Episode 61 – The Recces first Seaborne Operations and how the British High Commissioner’s Rolls Royce was blown up

Much of this week’s episode has been culled from a fantastic book called Iron Fist from the Sea, top secrete Seaborne Recce Operations 1978-1988 by Arne Soderlund and Douw Steyn. The South African Navy’s reach in those years included all the way up to Cabinda in northern Angola on the west coast, to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania on the East. These days we’re lucky if the patrols can stretch along our own border let alone further afield, but that’s a topic for another time. The first Seaborne operations carried out by the SADF was in 1972, when it targeted Mozambique resistance movement FRELIMOs training camp in Dar es Salaam, which is over 1500 nauticul miles from Durban, just out of interest. Tanzania’s president Julius Nyerere had offered FRELIMO support and the South Africans responded to a request by the Portuguese government to plan a clandestine operation. This was to support a Tanzanian foreign Minister called Oscar Kambona who’d fallen out of favour with Nyerere. They wanted to destabilise Tanzania and blame the violence on Nyerere, the targets low-value and injuries to citizens would be avoided. Eventually they decided that target would be a high value one – called the port of Dar es Salaam – which means “harbour of peace..”.