5

 

Zulu Delta

By the late 1970s a solution had to be found to SWAPO’s increasing threat in Ovamboland. The South African police responded with a unit similar to the Rhodesian Selous Scouts and so Operation Koevoet was born.

The original plan was for selected members of the SAP’s Security Branch to collect information and for members of the newly formed 5 Reconnaissance Regiment (commonly known as 5 Recce) to do the follow-up work. But this arrangement did not work and in time, the founding members of Koevoet devised, and refined, their own operational tactics.

In 1979 Eugene started working for Operation Koevoet at Oshakati under Colonel ‘Sterk Hans’ Dreyer’s command.

To find out more about Koevoet’s early years, I spoke with former Koevoet members and writer Jonathan Pittaway, who is compiling a book about the unit called Koevoet: The Men Speak. Larry Hanton and I hit the road again – this time to Durban, where Pittaway lives. A product of the upper-crust Michaelhouse school, Pittaway – an auditor by profession – writes and distributes books about combat units in Africa.

Pittaway’s Morningside sitting room is filled with antiques and Persian carpets. In true colonial fashion, we drank tea and ate dainty egg-and-ham sandwiches. He made his unpublished manuscript available to me, in which I found the stories told by former Koevoet member Marius Brand particularly interesting.

‘It was the era of the real tough guys,’ said Brand. ‘The first generation was a handful of hardened Security Branch policemen who set up the unit in Oshakati. All they had was ordinary police equipment. There were no Casspirs. They followed SWAPO terrorists on foot. The SWAPO bases were up to 300 strong in the Eenhana-Okankolo-Nkongo triangle in Ovamboland.’

I gathered from Brand’s evidence, and what others had to say, that the first few years of Koevoet’s activities were not properly documented. The unit had very few members and many covert operations – ‘night work’, as Eugene put it – were carried out. Precious little is known about these missions. It appears there were executions of captured SWAPO members at this time, and that local water sources were sometimes made undrinkable.

In the report Eugene wrote for Professor Anna van der Hoven, he says outright that the insurgents arrested by Koevoet never appeared in court. There were only two options for SWAPO prisoners: they could work for Koevoet, or they would be ‘let go’ (Koevoet members used the Afrikaans expression ‘laat ry’, a euphemism for being killed). Was there a specific order to kill SWAPO members? Yes, Eugene told journalist and author Jeremy Gordin in A Long Night’s Damage: Working for the Apartheid State.1

Larry mentioned that in Koevoet, the principle of doing ‘body counts’, which the American army used in the Vietnam War, was applied: ‘Lots of bodies (koppe, literally ‘heads’) on their side, and fewer on your side, meant a contact was successful.’

According to former Koevoet members, the unit gained ground against SWAPO during this time. ‘That first Koevoet group tamed Ovamboland,’ Brand says in Pittaway’s manuscript. ‘There were daily contacts due to the large number of SWAPO terrorists in the area. By 1983 there were 20 combat groups and about 50 white members. Our SAP budget was very small, the fighting was intense and, with Eugene de Kock around, Oshakati was a dangerous place. Eugene’s was the notorious generation. Those guys were the real deal.’2

Top: Koevoet members at shooting practice with an M79 grenade launcher, also called a ‘Snotneus’. Eugene is third from the left. On Mondays, Koevoet members would practise shooting and how to deploy from vehicles.

Top: Eugene (in the middle, with hat and glasses) at a kraal in northern South West Africa.

