THE BORDER WAR - PART 2 - OKATOPE, OPS MEEBOS -A South Africa Army conscript chats with his Corporal
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- čas přidán 21. 05. 2021
- PART 2: OKATOPE and OPS MEEBOS
IN THIS EPISODE:
Oshivelo, Okatope, SADF war strategy in Owamboland, Koevoet contacts, Ops Meebos, Ondjiva, Hitting landmines, SWAPO bases, MIG jets, Base 9 HAA, Puma shot down, Ops around Okatope, Kim Kallie music concert, guarding The Bridge
SERIES DESCRIPTION
Steve and Pierre discuss their service in the SADF army 40 years ago. Called up for 2 years to 6SAI (6th South African Infantry) in Grahamstown. Recollections of 9 months training then 15 months serving in the Border War with Alpha Company.
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TOPICS COVERED IN THIS SERIES:
- Infantry training
- Patrolling the Limpopo River (SA/Zimbabwe border)
- Active service in SWA at Okatope, Okankolo, Alpha Tower, Ondangwa
- External operations into Angola
- Contacts, landmines, patrols, life in the bush, warfare tactics, Koevoet & 32Bn, the good and the bad, humorous and tragic events
Thankyou for your service. These video's are fascinating and historically significant - please continue with them
History something that we can't run away from. You served your country then and u are true soliders. Keep this information in a book form, it will be great, currently soliders need to learn more about this historical events, it is part of SA Military History. Thank you for sharing
They did not serve the country though, they served National Party-Broederbond minority interests to the detriment of the country. That's a huge difference! The political agenda behind the military operations they participated in as perpetrators was never intended to be in the interest of South Africans.
Also, how can you be so subserviant to mercenaries of a regime which was busy killing Blacks in order to maintain their utopia of a white Afrikaner supremacy in South Africa? Do you not have any sense of consciousness and personal integrity?
While other countries punish past war criminals like these two chaps in the video in South Africa we have the funny situation where not only do we let them get away with impunity, but we even have Blacks acting in a subservient manner towards such criminals needy for their approval. Since when do we ask criminals for their approval?
I flew from Walvis Bay to Pretoria in a Herculies. Seats folded out of the sides. There were only 6 of us.
I was at the SA Police base at Okatope in 1980 about 1 km down the road from the the SA Army military base.
Phillip de Freitas and my self engineered the fixing of the ice cream machine , the Brigadier of sector 10 heard about it and made a special visit , R1 a fire bucket
I was a Bombardier in 14 Field Artillery . We went to Pretoria to escort a train with new Land Rovers and Bedfords
In regards to the structure of Koevoet and the Rhodesian Selous Scouts; although the structure and make-up may have been similar their operational methods were totally different.
In country the Selous Scouts operated as pseudo groups. Their objective was to make contact with enemy groups, establish strength, composition and objectives. They would then call in Fire Force to deal with them so as not to compromise their operations. When operating internally the their area of operation was frozen; meaning other army units and police support units were not allowed to operate in that area for fear of blue-on-blue events which had occurred. They were known as "Eskimos" in this context.
Externally Selous Scouts were used in direct operations and in support roles like tracking and Op's.
Fire Force were heli-bourne strike units composed mainly of RLI and Rhodesian African Rifles (PF) that reacted to call outs based on OP's or Selous Scout/SAS operations where defined enemy groups were identified at a specific locations. The SADF did train RECCE units in this type of operation but I don't know if they was used in the same way as they were used in Rhodesia.
The CZcams channel "Fighting Men of Rhodesia" provides a lot of detail and first hand experience of the men and operational styles used.
With regard to Koevoet - Napoleon once said that a war has never been won with rose water - unfortunately this is a fact.
Pieter, yes fair comment but still I do not have to like it. They were extremely effective.
I also felt the patrolling tactics sucked. Most of the infantry heavy lifting of the war was done by the professionals, most of whom were foreign (Koevoet, 32Bn, 101Bn), and most of the action was north of the Angolan border. Perhaps the thinking was to keep conscripts away from potential casualties, or perhaps the focus was on keeping conscripts in units that were "manageable" in a hierarchical way.
Proudly served with my brothers in arm 32Battalion
Walter, interesting comment. I read later that the powers that be wanted qhite conscipt casualties kept to a minimum. During Hooper, Packer and Modular, Unita provided most of the infantry. And the did suffer big losses.
When the generals wanted to attack Cuito from the west it was shot down, as the people in SA did not know we were involved that heavily in Angola atvthe time
At 38 mins you mention the rough treatment of civilians by Koevoet and your discomfort.
The reality of this war and the one in Rhodesia was that the ordinary tribesmen just wanted to get on with their lives and really had no particular interest in the politics of either protagonist. They were caught between a rock and hard place.
During the Rhodesian war ( I lived through that) tribesmen who failed to shelter, feed and provide sexual gratification to insurgent groups were; all summarily executed by locking them in their huts and burning them alive; forcing the wife of the headman to behead her husband with an axe or brutal beatings, amputations of tongues, hands feet etc.
The government tried to counter this by creating Protected villages that weren't popular. Hearts and minds programmes were introduced in 1977 and despite all that the brutal terror, false promises of wealth etc (still employed today) finally subverted large areas and ultimately got them into power.
56:13 There was no "civil war" in Angola after 1975. The internal race for the national leadership between FNLA, MPLA and UNITA was won by the MPLA. FNLA was defeated and they never had a major constituency to begin with, UNITA was not widely popular outside limited tribal confines.
It was Apartheid South Africa and rightwing "cold warriors" in the West that decided to create a "civil war" by bolstering the remnants of UNITA and FNLA as their regional cold war proxies against the influence of the non-aligned and socialist allies of the MPLA Angolan government. They caused the deaths of so many ten-thousands of civilians!
Quick question, just out of curiosity, are you Angolan?