counter-Insurgency Warfare (COIN).
Smuts also emerges from the Boer War as the only real ‘Bittereinder’ Boer General still occupying enemy territory and still waging an effective offensive campaign, and he carries his learnings over to the formation of the UDF – combining the very best of ‘Boer‘ doctrine with the very best of ‘British‘ doctrine and blends a defence force that has mobility and enveloping manoeuvre as its central premise – with both combined arms (the use of different disciplines – artillery, mounted infantry, armour etc.) and joint arms (the use of all services – Army, Navy and Air Force) all in unison and all in support.
Smuts built the UDF along the lines of using effective combined arms with high degrees of mobility to deal with both conventional warfare (as is the requirement of any statutory force) and any domestic insurgencies defined as potential ‘Black’ African rural uprisings of the time and even ‘white’ urban uprisings of the time – the Miners’ Strike in 1922 a case in point – and the UDF doctrine is evolved to counter-act these internal insurrections – urban and rural.
Smuts is happy to cherry pick, basically he’s happy to bring all that’s great and good about the British culture of warfare – their discipline and drill (sorely lacking in the Boer army), their uniforms and rank structures (sorely lacking in the Boer army) and their very effective use of combined arms warfare and joint arms warfare (also sorely lacking in the Boer army) and combine it with the Boer culture of warfare – the use of mobility, and applying high rates of survivability thinking to tactics of assault and defence (both of which are sorely lacking in the British army).
Smuts will build into the UDF the doctrine of highly mobile ‘combined arms’ – mainly the effective use of mounted infantry, armour and artillery (and other ‘arms’) all acting in unison and speed – preferably in an enveloping role. It’s a doctrine of “manoeuvre” using the Clausewitzian concept – using superior and simultaneous advances along “exterior” lines (a concentration in space) on an enemy using “interior” lines (known as a concentration of time) of communication and supply.
Under General Jan Smuts the UDF took shape into a very effective fighting force, one that is far ahead of his old Boer Republics strategic and tactical constructs and doctrine which focused mainly on “interior lines”. This will have far reaching consequences for the South African military and its future successes and even failures over the next century.
What David Katz and Evert Kleynhans do from here out is take you through this century of South Africa at war – over a journey of 20 battles which show you how Smuts’ doctrine is applied – “mobility” at first defined by ‘mounted infantry’, then by ‘motorised infantry’ in WW2 and then even further evolved after Smuts’ death in 1950, as after WW2 all the Allied planners look to their old enemy – for the “German way of war” and their very effective use of “Blitzkrieg” (lightning war) and the “schwerpunkt” (heavy, focus – or centre point) of armoured and manoeuvre warfare doctrine – especially at the tactical level, and the South African military planners are no different.
In more recent history commencing with the Border War in 1966, David Katz and Evert Kleynhans show how this manoeuvre doctrine evolves further when the Rhodesian ‘Fireforce’ concepts are added into aspects of ‘vertical envelopment’ (use of paratroopers and helicopters), something which the South African Defence Force (SADF) applies for the first time in earnest during The Battle of Cassinga.
This doctrine of manoeuvrability – horizontal and vertical, inside and outside lines of communication – a co-ordinated infantry and armour affair – adding force-multipliers such as Ratel Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFV) and vehicles such as Casspir Armoured Personnel Carriers (APC) and others into the mix, starts to deliver the outstanding successes we see in Operation Protea and along the Lomba River in Angola during Operation Modular.
Of specific interest to anyone with an interest in military history, and anyone who is currently or has served in the military is the extensive evaluation and insight that David Katz and Evert Kleynhans take to when analysing each battle across the three core tenants of waging a battle – the Tactical level, the Operational level and the Strategic level.
In a nutshell the Tactical level is the part where bits of metal start whizzing around, the Operational level is basically the plan and objectives going into battle and the evolved plan once bits of metal start really whizzing around in earnest and the Strategic level is the military and political intentions of going into battle in the first place – and the outcome of these intentions when the bits of metal stop whizzing around.
Analysing each battle on these three principles of military strategy makes for very enlightening reading, and for all the ‘Border Boys’ out there (Border War veterans) – wait till you get to their appraisal of The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale as its an honest, objective and highly critical ‘military’ appraisal, a true score-card on the SADF’s performance – and you’re in for some surprises I assure you – especially in light of the fact that this pivotal battle is one of the most controversial and misunderstood battles in our time.
I can almost hear the next universal cry from all the military enthusiasts out there …
“It all doesn’t matter now anyway, the SANDF is on its knees, eaten away from the inside by political malfeasance and now it’s a shadow of its former self!”
But here 20 Battles shows us, that over the course of history this is not the first time South Africa’s statute forces have been whittled down by political malfeasance to the point of unfit for purpose – from 1924 Hertzog’s Defence Minister Oswald Pirow rendered the UDF completely unfit and a mere shadow of itself after WW1, the learnings from WW1 and ‘the South African way of war’ had to re-learned completely to get the UDF ready for WW2. The Afrikaner Nationalists did it again after WW2, the Defence Minister appointed in 1948 was Frans Erasmus and his Erasmus Reforms completely crippled the SADF and left it utterly unfit for purpose when the Border War started in 1966 – and again the learnings from WW2 and ‘the South African way of war’ had to be completely re-learned again.
It’s here that 20 Battles shows its true colours as to what a valuable volume of work it is, as it serves to maintain the SANDF’s institutional memory, it outlines how the South African military ethos and doctrine is derived and come what may future military strategists will always be able to tap into these vital and hard fought learnings as a building block. In this respect the Military Academy at Saldanha military base is very fortunate to have good men like David Katz and Every Kleynhans working with them to maintain institutional memory.
I can almost hear the universal cry from the new generation …
“Forget about it all – we want our own ‘Black’ military history reflected in our military ethos, and not the history of Europeans and the Colonialists”
But even here 20 Battles serves to show that the art of war expressed by the SANDF is very “African” in its heritage and our philosophy of manoeuvre and envelopment can even be traced to the great Zulu General – King Shaka kaSenzangakhona.
David Katz and Peter Dickens at the Military Academy in Saldanha, Western Cape.
But .. but … but, South Africa does not need all this “military doctrine” we are at peace and have been since 1994! We don’t really need a large operationally ready military force anymore comes the political inspired call of people seeking to channel all the money to pressing welfare issues instead. Not true, as to our learnings on how to handle “internal insurrection” and the potential threats – look no further than the Covid Riots in Durban in 2022. As to foreign destabilisation and threats, look no further than the Islamic Jihadist activities on our border with Mozambique. Thomas Jefferson said something that is very true even to this day:
“Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everybody stands around reloading.”
Maintaining the SANDF’s operational capability and doctrine is vital.
The only criticism I have of 20 Battles is that it is very Army specific, the Navy and Air Force enter the equation when looking at the Joint Arms co-ordination in many of the battles outlined, however a “Sea Battle” or a “Air Battle” is not singled out to demonstrate how the ‘South African way of war’ is applied to these arms of service when acting unilaterally of one another. However, having read the book anyone with half an interest South Africa’s military history can easily see how the South ethos of manoeuvre and survivability ahead of attrition has been applied in both Navy and Air Force engagements in the past – from the anti-Submarine Warfare around the coast during WW2 to the SAAF and 2 Squadron’s approach to the Korean War.
I will say this as an ex-army officer, and I mean it – where was this sort of work when I did my National Service and Citizen Force training? As a young Candidate Officer, I would have been a zillion times wiser and rounded as an officer had the SADF taken the time to simply demonstrate how we arrived at our doctrine and ethos and how we intended to apply it going forward – instead a lot of the time was spent drilling in the Operation Procedures as they stood and learning Command and Control. In this respect I can only congratulate David Katz and Evert Kleynhans for finally pulling it all together and pushing it into the Military Academy’s arsenal for our military leaders and our current junior officers, NCO’s and warrant officers to tap into – there is no doubt that it will become a valuable asset in future.
My heartfelt recommendation – buy this book now! The book is published by Jonathan Ball Publishers and available at most major book retailers and on-line.
As we all experienced in the recent covid pandemic, during World War 2, all significant international sporting activities like the Olympics and Test matches came to a grinding halt for the duration of the war. Luckily, we’ve ‘rekindled’ our sporting trophies post Covid, however this wartime rugby trophy ‘The Book’ has been lost to future generations – and judging by all the new and evolving rules of rugby and the fierce contest that is any All Black and Springbok test match – if there is one trophy that needs a resurgence – it’s this one.
The fun bit, this is a trophy which was only ever intended to be awarded in a ‘test’ rugby match between South African ‘Springboks’ and New Zealand ‘All Blacks’ and the loser … NOT the winner … the loser gets to “win” this particular trophy.
A ‘winning’ trophy to the loser in a Springbok vs. All Black rugby humdinger – huh! So, what happened – how is it we’ve lost this, one of our most significant rugby trophies?
Let’s start at the beginning, to rugby mad nations like South Africa and New Zealand the on-set of World War 2 posed a problem for the sport and it was made worse by the fact that nearly all the young men playing in top division rugby leagues and top flight rugby clubs in all the ‘Allied’ countries like England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand had joined their respective armed forces and were off to war as ‘brothers in arms’ – all these Allied countries also happened to constitute the lead nations in the rugby playing world (then and now).
So, our wartime generation “made a plan” and the default “National” rugby squads fell to the various expeditionary forces finding themselves in the same theatre of operations. Initially informal rugby matches started in the North Africa Theatre of Operations where South African units (mainly Army and Air Force) found themselves alongside British, Australian and New Zealand counterparts. Soldiers been soldiers started niggling and ragging one another over national pride. It all started whenever there was a lull in fighting or whenever on rest and recuperation leave touring the hot spots of Cairo.
In particular, South African soldiers (also known as Springboks then) would seek out New Zealand soldiers (known as Kiwis) and before each contest would rib one another for not knowing the ‘rules’ of scrummaging and rugby as a whole (we still do).
Heads and bodies clashed immediately to form a scrum, with all the ‘dark arts’, grunting, groaning and shoving. With the scrummaging done all would rise up from the resultant ruck smiling and laughing, shake hands and arm-in-arm then proceed to the bar or mess to drink a beer or three.
It would not take long for the leader elements of the British, Australian, South African and New Zealand military formations to realise the benefits of all this camaraderie, teamwork, goodwill and national identity rugby offered and to settle this entire issue with more formalised rugby games.
