Episode 8 – The Portuguese pull out of Africa and the first Reccie dies in Angola

This is episode 8 and we’re dealing with the period in the early 1970s as the border war began to escalate - and the first death of an SADF soldier inside Angola. The Portuguese had fought a ten year war in Angola by early 1970 which was showing some signs of success until the rug was pulled out from the local military and security forces because of a military coup in Lisbon. The South Africans support for the Portuguese in Angola had escalated through the 1960s and by 1968 the South Africans began providing Alouette III helicopters with crews to the Portuguese Air Force. Meanwhile in April 1973, the SA Defence Force assumed responsibility for border protection of South West Africa from the SA Police who had struggled to maintain control in the face of increased insurgency by the South West African People’s Organisation’s armed wing, PLAN. SWA Command consisted of Windhoek, Grootfontein and Walvis Bay which was commanded at that time by Colonel Ian Gleeson. Officer commanding SWA was Jannie Geldenhuys, a person we’re going to hear a great deal about in this series. Apart from the permanent Force members and a few national servicemen at Grootfontein and Walvis Bay, there were also part-time soldiers known as the Citizen Force of 24 Brigade and others in what was known as the local Commando Force. There were unusual characters in these forces such as Colonel Koot Theron and the members of Commandant Hans Heinrich Otto Denk’s 112 Commando Squadron which had its own light aircraft as a spotter plane. The concept of local armed militia was a long tradition in South Africa’s frontier communities.