Something that might interest former soldiers

Not meant to be political although the last paragraph contains references. Message posted as received. It is what it is.

This Morning... For the First time in our history of 300 years were
South African troops, The once, most feared on the continent of Africa and comparable, only to Israel when it comes to sheer strength and brute-force, were compelled to surrender to Congolese Rebels in the Congo...
A Coloured, female South African Defence Force soldier, left a gut-wrenching call to her family, late last night to explain their dire-situation.
The WhatsApp message, revealed that the Uruguyan and Malawian troops, embedded withe SANDF simply drove off the two bases, operated by 21 SAI, leaving the South Africans in a fight for their lives... One SA Base, ran out of ammo and were re-supplied by the remaining Base with a SAMIL troop-carrier truck... When the rebels, became aware of the South Africans attempting to re-supply the other Base, they clearly perceived this act as the SANDF, taking a "last-stand" and concentrated their troops on the SANDF bases... The bases were overrun, late yesterday afternoon, inflicting heavy casualties on the South Africans and compelling the SANDF commander with the rank of a Colonel, to surrender his two SANDF bases to the rebels...
The South Africans were swiftly, disarmed and confined to Base...
Never, in our proud history, not in the Battle of Tobruk, or the Battle of Square-Hill or Delville-Woods or even the South African Bush War, had any South African detachment, ever been forced to surrender...ever.
As the author of this topic and a Para-Military trained Former South African Police Officer, I do not think, now is the time to be angry about anything... Now is the time, to do every effort to bring our Boys and Girls, home... With tears in my eyes, I say, We need to bury our dead... We need to bestow the full honours to our fallen troops...
Both, SADF and SANDF as well as SAP and SAPS, We will, in true and proud South African Military history, honour our dead, by not raising the very obvious political issues, for now....
But, when all this is done... We will demand a serious talk with our "Panga-President" and his Septic... ANC and demand anwers... It is also time, for a Non-ANC minister to be appointed, as Defence Minister in the GNU, who will have to probe, why our troops were there in the first place...

Sounds like a repeat of the Irish forces under UN control in the Congo in 1961! The Siege of Jadotville!
Politicians dropping the squaddies in the ****!

MSW2, that must have been infuriating to watch take place in near real time and be powerless to do anything about. I'll remain nonpolitical too for now to allow your country time to retrieve and bury any of your soldiers with all military honors.

Back in the 1980's when I was still living in Canada I met more than a few ex-pat South Africans who left as trouble was brewing. One gentleman I'll never forget was a former SADF member who brought an LM5 with him to Canada and shot it in some 3 Gun competitions we held. He called it a Galat which was the non selective fire version of the R4 which as we all know was a copy of the Israeli Galil. Once again, very sorry to hear the bad news from the Congo.

That is really news to me now. There is very little being told here about that crisis, and I'm very sad to read that your people have been attacked and killed...
There will come a time when Africa will face the real roots of its disastrous present, but it will be way too late. And Congo is one of those places where nothing ever changes...

I love Africa. It's one of the few places where you see people smiling even if poor like hell. I always feel good when I come to good old South Africa.
Maybe in February, after one full year of absence. And I'll take my youngest daughter, as promised to her if she got good grades at school (which she did, damn...).

I think a US Seal team were pretty much liquidated in Africa as well, a mission done with them & African troops in 4 x 4 utes with no armour back up they were just shot to pieces pretty sure they did not even have a 50 cal HMG with them.
Not sure if there was any culpable person was ever wrung out for the mission scope totally wrong info on the infantry size of the baddies.

RIP

The Seal time was at least well trained and probably well equiped.

From what I can gather from different sources for the SANDF:
Not enough food and water, only what they arrived with. The soldiers had to scavenge food and drink dirty water. Made them ill.
Not enough ammunition for weapons.
No proper medical care and backup.
Zero troop discipline (I saw a short vid of one camp looking like a garbage dump)
No proper leadership with clueless officers.
Training that will have anyone looking on from the outside on the ground laughing.
No air support and the Air Force unable to evacuate troops so the apparently 80+ wounded are still there with minimal care. A private Russian firm was going to fly in and get them but the SA government has not paid them yet so they stood down.

I can go on, but some of it might start touching on politics so I will not.

Looks like a problem with much deeper roots than just the faulty organisation of that mission...
Every time an Army ends a war or a conflictual period, it is reduced to bits and pieces in the aftermath, so that it will have to learn everything from scratch again next time.
But there are always those who pay for that, yet... no-one ever seems to be responsible.
I just wonder how professional soldiers can often allow the level to drop that low. All in all, they put their lives at stake too...

Just an update.

Bodies came back in a rather advanced state of decomposition. Family members were not warned before going to id their loved ones.
Ceremony was moved out to accomodate the president and then he was late anyway. Family members were not impressed with the few insincere words he had to say when he eventually showed up.
Very disorganized ceremony.

There are apparently issues getting wounded soldiers home. Two of the females are also pregnant...

We've seen this before: the new regime culls the established professional soldiers and officers and replaces them with untrained political appointees who will be "Yes" men to the new leader. Throw in racial animus and that's a recipe for disaster.

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Originally Posted by MSW2

Just an update.

Bodies came back in a rather advanced state of decomposition. Family members were not warned before going to id their loved ones.
Ceremony was moved out to accomodate the president and then he was late anyway. Family members were not impressed with the few insincere words he had to say when he eventually showed up.
Very disorganized ceremony.

There are apparently issues getting wounded soldiers home. Two of the females are also pregnant...

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What a shame.
Being disrespectful towards those who gave all can’t be forgiven…

I forwarded this thread to an ex South African Army friend of many years, who left when the tide was turning. He commented to me this morning that '........ The whole western world should have seen this coming. It is a tribal Country now' Indeed.

