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.
4
On a security-strategic level, South Africa was in an unwinnable situation by the 1970s. Both within South West Africa and internationally, it was regarded as an illegal colonial occupier. Officially, South Africa administrated SWA “in the spirit” of the old League of Nations mandate of 1919 (revoked by the International Court of Justice in 1971), but in practice the territory was run as a fifth province of the Republic. Initially, Pretoria was intent on applying the policy of grand apartheid in SWA, with self-governing and eventually independent homelands for the different black ethnic groups. Petty apartheid – segregation at a grassroots level – was applied assiduously by an army of officials and policemen. This, as we have seen, provided the main cause of dissent and gave rise to SWAPO’s insurgency.
Pretoria responded to the challenge with a pragmatism that, in hindsight, was quite surprising. Instead of the usual semi-theological arguments that apartheid was a naturally ordained way to order human relations and a blanket refusal to give up the territory, the government reacted with some flexibility. In 1973, Prime Minister John Vorster declared that the SWA population would have to decide its own future, thereby tacitly accepting that the territory could become independent. He also undertook to abandon the grand apartheid scheme of territorial separation for whites and blacks.[1]
Vorster also received the UN special envoy, Alfred Escher, implicitly acknowledging that the UN had a say in the territory’s future. Four years later, a conference between SWA political parties was convened in the Windhoek Turnhalle building, where South West Africans were allowed to decide on the political structures that would govern them. SWAPO viewed the process as a sham, though, and boycotted it. But the apartheid laws were progressively repealed: job reservation was abolished in 1975, along with the hated pass laws and laws forbidding mixed marriages and sex across the colour line, and the principle of equal pay for equal work was accepted in 1978. All of this was a rather adventurous process, seeing that it was still unthinkable in the Republic to contemplate more than just cosmetic changes to apartheid.[2]
In a top-secret assessment, signed by Dr Niel Barnard, director-general of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), it was concluded that white South West Africans had to be convinced “that they cannot demand the same as the whites in the RSA” (with regards to apartheid) and that they had to make “compromises”. The “big chasm between white and black aspirations” had to be taken into account in the formation of a united front, wrote Barnard.[3] Looking back on the 1980s, Barnard later told writer Padraig O’Malley, “[t]here is no military solution to any conflict in the world; there are only political solutions”.[4]
In the military, the changes were reflected in an ever-increasing number of blacks and coloureds fighting for the South African administration. In 1975, the South African Cape Corps (SACC) was for the first time designated a combat unit, and, later that year, sent a contingent of 190 men to the South West African operational area to take part in counterinsurgency operations. The navy followed suit, while the army established various ethnic-based infantry battalions.[5] The first unit to allow blacks to join the hitherto lily-white SADF was 32 Battalion