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The SADF reinvents itself

The failure of Operation Savannah, together with its political fallout, gave rise to a fundamental rethink within the SADF. The campaign exposed a number of organisational, doctrinal, equipment and strategic deficiencies, which had to be addressed rapidly. In fact, the development of a new operational and tactical doctrine was already well under way, as we will see, but Savannah meant that everything had to be accelerated.

Traditionally since 1910, successive South African governments had sought their country’s security within the bosom of the British Empire, and later the Commonwealth. Thus, in 1914 Prime Minister General Louis Botha entered the First World War on Britain’s side. In the 1930s, Prime Minister General JBM Hertzog fiercely opposed Italy’s occupation of Somalia and Ethiopia, and his successor, General Jan Smuts, entered the Second World War on the side of Britain.

By the late 1950s, however, the international situation had started to change. The colonial powers, especially Britain and France, were withdrawing from Africa, and in 1957 Ghana became the first European colony on the continent to gain independence. Not only was the Commonwealth changing from a mainly white club to one dominated by Third World member states, but South Africa’s apartheid policy elicited so much international opposition that the country became ever more isolated. Internally, the Sharpeville and Langa shootings of 1960 led to widespread riots. For the first time, whites in South Africa had to face the possibility of a black revolt.

This background naturally gave rise to new thinking in the Defence Force too. And so, in 1960, the General Staff for the first time prepared an analysis of South Africa’s altered security situation. The paper identified three threat factors, namely, the ideology of racial equality, the growth of black nationalism and the Soviet Union’s plans for world domination.[1] This was the first time that the USSR and communism were identified as threats to South Africa’s security.

A new security strategy

The SADF accordingly readied itself for both conventional and counter­insurgency warfare. As the 1969 Defence White Paper explained: “Although an unconventional threat already exists in the form of terrorism, the possibility of a conventional attack is not excluded.”[2] This approach was based on a new threat analysis developed by the SADF the previous year. The conventional threats foreseen involved a communist invasion or an invasion under the banner of the UN or the OAU – similar to the Korean War – to wrest SWA from South African control. It was also thought that the Rhodesian question could generate a conventional invasion of the Republic. In the eyes of the SADF strategists, the threat of unconventional war would become acute if the Portuguese colonies and Rhodesia fell.[3] They feared that, if SWA were conquered, the possibility existed that the victors could see such an operation as “just one phase in a campaign to ‘liberate’ the other white areas as well”.[4] The collapse of Portuguese rule in Angola and Mozambique and the failure of Operation Savannah brought the threat much closer to home. It was against this background that South African strategists took a good look at the ideas of the French general André Beaufre (1902–1975).

Beaufre served in Algeria during that territory’s war of independence (1954–1962), and based his ideas on counterrevolutionary strategy on the insights he gained there. Although the French won virtually every tactical encounter with the rebels, Beaufre ascribed their defeat to the fact that they could not win over the hearts and minds of the Algerian people. They could not offer the vision of a better future under French rule than an independent Algeria under the rebels. Therefore, he reasoned, the state’s strategic objective in a counterinsurgency war should be

[t]o deprive the enemy of his trump cards. There are two facets to this; we must first maintain and increase our prestige, not merely by showing we have adequate force available but also by showing the future we hold out has possibilities; secondly by thoroughgoing reforms we must cut the ground from under the feet of the malcontents.[5]

The answer, according to Beaufre, was a “total strategy”, of which the “use of military force is only part of the action. The action is total and it must prepare, assist and exploit the results expected from military operations by suitable operations in the psychological, political, economic and diplomatic fields.”[6]

Beaufre also coined the term “total onslaught”, which was later often misunderstood. He did not mean that the onslaught was total in its intensity, but in its breadth. It was total in the sense that it was waged in all fields of life – military, political, diplomatic, economic, religious, cultural, sporting and so on – which was why a “total onslaught” could be countered only by a “total strategy”. The answering total strategy is also not total in its intensity, but rather refers to an overarching vision and programme, to which all aspects of government policy (including military action) have to be tailored.

