Episode 42 – The Triangle of Death in 1979 and an introduction to Tannie Pompie

This is episode 42 – it’s 1979 and all hell is breaking loose as the Rhodesian Bush war reaches it apogee and SWAPO increases its incursions into OVamboland and into the Death triangle further south. In this episode we’ll meet an extraordinary woman called Tannie Pompie, real name Pompie van der Westhuizen. She has been lauded and memorialised by retired members of the SADF for good reason. It’s not every day that civilians play such a crucial role in communications in the midst of a war and Tannie Pompie was one of those indefatigable figures that history produces every now and then. By February 1979 SWAPO incursions became known as the Winter Games in a kind of counter-intuitive symbolic phraseology because these were now taking place mainly in summer. But it was during the rainy season – so the Winter Games as they were known accelerated starting at this point. The Triangle of death lay between Tsumeb, Otavi and Grootfontein. The triangle starts around 80 kilometers south east of Etosha Pan, and is well watered making the bush thick and extremely useful as cover if you’re planning attacks on farms – which was precisely what SWAPO was doing. The people of the Triangle of Death farmed a variety of crops. The Roodts on the farm Wildernis for example produced watermelons, others farmed cattle and some had game parks. These are large farms for the most part, isolated and exposed. So on May 8th 1979 Willem and Lena Roodt loaded their bakkie full of watermelons and headed off to Tsumeb. They left Granny and two youngsters behind, their son who was three and their daughter who was slightly older. The old lady and the children would not survive the day.