This is the second article in a two part series. The first article can be read here.
Amongst the white Afrikaner nationalist community in the early 1960s, republican fervor remained strong but was increasingly tempered by the future "unknowns", or at least, in the insecure white public mind, whether independent "Black Africa" might comprise some kind of future military threat, particularly if coupled to internal insurrection. Even the staunchly anti-Nationalist and anti-Republican Natal Mercury warned in May 1960 of a threatening "African Colossus".
During our period, secret SADF appraisals speculated a dread possibility that black revolution/insurrection might also culminate in external international military intervention, intended to maintain "world peace" and/or terminate white rule and Apartheid. Amongst white South African political leadership, perceptions existed, appraised and supported by SADF military intelligence of the plausible threat by a UNO and/or Afro-Asian collaborative military assault on either the Republic or Namibia/South West Africa (SWA).
On 27 October 1961, the Ceylonese UN representative, one A.B. Perera, spoke no doubt for many Afro-Asian leaders, when in the General Assembly, he referred to South African racial policies being a menace to world peace and advocated the possibility of "such action by air, sea or land forces, as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security". Perera added that in terms of the UN Charter: "The cry of the non-white population (of South Africa)...living in slavery" was a "virulent form of colonialism" that "must be eradicated".
Yet by 1963, most African states were still a year or two away from independence, let alone ever building up some kind of military capacity that could remotely threaten the white south. But declassified SADF documentation along with recorded public statements by government members make it clear how seriously the Verwoerd regime still viewed the possibility of military intervention by post-colonial African states, alongside their potential allies, namely Asian countries independent since the 1950s (1948 in India's case).
The much-vaunted and ridiculously unrealistic ANC/SACP Operation Mayibuye, the discovery of which led to the Rivonia trail and the jailing of Mandela and co-accused, was planned against the context of the OAU's inaugural congress in May 1963, where African leaders pledged full support for the "liberation" of white southern Africa. Sekou Toure of Guinea had even suggested fixing a date when remaining white minority governments would have to face a joint African military force. Directly from this 1963 OAU meeting, member states undertook to expand their military forces, with the view to participating in a UNO or OAU Task Force.
SWA's governance status was by the early 1960s a disputed South African mandate dating to the Union's 1919 Versailles Treaty participation. Now of course, such was voraciously challenged internationally and most particularly in the UNO, with the loud and confident Afro-Asian bloc in the forefront of protest and demands for "action".
This possibility of "international" military invasion received extensive press coverage and comment by white politicians. For a typical public example of the SADF's perceptions of impending threats appearing in the press, Die Burger of 3 February 1962 wrote: "Suid-Afrika moet baie meer aan verdediging bestee weens die vyandigheid van die V.V.O. en die Afro-Asiatiese lande, het dr. A.J. Visser, bekende Randse ekonoom, gister hier uit die Johannesburgse Rapportryerstak gesê."
Not revealed was the detailed extent to which the SADF had already started implementing various counter-measures. But in the early 1960s, there was also a strong element of white public disdain towards the SADF; a consequence of the controversial Frans Erasmus defence ministerial years. These included grievances held by war veterans from both white language groups, that they had been marginalized during the 1950s; Afrikanisation of the SADF during the same decade; and those in the general white public who condemned Erasmus's policies as having emasculating the military.
Even some Afrikaner nationalists still considered the SADF as too "English" (which it hardly was by 1960) or remained in their World War Two mode of hostility and suspicion towards "Khakis". Whatever white grouping antipathy towards the SADF resided within, newly appointed Defence Minister Jim Fouché tried to reassure and reconcile, but on strictly Afrikaner nationalist terms. During Fouché's first speech in early 1960, he appealed to the public not to ridicule the SADF and shortly afterwards announced a list of officer promotions including scores of still-serving World War Two veterans, particularly amongst Anglo-South African permanent force members.
Even at the height of Verwoerdianism, the 20 March 1964 Die Huisgenoot edition (this publication then being a reflection or facilitator/creator of popular Afrikaner opinion), suggested that the possibility of all races jointly defending South Africa could not be excluded. The veteran UP MP, Sir Piet Van der Byl - often lampooned in the Afrikaans press as Oom Lord Piet, was quoted explaining how "we (whites) would (in the event of invasion) be supported by hundreds and thousands of non-whites, particularly our coloured people, who despite their grievances have always proved they are great South African patriots". South African participation in World War Two, once bitterly opposed by the NP, also received a kind of official "rehabilitation".