Another point, which became relevant in the Border War context, was Beaufre’s discussion of the offensive and defensive approach, where he refined ideas developed by Von Clausewitz.[7] The defensive, Beaufre reasoned, “consists of accepting the enemy initiative and rejecting the political arrangement proposed. This attitude can be maintained for a certain length of time but as a rule it does not bring the argument to an end: a defensive attitude cannot lead to any political solution.” The defensive, he continued, “can only pay if it leads sooner or later to a resumption of the initiative, in other words to some offensive action. A counter-offensive is essential if submission to the will of the opponent is to be avoided” (Beaufre’s emphasis).[8]

It will become clear how Beaufre’s thoughts on the twin elements of initiative and counteroffensive were translated into action by the South African government’s security strategy and the SADF’s military strategy. Beaufre visited South Africa in 1974 at the invitation of the South African military attaché in Paris, and even gave a lecture at the Defence Staff College.[9] Under his influence, the Chief of the SADF (and later Minister of Defence), General Magnus Malan, analysed the communist “total onslaught” as being waged against four power bases: political/diplomatic, economic, social/psychological and security.[10] Malan believed that the answer to this total onslaught was a “total strategy” such as Beaufre proposed. As far as could be established, the first reference to a total strategy was made in the Defence White Paper of 1973, but it was mentioned only in passing.[11] Two years later, the idea started to take root and a more elaborate analysis followed.[12] In 1977, then Defence Minister PW Botha tabled a White Paper in which he identified the Soviet Union as the major culprit in the Angolan and South West African conflict, claiming that South Africa is “involved in a war”:

It is therefore essential that a Total National Strategy be formulated at the highest level. The defence of the Republic of South Africa is not solely the responsibility of the Department of Defence. On the contrary . . . [it] is the combined responsibility of all government departments. This can be taken further – it is the responsibility of the entire population, the nation and every population group.[13]

The total strategy was thus defined as “the comprehensive plan to utilise all the means available to a state according to an integrated pattern in order to achieve the national aims within the framework of the specific policies. A total strategy is, therefore, not confined to a particular sphere, but is applicable at all levels and to all functions of the state structure.”[14]

One should not be surprised that it took until 1977 for the government to come up with a coherent and coordinated response to what it perceived as the total onslaught against it. The catalyst was the role of the USSR and Cuba in Angola in the preceding two years. If these two powers had not intervened in 1975, it is likely that the wars and bloodshed up to 1990 would have been much more limited than they eventually were.

On 4 March 1980, the government accepted a top-secret policy document, informally known as the Green Book, in which the total strategy was explained.[15] The threat, according to the document, came primarily from the Soviet Union, which would use “proxy forces” (in other words, the Cubans, SWAPO and the ANC/SACP) against the Republic. This threat was so serious that it could “totally destroy” the country.

The document gave details of policies to be followed on constitutional, social and economic terrain. This followed closely the policy of the Botha government, which was to reform apartheid and to give blacks a stake in the battle against “communist imperialism”. The main pillars of apartheid were not really questioned. On the contrary, although the human rights of black South Africans were recognised in theory, this had to be exercised through the so-called black homelands. White rule over “white” South Africa had to be safeguarded.

As far as security matters were concerned, a growth in ANC terrorist activity was expected. To combat the threat, South Africa needed to establish a “constellation” of friendly neighbouring states. If this succeeded, the threat of a conventional invasion of the country could be contained to the area north of 10° South. If not, the threat could move southwards to South Africa’s neighbours. The document foresaw that South Africa would

ensure its national security through coordinated offensive pro-active behaviour on all power bases in the strategic and tactic areas. It does not imply that the RSA is striving for aggression against any state or group or is planning any territorial expansion, but if any threat rises from wherever against the RSA, the necessary defensive or pre-emptive operations will have to be conducted against those threats.

Moreover, the prestige of “resistance movements in neighbouring states” had to be promoted “where it is in the RSA’s interest”.

Based on this thinking, the government divided southern Africa into three strategic categories. The first was the heartland, South Africa and South West Africa. The second consisted of countries of tactical importance, and included Botswana, southern Angola, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique south of the Zambezi. The third category was the area regarded as of strategic importance, and which reached as far north as the equator.[16]

A new counterinsurgency doctrine

With SWAPO bands becoming ever more active inside South West Africa, the SADF urgently had to develop a proper counterinsurgency doctrine. The army had started a counterinsurgency training course in 1960, and was also introduced to American doctrine on the matter when then Major Magnus Malan attended a US Army staff course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1962.[17] The course taught that “[w]hile a military campaign could delay an insurgency, it could be defeated only by nonmilitary measures designed to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the population”.[18] Malan later introduced this approach into the SADF.

