Johannesburg - The South African Army subdued a province on a mythical island 100km east of the Horn of Africa on Tuesday. The island had been torn asunder by an illegal insurrection, threatening the legitimately elected leaders. In desperation its government had appealed to the African Union, which in turn had asked South Africa to help.
It was a scenario that could have played out anywhere on the continent. The mythical island was actually Lohatla, the 158 000ha home to the army’s Combat Training Centre (CTC), one of only 10 training areas of its size and the biggest in the southern hemisphere. The troops and their commanders of the army’s “Modern Brigade” might have been young, but some of their equipment, like the Olifant main battle tanks dated back to the mid-1950s, while the Ratel infantry fighting vehicle entered service in 1978, the year the CTC was established in the middle of the vast expanse of the Northern Cape.
The sleek Rooikat armoured cars are slightly younger, having entered service in 1989, but the age of the prime mission equipment, including the artillery out of sight behind the objective, was no deterrent to the success of Exercise Ukuthula, the annual integrated live fire showcase for the country’s landward force.
The week long exercise also provides a real time real life practical examination of the young majors completing their years long Junior Command and Staff Course which prepares them to be promoted to lieutenant-colonel and command battalions, regiments and combat groups of their own.
The Modern Brigade is drawn from 4 South African Infantry Battalion in Middelburg, 8 South African Infantry Battalion in Upington and 1 Parachute Battalion in Bloemfontein, supported by armour, air defence artillery and engineers. It is the first of three planned modern brigades; with a second to be based in Bloemfontein and a third in Pretoria, trained and held in reserve to quickly deal with any insurgency or terrorism anywhere in Africa. The brigade was deployed during Operation Prosper, the SANDF’s response to the insurrection in July.
The exercise, held to coincide with the SA Army’s annual Distinguished Visitors’ Day, began with a hot extraction display by two Special Forces teams mounted on Hornet vehicles which raced off to rescue a simulated downed air force pilot. Laying down heavy machine gun fire accompanied by hand held rocket launchers, the teams returned before the ground forces approached the objective on the ridge almost four kilometres away.
Two Hawk fighter aircraft scrambled from Air Force Base Makhado in Limpopo bombed the objective before returning to strafe the ridge with cannon fire, before the artillery’s multiple rocket launchers began bombarding the area, ahead of the armoured assault. After the Rooikats and Olifants had laid down their fire belt patterns, hammering the ridge, the infantry in the Ratels integrated and went on to dismount and then clear the trenches.
Afterwards the entire brigade drove up in front of the guests, dismounting to parade for the Chief of the Army, Lieutenant-General Lawrence Mbatha and the Chief of the South African National Defence Force, General Rudzani Maphwanya.
“These are the men and women who allow us to go to bed at night to have a dream of a peaceful South Africa,” Maphwanya said, “they’re out there trying to ensure that the dream of a better South Africa doesn’t turn into a nightmare.”
The SANDF, he said, spent more time in training and preparation than in actual deployment and combat. “The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle.”
He praised the commanders for keeping their prime mission equipment, although old now, in the best possible condition for effective deployment. He bemoaned the continued budget cuts which were affecting the SANDF’s ability to procure new equipment to meet the threats that it now had, coupled with procurement processes which were laborious and inefficient.
Calling for better discipline from his soldiers and vowing to reintroduce mandatory physical training with regular fitness tests for everyone, including his own headquarters staff, Maphwanya said he wanted a holistic approach to soldiering which included addressing the issue of new uniforms and military accommodation, both of which were key to the morale of the men and women under his command.
“You can’t hold inspections when the members live in the townships and not on the base.”
Mbatha agreed that the budgetary constraints were challenges that his leader group had learnt to look beyond and work around.
“The Defence Force is not just an asset for the nation, it’s an insurance policy. This brigade has soft power and hard. Today you saw the hard power.”