Episode 26 – Jannie Geldenhuys takes charge of SWA Command

[Music] Welcome back to South African Border Wars with me, your host, Dez Latham. This is episode 26 and recovering events in 1977. The incursions into a Wemble and increased suddenly in early 1977, and the SCDF was concerned about reports that the four frontline states of Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, and Angola had agreed to support this new wave of insurgency. From early December 1976, Swapo's armed wing plan had set its sights on traditional leaders, literally, who were mostly conservative and well-disposed towards the South African administration. To Swapo, though, there were sell-outs and had to be eradicated. Then in February 1977, the Caprivi experience was first incident in two years when a plan group opened fire on a South African patrol base near the borders with Angola and Zambia. Three SCDF troops were wounded and 12 insurgents were killed in follow-up operations before they had time to cross over into Zambia. At the same time, the SCDF's communication operations scheme or hearts and minds campaign got off the ground. 79 selected national servicemen were withdrawn from other tasks and assigned to teaching duties in black schools in the border area starting on the 22nd of March. Just over a week later, on the 31st of March, P.W. Butter announced in Parliament that during the two years since April 1975, a total of 231 insurgents had been killed in Avambalan, Cavango and the Eastern Caprivi. On the South African side, 33 men had died, while Swapo had also killed 53 locals, many were these traditional leaders, all their family members. 101 task force HQ had now moved from Rundu to Khrutfantane and General Constantine Fillion succeeded André Fandeventil as the officer commanding and in turn was succeeded by General Ian Gleason. In May 1977, Yannie Hellenhaest was called to stand in for Gleason, not fully realizing that he would eventually end up as a main officer in charge of the entire border region, but it did give him an insight into the pressures of running logistics so far away from South Africa. For example, the staff officer had received a signal from a forward base which was asking for 250,000 sandbags. Now that appears a significant request if you sit back for a moment and imagine what a consignment of 250,000 sandbags would look like. The quarter of a million. The staff officer was tired and was also tasked with feeding and housing thousands of refugees who had streamed across the border as the MPLA took over most of southern Angoda. They needed tens and fruit, blankets and water. As the quartermaster tried to sort the logistics required to move all of this material, he decided that 250,000 sandbags must be a mistake. What do you wonder with the sandbags? You inquired of the base commander. The reply was cut. We want to fill them with sand. The SEDF top brass had now decided to shake up the entire command and control structure of South West Africa. Up to this point, the army had been responsible for two areas. The territory north of the Red Line, which fell to 101 Task Force and the territory south run by South West African command. These two were drawn into a single area now under one leader known as the general officer commanding SWA command. And General Yani Heldenheist was appointed to fill this post. He arrived in mid-1977 to find that it was taking over as the border war morphed into an era of revolutionary warfare. Across the border to the north, the Angolan Civil War had become increasingly one of ethnic warfare for the complicating matters. Although at the time, you needed the MPLA and even the Efinale were bending over backwards to avoid referring to this fact. Heldenheist faced a war that was increasing in intensity. In a conventional war, a general moves a whole brigade or division with one command. But in counter insurgency, it really is a whole series of small-scale encounters in a combat zone that in the border war was vast. It stretched from Kaokaland in the West to the eastern part of the Caprivi strip, which is a distance of more than 1,500 kilometres. This was a war run by corporals and attendants and not generals. Heldenheist was also acutely aware that the military action he was to oversee was actually subordinate to the politics of the day. When he left Pretoria for Hruthvinten, Magnus Milen gave him very specific orders. First, he was to manage the security situation and contain swappers insurgency so that some sort of constitutional process could develop. Secondly, he was to amalgamate the old SWA command in the south and the 101 task force in the north into a new south-west African command with its HQ in Buntuk. Beridli Heldenheist was told he had to develop a standalone south-west African army and, alasely, and probably the most difficult assignment that everything he did had to be in line with international and internal political developments. For his soldier, that's always the most difficult balancing act. Think of General Westmulland in Vietnam where the Viet Cong would use Laos in Cambodia to launch attacks on South Vietnam and the American General had to order his patrols to stop at the borders. But in both wars, special force units were often operating across these lines on the map. Fighting a war in the relatively modern age meant knowing precisely where the cut line or the border was. In the days before GPS this posed a bit of a problem. I explained last week how a young national serviceman driving to a refugee camp south of Angola ended up north of the