During the 1960s and early 1970s the army (and SAAF)[19] had observers attached to the Portuguese colonial forces in Angola and Mozambique. The big expert here was Commandant (later Brigadier General) Willem “Kaas” van der Waals,[20] who later wrote a book about the subject.[21] The war in Rhodesia was also studied, especially because several South African units, as well as individual officers and NCOs, had fought clandestinely on the Rhodesian side. As a matter of fact, by late 1979, two companies of 1 Parachute Battalion as well as the entire 3 SA Infantry Battalion were fighting as task forces Yankee, Zulu and X-Ray, respectively, in Rhodesian camouflage uniforms alongside the Rhodesians.[22]

Beaufre was an important source for SADF thinking on the security-strategic level, where people like PW Botha and Magnus Malan moved. But such thinking often went over the heads of practical-minded officers who had to fight a war and kill the enemy. According to General Georg Meiring, a more widely read book was The Art of Counter-Revolutionary Warfare by the American military writer John McCuen.[23] McCuen recommends that the counter revolutionary should have clear and encompassing objectives; that the masses, especially the “silent majority”, be mobilised against the insurgents; and that the efforts of all state departments be united in a single, overarching and integrated plan.[24]

In general, most officers’ interest was limited to the tactical level. The main reason was the traditional contempt for intellectually schooled officers – a quality shared with the British Army. “From the time of Union,” Annette Seegers writes, “debates about the Department of Defence held that military experience counted for more than intellectual or staff ability. Staff courses and later joint staff courses at the Defence College favoured those with operational experience . . . Even for its elite, the SADF thought theory best ignored.” [25]

There were important exceptions, though, such as Lieutenant General CA “Pop” Fraser, Chief of Joint Operations in the 1960s, who in 1969 wrote an unpublished study entitled “Lessons learnt from past revolutionary wars”.[26] Fraser had made a study of the available literature about counterinsurgency warfare at the time and had distilled the prevailing insights for his readers. His fundamental point of departure was “that victory does not come from the clash of two armies on a field of battle”. Anticipating PW Botha and Magnus Malan’s total strategy approach, he wrote that counterinsurgency warfare had to be conducted “as an interlocking system of actions, political, economic, administrative, psychological, police and military”. The revolutionary wages his war by gaining the support of the people. A government can thus be victorious only “by recapturing the support of the masses, and by the complete destruction of that organisation and the eradication of its influence upon the people”. Referring to historic examples, Fraser wrote that most counterinsurgency wars were won militarily, but lost politically.[27] Because the objective of both sides is to win over the population itself, “political action remains paramount throughout the war”. This means that the interplay between politics and military action is so intricate that the two cannot be separated. “On the contrary, every military and administrative move has to be weighed with regard to its political effects and vice versa”. The inescapable conclusion, he emphasised, was “that the overall responsibility should stay with the civilian power at every possible level”.[28] He strongly recommended (unspecified) political reforms, and stressed that the locals’ life under the government must be perceptibly better than that offered by the insurgents.[29]

Fraser’s work was widely studied in the SADF and in government circles. In 1985, President PW Botha wrote a foreword when the main study was distributed to senior officials.[30] In his memoirs, General Jannie Geldenhuys devotes considerable space to Fraser’s ideas. “I identified myself intellectually and emotionally with the contents and made the ideas my own,” he wrote.[31]

It is thus clear that the South Africans, in theory at any rate, had developed a sophisticated approach to SWAPO’s onslaught, which embodied a good understanding of revolutionary guerrilla warfare principles. The question is: to what extent did they practise what they preached?

A return to mobile warfare

The traditional South African method of warfare is based on one overarching concept: mobility. From the 18th century, three factors encouraged this: the vast spaces, a relatively small population and a heavy reliance on militias (called commandos). Individuals could never remain in the field for long periods, as they had to return to their farms to plough or harvest. Campaigns therefore had to be concluded swiftly.

Infantry and cavalry in the European sense had only a limited application in southern Africa; the infantry were not mobile enough to cover the vast distances quickly enough, while cavalry were overly reliant on their horses and could not fight on foot. Thus warfare in this part of the world naturally revolved around mounted infantry, that is, fighters able to move around rapidly and across great distances on horseback, and able to shoot from horseback, but who, having entered a battle, would mostly fight on foot.

