The next deployment against SWAPO by the officially renamed 32 Battalion was in November 1976, and involved ‘special operations’ companies under command of Omauni base, as well as companies deployed in Owamboland and acting under command of a battalion headquarters in that area. Troops involved in special operations wore a wide variety of uniforms, while those active in Owamboland wore conventional SADF ‘browns’. The code-name Seiljag (sailboat) covered a series of ‘normal’ operations.
From the beginning of November, platoon commanders were allocated specific areas of responsibility to patrol, seek and destroy SWAPO guerrillas between beacons 25 and 34. Deployment was for a minimum period of three months, sometimes longer.
A platoon, loaded with enough rations and ammunition to last a fortnight, would be dropped off by road in the Yati Strip at the southern end of their designated area. Once the vehicles left, they would move as far as possible away from the drop zone, carefully obliterating their tracks as they went. At a position of their choice they would establish a supply cache, burying the bulk of their food and extra ammunition before booby-trapping the site with anti-personnel mines, which they would carefully plot. It was an inviolate rule that those who laid the mines also had to lift them when returning to the cache. As an added precaution, caches were normally used only once for re-supply before another location was chosen.
The first shots in Seiljag 1 were fired on the evening of 26 November, when the platoon spotted a group of SWAPO at a waterhole on the edge of Chana Onaimbungu, three kilometres south of the border. The platoon shook out into an extended line and got to within 50 m of the waterhole before opening fire. The enemy fled in a westerly direction.
Just 40 minutes later another platoon, deployed north-west of the waterhole, killed six SWAPO who walked straight into their temporary base. The platoon commanders concluded that this was the same group that had fled the waterhole.
In mid-December, Colonel Breytenbach’s brother Cloete, a photographer at the Sunday Times in Johannesburg, expressed a wish to visit the Operational Area to write a feature on the Border War. Even though the very existence of 32 Battalion was still classified top secret, Breytenbach agreed, on condition that neither the unit’s name nor the fact that it was operating inside Angola was published.
On 23 December, the brothers left Omauni in a convoy under command of Corporal Tony Viera, who was to re-supply troops deployed in western Owamboland and Angola. The Bosvark and five Unimogs followed the route to Ohikik, and at Beacon 35 a tracker spotted the spoor of bare feet and a dog entering Owamboland. Viera backtracked on the spoor two kilometres into Angola, as far as Chana Lupale, where his men took up position in the bush while he went ahead to assess the situation. It wasn’t long before he returned with the news that he had sighted seven SWAPO in conversation with some of the local residents under a lone tree north of a village some 200 m away.
The platoon formed an extended line in the bush fringing the chana and leopard-crawled to within 70 m of the target before rising up and opening fire. The element of surprise was total, and only one of the SWAPO guerrillas survived to run away. The Sunday Times duly published Cloete Breytenbach’s exclusive report, with photographs, of an anti-SWAPO operation by ‘our boys on the border’.
On Christmas Day, a group of 25 SWAPO crossed into Owamboland at Beacon 25 and attacked a 32 Battalion platoon deployed a kilometre south of the border. After a heavy firefight, with no casualties to 32, the enemy fled back across the border.
January 1977 produced no tangible results of fleeting contacts with small groups of SWAPO, but on 19 February, troops deployed at Beacon 34 followed enemy tracks leading into Angola. Breytenbach, who was visiting the tactical headquarters to take his leave of the troops before returning to Pretoria for a staff officer’s course, decided to lead two platoons in pursuit. At 19h30, in bright moonlight, they set out for Chana Namuhango, 14 km inside Angola, where they spotted seven SWAPO at the waterholes. Two were killed and at least one wounded before the guerrillas ran, leaving behind five RPG 7 rockets, six 60-mm mortar bombs and various other pieces of equipment. One member of Breytenbach’s platoons was shot in the leg, and died the next day.
On 22 February, while patrolling from north of Chana Henombe, a platoon stumbled on a well-camouflaged SWAPO base two kilometres south-east of the chana. An estimated 100 SWAPO were entrenched in the base when the platoon walked smack into the middle of it, almost immediately coming under fire from small arms, mortars and RPG 7s. After a firefight lasting nearly ten minutes, which caused no casualties on either side, the guerrillas abandoned their trenches and scattered into the bush.
On 1 March, the platoon led by Lieutenant Gert Keulder found signs of enemy activity around Chana Mamuandi. As they moved north around the chana, the platoon came face to face with a group of five SWAPO. Keulder’s men opened fire first, and the enemy fled. Eight days later, Keulder and his men located a SWAPO base in the Nutalala area, and destroyed it without meeting any real resistance. However, during their withdrawal, which started at 15h35, the platoon came under attack from a 300-strong SWAPO force. Despite the fact that they far outnumbered the 32 platoon, the guerrillas engaged them for only five minutes before melting into the bush, leaving five of their dead behind. Unfortunately, 32 paid a high price for their kills, as Lieutenant Keulder was fatally wounded during the skirmish.
Whether it was because word of 32’s prowess on the battlefield had spread, or simply because they had little heart for sustained combat, SWAPO’s tactics during this phase of the conflict amounted to little more than hit-and-run contacts. Even when they far outnumbered their opponents, it was customary for them to pour on the heat for a brief period, then disappear into the bush. This was the pattern even when they were defending well-prepared bases, such as the one found by Lieutenant Des Burman’s platoon on a patrol along the Huavala River north of Beacon 31. SWAPO answered an attack with small arms, machine guns and RPG 7s for about ten minutes before fleeing to the north-west. The base was found to have a 1,2-m deep trench system stretching over some 150 m, with covered bunkers big enough for two men to sleep in at a time. Interrogation of a group of women who stayed behind when the guerrillas fled, revealed that the base had been set up some three months before, and that the SWAPO soldiers spent their days tending the maize fields, returning to the base at night.
The end of March marked the end of Seiljag 1, when the companies deployed originally were relieved by fresh troops.
From 32 Battalion – The Inside Story of South Africa’s Elite Fighting Unit | Piet Nortje