In the South African Union Defence Force ‘sports officers’ in North Africa and the Middle East, started to organise multiple matches with sports officers in other allied formations, playing on whatever surface they could find with whatever ‘rugby’ poles and whitewash markers they could find. In all the various rugby games, the great rivalry was the same as it was in peace time – and this was the great South Africa and New Zealand ‘test’ match.
The Legend of ‘The Book’ – Part 1
The legend that was to become ‘The book’ starts to take shape amidst all this informal scrummaging competitions and rugby games between the Springbok soldiers and their Kiwi rivals.
As many may have guessed by now – The Book – is The Book of Rugby Union Rules. The South Africans claiming the Kiwis were hopeless and needed to learn the rules, and the Kiwis claiming they wrote the rules – so no need to learn them (or vice versa). The idea of each respective side “learning the rules” first became a general jibe and joke between Kiwi and Springbok service personnel.
The 6th Armoured Division “Springboks” – Egypt
By May 1943, South Africa’s 6th Armoured Division was formed as South Africa’s contribution to the invasion forces of Italy – and they took part in training exercises in Egypt before heading to Italian front. In identifying a need for stronger and more formal sports representation, and especially rugby – within the 6th Armoured Division there would also form South Africa’s default “Springbok” rugby side to take on the planned ‘internationals’ with ‘select’ sides from British, Australian and New Zealand military formations now in Italy – notably the 2nd New Zealand Division in Italy.
This 6th Armoured Division rugby team, playing in the Springbok ‘Green and Gold’ is no shrinking violet, it’s a rugby powerhouse on the level of an actual Springbok Rugby team – consider the players and the pedigree:
Initially the 6th Armoured Division team includes both current Springbok and future Springbok rugby players – George Daneel, Bennie Osler, Jimmy White, Jack Gage, Frank Waring, Howard Watt, Louis Babrow, Ebbo Bastard, George van Reenen, John Apsey, Pat Lyster, Henry Martin, Dendy Lawton, Tony Harris, Richard Luyt, Bill Payn, Hermanus de Jongh, Bert Kipling, John Dold, Joe Nijkamp, Bert Reid and notably – Boy Louw, who had played for South Africa from 1928 to 1938.
Then there was the talent still on its way to Egypt to join the team, the likes of Felix du Plessis, Basil Kenyon and Stephen Fry, all three of whom would Captain the actual Springboks after the war. There were other future Springboks – Okey Geffin, Dennis Fry, Franz van der Ryst and Cecil Moss. Then there were also many highly talented provincial players joining the team, Billy Anderson and Hannes Morkel to name just two.
Even the coach was Springbok pedigree, now with the rank of Bombardier, Boy Louw, the Currie Cup 1939 referee would coach the 6th Armoured Division team, after the war Louw would go on to famously coach the 1960-61 Springboks Grand Slam tour to the UK and Ireland.
Before heading to Italy, practice, trials and selections would take place in Egypt at the Gezira Sporting Club on an island in the Nile River and at Polygon Ground in Abbassia, a suburb of Cairo.
Their first proper game in Egypt is significant, it’s played against the ‘old rivals’ the New Zealand Base, and it’s played at the El Alamein club on 7 November 1943. The second billed “Springbok” and “Kiwi” clash in Egypt with the New Zealand Base is a narrow and hard game, it takes place at the same club on New Years Day 1944. The South Africans win both games.
Action shot from the SA 6th Division vs New Zealand Base on 1st Jan 1944.
Games against other military formations in Egypt are also played at the El Alamein Club, and in all the results speak for themselves – they played 6 and won 6:
Egypt Matches
1. SA 6th Armoured Division vs New Zealand Base, 22-5 on 7 November 1943 at the Alamein Club
2. SA 6th Armoured Division vs 10th Armoured Division, 49-0 on 14 November 1943 at the Alamein Club
3. SA 6th Armoured Division vs Cairo United Services, 28-3 on Christmas Day 1943 at the Alamein Club
4. SA 6th Armoured Division vs New Zealand Base, 12-11 on New Year’s Day 1944 at the Alamein Club
5. SA 6th Armoured Division vs Rest of Egypt, 12-9 on 23 January 1944 at the Alamein Club. The Rest were a Barbarian side made up of New Zealanders, South Africans and British players.
6. SA 6th Armoured Division vs Rest of Egypt, 27-3 on 4 March 1944 at Alamein Club.
Then onto Italy. The 6th Armoured Division are deployed to Italy along with their ‘Springbok’ rugby team, they depart Alexandria, Egypt by ship from the 14th to the 16th April 1944, arriving in Taranto Italy on the 20th and 21st April 1944.
The 6th Armoured Division “Springboks” – Italy
Into the thick of it, the immediate priority for the South African 6th Armoured Division is winning the war and not playing sport, from May 1944 to May 1945 the South Africans found themselves in a series of brutal engagements, starting with the Battle of Monte Cassino which ended on the 18th May 1944 as South African 6th Division engineers cleared the access roads to close off the fighting.
In the race to liberate Italian cities from German troops, the fighting South African ‘Springboks’ found themselves in action over the ‘Albert Line’ and then commanding the Arno Valley, and once again they found themselves in rivalry with their counterpart New Zealand 2nd Division ‘Kiwi’ and ‘Māori’ troops.
This time their respective national pride and ‘rivalry’ was not rugby, it was on a very serious military level as they both raced “shoulder to shoulder” to take the honours of liberating the regional capital city of Florence on the 4th July 1944. The South Africans beating the New Zealanders just hours ahead of them as South African 6th Armoured Division units consisting of the South African Imperial Light Horse and the Kimberley Regiment managed to get across the landmark Ponte Vecchio – the only remaining bridge into central Florence not blown up by the retreating German forces – and raced into central square whilst the New Zealanders entered the city from other points. Funnily as rivalry’s go (if you can be funny about war) – to this day New Zealand still claims the honours of liberating Florence, whereas the historical record and ‘honour’ was given to South Africa, the satirist would say, as birds go they are being Magpies and not Kiwis.
South African 6th Division tank entering Florence’s central square (Left) on 4th July 1944 and New Zealand 2nd Division tank entering Florence (Right) on the same day – enthusiastic Italian crowds greeting both.
Crossing the Arno River, the South African 6th Armoured Division found itself fighting along the ‘Gothic line’, advancing into Bologna and in action around the peaks of Monte Sole and Caprara di Marzabotto. Advancing through the Po Valley, they end their war in near the northern city of Treviso, thereafter they are ordered west to garrison the city of Milan on 29th April 1945.
A year of heavy fighting later, the South Africans suddenly found themselves at rest, idol and a little bored in Milan. They managed to famously conclude their Victory Parade on the 14th May 1945 on Milan’s neighbouring world-famous Monza racing track, but very soon their attention also turned to sport on the orders of Major-General Frank Theron, and very specifically – rugby.
Original colour image of the South African 6th Armoured Division Victory Parade on the famous Monza raceway – 14th May 1945.
The Legend of ‘The Book’ – Part 2
Whilst the 6th Armoured Division was in Milan in July 1945, a detachment of it, a South African Artillery Regiment – the 7-23 Medium Regiment found itself in liaison with the local Italian Amatori Rugby Club – which was playing a rugby game after an athletics meet at the local stadium, war had thinned their numbers somewhat and they only had 8 players, so they thought to ask some South African Gunners to make up their numbers.
Rugby in Italy in 1945 was still at its infancy, and weary that they were playing in front of an Italian audience who did not really understand the rules of rugby, the South Africans produced a small pamphlet simplifying Rugby Union rules for easy understanding and had it translated into Italian. Copies of pamphlet was then distributed to all interested watching the game.
Among the spectators at the rugby game were a handful of Kiwis who received this Italian pamphlet. The ‘old rivalry’ kicked in, the New Zealanders were immediately amused and started to taunt the South Africans taking part in the game. At last, South Africans can learn how to play rugby they declared loudly, but what a pity they’ve got to learn it from the Italians!
That night in the pub at Corner House, the South African rest camp in Milan, usually referred to as “Kiwi Corner” – copies of the pamphlet were predominantly displayed. The banter continued with the flow of more beer and the pamphlet became one of the treasured souvenirs of the Italian campaign – no lucky Springbok or Kiwi who managed to get hold of a copy was ever persuaded to part with it.
The banter, jesting and ribbing did not stop there, almost immediately afterwards cartoons were pinned up in the South African Springbok and New Zealand Kiwi messes respectively.
The South African cartoon depicted a triumphant Springbok standing over three battered little Kiwis studying ‘The Book’, opened on the first page which read, “The Game of Rugby How it is Played.”
The Kiwis cartoon comeback was equally good and taunting to the South Africans, it showed their Kiwi man as a schoolteacher of massive physique standing in front of 15 little Springboks with a rugby ball in his hand and asking sternly. “Come, come now, surely there is one among you who knows what this is?”
The idea of a ‘book of rugby union rules’ as a prize to the ‘losing’ team to “go away and learn the rules” started to take root, and there was only one way to solve this – a match to who might win this “least” converted and most undesirable “book” had to be played – New Zealand or South Africa.
The South African 6th Armoured Division Rugby Football Team was quickly re-established. Bombardier Boy Louw, the coach was re-engaged and he went about pulling a top-notch team together. He famously roped in real talent like Cpl Cecil Moss, then a Medical Corporal in the Special Service Battalion stationed at Monza, near Milan who arrived for ‘rugby’ duty in an ambulance (Dr. Cecil Moss was the Springboks’ vice-captain in the first post-war series against the touring All Blacks in 1949).
Before squaring up against the New Zealand 2nd Division’s default “all blacks” and to teach them a rugby lesson and hand them a copy of the rule “book” so they can learn to play the game, the “springboks” held trials on 22 October 1945 in Rapallo and then arranged a practice game against a ‘barbarian’ squad of rugby players of all nations station in the “59 Area”. The Sixth Division Rugby squad thumped the ensemble ‘59 Area’ Rugby squad 45-3. With that under their belt they were ready for the big showdown with New Zealand and the decisive ‘winner’ of the Book.
The Showdown for ‘The Book’
The South African 6th Armoured Division Rugby XV and the 2nd Division New Zealand Expeditionary Force Rugby XV clash was scheduled to take place in the small town of Rapallo on the Italian Riviera on the 10th November 1945. Billed as the ‘Grande Combattimento’ the game began to hype up to a spectacle of the old Springbok vs All Black rivalry.
Image: Advertisement hyping the game ‘Grand Combattimento’ and the contest for ‘The Book’
Although an “un-official” test match whose score would not count, in the minds of the men from both countries of the wartime generation this game was considered the most important or symbolic game they had ever watched. Both sides fielded XVs filled with current capped internationals or men who would go on to represent their countries at the highest level and receive caps in future.
