“Well, think about it… You can always just be friends,” my friend persisted.
So I agreed to meet Zelda the following day. And because she was beautiful, clever, fun-loving and a fitness fanatic, I was hooked right from the start. While my friend had obviously informed her that I was a Recce, I did not volunteer any further information. Zelda was smart enough to realise that she shouldn’t prompt me for more details, and accepted from the outset that I would often be away.
After a week of planning and briefings at Special Forces HQ, Diedies and I returned to Phalaborwa to join the rest of the teams for final preparations and rehearsals at Sawong. Once we were ready, we were picked up by C-130 from Hoedspruit Air Force Base and flown to Pretoria, where the SA-9 missile systems were loaded onto two C-130s under the cover of darkness. The Tac HQ and all our personal equipment went in with the vehicles.
The flight to the operational area was scheduled for the afternoon so that we would arrive at Rundu, the headquarters of Sector 20, after dark. The SAM-9s were offloaded and we moved our equipment to Fort Foot, where we would stay for a few days before the deployment. Fort Foot, 1 Recce’s operational base at Rundu, was situated inside the perimeter of the larger headquarters base. Adjacent to the fort was the Chief of Staff Intelligence (CSI) base, from where all liaison operations with UNITA in eastern Angola were coordinated.
The next morning Diedies and I went to meet our UNITA guide, a young captain only introduced to us as Mickey, at the CSI base. Mickey was an amiable guy with whom we would cooperate closely for years to come. He spoke English well and had an intimate knowledge of the situation in Angola. He knew the locations of the FAPLA deployments in our area of operations and, even better, knew personally all the UNITA commanders of the bases that we would travel through.
The SAM-9 crews used the opportunity to do a final rehearsal on the systems, locking on to just about every aircraft that came in to land at Rundu. This initially caused some consternation and a few near-crashes, as the pilots of the fighter jets had not been informed, and got some nasty missile scares. In the meantime Dave Scales had set up Tac HQ in Fort Foot and was testing and monitoring the frequencies we’d be using. As always, he had the most practical and well-coordinated system going, and had us rehearsing comms procedures endlessly.
Oom Boet Swart, the Ops commander, kept us in good spirits all the way. I loved the old man dearly, even more so because we shared a love of classical music. In those days, the SADF had a fifty-fifty language policy for formal communications, which required English and Afrikaans to be used in alternate months. As it was the English-speaking month, Boet, whose real name was Mathewis, insisted on being referred to as “Matthew Black”. He reckoned this pseudonym would enhance the clandestine nature of our mission, since no one would suspect he was a “regte Boer”.
The time for the deployment came and we crossed the Cubango (Kavango) River with a UNITA pontoon at night, taking the heavy BRDM-2 vehicles across one at a time. Most of the Small Team operators had made themselves comfortable on the camouflage netting next to the vehicle’s turret. We actually tied ourselves to the superstructure so as not to be wiped off by branches. And so began the long and tedious journey along a sandy vehicle track, from one UNITA base to the next, to our final destination along the Gimbe River.
During the afternoon of day three, there was a grinding of gears and the vehicle I was riding on suddenly packed up. Diedies, in consultation with Lappies Labuschagne, our vehicle technician, made the call to move on with one BRDM and a UNITA escort. I would stay behind with the disabled vehicle and a contingent of UNITA soldiers. As soon as a recovery vehicle could be organised, I would move on and meet up with the main force at a UNITA headquarters base 100 km further along our route. If the vehicle could not be recovered, Diedies would continue the operation with the one SAM-9 and a UNITA protection element.
During those few days on my own with UNITA, I realised how much could be done with almost nothing. I was astonished by the sheer genius, clever improvisation and perseverance of the UNITA soldiers. Since Captain Mickey had departed with the main group, I was left without an interpreter and in the company of the UNITA detachment commander whose English was about as limited as my Portuguese – which was nonexistent. Nevertheless, he told me not to worry, as they were just waiting for a vehicle and some shovels. I couldn’t figure out what purpose it could possibly serve, as the BRDM-2 weighed at least 8 tons. There was no way of towing it through the dense bush on the sandy vehicle track. I honestly couldn’t see a way out and was dismayed that I would probably miss out on a great experience.
Early the next morning I heard a Kwêvoël arriving. A swarm of youngsters, each armed with a pick or a shovel and cackling excitedly, jumped off the back of the truck. The commander approached me with a big smile on his face. They clearly had a plan, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure it out. Then a heavily loaded Mercedes truck arrived and my enthusiastic colleague indicated to me that we should move all the equipment from the BRDM onto the Mercedes.
I was still baffled. I thought they were about to abandon the missile system and take all the equipment away. I started to protest and tried to explain to the commander that I needed to stay with the SAM-9.
But my worry was short-lived. The Kwêvoël was driven to the front of the BRDM and parked about two vehicle lengths’ away. To my astonishment the shovel-bearing youngsters cleared a stretch of sand between the two vehicles and started digging. Throughout the rest of that day, they methodically sunk a pit in front of the BRDM, working rhythmically to a song they sang. Every now and again a fresh hand would jump in and grab a spade from one of the group. It was beautiful to watch – the harmony of the labour, the rhythm, the ease with which they accomplished a task that for most Westerners would have been impossible.
A trench sloped down from the Kwêvoël towards the BRDM, levelling out a few metres in front of it. By that afternoon the pit was deep enough for the Kwêvoël to reverse into, and for the BRDM to run forward onto the back of the Kwêvoël. Now they were faced with the challenge of how to get the unserviceable armoured car onto the back of the Kwêvoël. However, they also had this worked out. Two technical geeks started unwinding the winch from the BRDM’s front, looping the cable straight across the armoured hull of the Kwêvoël to where the Mercedes truck was waiting some distance away. With the cable fully extended and hooked onto the Mercedes, this became a simple operation. The Mercedes inched forward, pulling the BRDM slowly but steadily onto the Kwêvoël.
Once the BRDM was snugly on top, the next job was to get the Kwêvoël out of the pit. But even that turned out to be a minor challenge, as they simply let the Mercedes, with the winch cable still attached to the BRDM, move forward slowly, assisting the Kwêvoël with its massive load to get onto level ground.
We were ready to go, but as we started rolling I immediately saw that there was no way the huge combined structure of the two vehicles would pass under the tree canopy. But, again, I had underestimated the resolve and genius of these people of the bush. They simply placed two capable axe handlers on the Kwêvoël’s hardened roof. These guys patiently and methodically chopped away at any branch, whatever the size, that blocked the way. It took us two full days (and probably five times as many axe blades) to cover the distance to the base where the rest of the team was waiting. Disregarding the time and huge amount of effort it required, the UNITA soldiers literally cut a path out of the tree canopy for the BRDM to slide through.