The mounted infantry commando concept reached its zenith during the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), when the Boers mostly outclassed their British counterparts on the tactical and operational levels. It is interesting to note that the British followed the Boer example later in the war by exchanging their infantry and cavalry for mounted infantry, although in general they seldom matched the astounding mobility of the commandos.[32]

This Boer phenomenon never became the subject of military treatises or doctrine. It grew, as it were, out of the ground and simply became second nature. It is, therefore, not surprising that the South African invasion of Italian-occupied Somalia and Ethiopia in 1940/1941 was a classic example of mobile mounted infantry warfare – the horse simply having been exchanged for the lorry. The South Africans achieved great mobility by moving their infantry about in lorries and having them dismount when the need arose. It was, in fact, a sort of motorised Anglo-Boer War.[33]

Of course, after the Somalian and Ethiopian campaigns the South Africans moved to the Western Desert and Italy, where their freedom of movement and independence of decision-making were greatly constrained. South Africa had two infantry divisions in North Africa and an armoured division in Italy, which formed part of the British Eighth Army and later the US Fifth Army. These formations had to do what the senior British and American generals ordered. Moreover, the mountainous terrain of Italy was not conducive to the traditional mobile South African way of war.[34] As Brigadier General George Kruys wrote in a study, during that time “[t]he South African military thus experienced advance, attack, defence and withdrawal actions in largely set-piece operations”.[35] It was this experience that dominated the SADF until the 1960s and resulted in a Defence Force still very much in Second World War mode.[36]

Another problem was that few South African officers had practical experience of war. Most were too young to have participated in the Second World War, and the nature of that conflict was very different from the one that was about to begin.[37]

After a new threat analysis in 1968, a series of symposia was held to thrash out the problem. It was decided – against intense resistance, it must be added – to move away from the Second World War set-piece approach to mobile warfare. This was followed by a report of an Officers’ Council, which recommended that tactical surprise, commando attacks, strongpoints, infiltration attacks, raids and mobile defence techniques had to form the future nucleus of the army’s new operational doctrine of mobile warfare.[38]

These new ideas were, in large measure, based on fresh thinking by a group of younger officers at the Military College in Voortrekkerhoogte, such as Colonel (as he was then) Constand Viljoen, who became commander of the college in 1966. He and others began to see that the old approach would not work, at any rate not in Africa. The problem was that the distances were too great, the spaces too vast and the pool of manpower too small. The old approach would require large armies, which South Africa simply did not have. So the idea grew – as he told an interviewer – that “our whole tactical doctrine is wrong. Then we started with the idea of mobile warfare.” This was “based on not to hold ground but to create the design of battle in such a way that you would lure the enemy into [a] killing ground and then [utilise] the superiority of firepower and movement, you would kill him completely. . . . Never think about a battle that could compare with El Alamein, it’s completely impossible. In Africa you don’t operate that way.”[39]

In other words, instead of the holding and occupation of territory being the fundamental points of departure, factors like rapid movement (mobility), getting into the enemy’s rear areas, surprise and misleading the enemy would become instruments to make it impossible or difficult for the enemy to fight in the first place. All these new ideas were tested in exercises, with Land Rovers playing the role of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs).[40]

Kruys also highlights the influence of the writings of Frank Kitson, the British general who came up with the idea of combat groups and combat teams, battalion/regimental-size and company/squadron-size composite, ad hoc units drawn from different corps to provide a balanced force in the field – in other words, armour, infantry, artillery, etc., mixed in a single combat group.[41] This fitted in with the South African tradition of mounted infantry warfare.

By 1975, the SADF reported that the army had “finalised its doctrine for the landward battle”[42] – just in time for Operation Savannah a few months later. The SADF learnt several lessons from Savannah, which Kruys summarises as follows:

 • The fog that descended from the political level and obscured the view of the field commanders should be evaded. The aim of future operations would be precisely formulated. Incremental and extended involvement was out; operations would start with sufficient forces and would be of limited endurance.

 • It was evident that the SADF was under-equipped for the type of mobile warfare that was being experimented with.

 • A heavy armoured car, a proper infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) and modern long-range artillery were needed.

 • The concept of combat groups and combat teams drawn from different corps was sound and had to be developed further.