In his book Covert War: Koevoet Operations Namibia 1979–1989, Peter Stiff says this of Koevoet’s potency: ‘Combining their police investigational abilities and skills at getting information, the tracking abilities of their special constables, the landmine protection provided by their Casspirs – with the support of SAAF helicopter gunships – Koevoet emerged as the premier counter-insurgency unit in SWA/Namibia … In its ten-year existence it fought in 1 615 contacts and killed or captured 3 225 PLAN soldiers. But it paid a high price in blood. It lost almost 162 policemen killed in action, with another 949 wounded – more grievous casualties than any other South African fighting unit since World War II.’3

Former Koevoet member Dave Baker explains the early structure of the unit: ‘The feather in Koevoet’s cap was its fighting units, Zulu Delta (Eugene de Kock), Zulu Foxtrot (Frans Conradie), Zulu Sierra (Piet Stassen) and Zulu Whisky (Chris de Witt). The operational officer, Z2, was John Adam, who would later go on a mission to London with Eugene to blow up the ANC headquarters.’4

Earlier, Hennie Heymans had told me that Koevoet had reached ‘cult status’ in the police force. ‘Many station commanders sent policemen who were difficult to handle to the Border or the riot units. In Koevoet they flourished because the normal rules of policing did not apply. Although Colonel Hans Dreyer ruled with an iron hand, the men could grow their beards and uniforms were not obligatory.’

According to Eugene, in Oshakati he always wore just a T-shirt, black PT shorts and velskoene without socks. Or the same clothes, but with his Hi-Tec boots.

How did the average policeman and troepie experience the base at Oshakati in the early 1980s? I found one answer in Anthony Feinstein’s book Battle Scarred: Hidden Costs of the Border War, in which he describes his experiences as a newly qualified doctor responsible for the psychiatric care of the ‘emotionally wounded’ at Oshakati. ‘We arrive at Oshakati in the late afternoon. The base shimmers under a blazing sun. Thousands of conscripts would rather be elsewhere. They have set up home in a dustbowl, sand as far as the eye can see, their lives coated with layers of sweat and axle grease.’

Feinstein discovered pretty quickly that one thought dominated the men’s lives. He describes the metal desk in his office in the sickbay as follows: ‘The surface of the desk is badly scratched – florid scatology, phalluses and pudenda are everywhere … This is the desk they have given to the army psychiatrist, a Rosetta stone of obscene messages, frustrated desires and perverse cravings. Between patients I scrutinise its detail, marvelling at the outpouring of smut and unbridled lust uncontaminated by a clean thought.’5

Oshakati: unadulterated, testosterone-soaked world of men.

In 1987, journalist, writer and photographer Jim Hooper moved with Koevoet in the operational area – and was even wounded twice – researching his book Koevoet! Experiencing South Africa’s Deadly Bush War. Hooper met Eugene that year at Oshakati. ‘He was already commander of Vlakplaas – which I’d never heard of – and was passing through Oshakati “on business”. Even though I had no idea who he was, my curiosity was piqued by dedicated soldiers’ awed references to his legendary status. He gave me his business card and invited me to contact him when I was in Pretoria.’

Hooper did so and the two got together one day and started talking about Koevoet’s early years, becoming good friends in the process. I asked him to tell me about the psyche of a soldier.

‘Few people understand the difference between a soldier and a professional combatant. The most difficult thing is understanding why certain men become addicted to warfare. Most of the young guys who went to the Border hated every minute of being away from their girlfriends and their moms’ cooking. But then there was the small group who found their raison d’être in war and volunteered for high-risk units such as Koevoet, 32 Battalion, the Parabats and the Recces.

‘These men share an above-average IQ and a specific biochemistry – a genetic predisposition – for risk. It is particularly evident in those with an elongated DRD4 gene, which rewards near-death experiences with dopamine, a hormone as addictive as cocaine or methamphetamine.’

Hooper describes Eugene as ‘one of the most impressive people’ he had ever met. ‘A brilliant tactician and strategist, a lateral thinker, mercilessly effective against the enemy, a loyal friend, enigmatic. Even when he knew his arrest was inevitable, he phoned me to apologise for the visit the police would probably pay me because of our friendship. That his former commanders worked with the old and incoming regimes to demonise him was immoral, cowardly and criminal.’

I thought again of one of the first remarks Jonathan Pittaway had made about Eugene. He said Eugene had a certain magnetism, that when he walked into the room he brought with him an unmistakeable aura of power.