Two South Africans, Lt. Keith Oxlee and Capt. J.G. Louden, are credited with the idea, of actually producing “The Book” before the game, with the intent of handing it out to those present and the losing side being given a copy so that they could go away and study the game! The idea was to make it like the Ashes, however unlike the Ashes, the losing team would be given the “trophy”. In the event a small, folded booklet consisting of only 8 pages with illustrations and rules was handed out at the game to the truckloads of troops, New Zealanders and South Africans who packed out the stadium.
The cartoon illustrations of the rules in ‘the book’ where drawn by cartoonist Richard “Ginger” Townley Johnson who drew draw sports caricatures for the Cape Town Times before and then after the war. It also contained the team lists (this booklet is now a highly collectable and sought after rugby piece of rugby lore and memorabilia).
Image: ‘The Book’ as outlined in pamphlet form produced by the South Africans
A “curtain raiser” was played before the main game, between the two respective “dirt-track” B team players – the Division Equipment Park versus the Artillery/ Armoured Group.
After the curtain raiser the two main contesting teams entered the stadium, the main attraction was on, history records the run-out sides as:
For the South African 6th Armoured Division: Oscar Swanson, Ian Frylinck, Cecil Moss (future Springbok), Jimmy Hearne, Frank Kingwill, Peter Stewart, John Youngelson, Dick Holton, Dr. Piet Duvenhage (Capt), Apie Greeff, Hannes Morkel, John Clother-Morkel, Cas Botha, Stephen Fry (future Springbok) and Hendrik Swartz.
Note: Aside from the two Springboks, all the other players would go on to play Provincial or 1st Division rugby.
For the 2nd New Zealand Division Expeditionary Force (NZEF) the names recorded on the pamphlet are: Greig, Evans, O’Byrne, Murphy, Marshall, Robinson, Finnerty (Capt), Figher, Hoffman, Honana, McNab, Haimona, Gibson, Cameron and Green.
The referee was Captain Robin Prescott – Prescott was a front row forward for England prior to the war (capped from 1937 – 1939), later from 1962 – 1963 he served as Vice- President of the Rugby Football Union.
The two teams were lined up and introduced to the much loved and highly respected Commander of the South African 6th Armoured Division – Major General Evered Poole by the respective Team Captains.
Image: Major General Evered Poole greeting the South African 6th Division (left) and Brigadier Pleasants (New Zealand 2nd Division) alongside Maj General Poole exiting the playing field after introductions (right).
So, what happens? Who gets the book?
Long and short the South Africans obliterate the New Zealand side, it’s a thumping, made worse considering the rugby old points scoring in 1945 (only 3 points for a try and 2 points for a conversion if successful called ‘a goal’– a penalty was worth 3 points and a drop goal 4 points), the South Africans score no less than 7 tries, the New Zealanders replied with only 1 try. The final score 30-5 with the South African 6th Armoured Division the clear victors.
Image: Line-out action during the SA 6th Div and NZ 2nd Div match at Rapallo on the 10th November 1945.
Eastern Province’s Frank Kingwill scored “the try of the match” a 50-yard run that split the field and sealed the victory. The headline in La Stella d’Oro, an army newspaper loudly declared: “Springboks Smash Kiwis in Game of the Century!”
The introduction to the story says everything and read:
“The SA Sixth Division ‘Springbok fifteen’ trounced the New Zealand Kiwi’ team 30 (three goals, four tries and a penalty) to 5 (one goal) to establish very definitely that the New Zealanders are the ones that need to study The Book.”
So, what next? Obviously, the New Zealanders want a re-match, so the South Africans give them one.
The re-match for ‘The Book’
The re-match is set for the19 November 1945, once again it’s the South African 6th Armoured Division versus the New Zealand 2nd Division Expeditionary Force, but this time its scheduled to be played at the Florence Stadium in the city Florence (the same city the South Africans and New Zealanders dispute over ‘liberating’).
The second game was played in a strong wind, and again its played to a packed stadium of South African and New Zealand supporters. Not to be outdone, this time it’s the New Zealanders turn to produce their official version of The Book for this match, and it is titled:”This is The Book” – it’s also a pamphlet form and consisting of 8 pages with the two teams listed and cartoon caricatures illustrating respective rugby union ‘rules’. The kiwi artist illustrating the cartoons was Captain Peter McIntyre. McIntyre, OBE, New Zealand’s official war artist (again, this booklet is a highly sought after rugby artefact now).
Image: ‘The Book’ pamphlet produced by the New Zealanders
The South Africans are confident going into this game, Boy Louw makes no changes to the team which thumped the New Zealand 2nd Division just 9 days earlier in Rapallo. The Kiwi’s go in with a much-changed side, the South Africans record that the Kiwis backline’s defence was improved and that they boosted their forwards with a few tough Māori’s. The referee is again the English prop – Captain Robin Prescott.
The teams are listed as:
South African 6th Armoured Division XV – Swanson, Frylinck, Moss, Hearn, Kingwill, Stewart, Youngelson, Holton, Duvenage (capt), Greeff, Morkel J, Morkel J C, Botha, Fry S and Swartz.
New Zealand 2nd Division XV: Hill, McKay, Birchfield, O’Byrne, Evans, Clay, Finnerty, Gardner, McNab, Murray, Haimona, Waaka, Honana, Mathews and Poki.
The game is noted as scrappy one in windy conditions with many infringements and rough play, given the conditions and the improved Kiwi backline, the South Africans keep the ball ‘tight’ in the forwards as a tactic and the two packs pounded each other into submission.
So, who won and who walks away with ‘The Book’ to learn the rules of rugby? Well, again it’s a thumping, a proper drubbing – the South Africans convincingly clock up 25 points, the Kiwis managed only 3 points to become he undisputed winner of ‘the book’ (again).
In true comradeship, after the match a complimentary dinner is hosted by the Kiwis for the two teams at the New Zealand Forces Club at the Hotel Baglioni.
Touring
With the matter of who keeps ‘the book’ settled for once and for all. The balance of the South African 6th Armoured Division XV campaign in Italy is nothing more than one outstanding victory after victory. They emerge from Italy, as they did in Egypt with a complete winning streak having played 6 and won 6.
In all the Italian tour records:
1. SA 6th Division vs 59 Area, 45-3 on 27 October 1945 in Rapallo.
2. SA 6th Division vs 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, 30-5 on 10 November 1945 in Rapallo.
3. SA 6th Division vs 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force, 23-3 on 19 November 1945 in Florence.
4. SA 6th Division vs 2 Military District, 19-3 on 27 November 1945 in Rapallo.
5. SA 6th Division vs British Army XV, 17-10 on 1 December 1945 in Milan.
Italy done, the issue of ‘the book’ settled – the 6th Division team then goes on to tour the United Kingdom, France, Germany and back to Egypt before been shipped back to South Africa, arriving to a hero’s welcome in February 1946.
In all they Played 22 matches, won 19, drew 1, lost 2, and one match was cancelled. Now that is some track record, by any rugby teams standards.
Image: Team photo of the South African 6th Armoured Division touring squad 1945-1946
In Conclusion
Nobody knows where the ceremonial ‘book’ which acted as the trophy is. In 1949 Pat Swanepoel and others got together and recreated “The Book”, embellishing and expanding it and published it to celebrate the arrival of the 1949 All Blacks in South Africa on the first post-war tour. This version of ‘The Book’ was edited by Pat Swanepoel and illustrated by John Jackson. It is thought to have been whisked away by this losing All Black XV side when the Springbok XV made a clean sweep of them in the 1949 Test series. It has never been seen by the South African public since.
Would it not be nice to resurrect this fine tradition again and remember our wartime generation who secured liberty for Europe and the world over and who made such a significant sacrifice?
I would imagine it’s about time. I’m glad the All Blacks have held onto ‘The Book’ of rules to learn them since 1949 and feel it necessary to hang onto it to overcome whatever inadequacy they may have; some would however say it’s also rightful that South Africa should have walked away with ‘The Book’ after some woeful Springbok tours to New Zealand since. Either way, it’ll be great to have this quirky tradition back – rather than tin cups and shields, this particular trophy has substance, quirkiness, history and pride just oozing from it.
Written and Researched by Peter Dickens
References:
War stories: Rugby games ‘Up North’. By Paul Dobson. Rugby 365 June 2020.
The Book – article in the Eastern Province Herald on October 27th, 1994, by Norman Canale
Khaki-clad Springboks: Rugby played by the 6th South African Armoured Division 1943-1946 by Gideon Nieman – Jstor public domain.
A while back, as the Chairman of the South African Legion in the United Kingdom, I was involved in the return of Peter McAleese’s South African Defence Force nutria ‘Slangvel’ (parabat smock) to him. For jump qualified ‘Parabats’ (Airborne Infantry) this smock is a prize item, and the South African one, the ‘slangvel’ (snake-skin) as it is fondly known, is a little unique because of reinforced sections sewn onto it – elbows and shoulders mainly to deal with all the chute and other strappings, keeping them tight and to prevent wear. The ‘brown’ nutria slangvel is a collectors favourite and very sought after.
Nutria was the preferred uniform of the SADF, basically just ‘brown’ – the developers of nutria argued that in the harsh African sun after 50 meters you are an un-definable blob to the naked eye anyway, ‘nutria’ brown as a single colour was versatile enough in the African surrounds to provide sufficient camouflage when needed – so no need for camouflage stripes or dots – and so the SADF was just about everything ‘brown’, including vehicle camouflage – one colour, and that made economic sense.
Images: Peter McAleese in his SADF nutria ‘slangvel’ and Sean Renard returning it to him.
Somehow Peter’s ‘nutria’ ‘slangvel’ smock found itself in the wild and and fellow South African Legion – Legionnaire, Sean Renard found it in Europe on auction, bought it and on the 16th July 2015 decided to give it back to Peter at his book launch at the Oriental Club in London with the aid of Cameron Kinnear – another Legionnaire. Sean proudly and selflessly handing it over to him – the epitome of the Legion in action and its members.
Now, not only is that a rare spot, but Peter McAleese is also a rare spot for collectors of militia – and that’s because he’s also seen wearing a very rare ‘Giraffe Patten’ Camouflage uniform in some of his SADF period photos whilst with the SA Army’s 44 Parachute Brigade and Pathfinder Reconnaissance Unit. The ‘Giraffe’ slangvel smock he is seen wearing (as opposed to his nutria one) is incredibly rare.