 • It was felt that the brigade would become the basic operational combat level for the SADF.[43]

Having a new doctrine is fine, but it has to be implemented to make any difference. For this purpose, at the end of 1973, 1 SA Infantry Battalion (1 SAI) was moved from Oudtshoorn to Bloemfontein to become the test-bed for the new mechanised approach and to be near the armour units with which the mechanised infantry would have to work. The unit, with Commandant Joep Joubert in command, started off with the 30 Saracen armoured personnel carriers the army had at the time. Three years later, amid much excitement, the first Ratel IFVs arrived. The mobile doctrine was developed by then majors Roland de Vries, Tony Savides and Reg Otto (later Lieutenant General and Chief of the Army in the 1990s).[44] De Vries later became one of the army’s foremost experts on mobile mixed-arms operations.

The SADF’s doctrinal development was furthered by sending several middle-ranking officers on courses with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), which had amassed considerable experience with mobile mechanised warfare during the wars of 1948/1949, 1967 and 1973, and would expand this in 1982. In 1977, 22 South African officers attended courses at the IDF’s combat school, and others followed in subsequent years. Officers who attended mechanised warfare courses in Israel included men who became commanders of elite conventional units like 61 Mechanised Battalion Group (61 Mech), men such as commandants (both later colonels) Gert van Zyl and Ep van Lill.[45] The SADF’s tank doctrine was, in addition, much influenced by that of the Israelis.[46]

The SADF took over the Israeli operational planning cycle, as perfected during the Six Day War of 1967 and the October War of 1973. This boils down to simultaneous planning on an integrated basis with free liaison between different staffs. In other words, armour, infantry, artillery, logistics, air force – all involved – would come together and thrash out one or alternative operational plans, which would then be submitted to the senior commanders.[47] This debating procedure was more democratic than rigid decision-making at the top.

The downward devolution of decision-making played an important role for the SADF. As Roland de Vries writes:

The South African combat leaders were afforded a great measure of initiative down to combat group and combat team [more or less battalion and company/squadron] level. This stimulated independent thought and conduct to a great extent down to ground level. The FAPLA enemy did not have this powerful and flexible attribute. The poor devils had to ask permission for everything and were not allowed to think for themselves.[48]

He points out, though, that things were different for SWAPO and UNITA guerrillas.[49] However, this devolution of power was in sharp contrast to the rigid control in FAPLA and the Cuban army, and helps explain the operational success the SADF repeatedly achieved in its conventional operations inside Angola.

Operation Savannah was indeed the first practical test for the SADF’s new doctrine. On an operational and tactical level, it worked very well, although Savannah was a strategic disaster. After the operation, the Commission of Investigation into the Future Planning of the South African Defence Force was set up, with Jannie Geldenhuys as chairman, for what would, in effect, be a defence review for the 1980s. In the wake of Savannah, the committee report emphasised, among other things, the influence of the “space factor”. “Area is the only relatively stable factor as far as the RSA’s environmental analysis is concerned,” the committee wrote, although it noted that “the space between the RSA and its enemies has narrowed alarmingly”. For the SADF’s operational doctrine, this meant that “[t]he RSA is a vast country with extended borders and a long coastline. This means that the SADF has to operate in an area and not along a front. This requires special attention to logistics, strategic and tactical mobility, the need for blanket cover, decentralisation of execution and a night-fighting ability.”[50]

One prerequisite, as the army realised, was to couple mobility with devastating firepower. As Roland de Vries, at the time second in command of the Army Battle School at Lohatlha, and a junior officer wrote in 1987: “After conducting outflanking manoeuvres or penetrations, the force which has taken the offensive, can attack vital installations behind enemy lines, wreaking havoc. If the enemy’s warfare doctrines favour positional rather than mobile warfare, defeat should be imminent and swift.” In support of the concept of mobility, they offered a quotation from the British historian Thomas Pakenham about the Anglo-Boer War: “There was one iron law of strategy imprinted on the mind of the Boers like a law of the wild: the answer to superior numbers is superior mobility.” With this mobility the objective should be “to out-manoeuvre, rather than engage and become involved in a full-scale confrontation with the enemy”.[51]