Eugene is busy writing his own manuscript about his time in Koevoet. The following piece is compiled from this and his report for Van der Hoven.

The policemen who were to launch Koevoet were sought out in the Republic. Initially we were eight men with a few vehicles. We also received six .38 revolvers with 600 soft-nosed bullets. For executions. Assassinations …night work.

Soft-nosed bullets, which can mutilate a person horrifically, are used to make ballistic identification impossible. The same .38 Special revolvers would be given much later, in 1989, to the unit at Vlakplaas for further use. However, within a week the weapons were withdrawn to be destroyed. No ammunition came back to Vlakplaas with them.

The idea was initially for the police to source information and conduct interrogations, and for the reconnaissance commando to be responsible for pseudo-operations. In Ovamboland a force would be raised as a so-called freedom movement against SWAPO and that could operate inland. SWAPO’s networks in Ovamboland and further south had to be wiped out as soon as possible. The total destruction of the intelligence, espionage and sabotage groups in the white south was an immediate priority.

A second group would operate on the same principles as the Selous Scouts. Among other things, this involved infiltrating the freedom movement’s territories and periodically attacking the enemy. The group would also establish the enemy’s positions and send them through to air and ground combat units for actions, poison their food and clothes – in other words, do anything to kill or compromise the enemy …

It was a challenge to gather information; for three or four months we had no breakthroughs against SWAPO’s assassination gangs. But in April or May 1979, the Security Branch at Oshakati made an arrest and members of Operation Koevoet did the interrogation. This was our first breakthrough in terms of SWAPO’s intelligence network in Ovamboland – a turning point. We started reeling the entire network in, delivering it a blow from which SWAPO never really recovered.

Many of the SWAPO members Koevoet arrested started working for the unit. In time, some of these people started disappearing. On the grounds of discussions I had with our members, there is no doubt in my mind that a considerable number of them are now in the hereafter. On three occasions I made people disappear myself; there might have been more, but I can’t remember.

In the winter months of May and June 1979 the SWAPO infiltration from Angola through Ovamboland to the farming district of Tsumeb took place. Koevoet members, including those trained by 5 Recce, were sent south to counter it. In one incident a group of SWAPO terrorists attacked a farmhouse in the Tsumeb district and murdered a grandmother with a little girl and boy. These ‘brave heroes’ shot the elderly woman and the small girl dead, and beat the boy to death against the wheel hub of a tractor or some other vehicle. Any form of empathy or sympathy from my side took another hit.

The SWAPO members then started moving north to exfiltrate. A group was sent on a follow-up under the same sergeant with whom I did not get along. Within a few hours Colonel Dreyer loaded me and the rest of the ‘freedom movement’ into helicopters with orders to stop the SWAPO group that was on its way back to Angola.

When we arrived at the airstrip at Ondangwa, a group of about 30 black members waited on us. Dreyer gave me two maps of the area we were heading for, but they were inadequate. He assured me that the group that would accompany me was heavily armed, fighting fit and operational. I still wanted to go through their equipment, but he said we had no time to waste. This was my first experience of follow-up operations in the south.

I had my own long-distance and ground-to-air radios, a medical kit and food for two days. My radio equipment was the best that was issued to the SADF troops at the time. I had to steal it from the SADF. The police still used the rubbish we had been issued in Rhodesia, handed out to you even though it never worked. Standing orders said you had to have a radio – but didn’t say it had to work. In the end, all the Koevoet units had to steal SADF radios – lives depended on it, and the SADF had surplus.

If it wasn’t for the stolen radios, I don’t know whether we would have survived that excursion. Dreyer neglected to tell me that the group was poorly equipped and inadequately trained. They had not been issued with food, water bottles or ammunition. Dreyer gave me a set of radio frequencies for reporting and logistics. There was not even time to make sure they were correct.

We were taken to Oongodi in the far eastern part of Ovamboland, landing in unfamilar, densely wooded terrain with few locals and even fewer water sources. Only God, the helicopter pilots and I knew where we were: not another soul, except the SWAPO guerrillas who were waiting for us.