Images: Peter McAleese in the rare experimental ‘Giraffe Patten’ camo
In fact it’s a holy grail for people collecting military items like uniform pieces, badges, headgear, rank and insignia .. it’s even considered one of the rarest examples of a camouflage used by any military force in the world .. it’s that rare.
So, what’s the fuss all about?
When and why the SADF come up with this ‘holy grail’ camouflage uniform. Not everything here is confirmed, this uniform was developed in a shroud of secrecy for special forces units alone. The South Africa special forces units tended to have a little more latitude in their choice of weapons, equipment and uniform (and even bearing) and many of their operations are still clouded in secrecy – so not surprisingly folklore and unsubstantiated stories have come to surround them. I may be wrong but here’s what we know about this uniform.
About 80 or so ‘Giraffe Patten’ camouflage uniforms were issued between 1980 and 1982 to the Pathfinders of the 1 Parachute Battalion of the 44 Parachute Brigade. The camouflage is a two-tone colour – one brown, one off white and draws inspiration from the Reticulated Giraffe. In testing the patten proved unremarkable and not effective enough and therefore did not enter broad service. It was however used by special forces and some rare photos exist of it being used in the field. Rumour has it that Colonel Jan Breytenbach, then the Officer Commander of the 44 Parachute Brigade, ordered that all the uniforms be destroyed .. except one. This one uniform ultimately landed up with a Private collector in the USA (via a Private collector in France).
However, at some stage, a limited array of uniform items – about 12 uniforms consisting of bush-hats, slangvels, shirts and pants were re-printed using the Giraffe Patten, in the correct SADF style, and these made it into ‘collectors’ circulation – although not original, the person who manufactured and sold the items decided to keep them limited to keep collectors value – so they are pretty rare and sought after too.
Images: Rare use of the giraffe camo and the Reticulated Giraffe
No mean soldier
Now to someone very rare and who is very genuine – the subject of the camouflage – Peter McAleese, Peter is a legend in South African military circles.
Born 7 September 1942, he served in the British Army’s Parachute Regiment and Special Air Service (SAS), the Rhodesian Special Air Service and British South Africa Police, and then subsequently as a Sergeant Major in South Africa’s 44 Parachute Brigade during the Border War. As a mercenary or contractor, he worked in countries including South Africa, Angola, Colombia, Russia, Algeria and Iraq.
He’s written two books ‘No Mean Soldier’ and ‘Beyond No Mean Soldier’ (both available on-line) – there are precious few like him around today, a real soldier’s soldier and it was a privilege for me to meet him, and for the South African Legion to recover his nutria smock for him.
Remembering another South African national treasure and forces darling from the Bush War generation….. the late Esme’ Euvrard, affectionately adopted as their very own “Bosmoedertjie” (Bush Mum), the closest to a maternal link to home that they could find.
Weekends on military bases during the 70’s and 80’s would focus around her “Springbok Radio Rendezvous” programme, with troops across South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia) waiting eagerly to hear a message from loved ones at home. Troopies would chuckle at all the soppy/funny/cheesy messages sent to others, make fun of those receiving them and feeling a bit disappointed (without showing it, of course) if they did not receive a special mention.
A great morale booster, the SABC ran a number of programs dedicated to the conscripts (and permanent force) members. Patt Kerr did ‘Forces Favourites’ on the SABC English Service (became Radio South Africa) and Marie van Zyl did ‘Stand at Ease’ on Radio 5. For more on Patt Kerr, follow this link: A soldier’s dedication to Pat Kerr
However it was “Tannie Esme’s” military marching music theme which brought in the start of her Springbok Radio Rendezvous program which resounded for many years, with her ‘golden voice’ announcing it was for ‘die manne en vrouens in uniform” (the men and women in uniform) and with her supreme grasp of Afrikaans, she made an impression on many, especially the Afrikaans speaking troops, her ‘warm’ voice which held a everlasting motherly comfort.
Esmé Euvrard was a very popular media personality, in radio, she and Jan Conjé co-presented the long running Afrikaans serial ‘Liefdeslied’ (love song) and also presented the very popular, ‘Só Maak Mens’ (This is how you do it) a programme of household tips, recipes and interviews that ran from 1957 to 1985. She presented ‘Springbok Rendezvous’ for ‘the boys on the border’ with Paul Desmond. On Sunday nights she presented Esmé’s se Musiekalbum (Esmé’s Music Album). She also did children’s stories.
In film, she starred in minor parts in five films ‘Man in die Donker (1962), Majuba: Heuwel van Duiwe (1968), Vrolike Vrydag 13de (1969), Staadig for die Klippe (1969) and Wolhaarstories (1983). For TV, she acted in Net ń Bietjie Liefde (1977) and did some dubbing work. In advertising she was a notable brand spokesperson for Punch washing powder.
In music, she married the Portuguese-born flamenco guitarist Gilberto Bonegio and they both joined the Mercedes Molina Spanish Dance Company in 1958. She was, also a talented singer and she and her husband produced at least one fado record. In 1988 she produced a record of children’s stories entitled Diereverhaaltjies.
Gilberto died in 1964 after spending 20 months in a coma following a car accident and all of her devoted fans identified with her loss. Their two sons, Raúl and Fernando, followed in their father’s footsteps and became talented flamenco artists in their own right.
Tannie Esme’ passed away on the 11th September 1993. As recently as the 26th January 2020, Esmé Euvrard was inducted into the South African Legends Museum in Pretoria and her sons donated a painting of Esmé and her ‘Star of Africa’ State President’s award to the museum.
This article has been a long time in coming because it’s really a simple soldier’s story … it’s mine … and I’m a real son-of-a-bitch to consolidate myself with and as such this has been very hard to put together. However, I hope it gives some insight into what it was like to serve in the South African Defence Force (SADF) from the unbanning of the ANC and release of Nelson Mandela on 11 February 1990 to the landmark year for the transformation of South Africa’s democracy in April 1994.
It’s also a testament and a cathartic exercise, as … ta da! No surprise to anyone who knows me personally and what I went through with Covid 19, but I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). So, no surprise on the Covid front, but it’s the root of the PTSD that’s the real problem, and it boils down to my time in the SADF from 1990 to 1994, it settled on ‘Trust’ or lack thereof really.
“Ag Fok man! No more PTSD G3/K3 Fucked Up Kak” some of my fellow veteran buddies may jump to, heck at one stage I felt the same. But bear with me ‘manne’, this is not a ‘outreach’ or a ‘call for help’ .. I’m solid, in good spirits and very stable (more on this later). What my therapy disclosed is in fact a very interesting bit of history not often held up in the narrative of 1994 and it possesses a load of inconvenient truths, that’s what this story is really all about. So, here goes;
Wit en Swart Gevaar (White and Black Danger)
In 1990 Whilst the now ‘unbanned’ African National Congress (ANC) was finding its political feet and locating itself to ‘Shell House’ near Bree Street in Johannesburg, I was located at Witwatersrand Command’s new HQ Building – also in Bree Street a block away – the nearby old HQ at the bottom of Twist Street called the ‘Drill Hall’ had been all but abandoned after it was bombed by a ‘lone’ ANC cadre – who oddly was a ‘white Afrikaner’ from a top Upper Middle Class Afrikaans school, Linden High School, and who had some serious ‘Daddy issues’ with his Conservative father and upbringing. With the building now declared ‘unsafe’ the HQ had moved next door. Here begins my problem in trying to define the enemy – as we had been conditioned by the old Afrikaner Nationalists and in the SADF that the ‘enemy’ was a ‘Swart Gevaar’ (Black Danger) and a ‘Rooi Gevaar’ (Communist Red Danger) – not a ‘Wit Gevaar’ (White Danger) with a Upper Middle-Class sense of Liberalism as the bomber in question, Hein Grosskopf, was.
Hein GrosskopfThe Drill Hall
So, here I am, a freshy minted National Serviceman ‘one-pip’ Loot ( 2nd Lieutenant or Subaltern) seconded to Wit (Witwatersrand) Command Operations (Ops) from my initial placement at D-Ops (Directive Operations) located in a underground circular shafted ‘nuclear proof’ building in Pretoria called Blenny, the building whose Top Secret Ops room looked like a scene out of Dr Strangelove had its entry bunker located near the Pretoria Prison. This underground building is now falling derelict as a SAAF HQ, in my time the personnel stationed there were known as the ‘Blenny rats’ for obvious reasons, and funnily I can count myself as one.
My job at Wit Command (not ‘Wits’ Command mind – that designation was for the nearby University) was to provide Operation Support and send Top Secret daily SITREP (situation reports) from Wit Command to D Ops at Blenny, or just been a ‘Bicycle’ as my fellow senior officers called ‘one pip’ 2nd Lieutenants (you can ‘trap’ i.e. peddle/stamp on a bicycle), the lowest rung on the officer rank profile.
Whilst parking in my cushy post in the Ops room in September 1990 processing a whack of casualties reported on Johannesburg’s railway lines as the ANC dealt with ‘sellouts’ by throwing them off the commuter trains, the Railways Police and Army Group 18 collecting the corpses and sending reports to me for the daily SITREP and suddenly ‘bang’ another bomb blast (more like a muffled ‘thump’ actually), this one a couple of city blocks away in nearby Doornfontein and the target is the old Beeld Newspaper Offices, the bomb later turned out to be placed by the Orde Boerevolk – one of the spin-off militant White Supremacist Groups. Swart Gevaar suddenly turned Wit Gevaar again. Luckily nobody killed.
This ‘White’ Danger did not end there for me that month. Being a ‘bicycle’, 2nd Lieutenant I was given the shift nobody wanted, the weekend shift in the Ops room, the ‘Commandants’ (Lt. Colonels – and there were loads of them in Army Ops), were all at home enjoying their braai’s and brander’s. It was a 24 hour on – 48 hour off gig with no brass around so I enjoyed it. Late on a Saturday night, its all quite and I’m stretched out on a cot behind the signaller’s station watching TV and enjoying my lekker time in the ‘Mag’ when a white Ford Cortina pulled up in Bree Street, four white men in the car, out step two, one of them wearing a AWB arm band hangs back standing watch and the other walks up to the entrance of Wit Command and calmy shoots a 21 Battalion sentry on duty in the reception in the head.