De Vries, in fact, was one of the foremost SADF thinkers in developing a new mobile warfare doctrine suited to the African battle space. As second in command of 1 SAI in the late 1970s, he – together with Ep van Lill and André Kruger – “developed the training systems, training programmes, training doctrine and aides-memoire for mechanised infantry”. They tested their ideas in battle simulation exercises at De Brug and Schmidtsdrif, and even involved the air force in order to experiment with the “evolving tactical and operational mobile warfare concepts – one of these being the comfortable utilisation of air support with the close coordination of indirect fire support and ground manoeuvre”. He also writes, “We taught our combat leaders situational awareness, thinking one step ahead, fast moving action, leading from the front, quick orders and smoothly attacking from the line of advance.”[52]

A new structure and new equipment

Operation Savannah had mixed consequences for the SADF. In Willem Steenkamp’s words: “For the South Africans – short of men, short of equipment, their defence force still struggling to wrench itself free from the decades of neglect that had followed World War II – the situation was immensely worrying.”[53] Yet it was the army’s first experience of mobile warfare in the southern African bush, and as such created a laboratory where the new doctrine could be tested.

One of the most important consequences of Operation Savannah was that it showed the inadequacy of the South African weaponry. Magnus Malan lamented the country’s lack of “comparable firepower”: “It was a shock to compare the obsolete weaponry of the Defence Force with those of the enemy. This shortcoming needed urgent rectification,” he wrote in his memoirs.[54] The need for an infantry fighting vehicle to replace the obsolete Saracen armoured personnel carrier had been identified by 1968,[55] but development really took off in the wake of Operation Savannah.

The fact is that the motorised infantry’s main vehicles – Unimog and Bedford trucks – were too soft for the harsh African terrain. A proper infantry fighting vehicle was necessary in order to transform the motorised infantry into mechanised infantry. The four-wheeled Eland armoured cars also found it difficult to move everywhere – the setback at Ebo occurred partly as a result of this deficiency.[56] The army had very little with which to counter Soviet-supplied T-34 and T-54/55 tanks used by FAPLA and the Cubans; the Eland’s low-pressure 90-mm gun did not have the necessary penetrative capacity. The Second World War-vintage G-2 140-mm (5,5-inch) gun used by the artillery had a range somewhat shorter than the enemy equivalent – 18 km versus 23 km – while the BM-21 (“Stalin organ”) tactical rocket system used by the Cubans was greatly worrying. The need for something similar in the SADF was identified.[57]

A re-equipment programme had started in 1974, but Operation Savannah emphasised the need for rapid action. One of the first breakthroughs was the development of the Ratel IFV. Three years after the prototype saw the light of day, in 1974, the Minister of Defence reported to Parliament that the Ratel had been “successfully industrialised”.[58]

The significance of the Ratel can hardly be exaggerated.[59] It was the single most important weapon system in the execution of cross-border operations in Angola. With its six wheels, later equipped with “flat-run” tyres, the Ratel was the army’s most mobile vehicle in the bush throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The infantry fighting version was equipped with a rapid-firing 20-mm gun, able to fire both armour-piercing and high-explosive ammunition, and the gunner was able to switch instantly between the two types. It had space for a section of infantry, who could either stand with their upper bodies out of hatches on top or shoot out of portholes in the side of the vehicle.

The infantry could therefore enter the battlefield in an armoured vehicle that had a formidable fighting capability in its own right. When needed, the section could jump out within seconds and fight further on foot. Not only did the Ratel give the infantry a hitherto unheard-of degree of mobility, but it also enabled the troops to enter battles relatively fresh – at any rate, compared with soldiers who had to walk long distances carrying heavy packs to reach the front. Furthermore, the Ratel gave protection against small-arms fire, although not against the formidable Soviet-supplied 23-mm anti-aircraft gun, with which both SWAPO and FAPLA were equipped.

There were various models of the Ratel. Apart from the above-mentioned Ratel 20, there was one with a 90-mm gun, which was basically the Eland 90’s turret on top of the Ratel chassis. This model was utilised as an armoured car and as an antitank weapon, and even at times successfully took on the Soviet T-54/55 tank, although its gun was not really up to the task. Against infantry or lightly armoured targets, it was very useful. In close-quarters fighting, as against the T-54/55, its main protection was its formidable mobility, although the lack of a stabilised gun somewhat mitigated this (the Ratel had to stop each time if it wanted to fire accurately, giving up the protection its mobility offered). One could, of course, reason that the dense bush of southern Angola itself acted as a kind of protection, because firing distances were often as little as 30 m. The bush was, in effect, “neutral”, as it protected both SWAPO and the Angolans as well as the SADF forces. The decisive factor here was reaction speed. This improved only through intensive training, a field in which the SADF was vastly superior to its adversaries.