Once we had offloaded, I started going through the black members’ equipment. They had no radios or medical supplies and food for only two days. Checking their weapons, I realised we would be in serious trouble if we ran into SWAPO. Most of our men had too few magazines – on the belts of their machine guns were sections of loops with only eight or ten rounds in them. I alone had a medical kit, hand grenades, smoke grenades, etc. We would ultimately be in the veld for six days, with food for only two.

We had been told we were merely a stopper group, that there would be no SWAPO insurgents in the area. I learnt very quickly that there was no place in Ovamboland of which one could say there were no SWAPO insurgents. Guerrilla warfare has no frontlines; SWAPO was everywhere.

The operators jokingly described such actions by Dreyer as the HPS method: hoes, poep en storm (cough, fart and storm). It was pure luck that we lost virtually no lives in these unplanned, impromptu operations that were given no professional deliberation.

Koevoet members were issued with meat, which they would often eat semi-raw, when out on operations. Sometimes, when they were out in the bush, they would also hunt game.

A group of SWAPO insurgents lay in wait for us at the waterhole nearest to our drop-off spot. The insurgents were 15 to 20 strong. Immediately after the helicopters departed we formed a perimeter defence. I sent a search party to the nearest kraal to assess the situation. It walked straight into the ambush SWAPO had set up at the waterhole. A short, extremely intense firefight followed, which the search party won.

The next morning at six o’clock we encountered a group of five terrorists in very thick bush, so dense we had to drag our equipment behind us. We attacked this group from behind. One was wounded and got away, but some useful equipment was left behind. On the evening of the second day we realised that although we were on the trail and regularly crossed new trails, we were being followed by a group of SWAPO terrorists. That night we dug ourselves in and lay in wait.

On the third day we did not move at all. That afternoon, about 20 SWAPO terrorists passed in front of us, completely relaxed, rifles slung over their shoulders. Without waiting for the enemy to walk properly into our ambush, a black member jumped up and opened fire wildly. The whole group escaped unscathed, leaving only equipment behind. Our ammunition was practically finished; the next day a helicopter dropped off some SADF troops with extra ammunition.

Our survival over the next five or six days was thanks to good radio communication and strategy on my part as well as the black members’ bushcraft. All but one of the 30 black members were unknown to me. As in Rhodesia, I saw that combat teams made up of black and white soldiers – who were properly trained, were confidant in the bush and had the latest technology – could be a winning recipe against SWAPO.

I explained these ideas to Dreyer, and thereafter we started planning. The classic Koevoet fighting unit emerged from this deployment. The unit’s foundation was laid on that day.

The sergeant wanted to continue with his ‘freedom movement’ and I could ultimately only get hold of two or three members of his group, all former FNLA members from Angola. We then went on a recruitment campaign, enlisting 60 black members. They, along with a white officer and myself, were sent to Fort Doppies, the reconnaissance commando’s training base in the Caprivi, for a month’s intensive training. While the training was not new to me (it was a repeat of the courses I had done in Rhodesia), it transformed the black Koevoet members from cads into one of the best fighting units in the SAP at that stage. The group was later split in two, starting a second group under the other white officer’s command. In time the ‘freedom movement’ was also disbanded.6

Early one morning at the end of October 1979, just after completing our training at Fort Doppies, we were deployed to eastern Ovamboland by 5 Reconnaissance (5 Recce). At that stage SWAPO, not the security forces, controlled the area. SWAPO was doing whatever they wanted there.

The first patrol was with the new group, Zulu Delta. We moved in battle formation as we had been taught, adapting it immediately to the terrain without orders. Everyone knew what to do. I was the only white member in the group – on deployment day, the other white officer suddenly didn’t feel well enough to go into the bush.

About three kilometres into the patrol, we noticed some movement near a group of kraals and the central waterhole that served them. They were definitely SWAPO. Heads clearly visible, they peered at us over the high fence of branches around the waterhole. They didn’t give a damn that we saw them. They taunted us, actually – sticking their heads out, pulling them back down, sticking them out again.