21 (Two-One) Battalion was a ethnic Black Battalion – the SADF was ethnically funny that way, so this was basically a white extremist shooting a black SADF troop as a terror attack. I hear the gunshot, then get a frantic call from the guard room. There is no medic support and only one other officer on the base, so I grab a hand-held radio and the emergency medic bag and give instructions to the signaller to stay on the radio and relay messages. The troopie is fortunately alive, the bullet having passed through his jaw as he flinched away from his attacker’s gun. I patch him up with bandages from the medical kit bag and radio the signaller to call an emergency medical evacuation. I then issue an order to the 21 Battalion Guard Commander to double the guard, take note from witnesses as to what happened and then back to my post to disturb my senior officer’s weekend. ‘Wit Gevaar’ had struck Wit Command again.
Image : AWB Clandestine paramilitary
Given the general carnage in the country created by the AWB, the Inkata Freedom Party (IFP) and African National Congress (ANC) at this time it did not take long for the ANC version of ‘Swart Gevaar’ and it would hit me directly again about two weeks later in October 1990 when I received a desperate call over the Ops room phone from an ANC informant, his cover blown and an angry ANC mob had turned up outside his house in Soweto. I was unable to get an extraction to him in the time that it took for the mob to break down the door and the line go dead after I had to listen to his desperate pleading to me for help, the Police picked up his body later. The dismissive and rather racist attitude of one of the other officers present to the whole incident .. “just another kaffir.”
Shortly after that in October ANC ‘danger’ turned to IFP ‘danger,’ same scenario I’m sat on the weekend in the Ops room enjoying my cushy 24 hours on 48 hours off. This incident strangely happened on a Sunday afternoon, so again the Command is relatively silent manned only by a skeleton staff. Odd for a Sunday, but a small group of IFP supporters banishing traditional weapons (deadly spears and pangas in reality) had made its way down Twist Street from Hillbrow and was making its way past the old Drill Hall to Bree Street, which, as it was still a SADF installation had a group of 21 Battalion guards staying in it. One troop was casually standing outside having a smoke, and I don’t know if it was a ethnic retaliation of Zulu sentiment for a Black SADF troop, but in any event, he got attacked – hit by a panga as he lifted his arms to prevent a killing blow.
Same drill as previous – no medics around and only 2 officers on the base, grab radio to relay instructions, grab bomb bandages, immediately double the guard, relay instructions to my signaller. I get to the troop and start bandaging him up, however as the panga had severed veins and done other general carnage in both his arms it took some bomb bandages and applied pressure to get it the bleeding under control before an ambulance arrived.
Image: Inkata Freedom Party member taunts a black SADF soldier
He lived, but the strange bit for me, next morning – Monday early, I had been up all night and my uniform was covered in blood. The Commandant, whose lekker branders and braai weekend I had once again disturbed, came in earlier than expected at 06:30am, called me in ‘on orders’, and whilst ‘kakking me out’ from high told me I was derelict in my duty for not wearing barrier gloves when treating a casualty, who, as he was a black man (and to his racially ‘verkrampt’ mind) he would likely have AIDS, thus I was endangering myself as government property. That there were no barrier gloves around was not an excuse – and as some sort of punitive measure, he then instructed me to attend the morning parade on the open ground on the Command’s car park (as Ops Officers we had usually been excluded from it). I objected on the basis that I could not change my uniform in time, but he would have none of it.
So, there I stood, an officer on parade covered in blood from saving yet another lowly regarded ‘black’ troopie, watching the sun come up over a Johannesburg skyline on a crisp clear day (if you’ve lived in Johannesburg, you’ll know what this is like, it’s the town’s only redeeming factor – it’s stunning) all the time thinking to my myself “this is one fucked up institution.”
There were more instances of the random nature of violence at the time, I was called to and attended to the stabbing of a woman (later criticised by a Commandant for calling a emergency ambulance for a mere ‘civilian’) – she had a very deep stab wound about two inches above her mons pubis into her lower intestines which looked pretty bad to me, so I called it and I have no regrets. I was also called to help with a off duty white troop who staggered into the Command late Saturday night with a blunt trauma to the back of the skull and subsequently pissed himself and went into shock.
Oh, and if the general populace wasn’t bad enough, then there were the ‘own team’ military ‘idiots’ which posed a danger all of their own, my first ‘Padre’ call out as an Ops officer was for a troop shot dead by his buddy playing around with his 9mm side-arm, and some months later on after a morning parade walking back to the Bree Street building I had to deal with an accidental discharge gunshot in the guardroom of the old Drill Hall which saw two troops with severe gunshot wounds (a conscript Corporal in counter-intelligence decided to check R4 assault rifles standing on their bi-pods on the ground, one discharged taking off a big chunk of his calf muscle which was in front of the muzzle, the bullet then entering both legs of a 21 Battalion guard standing opposite him).
One thing was very certain to me … everyone, black and white .. from white right wing Afrikaners to left wing English and Afrikaner whites .. to militant and angry Zulus, Tswanas and Xhosas and just about everyone in between was a threat to my life whilst in uniform. These instances whilst serving as an Ops officer would later serve as the basis of stressor trigger during my Covid experience. To me in 1990 there was no such thing as a ‘friendly’, extreme racism, danger and hate coursed in all directions and the old Nationalist idea of the ‘Gevaar’ was a crock of shit.
Wit Command Citizen Force
On finishing my National Service (NS) stint, I immediately landed up in my designated Citizen Force Unit, 15 Reception Depot (15 OVD/RCD) which was part of Wit Command and basically handled the bi-annual National Service intakes and call-ups (reserve forces included). It also provided surplus personnel to assist in Wit Command’s administration, and that included Operations and Intelligence work. By 1991, I was back doing ‘camps’ and had impressed my new Commanding Officer (CO) enough to earn my second ‘pip’ and now I was a substantiated Full Lieutenant, an officer good and proper. I had previously keenly jumped at a role as a Convoy Commander escorting raw SADF recruits to their allocated training bases.
Images of Nasrec NSM intakes circa 1990-1993. Photo of Lt. Col Mannie Alho (then a Captain) and Miss South Africa, Michelle Bruce at an intake courtesy Mannie Alho.
These were ‘fully armed’ operations as NSM intakes were regarded as a ‘soft’ and very ‘public’ target, of much value for an act of terrorism. As such each convoy needed an armed escort with a lot of Intelligence and logistics support. If you need to know how dangerous – consider how many times a recruitment station has been bombed in the Iraq and/or Afghanistan conflicts. I volunteered for the furthest and most difficult escort as the Convoy Commander – the bi-annual call up to 8 South African Infantry Battalion in Upington (8 SAI). My ‘escort’ troops were made up of Wit Command reservists, some from Personal Services but most of them with Infantry Battalion backgrounds, Border War veterans in the main and highly experienced.
1994
By 1994 I had really earned my spurs doing ‘long distance’ Convoy Command. In early 1993 my CO – Lt. Col Mannie Alho had seen enough potential in me to kick me off to do a ‘Captain’s Course’ at Personal Services School at Voortrekkerhoogte in Pretoria. At the beginning of 1994 Colonel Alho called me in, handed me a promotion to Captain and gave me his old Captain’s ‘bush pips’ epaulettes he had in his drawer – a gesture and epaulettes I treasure to this day.
Images: … erm, me – in case anyone is wondering why the ‘Bokkop’ (Infantry beret), I started off at 5 SAI, then PSC, then back in an infantry role in Ops.
At this time around Wit Command, a number of significant things happened involving all of us in 15 RCD to some degree or other – some less so, others more so. It was a BIG year. In all, these instances would really question who the enemy was in any soldier’s mind serving in the ‘old’ SADF at that time.
The Reserve Call-Up – 1994
Firstly, the call up of the SADF Reserve in the Witwatersrand area to secure the country for its democratic transformation. Generally, in 1994 the SADF was running out of National Servicemen – the ‘backbone’ of the SADF, the annual January and July intake of ‘white’ conscripts had dwindled alarmingly. Generally, the white public saw the writing on the wall as to the end of Apartheid and the end of whites-only conscription program and simply refused to abide their national service call-ups.
As to the ‘Permanent Force’ (PF), the professional career element of the SADF, many senior officers (and a great many Commandants) along with warrant officers and some senior NCO’s took an early retirement package. They had seen the writing on the wall as to their role in the Apartheid security machine and felt they had been ‘sold out’ by the very apparatus they had sworn their allegiance to. Some would head into politics in the Conservative Party, others would join the AWB structure and other ‘Boerevolk’ resistance movements and some took their Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) amnesty’s and quietly retired. Others would just bow out honourably, their time done. Nearly all of them totally fed up with FW De Klerk and his cabal and feeling utterly betrayed by them – even to this day, and I meet many in military veteran circles.
As to the other part of the SADF ‘backbone’ of which I was one – the Citizen Force, then made up almost exclusively of ‘white’ ex-National Service members now undertaking their ten odd years of ‘camp’ commitments. In 1994, it was on the cards that a future ‘whites only’ conscription would be stopped, but the problem was a great many soldiers would be needed to stop the country falling into a violent abyss and continuing its journey to a free fully democratic election. To keep up with resourcing requirements, the government contested that ‘whites only’ conscripts who had completed their National Service and were now serving in citizen force Regiments and Commandos must continue to do so and attend their call ups (or risk being fined).
Many were simply sick and tired of the situation; they had done their ‘Border Duty’ and ‘Townships’ and had seen the writing on the wall. They knew the Citizen Force structures would be toothless trying to enforce the camp call-ups and ‘fines’. Many just didn’t bother with a camp call up and just wanted to get on with their professional and family lives. A small few however split their loyalty on political grounds and made their way into the AWB and other Boerevolk Armed Resistance movements instead.
Copyright Ian Berry
Images: AWB Training – note the use of parts of SADF ‘Browns’ uniform
However, and this is a truism, a great many of these active reservists (the vast majority) stayed on out of sheer loyalty to serve their country no matter what, and to serve their comrades (a powerful bond of brotherhood develops when you serve) and to execute their mandates as well trained and professional military personnel. It was to this element of the Citizen Force that the government would ultimately turn to for help and implore them to volunteer to steer the country to democracy. Even the old ‘End Conscription Campaign’ anti-apartheid movement moved to support the ‘camper call up’ for the 1994 general elections.
Personally, I found the SADF military personnel moving to join the AWB and other White Supremist groupings very disappointing as I honestly believe they were hoodwinked and misled. Whilst serving in the SADF, the AWB presented itself as a very distinct enemy and they had no problems targeting the SADF – of that I had first-hand experience, so very little doubt. I find myself often in military veteran circles in contact with some of these veterans and must say I still find it difficult to reconcile with them.
