The SADF in the Border War. Leopold Scholtz
the war”. This means that the interplay between politics and military action is so intricate that the two cannot be separated. “On the contrary, every military and administrative move has to be weighed with regard to its political effects and vice versa”. The inescapable conclusion, he emphasised, was “that the overall responsibility should stay with the civilian power at every possible level”.[28] He strongly recommended (unspecified) political reforms, and stressed that the locals’ life under the government must be perceptibly better than that offered by the insurgents.[29]
Fraser’s work was widely studied in the SADF and in government circles. In 1985, President PW Botha wrote a foreword when the main study was distributed to senior officials.[30] In his memoirs, General Jannie Geldenhuys devotes considerable space to Fraser’s ideas. “I identified myself intellectually and emotionally with the contents and made the ideas my own,” he wrote.[31]
It is thus clear that the South Africans, in theory at any rate, had developed a sophisticated approach to SWAPO’s onslaught, which embodied a good understanding of revolutionary guerrilla warfare principles. The question is: to what extent did they practise what they preached?
A return to mobile warfare
The traditional South African method of warfare is based on one overarching concept: mobility. From the 18th century, three factors encouraged this: the vast spaces, a relatively small population and a heavy reliance on militias (called commandos). Individuals could never remain in the field for long periods, as they had to return to their farms to plough or harvest. Campaigns therefore had to be concluded swiftly.
Infantry and cavalry in the European sense had only a limited application in southern Africa; the infantry were not mobile enough to cover the vast distances quickly enough, while cavalry were overly reliant on their horses and could not fight on foot. Thus warfare in this part of the world naturally revolved around mounted infantry, that is, fighters able to move around rapidly and across great distances on horseback, and able to shoot from horseback, but who, having entered a battle, would mostly fight on foot.
The mounted infantry commando concept reached its zenith during the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), when the Boers mostly outclassed their British counterparts on the tactical and operational levels. It is interesting to note that the British followed the Boer example later in the war by exchanging their infantry and cavalry for mounted infantry, although in general they seldom matched the astounding mobility of the commandos.[32]
This Boer phenomenon never became the subject of military treatises or doctrine. It grew, as it were, out of the ground and simply became second nature. It is, therefore, not surprising that the South African invasion of Italian-occupied Somalia and Ethiopia in 1940/1941 was a classic example of mobile mounted infantry warfare – the horse simply having been exchanged for the lorry. The South Africans achieved great mobility by moving their infantry about in lorries and having them dismount when the need arose. It was, in fact, a sort of motorised Anglo-Boer War.[33]
Of course, after the Somalian and Ethiopian campaigns the South Africans moved to the Western Desert and Italy, where their freedom of movement and independence of decision-making were greatly constrained. South Africa had two infantry divisions in North Africa and an armoured division in Italy, which formed part of the British Eighth Army and later the US Fifth Army. These formations had to do what the senior British and American generals ordered. Moreover, the mountainous terrain of Italy was not conducive to the traditional mobile South African way of war.[34] As Brigadier General George Kruys wrote in a study, during that time “[t]he South African military thus experienced advance, attack, defence and withdrawal actions in largely set-piece operations”.[35] It was this experience that dominated the SADF until the 1960s and resulted in a Defence Force still very much in Second World War mode.[36]
Another problem was that few South African officers had practical experience of war. Most were too young to have participated in the Second World War, and the nature of that conflict was very different from the one that was about to begin.[37]
After a new threat analysis in 1968, a series of symposia was held to thrash out the problem. It was decided – against intense resistance, it must be added – to move away from the Second World War set-piece approach to mobile warfare. This was followed by a report of an Officers’ Council, which recommended that tactical surprise, commando attacks, strongpoints, infiltration attacks, raids and mobile defence techniques had to form the future nucleus of the army’s new operational doctrine of mobile warfare.[38]
These new ideas were, in large measure, based on fresh thinking by a group of younger officers at the Military College in Voortrekkerhoogte, such as Colonel (as he was then) Constand Viljoen, who became commander of the college in 1966. He and others began to see that the old approach would not work, at any rate not in Africa. The problem was that the distances were too great, the spaces too vast and the pool of manpower too small. The old approach would require large armies, which South Africa simply did not have. So the idea grew – as he told an interviewer – that “our whole tactical doctrine is wrong. Then we started with the idea of mobile warfare.” This was “based on not to hold ground but to create the design of battle in such a way that you would lure the enemy into [a] killing ground and then [utilise] the superiority of firepower and movement, you would kill him completely. . . . Never think about a battle that could compare with El Alamein, it’s completely impossible. In Africa you don’t operate that way.”[39]
In other words, instead of the holding and occupation of territory being the fundamental points of departure, factors like rapid movement (mobility), getting into the enemy’s rear areas, surprise and misleading the enemy would become instruments to make it impossible or difficult for the enemy to fight in the first place. All these new ideas were tested in exercises, with Land Rovers playing the role of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs).[40]
Kruys also highlights the influence of the writings of Frank Kitson, the British general who came up with the idea of combat groups and combat teams, battalion/regimental-size and company/squadron-size composite, ad hoc units drawn from different corps to provide a balanced force in the field – in other words, armour, infantry, artillery, etc., mixed in a single combat group.[41] This fitted in with the South African tradition of mounted infantry warfare.
By 1975, the SADF reported that the army had “finalised its doctrine for the landward battle”[42] – just in time for Operation Savannah a few months later. The SADF learnt several lessons from Savannah, which Kruys summarises as follows:
• The fog that descended from the political level and obscured the view of the field commanders should be evaded. The aim of future operations would be precisely formulated. Incremental and extended involvement was out; operations would start with sufficient forces and would be of limited endurance.
• It was evident that the SADF was under-equipped for the type of mobile warfare that was being experimented with.
• A heavy armoured car, a proper infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) and modern long-range artillery were needed.
• The concept of combat groups and combat teams drawn from different corps was sound and had to be developed further.
• It was felt that the brigade would become the basic operational combat level for the SADF.[43]
Having a new doctrine is fine, but it has to be implemented to make any difference. For this purpose, at the end of 1973, 1 SA Infantry Battalion (1 SAI) was moved from Oudtshoorn to Bloemfontein to become the test-bed for the new mechanised approach and to be near the armour units with which the mechanised infantry would have to work. The unit, with Commandant Joep Joubert in command, started off with the 30 Saracen armoured personnel carriers the army had at the time. Three years later, amid much excitement, the first Ratel IFVs arrived. The mobile doctrine was developed by then majors Roland de Vries, Tony Savides and Reg Otto (later Lieutenant General and Chief of the Army in the 1990s).[44] De Vries later became one of the army’s foremost experts on mobile mixed-arms operations.
The SADF’s doctrinal development was furthered by sending several middle-ranking officers on courses with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), which had amassed considerable