It was clear they had no fear of, or respect for, us, this lone whitey and a group of armed black soldiers. The Ovambo members began to laugh softly. They were looking for trouble after the merciless, murderous training session at Fort Doppies. They wanted a fight. I had seen a similar expression only in one other instance and that was on the faces of troops from the South African parachute battalion.

Fifteen minutes later, SWAPO’s opinion of the approaching group was to change. We reached the fence and started to determine the direction in which the enemy had moved, using the trail, so we could start the follow-up. The footsteps led directly to the waterhole, but were indistinct from there onwards.

I took four members with me, climbed over the fence and moved towards the waterhole to see if some of them were there and, if they weren’t, to determine where the trail would take us. Halfway to the waterhole, where there wasn’t a single blade of grass or tree for cover, the SWAPO group opened fire with AK-47s, a PK machine gun, RPG-7 rockets and a 60 mm mortar. The dust kicked up by the firing gave us cover and the mortars fell behind us. Our only chance was to run into the firing line and make straight for the waterhole to shelter.

Meanwhile our black group leader, Lukas Kilino, divided the group into two, threw the equipment to one side, and left six men to guard it and to cover the rearguard in the event of an attack from behind. The two groups then moved along the kraal fence towards the firefight, parallel to each another.

The SWAPO fighters didn’t see this one coming – the next minute the two flanks of Zulu Delta were upon them. The heavy fire at the waterhole eased off; we were able to move forward until we were parallel with our two flanks and could join them to form one line. Control over formations is an absolute priority – we would, otherwise, shoot one another in the back.

When we reached SWAPO’s line of defence, we realised they had had a fuck-you attitude from the outset. Their trench had been dug the previous night and they had clearly just been waiting on someone who they could give a beating.

In the trench one of their men lay dead. One of our 60 mm mortars had landed about three metres from him; some shrapnel must have struck his head. It had surgically removed a piece of his scalp and his skull. Although the hole in his skull was relatively small, there was nothing inside it. His head was hollow. Other than that, there was not a mark on the man. At first I thought I was hallucinating and asked the others to come and look. They stared with the same disbelief at the empty skull. One of the members then called me and pointed to something lying in the veld about four metres away.

We went to look. It was his brain, still in its cerebral membrane, without a scratch. I could hardly believe my eyes – I would never be able to get the brain back into the skull through the small hole, never mind how hard I tried.

Since we operated under 5 Recce, they immediately sent a helicopter. All clothing, jewellery, hairstyles or emblems on the insurgents clothing were replicated for pseudo-operations. Their equipment would also be used in such operations.

But I had a problem – what to do with the brain? I called the group together only to have 40 tough, heavily armed men dig in their heels and say not a fuck are we touching that brain. The shirumbu – that would be me – would have to handle it.

That was one thing about black Koevoet members – they never touched a dead body. Neither would I, as a rule, but the Puma helicopter had already made its first pass. The reconnaissance regiment was incomparably professional: they removed the body and equipment, replacing our spent ammunition, rifle grenades and mortars too. We picked up the SWAPO trail again and were ready to move on.

In his final radio transmission to relay the direction of the follow-up, the pilot asked, ‘Where is the fucking man’s brain?’

‘Look in the cardboard box next to the body,’ I said.

‘Why the fuck did you put the brain in there?’ he wanted to know.

‘What the fuck else was I supposed to do with it?’ I countered. The brain was in a ration pack.

Some time later, after I had completed an explosives course (I was sent on it to get some rest), I worked out for myself that when a mortar detonates it briefly creates a vacuum on explosion. The man’s brain was probably sucked out of his skull through the hole the shrapnel had made.

Even today I don’t know if I’m right about this. The whole thing of the brain on the ground was strange … the two lobes and the ridges looked like the inside of a pecan nut you have carefully opened. It also made me think back to the day in 1970 when I came upon a motorbike accident in Benoni and the rider’s brain had also ‘disappeared’.