The country’s military also can’t just ‘sommer’ fall apart when a new political party is elected, the loyalty and oath on my officer’s commission is not party political it’s to the State. As a soldier, acting against the State is an act of sedition and all it did was show up these SADF soldiers as loyal to political causes, in this case the National Party’s Apartheid policy and not to the country per se, the military, or their fellow comrades-in-arms still in the military. Having any of them on the ‘inside’ at this time simply qualified them in my eyes as yet another form of ‘Wit Gevaar’.
To secure the transition of the country to its new democratic epoch, CODESA (the Committee overseeing the establishment of a new constitution and transition of power) proposed the National Peacekeeping Force (NPK), a hastily assembled force consisting of SADF soldiers, some ‘Bantustan’ Defence Force soldiers and ANC MK cadres, to conduct peace-keeping security operations and secure the 1994 election. The NPK was a disaster, SADF officers complained of the very poor battle form and discipline, especially of the ANC ‘cadres’ and pointed to basic cowardice. All this materialised in the accidental shooting and killing of the world renown press photographer, Ken Oosterbroek by a NPK member nervously taking cover behind journalists advancing on a IFP stronghold. The NPK was finally confined to barracks in disgrace and quietly forgotten about (even to this day).
Images: National Peacekeeping Force in Johannesburg and surrounds
So, it was the old SADF that would have to do the job of taking the country into democracy. I was at the Command when this news came in on the NPK, and I must say I was very relieved, I felt we had been held back ‘chomping at the bit’ literally, and this was our opportunity to shine. It was the opportunity for all involved in the SADF at the time to redeem its image so badly battered by its association to Apartheid and the controversial decision in the mid 80’s to deploy the SADF in the Townships against an ‘internal enemy’ (protesting South African citizens in reality) as opposed to the ‘Rooi Gevaar’ enemy on the Namibia/Angola border (MPLA, SWAPO and Cuban Troops). Added to this were the emerging confessions of political assassinations by Civil Co-Operation Bureau (CCB) members, a SADF clandestine ‘black-ops’ group off the hinge and operating outside the law.
The decreasing pools of experienced SADF soldiers, the increasing violence between ANC and IFP supporters, the substantial increase in attacks and bombings by armed ‘Boerevolk’ white supremacist movements like the AWB and others, and the disaster that was the ‘National Peacekeeping Force’ and its disbandment; all forced CODESA and the FW de Klerk government to call-up the SADF’s National Reservists. This was done to boost troop numbers and inject experience into the ranks, take over where the NPK left off, and secure the country’s democratic transition and elections.
A Reception Depots primary role is ‘mustering’ and this does not matter if it’s a citizen recruit for Military Service – conscript or volunteer or the mustering of the country’s National Citizen Force Reserve. The mustering of the SADF Reserve in Johannesburg took place at Group 18 (Doornkop) Army Base near Soweto and as 15 Reception Depot I was there with our officer group to process the call-ups, see to their uniform and kit needs and forward these Reservists to their designated units to make them ‘Operational’.
Operational Citizen Force members in Johannesburg and surrounds during 1994
Swaggering around the hanger rammed full of reservists, as a newly minted Captain and trying to look important, I was tasked with dealing with a handful of reservists who had abided the call-up but turned up wearing civilian clothes and no ‘balsak’ kitbag and uniforms in sight. The Army regulations at time allowed National Servicemen to demobilise but they had to keep their uniforms in case they are called back. I was to send them to the Quarter Master Hanger to get them kitted out again but had to ask what they did with their uniforms. Expecting a “I got fat and grew out of it” or “the gardener needed it more” I got a response I did not expect. They all destroyed or disposed of their SADF uniforms – three said they had even ceremonially burned their uniforms when they left the SADF they hated serving in it so much. All of them said; despite this, for this occasion, the securing of a new dawn democracy, for this they would gladly return and serve again, they just needed new browns. It got me thinking, and I felt we were really standing on the precipice of history and as ‘men of the hour’ we were going a great thing. We were the men who, at an hour of great need, had heeded the call to serve the country, and we were to advance human kind and deliver full political emancipation to all South Africans, regardless of race, sex or culture…. heady stuff indeed!
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Images: SADF Citizen Force members guarding polling stations and securing ballots during the 1994 election.
A very ‘Noble Call’ and I felt very privileged and excited at the time that I was involved in such an undertaking, I felt like my old ‘Pops’ (Grandfather) did when the country called for volunteers to fight Nazism in World War 2. We were most certainly on a great precipice.
I don’t want to get into the “look at it now” as I type this in 2022 during Stage 5 loadshedding. That was not the issue in 1994, the ANC miss-management and plundering of the country of its finances decades later was not on the cards then, what was on the cards was the disbandment of an oppressive political regime looking after a tiny sect of Afrikaner Nationalists and in the interests of a minority of white people only, and one which was trampling on the rights of just about everyone else. The idea of a country, a ‘rainbow nation’ with one of the most liberated constitutions in the world was paramount at the time, and I’m very proud of my role in this (albeit small), my UNITAS medal for my role in all this still sits proudly on my medal rack.
Newspaper at the time capturing the mutual confidence in the future of a ‘new South Africa’ and avoiding ‘the abyss.’
These ‘white’ ex-conscript reservists guarded election booths, gave armed escort to ballot boxes, patrolled the ‘townships’ keeping APLA, ANC, IFP and AWB insurgents away from killing people – black and white in the hopes of disrupting the election. If you think this was a rather ‘safe’ walk in the park gig, the ‘war’ or ‘struggle’ was over, think again. I accompanied Group 42 soldiers later in an armoured convoy into Soweto and it was hair raising to say the least. Which brings me to the next incident in 1994.
The Shell House Massacre – 1994
As noted, earlier Shell House was located a block away from Wit Command and was the ANC’s Head Office in the early 90’s (Letuli House came later). On the 28 March 1994, IFP supporters 20,000 in number marched on the ANC Head Office in protest against the 1994 elections scheduled for the next month. A dozen ANC members opened fire on the IFP crowd killing 19 people, ostensibly on the orders of Nelson Mandela. SADF soldiers from Wit Command mainly reservists and national servicemen were called to the scene, on arrival, to save lives they put themselves between the ANC shooters and the IFP supporters and along with the South African Police brought about calm and an end to the massacre.
I was not there that day, but some of my colleagues at Wit Command were and all of them would experience ‘elevated’ stress and take a hard line, fully armed response when it came to dealing with protests, especially on how quickly they could go pear shaped. This would permeate to all of us in our dealings with this kind of protesting (more on this later). If you think this incident was yet another in many at this time, note the photo of the dead IFP Zulu man, shot by an ANC gunman, his shoes taken off for his journey to the after-life, and then note the three very nervous but determined SADF servicemen from Wit Command putting themselves in harm’s way to prevent more death.
Images: Shell House Massacre
The Bree Street bombing and 1994 Johannesburg terrorist spree
Not even a few weeks after the Shell House Massacre, the ANC HQ on the same little patch on Bree Street as Wit Command was to be hit again, and this time it was as destruction outside Shell House was on an epic level.
The bomb went off on 24th April 1994 near Shell-house on Bree Street and was (and still is) regarded as the largest act of bombing terrorism in Johannesburg’s history’. It was part of a bombing spree focussed mainly around Johannesburg which left 21 people dead and over 100 people with injuries between April 24 and April 27, 1994. The worst and most deadly campaign of terrorist bombings in the history of the city.
And … it was not the ANC, nope, my old enemy in 1990 had reappeared with vengeance, it was ‘Wit Gevaar,’ it was the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) again. Luckily, I was not at our HQ at Wit Command when the bomb went off, however I was there afterward to see the carnage – the whole city block was sheer destruction – everywhere.
The thunderous blast of a 150 pounds of explosives set off at 09:50 am left a waist-deep crater in the street about midway between the national and regional headquarters of the African National Congress, shattered glass and building structures for blocks and lacerated scores of passers-by on the quiet Sunday streets and residents in the surrounding high-rise buildings. It was the deadliest blast of its kind in South Africa since 1983.
Images: AWB Bree Street Bombing
A total of 7 people were dead in Bree Street, mostly by-standers and civilians from all racial and ethnic groups and 92 people in total were injured. The only reason behind the low death toll is that the bomb went off (and was planned) for a Sunday when the streets were relatively empty. Even though it was a Sunday, members of the Army from Wit Command, SAP and especially SADF Medics quickly moved in to secure the bomb blast area and treat the wounded.
The AWB bombing campaign did not stop there, it continued at pace, the very next day on April 25 a bomb was placed in a trailer allegedly belonging to the AWB leader, Eugene Terre’Blanche (the AWB later claimed it had lost the trailer during its disastrous Bophuthatswana campaign). The Trailer was towed to Germiston where it was left and then detonated in Odendaal Street near the taxi rank at about 8.45am. Again, civilian by-standers took the toll, 10 people were killed and over 100 injured.
Later in the day on April 25 at 11.45am, a pipe bomb detonated at a taxi rank on the Westonaria-Carletonville road, injuring 5 people. Earlier, at about 7.45am, a pipe bomb went off at a taxi rank on the corner of Third and Park streets in Randfontein, injuring 6 people. At 8.30pm on the same day, a pipe bomb attack at a restaurant on the corner of Bloed Street and 7th Avenue in Pretoria killed 3 and injured 4.
To prevent more bomb-blasts in Johannesburg’s city centre on the election day and the lead up to it, Johannesburg’s city centre was locked down by the SADF using reams of razor wire and armed guards. The election booths themselves in the high-density parts of the city became small fortresses with a heavy armed SADF presence, all done so people in the city centre could vote in the full knowledge they were safe to do so.
Then, just two short days later, on the Election Day itself, 27th April 1994 the final AWB election bombing campaign attack came in the form of a car bomb at the then Jan Smuts International Airport (now OR Tambo International). The bomb was placed at this high-profile target so as to create fear on the Election Day itself. The blast left the concourse outside the airport’s International Departures terminal damaged along with a number of parked vehicles on the concourse. Ten people were injured in this blast. If the AWB was going to make an international statement on their objection to the 1994 Election Day itself, this was it.
Images: AWB Jan Smuts Airport Bombing
To try and understand my context, this was violence in the ‘white danger’ context of the ‘Struggle’ it was on top of such a general surge of violence at the time I was serving that was the ‘black danger’, the townships of Johannesburg burned as the IFP and ANC went at one another hammer and tongs leaving thousands dead and wounded. The Human Rights Committee (HRC) estimated that between July 1990 and June 1993, some 4 756 people were killed in politically in mainly IFP and ANC related violence in Gauteng alone. In the period immediately following the announcement of an election date, the death toll in Gauteng rose to four times its previous levels.