In its November and December 1964 editions, Die Huisgenoot published a series of articles depicting the South African troops of twenty years earlier as brave and resourceful; such content was certainly intended to assist "white republican unity" in the face of adversity. But SADF military intelligence disagreed with Van Der Byl's views; in April 1963, it had recommended that to restrict "subversion", it needed to be understood that too much value was attached to a white South African belief that the larger part of the "Bantu" were "loyally-inclined". "Even small-scale successes (by black guerrillas) could hurry the loyalist element into the subversive kraal".
The calling up of troops after Sharpeville was anything but an efficiently organized process; the SADF had long deluded itself as to the extent of its readiness; although the official SADF publication Commando reported the complete contrary, emphasizing rather the supposed ready cooperation between Afrikaans and English citizen force units. During the 31 May 1960 Union Festival celebrations held at Bloemfontein, Fouché addressed assembled school cadets as "Dick Kings and Dirkie Uys's" who had competed together in the spirit of unity. Directly after the October 1960 Republican referendum, Fouché made it clear that "military defence" was as important a precondition of white national survival as the Republic's capacity to "survive economically" and "maintain ourselves as Europeans".
As part of the last Union Day celebrations, a massive live ammunition mock battle, involving tanks, infantry and "air attacks" by a variety of planes, was held by the SA Army and SAAF at the vast De Brug training location outside Bloemfontein. It was viewed by thousands of white spectators; including Verwoerd who was still convalescing from being shot in the head by the enraged and unstable farmer David Pratt. That evening these scores of white South Africans who had watched their military "vanquish' its foes, camped and braaied amongst the Free State koppies and vlakte.
A close reading of SADF intelligence reports during this period makes it clear that significant use had been made by the SADF's military intelligence of G. D. Scholtz's work - an Afrikaner nationalist historian and editor of Die Transvaaler. Scholtz's plethora of books in the 1960s: Die Stryd om die Wêreld (1962); Die Republiek van Suid-Afrika en die Wêreld (1964); „n Swart Suid-Afrika? (1964), and Die Bedreiging van die Liberalisme (1965), analysed in detail the precarious strategic position white South Africans faced during this period and the "dangers" inherent within alternative politics challenging Verwoerdian assumptions. Scholtz vilified the UNO as a potent military threat to the Republic.
Not only were Scholtz's books marketed directly through Commando, but Rudolf Hiemstra, Deputy-Commandant General (1960-Sept 1965) and top SADF man from Oct 1965-March 1972, was also Scholtz's personal friend. Scholtz identified SWA's strategic position as critical to South Africa, equivalent to Canada's location regarding the United States": "...a pistol that can be pressed against the Republic's heart". A hostile power in possession of Walvis Bay could threaten South African sea links, Scholtz argued that UN efforts to challenge South African authority in SWA were intended to place "to place SWA under the authority of a capricious and hostile organization" threatening the Republic.
Indeed, the first SADF concern, already from mid-1960 was for SWA; there were other counter-strategies adopted by the SADF to defend the Republic itself; but this article component focuses specifically upon SWA and particularly Walvis Bay and its immediate environment which was not part of the 1919 mandated territory, but part of South Africa having originally been part of the Cape Colony as per colonial agreements between Britain and Imperial Germany.
After a hurried inspection in late 1960 of the territory's vast frontiers, conducted by Major General Nic Bierman under whom the SADF's Directorate of Planning and Operations fell, Commandant General Piet Grobbelaar urged the Minister of Defence to act immediately in establishing a military base at Walvis Bay. Such needed to include a battalion combat group comprising infantry, armour and artillery to help serve as a deterrent against any foreign attempt whether by land or sea to militarily seize the port as a bridgehead towards invasion, intended to thereby forcibly end the South African mandate. The urgency for the SADF to respond regarding "threats from the north" was heightened in December 1961, when Indian Air Force Canberra light bombers had attacked Kolwezi in Katanga, causing numerous white Belgium settler civilian casualties. Could Indian military forces already present in Africa be the vanguard of Afro-Asian of UNO intervention in SWA?
Over the next two years, Grobbelaar issued orders for the coastline around Walvis Bay, both north and south between Cape Cross and Sandwich Bay, to be secretly scrutinized for obvious military landing sites. Highly classified operational plans were developed to this territory, based upon appraisals of how strong an enemy task force might be and it's most likely strategy.
