He also completed an extensive infantry course in the United States. This was where his interest in the methods and activities of the British Special Air Service (SAS) and the US Marine Corps took root. At 1 Parachute Battalion he wrote a letter to Cmdt. Louw that provided the spark for the founding of a unit similar to the SAS in South Africa. Subsequently he and Louw had regular discussions about unconventional warfare.
Louw, who had been promoted in the meantime, had a meeting in Pretoria with Breytenbach and Maj. Dudley Coventry, commander of C Squadron SAS Rhodesia. Thereafter they were intent on setting up a unit similar to the SAS. When Louw became Chief of the Army the following year (on 1 December 1967), he immediately arranged for a hand-picked team of men to be sent to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) for training by C Squadron SAS.
Jan Breytenbach was part of the group, and the other members included men such as Eddie Webb, Boytjie Viviers and Barrie Ferreira. Others were Frank Bestbier, Yogi Potgieter, Johnny Kruger, Pep van Zyl and Tillie Smit. This team could possibly form the nucleus of Lt. Gen. Louw’s envisaged unit.
It was a gruelling selection course in which the Rhodesian instructors showed the South Africans no mercy. The group was exposed to advanced demolition, signals and parachuting (for those who were qualified jumpers). This was followed by battle drills at small-team level, rock climbing, abseiling and speed marches with heavy packs.
In southern Matabeleland the course participants had to undergo an escape-and-evasion exercise. They were locked up for days in a tiny cell with hardly any food and subjected to interrogation. Eventually they were carted off in a cattle truck, but they managed to break out and fled. Breytenbach was captured during this phase and subjected to a series of interrogation techniques that included having a bag pulled over his head, being kept awake continually and having cold water poured over him at night.
Those who had endured the tests successfully were taken to the Zambezi Valley where they did a survival and tracking course at the Chewore River. Next they went to Lake Kariba for the final phase of their training. Only a handful of candidates passed the selection course, including Breytenbach, Yogi Potgieter and Pep van Zyl.
The successful candidates received their SAS berets and belts during a function held at the SAS headquarters in Salisbury (now Harare), following which they returned to South Africa. Nobody knew what the next step would be, but by this time Breytenbach was like a coiled spring. He was determined to present the same selection course on home soil as soon as South Africa’s own SAS-type unit was formally approved.
The genesis and establishment of a specialist unconventional fighting unit in the SADF would turn out to be an integrated process in which more than one factor played a role. The end result would be the birth of a unit that differed completely from any existing unit in the SADF.
But a lot still had to happen before this ideal could be realised. The breakaway state of Biafra (part of Nigeria) was at that stage an unfamiliar name to many South Africans. And it was there that a conflict was brewing that was to have a decisive influence on the founding of an SAS-type unit in South Africa.
2
Strange destination: Biafra
Far north from South Africa, in Nigeria, a civil war was raging. The conflict had started after Col. Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, military governor of that country’s Eastern Region, unilaterally declared the area a sovereign state on 30 May 1967. At first there was no noteworthy reaction, but gradually skirmishes broke out between forces of the new Republic of Biafra and the Nigerian government, which soon escalated into a full-scale civil war.
Biafra had meagre military supplies, and Nigeria had immediately blockaded its ports to boot. The breakaway state with its population of 14 million found itself pitted againt the rest of Nigeria’s 41 million. Only four African states – Gabon, Zambia, Tanzania and Ivory Coast – recognised Biafra officially. France and Portugal covertly supported the new state. In military terms it seemed like a hopeless situation for the Biafrans, yet the war would last for more than two years.3
In early 1969, Gen. Fritz Loots (then Director of Military Intelligence) was in the Angolan capital Luanda to visit his Portuguese counterpart. One afternoon there was an unexpected knock at his hotel door. The visitors were two black men. We are army officers from Biafra, they told the surprised Loots. He found the situation exceedingly strange. Two West Africans wishing to hold talks with an officer of the SADF was not an everyday occurrence. After the initial polite pleasantries, they came to the point: Biafra was requesting assistance from South Africa – weapons, ammunition, explosives, mines and medical supplies.
Back in South Africa, Loots briefed the then minister of defence, PW Botha, on the situation. When Botha asked Loots what he would recommend, Loots’s view was that South Africa should assist the Biafrans. Botha doubted whether supplying them with weapons would help; Nigeria was too strong for Biafra. Loots pointed out, however, that assistance to Biafra might benefit South Africa by opening closed doors to a few other African countries as well as to France.
Loots planned to assist Biafra with covert logistical support as well as military training. The need for a Special Forces unit might have taken root in his mind during this time. After all, a highly clandestine task such as guerrilla training in Biafra did not fall within the scope of an ordinary defence force.
As a first step, he looked for someone who would be equal to the covert mission. Once again the name of Jan Breytenbach (who had meanwhile been promoted to major) came up. Loots requested him to assemble a three-man team for the mission. Breytenbach’s first choice was Yogi Potgieter, who had passed the Rhodesian SAS selection course with him in 1967. Trevor Floyd (of 1 Parachute Battalion) was his next choice. He asked Trevor to nominate another person, which was how FC van Zyl (a fellow paratrooper and Trevor’s bosom buddy) became the third member.
Breytenbach kept his team in the dark about their destination right until the end. We’re going to Angola to train Portuguese soldiers, he said.
Breytenbach first went to Biafra on his own to do a recce. The mission required thorough planning as the entire area was besieged. For security reasons he flew via Paris, France, to Gabon. Jack Mulloch, who was based in Rhodesia and owned his own fleet of DC-7 aircraft, piloted Breytenbach personally on his first flight from Gabon to Biafra. They took off after dark and flew at a dangerously low altitude to evade the Nigerian radar and attack aircraft. Finally they touched down at Biafra’s Uli airport without incident.
The Biafrans thought Breytenbach would help them solve all their problems, and welcomed him cordially. They seemed to be well set up militarily. It was only when he insisted on inspecting the ‘front’ that he found out the deployment on the Imo River left much to be desired. Instead of waging a guerrilla war, which would have seemed advisable in the light of their military shortcomings, the Biafran officers had set themselves up for a conventional war. Breytenbach was amazed that they were still managing to hold out.
In South Africa, Trevor, FC and Yogi were still under the impression that they were bound for Angola. Trevor and FC were on a course when they were instructed to buy civilian clothes and report to Breytenbach in Pretoria. Trevor purchased a white suit with a matching hat. The outfit made him look like a ‘Mexican gangster’, he said. But he reckoned he was dressed appropriately to blend in inconspicuously with his fellow travellers on the intended journey.
On the eve of their departure Breytenbach surprised them with the news that they were not going to Angola, but to Biafra. None of them had ever heard of Biafra. When he explained that it was in Nigeria, they did not know where that was either. Moreover, they had to fly there via France.
Yogi, who was the last to depart, joined the group in France, and they flew together to Libreville, Gabon. Everything went smoothly, except that – without anyone being consulted on the matter – an unknown British member with the codename ‘Spuds’ had been allocated to their team.
In Biafra, much training and reorganising lay in store for them. The Biafrans had traditionally only trained officers. The particular officer would then select his own troops, train them himself, and they would go off to fight. The officers could show Breytenbach with great precision on a map where the enemy