Armed ANC, APLA and IFP driven unrest in Johannesburg Townships 1994
I often look at the SADF conscripts from this period – the post 1989 intakes, as having more violent exposure than the majority of SADF veterans called up for the Border War which ended in 1989. Our experience ‘the post 1989 intakes’ was fundamentally different to that experienced by the Border War veterans who stopped doing camps after 1989, and I stand by that. I see this difference in old SADF social media groups especially, if a Border War vet posts a picture showing the war against the MPLA and PLAN prior to 1989 that’s fine, post a picture of the elections showing the AWB mobilising or the MK amalgamation in 1994 and its too ‘political’ for them – our war doesn’t count, it’s all a little too ‘blurred’ for them – no clear cut Rooi-Gevaar and Swart-Gevaar see – no clear cut ‘enemy’, it just doesn’t make sense to them.
The elections, as we all know went ahead, history marched on, but I must smile at the inconvenient truth of it all, it was the SADF, and more specifically the white conscripts serving their camp commitments, who brought the final vehicle of full democracy to South Africa – the vote itself. There was not an ANC MK cadre in sight at the election doing any sort of security, they played no role whatsoever, in fact at the time they were part of the problem and not part of the solution, and their efforts in the NPK deemed too inexperienced, so they were sidelined. The ANC and PAC military wings fell at the last hurdle, they didn’t make it over the finish line of Apartheid bathed in glory, in fact they came over the line a bloody disgrace. To watch them in their misguided sense of heroism today just brings up a wry smile from me.
Integrated Military Intakes
Later in 1994, as a Mustering Depot, we naturally became involved in implementing the newly developed ‘Voluntary Military Service’ program. This was the first multi-racial intake of male and female SANDF recruits. The Voluntary Military System (VMS) was originally established as a substitute for the defunct ‘whites only’ involuntary national service system (NS) and the ‘Indian’ and ‘coloured’ voluntary national service. Also, out the window where the ethnic intakes into ‘Black’ battalions.
In terms of the VMS, volunteers had to undergo ten months basic military training, followed by a further obligation of eight annual commitments of 30 days in the Regiments and Commandos (the Reservist Conventional Forces). The objective was to create a feeder system for the Reservist Conventional forces and eventually balance the ethnic make-up of Reservist Regiments (up to this point they were a near ‘all-white’ affair with black troops and officers gradually joining them).
Our first VMS intake at Nasrec in early January 1995 was historic and very telling. In 15 RCD, some of our battle hardened and experienced escorts had to re-programmed a little. We introduced a policy of minimal force, we were no longer at war and we had to change mindset. We replaced our pre-intake shooting range manoeuvres with ‘hand to hand’ self-defence training instead. The photo on this article shows our escorts getting this training – it was very necessary and vital, times had changed.
Image: 15 RCD Hand to Hand Training NASREC – My photo.
Our intelligence had picked up chatter that the local ANC structures planned to disrupt the intake by spreading the word that the army was now employing – ‘Jobs’, ‘Jobs’, Jobs’ after all was an ANC election promise in 1994 and this a first opportunity for delivery on their promise, you merely had to turn up at Nasrec and a ‘job in the defence’ was yours. Anyone with a brain knows a political party cannot promise jobs, an economy creates jobs – but this did not (and still does not) deter the ANC on trying to fulfil their own propaganda.
And so it happened, two sets of people turned up, one set with ‘call-up’ papers, vetted by the military before mustering and one set, just turning up. The job seekers naturally started to get very upset, angry and uneasy with being turned away and a potentially violent situation began to brew with a large and growingly angry crowd. A couple of other officers and I were called to the situation, and it suddenly occurred to me, as comic as it is serious, that the 9mm Star pistol issued to me was a piece of shit and one of the two issued magazines had a faulty spring – so pretty useless if things go south – and angry crowds for whatever reason in South Africa, even lack of electricity or a delayed train, can get very violent. So much for Denel’s (Armscor) best, but the SADF was like that when it came to issuing weapons and ammo – uber self-confident, during my basic training at 5 SAI and Junior Leaders (JL’s) training at Voortrekkerhoogte, the standard operation procedure (SOP) was only 5 rounds (bullets) per guard – I often wonder how MK would have reacted if their Intel knew just how underprepared and over-confident the SADF was sometimes.
Images: NASREC response, 1995 VMS Intake: My photos
We got to the ‘flashpoint’, and to this day I can kiss Staff Sergeant Diesel, who jumped up onto a Mamba Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC), two of which had been brought up, grabbed a loud hailer an told them calmly to go to Wit Command and then he quickly handed out a stack of application forms. His mannerism as a larger-than-life guy and likeability as a person immediately diffusing the situation as they all set off – either home or to Wit Command armed with the correct information.
The intake went on without any further incidence and I have the privilege of having the only photographs of this historic day. I asked VMS recruits what their expectations where, for many ‘white’ VMS recruits their parents (and fathers specifically) wanted them to have the military discipline and camaraderie they had experienced in the old SADF as a life purpose, the ‘black’ VMS recruits were different, they immediately wanted to sign up as permanent force members and make the military a full-time career – they saw the VMS system as a ‘In’.
The First Multiracial Intake: My Photos – Peter Dickens copyright
The VMS system of mustering also went ahead for the first multi-racial female intake, so as to address the balance of female personnel and officers, black and white in the Reserve forces, again I was proud to be involved in that ‘call up’ and again hold the only historic pictures of it. However, again, the general sense that I picked up was these women were holding out for full time military careers, but nevertheless it was critical that militarily trained females were sorely in need to modernise the South African military.
First Integrated Female Intake circa 1998: My Photos – Peter Dickens copyright
For the latter reason, the objective of the VMS was not initially met, many VMS service personnel, after doing their basic training, were in fact able to secure these permanent force contracts as the force experienced a contraction of trained personnel after 1994 and the VMS personnel proved an easy and trained recruiting pool. By 2006 the VMS system had all but served its role and was disbanded, the Reserve Force Regiments would recruit directly under a newly constructed training programme, and with that came the bigger changes that integration required.
Also, I don’t really want to hear the ‘it was the beginning of the end’ bit so many vets now feel, the SADF had to change, ‘whites only’ conscription had to change and Apartheid as an ideology was simply unsustainable and had to go. The SADF had to change – dividing units on colour and ethnicity was not practical, segregation had fallen on evil days to quote Field Marshal Jan Smuts. The Defence Force had to become reflective of the country at large – the extreme lack of Black African commissioned officers in 1994, in an African Defence Force nogal, was alone reflective of a system of extreme racial bias.
SANDF VMS Intake circa 1997, my photos
Remember, in 1994 nobody could predict the future, many held a belief that structured and balanced politics would happen, the Mandela Magic was everywhere, from 1990 to 1994 the violence was extreme and as a nation we had narrowly skirted ‘the abyss’ with a miracle settlement. In 1994, nobody foresaw Jacob Zuma and the ANC’s pilfering of the state from 2009, nor did they see the ANC’s extreme restructuring of the SANDF in their likeness, the ‘rot’ starting as early as 1999 when General Georg Meiring, a SADF stalwart and now the Chief of the SANDF, was dismissed on trumpeted up allegations of presenting a false coupe, making way for General Siphiwe Nyanda, a ANC MK cadre whose subsequent career as Jacob Zuma’s Communications Minister is a corruption riddled disgrace.
The MK Intake – 1994 to 1996
Finally on the 1994 line-up, the amalgamation of the Defence Structures with non-statute forces, the ‘Swart Gevaar’ terrorists. From 1994, 15 Reception Depot became involved to a degree with the mustering of ANC and PAC political armies into the newly SANDF. At this stage I was a SSO3 (Senior Staff Officer 3IC) at 15 Reception Depot and had the privilege to work closely with Sergeant Major Cyril Lane Blake, the unit’s Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) who had been involved with the non-statutory force intake from an Intelligence standpoint. Mustering of MK and APLA took place at Personnel Services School, a military base in Voortrekkerhoogte and at Wallmannstal military base, many of these MK members were then destined to go to De Brug army base for training and integration.
Of interest was the intake itself, of the ANC Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) veterans, only half of them really qualified as trained soldiers, these were the MK members trained overseas – mainly in Angola, they were made up mainly of the old cadres (old guard) of Mandela’s period, trained by the ex-WW2 veterans like Joe Slovo, and they were recruited to MK after the Sharpeville Massacre (a very small contingent) and then the Seventy Sixes (the big contingent), those who were recruited after the 1976 Riots, added to this was a trickle from the 1980’s riots who made it to their Angolan training camps. Out of 32,000 odd MK veterans, there were only about 12,000 MK veterans who were accepted as proper military veterans (about half of them), the rest were ‘stone throwers’ (as some sarcastically called them) recruited rapidly into the ANC MK ranks in 1990 the very minute they were ‘unbanned’ and they just constituted political dissidents with little military experience if any and no formalised military training whatsoever.
Images: MK Intake into the SANDF issued with old SADF ‘Browns’ – Copyright Reuters, RSM Cyril Lane-Blake, my photo and finally ANC supporters appearing in ‘uniform’ as MK at Mandela’s inauguration in 1994.
Of the ‘Untrained’ MK veterans, many of these were the ‘MK’ cadres from the so called ‘self-defence units’ in the townships who had regularly gone about holding ‘peoples courts’ and sentencing people to death with ‘necklaces’ (placing a car tyre around the persons neck, dousing it in petrol and setting it alight).
Also, but not unsurprisingly there were MK ‘chances’ – people joining the intake pretending to be MK so they could get a ‘job in the defence’, BMATT (British Military Advisory Training Team), the British Military task force assigned to the integration, and even the ‘proper’ MK cadres themselves, had a heck of a job trying to identify these chance takers, and a great many ‘slipped’ through with falsified CV’s.
This would later result in what BMATT politely called a ‘hardening of attitudes’ in their report to Parliament, when it come to the way statutory force members viewed these ‘non-statutory’ force members and MK generally, an attitude which in my opinion is getting ‘even harder’ as the years go on as some of these MK vets really show their colours to all of South Africa – involved in corrupt and outright criminal behaviour, degenerating and demeaning themselves, their organisation and their ‘victory’ now well tarnished.
What amazed me was just how structured the MK was when it came to the their proper military veterans, I had been conditioned by the SADF that they were a rag-tag outfit and incompetent at best, but that wasn’t completely true, they had a highly structured command and very defined specialised units ranging from a Chief of Staff, Operations, Ordnance, Intelligence, Engineering, Anti-Aircraft, Artillery to Counter Intelligence/Communications (propaganda), and attached to nearly to all of it was a very detailed Soviet styled military Political Commissar structure. They even had unit designations, and many out of the half of them that had been trained, had decent military training.