The formally classified documentation detailing these issues is very lengthy, but some fascinating points emerge. Already from August 1962, the year in which new defence legislation ensured there were increased numbers of balloted conscript troops, the first SADF land/air/sea exercises occurred, intended to simulate Walvis Bay defence against invaders. A document dated 1 April 1963, written by Brigadier P.M. Retief, then Director of Military Intelligence and former a World War Two SAAF pilot, speculated that because non-military methods by the UNO had not forced the Republic away from either its racial policies or its determination to maintain the SWA mandate, the international organization under Afro-Asian and communist pressure could prompt military intervention.
Any repeat of Sharpeville, it was recorded, could prompt the UNO or a country acting its "agent" to take a lead in assembling an invasion force and India was considered a real possibility in terms of acting out this role.
Until May 1964, Jawaharlal Nehru was Indian Prime Minister and his stridently anti-colonial and anti-white South Africa rhetoric, delivered in Third World forums, unsettled the SADF top brass. In fact, during the early 1960s, the Indian military and the Indian Army in particular, although numerically huge, were poorly trained and equipped - something disastrously exposed in their short, but potentially exceptionally serious war with China during October-November 1962. The South African diplomatic representative in the Rhodesian/Nyasaland Federation warned that Indian forces could be transferred from Katanga across to SWA.
The successful seizure of Portuguese Goa by Indian military forces in December 1961, amplified SADF perceptions that the UNO was prepared to forcibly challenge remaining vestiges of colonialism; no resolute UNO condemnation occurred regarding India's Goa operation. It was however stressed that the racial composition of any UNO force would be important; a predominantly white invasion force would complicate the Republic's capacity to defend itself, but a predominantly black force would do the opposite. The same documentation warned that the UN forces in Katanga, already had suitable bases from which combat operations could be launched against colonial areas in southern Africa.
SADF appraisals argued that any amphibious assault would require at minimum, an enemy naval force capable of providing air cover to the invaders, necessitating therefore the presence of at least one aircraft carrier with numerous other warship escorts. As it was believed likely (but not entirely excluded) that powers with significant carrier fleets: America, Britain, France, would neither participate in nor approve of such an action, it remained to identify which countries might be willing to supply such a vessel.
Former SA Army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Jack Dutton, deceased last year, was as a middle ranking officer in the early 1960s was amongst the SADF staff tasked with assessing invasion risks. Indian troop presence and operations in Katanga against Belgium colonists attempting succession from Congo appeared to heighten the plausibility of this country's military forming the most likely core of any Afro-Asian force.
During my doctoral research, Dutton confirmed to me that the Indian Navy's sole aircraft carrier during the early 1960s, the British-built Vikrant, which carried Sea Hawk fighters, was the SADF's main naval concern during their appreciations of an enemy task force's viability. This information is verified in a previously top secret document dated June 1965, entitled SAW Operasieplan Olympus,
Under the code names lmpala, Olympus and Caravel, operational planning assumed invaders would follow a course identical to that trodden by Louis Botha's men during 1915 when the German colony was wrested away and brought under South African military occupation. Not only might a sea-borne invasion occur, but Indian or other troops might in conjunction be airlifted from Katanga to seize airfields at Windhoek, Keetmanshoop, Swakopmund and Walvis Bay.
The SADF planners believed their attackers would attempt to cut off the Walvis Bay defenders while a larger force proceeded onto Windhoek. Therefore it was considered vital the Defence Force had the resources quickly available to neutralize the attackers on their beachhead, while also damaging the task force's capacity to provide support. The SA Navy at the time lacked submarines and also had insufficient frigates and destroyers that were too lightly armed anyway to confront a well supported armada. Both India and Indonesia listed cruisers in their navies; the Indonesian fleet from 1962 possessed a modern Soviet Sverdlov-class vessel and the Indians two ex-Royal Navy World War Two vintage ships; all mounting six inch guns, far heavier than any SA Navy vessel's armament.
The Egyptian and Pakistani navies had more frigates and destroyers than available at Simon's Town. The minesweeping and anti-submarine orientated SA Navy was in no position to confront such a fleet, especially if, as the SADF appraisers surmised, it included such heavily gunned cruisers. Investigation into a submarine flotilla purchase began from 1963, but the SADF immediately ordered of two squadrons of British Buccaneer maritime strike aircraft. Just one squadron eventually arrived in South Africa in 1964, flown in and led by war veteran Commandant Bob Rogers (Later Chief of the SAAF), after the newly elected Labour Party government nearly declined to honour even this first delivery batch.