As a bit of an aside, I got on the London bus a couple of weeks ago and the white driver was clearly from SA(?) I asked him the usual friendly Q's and he told me was from Rhodesia. Told him that I was in Malaya and carved into the brick wall into one of our camps there, was the Rhodesian African Rifles (or was it Rhodesia Light Infantry) Lion with a tusk badge. He immediately flicked his lapel over, and there, he had a miniature RLI badge. Made his day that someone would recognise it. Made my day too as he didn't collect my fare!

Added the next day. My ex SADF friend, as above emailed me later and said that the SADF mentioned in glowing terms at the start of this thread started its visible decline shortly after the 80's freedom regime came about. That's as diplomatic as he was prepared to go. Needless to say, he saw the writing on the wall and left!

The SA Air Force has more than 300 aircraft. Currently 6 are useable. They cannot move troops or supplies. No air cover for troops fighting on the ground.

For interest value: ht tps://unicornriot.ninja/2025/fourteen-south-african-troops-killed-as-congolese-war-escalates/

Copy and paste to you address bar and remove space in "ht tps". ;)

Perhaps just something I can add to what was said in the article. It is strange that troops who did not surrender are confined to where they are and not allowed to do as they please. In my experience the easiest way to tell that the people who said that the 'surrender' was just to retrieve bodies are telling lies is to watch their lips. If they are moving the lies are flowing freely.
Also, the business interests connected to minerals in the Congo that the people who sent the troops have is the reason they are there. Nothing humanitarian, just money...

Saw in a newspaper article today that 250 troops have been brought back to SA. They arrived at Waterkloof AFB near Pretoria while the minister was waiting to receive them near Bloemfontein. Hundreds of kilos away in a different province...

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Originally Posted by Peter Laidler

I forwarded this thread to an ex South African Army friend of many years, who left when the tide was turning. He commented to me this morning that '........ The whole western world should have seen this coming. It is a tribal Country now' Indeed.

As a bit of an aside, I got on the London bus a couple of weeks ago and the white driver was clearly from SA(?) I asked him the usual friendly Q's and he told me was from Rhodesia. Told him that I was in Malaya and carved into the brick wall into one of our camps there, was the Rhodesian African Rifles (or was it Rhodesia Light Infantry) Lion with a tusk badge. He immediately flicked his lapel over, and there, he had a miniature RLI badge. Made his day that someone would recognise it. Made my day too as he didn't collect my fare!

Added the next day. My ex SADF friend, as above emailed me later and said that the SADF mentioned in glowing terms at the start of this thread started its visible decline shortly after the 80's freedom regime came about. That's as diplomatic as he was prepared to go. Needless to say, he saw the writing on the wall and left!

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Have often thought that of all people it's the Boers who should have seen it coming. That part of the rest of the world which actually gave a damn probably knew quite well. The usual suspects were of course looking forward to adding South Africa to the usual chaos of post-colonial Africa with its resources "for sale or rent" in cash payable in the Cayman Islands. Heard a stat recently that there is more money secreted in offshore accounts by corrupt African leadership than the annual GDP of (presumably Sub-Saharan) Africa! Had the Boers been willing to make do with less and carve themselves out a state appropriate to their demographics they'd still be enjoying it now and the contrast between their little piece and the rest would so striking there'd be a queue miles long to get in.

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Originally Posted by Surpmil

Have often thought that of all people it's the Boers who should have seen it coming. That part of the rest of the world which actually gave a damn probably knew quite well. The usual suspects were of course looking forward to adding South Africa to the usual chaos of post-colonial Africa with its resources "for sale or rent" in cash payable in the Cayman Islands. Heard a stat recently that there is more money secreted in offshore accounts by corrupt African leadership than the annual GDP of (presumably Sub-Saharan) Africa! Had the Boers been willing to make do with less and carve themselves out a state appropriate to their demographics they'd still be enjoying it now and the contrast between their little piece and the rest would so striking there'd be a queue miles long to get in.

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Not to get political in any way, but that was the concept behind people living apart from each other. Not racism. What was used by communists and their kind and shown by international media was not the truth or reality of SA.

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Originally Posted by MSW2

Not to get political in any way, but that was the concept behind people living apart from each other. Not racism. What was used by communists and their kind and shown by international media was not the truth or reality of SA.

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What I was getting at was that since apartheid was insupportable, at least in the context of southern Africa, they might have been better off consolidating themselves into a smaller state that provided for an equitable separation of the races into different countries. I believe it is generally agreed that historically all populations were migrants into most of what was modern S.A.

You will be surprised how many of the Black population were recent immigrants at the time of the colonisation, and how much of the country was totally unpopulated then.

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Originally Posted by Surpmil

What I was getting at was that since apartheid was insupportable, at least in the context of southern Africa, they might have been better off consolidating themselves into a smaller state that provided for an equitable separation of the races into different countries. I believe it is generally agreed that historically all populations were migrants into most of what was modern S.A.

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Two facts: the most content societies are the most homogenous and some cultures are incompatible with others.

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Originally Posted by Daan Kemp

You will be surprised how many of the Black population were recent immigrants at the time of the colonisation, and how much of the country was totally unpopulated then.

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That's what I was referring to.

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Originally Posted by Sapper740

Two facts: the most content societies are the most homogeneous and some cultures are incompatible with others.

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Indeed.

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Originally Posted by Daan Kemp

You will be surprised how many of the Black population were recent immigrants at the time of the colonisation, and how much of the country was totally unpopulated then.

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And now in the last 30 years. Most of them arriving without the proper paperwork or just letting it lapse once here and not leaving when they should.