I don’t want to get to the Pan African Congress’ APLA veterans, I was told they generally treated their SADF escorts with utter disdain.
Their problem (MK and APLA) is that they were asked to identify and verify all their members for their military credentials, and they quickly pointed out who was and who was not a trained military veteran, and this caused the huge division in the MK veteran structures we see today. The split of the Umkhonto weSizwe Military Veterans Association (MKMVA) and the MK Council recently is a case in point – the MK Council are the ones with the military ‘struggle’ credentials and the MKMVA have all the members who do not have any meaningful military ‘struggle’ credentials at all, they’ve all joined Jacob Zuma’s RET hence the reason the current ANC no longer wants to recognise them.
This makes me laugh uncontrollably when the MKMVA used to wheel out Carl Niehaus in his purchased PEP store MK camouflage fatigues pretending to be a military veteran, when in truth he is anything but one, and it makes me cry when the Department of Military Veterans squander all their time and money on the 12,000 odd MK ‘non-veterans’ trying to give them and their families un-earned veteran benefits and bring harmony to the ANC and they almost completely ignore their primary mandate – the 500,000 odd statutory force veterans, proper military veterans – solely because many of them (the majority mind) served in the old SADF and of that a great majority where conscripts.
In 1999, I was assigned to escort Joe Modise, the ex MK Commander in Chief, and Paratus (the SADF/SANDF) mouthpiece published it, yes, I admit it – I even shook his hand (we’ll there is a published photo to prove it – so no point hiding the fact), but again, at this stage in the SANDF we were still confident in the country, little did I know he would be dead two years later and embroiled in yet another ANC corruption and arms buying controversy. I did some more VMS work after that, but that signalled the beginning of the end of my service, reception depots had outgrown their use after 2002 and mothballed – in fact they are still mothballed, waiting for the day to muster the general populace in the event the country goes to war again.
Image: Joe Modise and myself – Peter Dickens copyright
Oh, and if this sounds a bit personal, it is, here’s a big “Fuck You” middle finger to the politically motivated pressure groups in ANC led government departments currently trying to delist the old SADF ‘conscripts’ as military veterans on the basis that they ‘served Apartheid’ and not recognising their role in bringing democracy to South Africa, whereas their ‘heroes’ in MK did. The historic record stands, there’s no changing it and as things go even this missive is now primary documentation for future generations of South Africans to read and assimilate – from someone ‘who was there’ and is a genuine ‘military veteran’ – true reconciliation comes with facing the truth comrades, just saying.
Back to PTSD
So, enough to do with the ANC and their Parliament of Clowns, the old ‘Swart Gevaar’ fast becoming a newly reinvigorated ‘Swart Gevaar’ of their own making and back to the serious stuff and all the ‘Wit Gevaar and Swart Gevaar’ from 1990 to 1994 forming my general mental mistrust of just about everything.
Whilst in hospital with Covid I had a psychological mistrust of efforts been made by Doctors, Nurses and medical assistants (Black and White), I was convinced they were out to kill me and efforts to pump lifesaving high pressure oxygen into me were met with an unnatural resistance and a self-induced gag reflex. To give you an idea of how bad this ‘mistrust’ was, if personnel so much as tried to ‘turn’ me to change bedding or wash me I would go into a panic attack, which resulted in rapid rapid thoracic breathing upsetting my body’s oxygen levels to the point of oxygen starvation and renal nerve release (I’d literally piss myself) – a simple ‘turn’ would become a life and death matter – and nobody could make sense of it, me included. So, in desperation .. enter stage right … the hospital Psychologist … and stage left my lifelong confidant, a solid Free State ‘Bittereinder Boertjie’ with the mental tenacity of a Ratel (an African Honey Badger) … my wife.
To define and understand PTSD, as it’s a much-brandished word nowadays with anyone having experienced a high stress incident claiming it, many using it as an excuse. PTSD is best explained a stressor bucket in your head, you’re born with it and its empty. In life stressful events are sometimes internalised and start to fill your bucket, your bucket usually makes it underfilled to the end of your life and you don’t have a mental meltdown and things make sense and you’re stable, the bucket is very resilient. What happens to military personnel especially is that the stressors they experience are often far beyond normal and it fills the bucket up at an early stage, right up to the ‘nearly full’ mark in some extreme cases, after some significant stressors are added to it later in life, anything really but usually the D’s – Disease, Debt, Divorce and Death. For Military veterans these ‘D’s’ can then ‘tip’ the bucket over and you start to psychologically have a meltdown. This is the reason why PTSD is gradually becoming more and more apparent in ex-SADF conscripts and PF members as they get older.
In extreme cases in the military, you can have that meltdown whilst serving, the old battle fatigue syndrome, repeated life and death experiences unrelentingly occurring end on end filling up the stressor bucket and finally your last one tips the bucket, produces meltdown and you’re withdrawn from the line. Refer to Spike Milligan’s autobiography ‘Mussolini, his part in my downfall’ of his time as a gunner in WW2 and you’ll see how this plays out in a serving combatant.
In therapy trying to get to the bottom on what initially filled my bucket up, and on this the Psychologist and my wife and I settled on ‘mistrust’ initially rooted deep in in my psyche whilst I was in the Army. Mistrust as I could not distinguish foe from friend, ‘swart gevaar from wit gevaar,’ and to me everyone was a ‘enemy’ – that enemy or ‘gevaar’ now included most hospital staff – black and white, and I was the only one who could fight my way out – no help required thanks.
To say my Covid condition was bad and a PTSD issue on its own would be an understatement, I had even died to be brought back with CPR on one occasion and knocked on the Pearly Gates a great deal more with more near death experiences than I can shake a stick at. I was intubated on a ventilator and placed in an induced coma for a full month. This was followed up with two collapsed lungs and a battery of deadly infections, two serious bouts of bronchitis and then bronchial pneumonia. To my knowledge, I walked into history as one of a mere handful of Covid patients to survive the disease with the number of infections and complications I had – 4 months in ICU, 2 months in High Care and another 2 months of Step Down therapy as I even had to learn to simply take a shit in a toilet and even walk again – a total of 8 months spent in hospital and a further 4 months as a oxygen supplement dependent outpatient, before been given an ‘all clear’ a full year later and taken off all drugs and supplemental oxygen.
This is pretty big story for another day, and a lot of people are very intrigued by it, so I am writing a book on it called ‘I’m not dead yet’ – my dark military sense of humour aside, do look out for it.
Images: Me recovering from a coma, giving my best army ‘salute’ just before both lungs collapsed and me sitting up for the first time once lungs drains were removed – copyright Peter Dickens
It took all that to ‘tip my stressor bucket’ – and no doubt I had a massive life and death fight on my hands, but I would have to say this in all honesty, I was substantially compromised by a latent mistrust I picked up as a young man in the Army, especially in 1990. Unlocking that, helped unlock the gag reflexes, which unlocked the fear and ultimately set me on a journey to a healthy recovery – physically and mentally.
Dragon Slaying
Many years after my service, a fellow military veteran, Norman Sander (and ex Sergeant Major in the Natal Carbineers) and I had lunch in London with an ex-BMATT officer, Colonel Paul Davis who had been involved in the South African Forces integration and at one stage headed up the BMATT delegation. He said something interesting, according to the Colonel, the South African Defence Force training modules where draconian at best and styled on the old Nazi Waffen SS model, which demanded absolute iron cast discipline, absolute obedience and absolute goal driven determination to function across multiple voluntary and conscripted outfits often ethnically separated. Notwithstanding his view, I’ve attested to this before, had I not undergone this “draconian” training as an SADF officer I would not have survived my Covid experience, no matter how bad it got I knew I had more in the tank, I’d pushed these limits whilst ‘pissing blood for my pips’ in the SADF as a young man and understood my breaking point from a early age, without this intrinsic knowledge and iron cast focus I would be dead, of that there is absolutely no doubt.
My Commission signed by President F.W. de Klerk, one of his last acts of office
In Conclusion
Now, I’m no ‘Grensvegter’ (Border Warrior), I’m a simple pen pusher, my service pales into insignificance compared to a great many veterans, many I’ve had the privilege to serve with, true soldiers fighting a brutal war in a brutal manner. Nope, I’m not one of those, and nor can I ever be, and nor do I pretend to be, to them the kudos of valour and I mean it.
Here’s a simple thought on my time as a Military Conscript and then a Volunteer, this quote from Czech author Milan Kundera and it resonates with me the most;
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
What this means to us SADF conscripts turned volunteers in 1994, we were on a journey, a ‘struggle’ if you will, to take our fellow citizens out of political oppression into political emancipation and liberty. If we forget our stories in this great struggle, discard them as irrelevant because we are no longer politically convenient, vanquished as ‘SADF’ baby killing monsters, and passed over as fighting for some sort of WOKE idea of ‘white privilege’ – if we don’t resist this and choose ‘forgetting’ instead, then we ultimately betray ourselves, we’ve lost.
On PTSD, it’s manageable for most, but you must get to those internalised ‘stressors’ and truly understand what they are and what caused them. Un-internalising the stressors is a first big step to ridding yourself of PTSD, and that’s why I can say in all honesty I’m happy and stable.
So, I thank all you who have made it to this last part of my ‘story,’ it really is a simple soldier’s small tale with a great deal of political ‘struggle’, and I really hope you’ve picked up some interesting historical snippets on the way, especially the ones which are not really in the broad ANC narrative today of ‘the struggle’ leading to 1994. The ‘truth’ will eventually ‘out’ and I sincerely believe that, and I believe its cathartic and from a cognitive therapy perspective a very necessary ‘out’.
A memoir: By Capt. Peter Albert Dickens (Happily Retired)
Join me for a frank talk on The Battle of Cassinga at Quentin at Oakhurst in Hout Bay on the 24th July. Booking direct with Oakhurst Barn it includes a sit down three course dinner. I’m really looking forward to exchanging views on this poignant and far-reaching battle.
Veterans of this battle specifically and the Border War in general are most welcome, their story needs to be told.
The details again:
Where? ‘Quentin at Oakhurst Barn Restaurant’, 3 Dorman Way, Oakhurst Farm Park – Hout Bay, South Africa, 7806
When? Wednesday 24th July 2019
What Time? 19:00
How much? R 295 pp – includes a three course dinner
The Observation Post 