Because the amphibious invasion scenario particularly worried SADF planners, the SA Navy Chief of Staff, Rear Admiral Hugo Biermann prioritized in 1961 the placement of a six inch naval gun battery outside Walvis Bay. Biermann was also tasked with ensuring that in the event of imminent attack, viable plans existed to mine the harbor entrance and extinguish all coastal navigation aids such as lighthouses.
It was surmised the invading task force's land component would be of brigade strength, possibly increasing to divisional strength, depending upon its initial success and logistical capacity for reinforcements to be speedily deployed. This would thereby involve an invading force of 30 000 with about 100 landing craft, consistent with similar operations staged two decades earlier during World War Two.
In warfare, control of the skies is everything, therefore the SAAF was hurriedly modernized against the impending arms embargo to supplement its obsolete late 1940s/1950s inventory of Vampires and Sabre fighters. The SAAF's Canberra light bombers arrived from 1962 and the first French Mirage III jet fighters the previous year But the SAAF front line fighter during the early 1960s remained initially the Sabre; the Mirages did not feature in first SADF planning to defend SWA - a consequence of requisite ground radar still requiring development and no doubt training issues too.
The army's armoured vehicles, except the first acquired (1961) French Panhard (later Eland) armoured cars) also remained of 1940s and 50s vintage. Half (100) of its Centurion tanks had been sold in 1960, while the army struggled to manage the increased numbers of trainees balloted from January 1962. Saracen armoured personnel carriers numbering over two hundred, purchased along with 200 Centurion tanks from Britain during the 1950s, had been exceptionally under-utilized and not properly integrated (or not at all) with newly established army training battalions for infantry.
SA Army artillery remained of World War Two vintage, but in all combat corps, a nucleus of World War Two vintage officers imparted critical training experience. Ironically, after the NP government had opposed Smuts's decision to fight in 1939, these veterans were now valued, despite their previous often insulting treatment under Frans Erasmus, the notorious 1950s defence minister.
In fact, the SA Army during the 1960s struggled with inadequate facilities and poor logistical planning to manage the larger influx of balloted trainees from 1962. Troop accommodation was inadequate and their instructors limited in numbers and often extremely ill-suited as both leaders and managers. There were numerous written complaints concerning trainees being abused physically, directed to Defence Headquarters; I read scores of such letters. These grievances came from both the Afrikaans and English communities; one of the most angry letters, I encountered in the archives was from a Mr J.A. Nel, then Headmaster of the prestigious Afrikaans Seuns Hoёrskool in Pretoria.
Nel wrote directly to the Defence Secretary protesting that former ASHS pupils, having completed military service, were confiding in him that they had been treated with extreme disrespect and were now negative towards military service. Nel listed specific examples of abuse, including that his old students felt they were mishandled by instructors because of the latter's sense of social class inferiority. Nel emphasized the SADF had to urgently improve its instructor quality or risked losing the support of young white South Africans.
The SADF counter plan to a Walvis Bay invasion scenario following standard World War-type British Army doctrinal principles; as the taskforce size had been appraised as likely to include an aircraft carrier besides the requisite escorts and troop transport vessels, the SAAF's role was considered decisive. The Rooikop airbase needed expansion to accommodate both SAAF and SA Airways planes; the latter likely to be commandeered for troop reinforcement.
As Sabres were not immediately able to operate from Rooikop, it was recommended that a squadron of Vampire fighters, already long obsolete in the early 1960s, be transferred to Rooikop. Grobbelaar in correspondence dated 24 April 1963, made it explicit that all SADF reconnaissance of the Walvis Bay area, was to occur with an effective cover (dekkingsplan) that any observing civilians might not guess it's true intention; neither were SADF personnel engaged in surveillance to approach members of public, for whatever reason.
It was estimated that in order to repel invaders, an SA Army division of four brigades would be required, supported from the air by what the SAAF could initially manage - a squadron of Sabres; a squadron of Vampires and a squadron of Harvards, further very supported by a squadron of Alouette helicopters, 8 Dakotas and 4 Shackletons. The documentation emphasized it could not be certain whether any UNO attack on SWA would be limit the operational zone to that territory alone, or whether such would inevitably expand into the South Africa - again, military intelligence stressed, this would be determined by SADF combat effectiveness. For example, if the SAAF was to be neutralized in any attempt to defend SWA, this might be because UNO air operations would be launched against air bases in the Republic. Such could then spread towards war against South Africa within its own territory.