Then there was the Ratel Command, which was specially equipped as a mobile headquarters and armed with a 12,7-mm machine gun. Another model became a mobile 81-mm mortar platform, and later on even an antitank missile model was developed. Taking everything into account, the Ratel was probably the best and most flexible weapon system in the army’s arsenal, one without which its operations in Angola would have been impossible.

The Ratel was only the second IFV in the world. The first was the Soviet BMP-1, which entered service in 1969. After the BMP-1 and the Ratel, several other countries followed suit, including the US, which developed the Bradley, the British the Warrior and the Germans the Marder.[60] In this regard, the Ratel was a real trailblazer.

To utilise the Ratel, a new breed of infantryman was needed. Hitherto, the South African army had deployed either light or motorised infantry. The new doctrine saw the introduction of mechanised infantry. In January 1977, the Bloemfontein-based 1 SA Infantry, with Joep Joubert in command, was tasked as the training unit for all mechanised infantry. While on deployment in Ovamboland, Joubert had evaluated the possibility of establishing a permanent mechanised combat group in the operational area, and his recommendations led to the formation of Battle Group Juliet, under the command of Commandant Frank Bestbier. At the beginning of 1979, it evolved into 61 Mechanised Battalion Group, which was a totally new kind of animal.[61] Known simply as 61 Mech, the unit consisted of two mechanised infantry companies and an armoured car squadron, as well as its own organic artillery battery, antitank platoon, mortar platoon and combat engineer troop.[62] It became arguably the most experienced conventional warfare unit in the army.

Another weapon system that was a direct result of the lessons learnt in Operation Savannah was the medium G-5 gun (155 mm) and its self-propelled model, the G-6, which replaced the obsolete G-2. The development of the G-5 weapons system started in 1977.[63] The first series production began in 1982, and the G-5/G-6 was continually improved. These guns had a range of 39 km, which is unsurpassed even today.[64] (The range has since been improved to an astounding 75 km.)[65] The BM-21 “Stalin organ” was copied and improved in the form of the Valkiri 127-mm multi-launched rocket system. With its improved artillery, the army became able to shell any opponent accurately and from a distance, without the enemy’s being able to counter it.

The lack of a proper anti-aircraft system remained a problem. The Cactus missile system was designed for base protection and fared badly in the bush. The only interim system was the Ystervark – a simple 20-mm rapid-firing gun mounted on the back of a lorry. It was hardly adequate for use against MiG-21s or MiG-23s.

All of this was supplemented with the Olifant Mk 1 main battle tank, which was a drastic modernisation of the old Centurion. The petrol engine was replaced with an adapted Caterpillar diesel engine and a new stabilised 105-mm gun was installed, together with additional armour. The Olifant would form an important fist in the final phase of the war, and was designed as the answer to the Soviet T-62 tank, which was first spotted in southern Africa in the mid-1980s.[66]

The structure of the army was also changed to counter the threat both from within and without. To begin with, national service was extended from one to two years in January 1978 on the advice of a visiting Israeli officer, Colonel Amos Baran.[67] Even so, the SADF struggled with a severe shortage of manpower throughout the war.[68] Doubling the time the troops had to serve meant that they could be thoroughly trained in the first year and that more men would be operationally available during the second. With the SADF’s excellent training, this made a huge difference on the battlefield.

Secondly, two types of units were established – area protection and conventional units. The former consisted mainly of commandos (militia) and were organised in regional commands, specialised in counterinsurgency warfare. The latter formed the conventional fist and was organised into two divisions, 7 Motorised Infantry Division and 8 Armoured Division, both consisting of three brigades and other divisional troops. After 1978, these were complemented by 44 Parachute Brigade, with three battalions and other brigade support units. This conventional force was also trained in counterinsurgency warfare.[69]

These units were mostly manned by the Active Citizen Force, which would be called up only when needed or in a crisis. Most of the normal manpower needs were supplied by National Servicemen.

The army’s order of battle from the late 1970s onward, therefore, looked like this:[70]

This reinvented SADF went to war in all earnest in the late 1970s.