border and a prison of war camp. Wrong turns and military history are the stuff of religion. So Heldenheist faced significant difficulties dealing with the enemy who jumped the various borders at the earliest convenience. He also had a political and military conundrum to solve and often told a story of dealing with these kinds of challenges. An outgoing general handed over responsibilities to his replacement and also handed over three envelopes. The instructions were to open the first envelope when he encountered his first serious problem. Each subsequent problem was to be dealt with by the second and then the third envelope. So the general put the envelope in his safe until he faced his first challenge where he unlocked the safe open the envelope and he discovered a piece of paper inside which red blame your predecessor. The general Julie did so and survived. After a few more months of smooth operations he encountered his second serious challenge. Upon opening the safe and the next envelope he found that the message red reorganized. So the general reorganized which was such a problem that he forgot to run his army. Eventually he encountered his third main challenge and upon opening his third envelope the message red prepared three envelopes. While ironic this method is actually in use today by South Africa's reading political party A&C it has been bouncing between envelopes one and two for a quarter of a century. We probably closer to a third envelope than the A&C would like us to believe. The Roman Gaius Pretrinius writing in the 66 AD said, "We trained hard but it seemed that every time we were beginning to establish proper teams we would be reorganized." I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet every new situation by reorganizing and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization. I suppose philosophy 101 over. Let's get back to the border wars. Politically, negotiations were underway in 1977 to deal with the South West Africa that included Pretoria and the five major Western powers, the UK, US, France, West, Germany and Canada. Everything that the SEDF was doing along the border was critical in such moments. Vintuk would now have a new political status with the appointment of an Administrator General. The Turnhala conference was set up where leaders of all population groups would fall under this Administrator. The hope was this would give substance to what Pretoria had been saying since 1971 that South West Africa must decide its own future. Even SEDF troops would refer to NAM when they spoke about heading off to the border. That was certainly true of my unit in 1981. It served as a reminder to us that we were in someone else's country fighting and insurgency that most of the locals seemed not to prefer. A bit like Viet Nam, whatever the political spin doctors were dishing out to both the South African and earlier the American public. The new Administrator General of South West Africa was Justice Martinez Stain who was tasked with initiating a democratic process of elections, one person, one vote, but excluding Swapu, which had cocked a snook at the entire idea. Keldin has knew that for any of these plans to work security must be in place and the military situation should be stable. Of course, the reality was the border and part of South West Africa was distinctly unstable and the political situation was in his words intricate. The Turnhalla Conference led to a constituent assembly then a National Assembly in South West Africa with the Council of Ministers. Back in Pretoria, the scenario planners had been busy. There would be a political backlash for apartheid's national party back home. What has been largely forgotten in these times of post-apartheid South Africa was that the Conservatives in that party were utterly against any election of any sort in South West Africa. These hardliners were like the bitter enders or bitter enders during the Anglo-Bore War. Never give an inch. Of course, in doing so, they also doomed their own people to extended periods of extreme violence. In our country today, there are far-right members of this order who somehow believe it's possible to turn back the clock and create a white-only bunch of stun where no blacks are allowed. Dirk Manch walked out of the ruling White National Party Congress in September 1977, which resulted in a dramatic split in that party in South West Africa. A H-duplacy remained the leader of the National Party of South West while much formed the Euro-Publican party. Back in South Africa, the attempts at the same time by the apartheid government to institute Buntistan's across the nation was not going swimmingly, as Mangasutu Bitterlesi refused point blank to the idea of Krasulu being nominally independent. The tricameral parliament, where Indians and Colods were set to join the whites, caused a split in the national party at the same time. Andres Trinicht wanted nothing to do with those he called "unus clearjas" or "alakalas" and was barking his racist message that led to the creation of the "Histakhtan National apartheid" or the reconstituted national party. Some of the national party newspaper mouthpieces built in the report, for example, had a field day with that. Of course we know that Andres Trinicht's ancestry included blacks, are the Africans. So that's one of the ironies of our nation. These publications figured out that Trinicht was around 10% black. It sounds trite these days, but back then, with many whites trying to art white each other, that was a major embarrassment. In South