From October 1965, the new Commandant-General was Rudolf Hiemstra, an ardent Afrikaner nationalist and during the 1930s one of the SAAF's top pilots. Hiemstra had on political grounds declined to take the Africa Oath in 1940, which signified a permanent force member or volunteer's willingness to fight in the war (anywhere within Africa) - later the General Service Oath for troops willing to fight anywhere in the world. Hiemstra resigned from the then Union Defence Force in 1941, but in 1948 retuned with a vengeance as Frans Erasmus's protégé, enjoying a meteoric series of promotions and appointments, much to the resentment of many less-favored colleagues who had risked their lives in World War Two. Hiemstra was instrumental in assisting Erasmus to drum out from the UDF/SADF during the 1950s, numerous highly regarded English and Afrikaner officers. But by the 1960s, Hiemstra had little choice but to contain his hostility towards still serving soldiers who had ignored the NPs shameful 1940s call for South African neutrality.
By 1966, Hiemstra as the NP choice for the top military position chaired an SADF Supreme Command consisting of World War Two veterans like Lt General Charles (Pops) Fraser, Vice Admiral Hugo Biermann and Lt General Nic Bierman. Hiemstra was also instrumental replacing the ballot conscript system by ensuring compulsory military national service from 1968 for all white males in their eighteenth year.
The man who as a permanent Defence Force member had declined to volunteer in the fight against Fascism and Nazism, saw no irony, it seems, in working with and commanding those who had, besides also, as a once war service objector, instituting compulsory military service on all white male youths. In 1975/76, SADF national servicemen would fight, compulsorily if called upon, in a secret war intervening in a then imploding Angola. Several were to lose their lives.
By mid-1966, the SADF Intelligence writers were assuming that a conventional attack on South Africa or SWA was unlikely, provided the southern African "buffer states" continued under Portuguese/white Rhodesian control. The SADF was also convinced that a Third World War would work to the country's advantage, in that any Western defence plans/strategy against the USSR would have to encompass the Republic, or so military intelligence surmised. Indeed it was even thought, completely unrealistically, that during a Third World War, South Africa would be able to dictate the terms of military collaboration with the West. Such was the power of self-delusion, when a grouping under siege, begin to believe their own propaganda.
But fears remained that the UNO could view the security situation in both the Republic and SWA as a threat to world peace; military intelligence reasoned that the degree to which the SADF were perceived as a capable military deterrent would be extremely important if the UNO or Afro-Asian nations ever considered any military interventionist action. By mid-1966, the majority of Afro-Asian countries, given the capability and plausibility of such action, certainly remained supporters of military intervention to end Apartheid, but were impotent without big-power support.
In 2007, the concrete remains of the SA Navy's six-inch gun battery was still visible above Walvis Bay. Scores of late-middle age white South Africans today, will well remember their national service during the 1960s at 2 SA Infantry Battalion, or with the armoured and artillery components of the combat group. They were in fact waiting (which of course they never knew) for the Indian and Indonesian navies to arrive over the horizon with a brigade or more of Afro-Asian troops. The plans to repulse these attacks being well tucked away in the Battalion Group commanding officer's safe.
The planning and details of the SADF's early 1960s concerns of UN/Afro-Asian invasion, when viewed against white South Africans fearful perceptions of decolonizing Africa and the general global hostility to Verwoedian Apartheid, propel us back into a context where all was hardly what it seemed. Perhaps one of the most enticing elements in the study of History, is the historian's capacity, when he opens his mind, to absorb and attempt comprehension of human beings tendency to be lured by their own fears, prejudices, hopes, and not least, their caution.
The actions of the SADF in planning to repel "invaders" that never came, is just one, albeit long well forgotten and previously hidden example of such within our own country's past. Such was the mindset of besiegement emanating from Defence Headquarters in Pretoria and the Union Buildings half a century ago, underpinning how vastly different Africa, international relations and South Africa once was. As this article was introduced, a thorough re-study is urgently required of South Africa during the 1960s and how fear was such an important factor in determining white attitudes and actions.
It is important that in 21st century South Africa, white South Africans re-examine and re-assess their own history and various identities; not to be in any way in conflict with our Constitution, let alone attempt to justify political wrongs of Verwoerd, etc, but to restrain those within our country, particularly within ANC/SACP/PAC ranks who do not wish white South Africans well, and who seek to lock the past in an ideologically perverse manner which is just plain racialist anti-white vitriol and shallow nonsense, intended for the masses seeking scapegoats for their poverty and frustrations towards the ANC government . We owe this re-discovery of history to our own children and the whole cultural mosaic of this country.
Dr Rodney Warwick PhD MA (UCT)
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