Africa, Majors' Republican Party now allowed itself with black and coloured groups. They went the other way to Trinicht's "Histakhtan" option. The political entity that emerged in Buntuk was called the Democratic Turnhalla Alliance or DGA. But to be done, the national party of South West began to schmooze black and brown politicians to form an umbrella organisation called the "action front" for the preservation of the Turnhalla Principles. Extremist leaders emerge at times like this, and in South West Africa, white resistance expressed itself through "blunk" "SWA" or "white" "SWA". The "virt de per sanz bevirchen" or "white resistance" movement, and acts of politically inspired violence increased. Kelvin has, and the SIDF, we're slapping in the middle of trying to deal with these complex forces while technically fighting an insurgency. Back in South Africa, a similar group emerged called the "Africano-Vierstanz bevirchen" or "Africano-resistance movement", A.W.B. Its tomatoes later would send a chill through those in my country, who bladly spoke of armed resistance as a race-baiting minority, including the execution of three of its members by black-bunters and soldiers in Paputotswana, an event I covered as a journalist at the time. SIDF commanders in Avambaland and other regions had to remain aloof from these political developments while being aware of them. As I can attest, the permanent force members I was an operational duty-with, and trained with, were a professional soldier's first. Political discussions were banned at the bar, for example. We discussed sport, the days events our families, but politics was outlawed. As national servicemen, we spoke of these things outside the range of the SIDF structures, informally in our barracks. Held an ace and other senior officers created a formula for part-time members of the SIDF. They could retain the political positions, but were not to lecture any troops on any of these matters. The second guideline in developing a politically neutral defence force was never to appear before audiences that would be considered politically inspired. That was more difficult to achieve, with a top brass on lectons alongside PW Butter or Magnus Malan. Held an ace though went out of his way to only address politically homogenous audiences. Yani Held an ace's third principle was keeping his military personnel informed. He was in the middle of a process led by the five Western nations who were proposing instituting the United Nations Security Council Resolution 435, much hated by the far right. That was the resolution, calling for an independent Namibia. General Heldnose was cut from a completely different cloth to most military leaders. His directs and neutral discussions and briefings when it came to the latest political developments were matter of fact and included Swapo and Plan at times. When he briefed Commandant Delville Linford's Bushman battalion, one man objected, saying he knew enough maths to know that Resolution 435 should be Resolution 345. The point is that the officer commanding the entire SWA region was briefing troops directly at battalion level without resorting to political points scoring. The SADF outreach program, Hearts and Minds, seemed to be working despite and possibly because of Swapo and Plan's decision to murder village elders. The local leaders would listen to updates about what the Administrator General was doing back in Ventuk, what the SADF was doing in Obamberland, what the United Nations Resolution meant. At the end of these rural briefings, the village elder would often point to the broken school window and say, "So much for all of that, but who's going to fix our windows?" Village life is dominated by small things that build a big picture. But the dividing line between that life and military activity is hair thin and usually causes suspicion. The soldiers were supporting the government of the day, which was still rooted in a party. Naturally the educated of Umber youths felt more comfortable inside Swapo than inside the Democratic Turnhalla alliance, no matter what Pretoria's political spin doctors and leadership thought. The Aeson between the SADF and South West African government was via the office of the Administrator General, and he was planted in Ventuk by Pretoria, below him with the second tier of government inside SWA, the Avambo and Cavango administrations. Because there was a military presence in Cavango, the commanding officer would have to lie as with the chief minister of Cavango and his cabinet. Some of these men were members of the Democratic Turnhalla alliance, and the villagers naturally assumed the SADF was therefore aligned with the DTA in Cavango. All makes sense. The SADF's neutrality obviously did not extend to Swapo or plan. As Janie Heldon there so eloquently points out in his biography at the front. Those people living in the South, the big cities, Ventuk, Swakupmund, Kirtmans who were marientel, were obsessed with politics, north of the Red Line, places such as Oshakati, Rundu, Kathimumululu, people were more worried about surviving the war and the daily security situation while the UN resolutions and AG's decisions passed them by almost unnoticed. We'll hear more about this in upcoming podcasts. Right now we must halt and secure the perimeter. Please rate the series on your podcast platform of choice that helps escalate visibility. You can send me an email through my website, abwarpodcast.com, or direct message me on Twitter @Daislaven. Until next, goodbye. 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