A few days later, in another skirmish in northern Namibia, one of the enemy was shot in the head, causing his brain to hang out of the side of his head. It looked like oatmeal. On that day, as on the day of the motorbike accident in 1970, I knew that nothing would ever be the same again.7

Former Koevoet member Rodney Bradley was in Eugene’s Zulu Delta group from 1980 to 1982. I met him in Durban in December 2012 and I asked him how he remembered his former commander.

‘One image stands out,’ he recalled. ‘He had the habit of twisting his hair with his right hand when he was thinking. I will always remember the picture of his right arm sticking out in front of me in the Casspir and him twisting his hair around and around with his finger.

‘Gene is a fantastic leader. I would work with him any day. If he asked me to work with him again I would in a flash. Look, he was explosive, but he was a wonderful leader.’8

Eugene’s explosiveness comes up regularly. In an unpublished manuscript, former Koevoet member Dawid (Attie) Hattingh also refers to it: ‘He had a very short fuse and could become volatile in seconds. He had an unpredictable temperament and was inclined towards excessive mood swings. From early childhood Eugene stuttered and this was exacerbated during operations when he was fed up [or the adrenalin started pumping]. Then all you could hear on the radio was “fok, fok, fok” – which led to his nickname, Fok-fok de Kock.

‘Naturally no one would dare call him by his nickname. But then, we were all overly aggressive. We were expected to be. Eugene became our role model, the hard-working, drinking fighter-operator with a take-no-shit attitude.’9

According to Hattingh, Eugene was a charismatic, dynamic leader who demanded enormous respect ‘through his example and professional conduct in the bush’. Hattingh says Eugene regarded anyone who was not involved in the heat of the battle as ‘jam-stelers’ (jam thieves, literally translated). ‘The majority of the administrative personnel fell into this category. This caused a gradual rift between factions in the operational and administrative staff, which would lead, eventually, to Eugene’s departure from the unit.’

Hattingh also told of the regular bar fights that broke out between Koevoet members and the SADF at the International Guesthouse and the Blou Klub at Oshakati. The owner would usually phone Colonel Dreyer and inform him that Koevoet members were going to be barred from the guesthouse. The guilty ones were then paraded before Dreyer, with the most senior in rank – usually Eugene – heading up the parade. According to Hattingh the highly annoyed Dreyer would then ask, in colourful language, exactly what had happened – but the uitkakparade, or ‘disciplinary parade’, would not last long.

It would calmly be explained to Dreyer that the Koevoet members had been provoked to a point at which they could no longer ignore the insults and consequently had to retaliate to protect their reputation and honour. Then Dreyer would usually start to relax. He would ask, ‘Gene, who won?’

‘We did, colonel,’ was usually the answer.

Dreyer would then smile mischievously and say, ‘Right, now fuck off. I will fucking chase away the next bliksem who gets into a fight.’10

From the very beginning Dreyer played an important role in Eugene’s life, becoming something of a father figure for him.

I got the feeling that throughout his life Eugene yearned for a father figure and for approval from such a figure. When I asked him about their relationship, Eugene admitted that it was fatherly in nature. ‘He was my mentor.’

Under Dreyer, Eugene had the chance to fully develop his combat skills, vision and expertise in the bush. In Koevoet, he became deadly.

However, it is also clear that Eugene was a loose cannon during his time on the Border. Dreyer put up with a great deal – Eugene’s temper, the cursing and the after-hours punch-ups.

What is the psyche of the archetypal soldier? I asked Eugene on one of my visits. What motivated you?

As was often the case when he wore his glasses, his eyes became unreadable. ‘I’ll have to think about that … Generally, you’re a soldier, or you’re not. There isn’t a profile. You’re a protector to the very end, or you’re not. Nothing is too much to ask or to give. It’s never about you, but about others and their wellbeing.’

Soldiers have the power of life and death – a role usually ascribed to God, I read in a book by Karl Marlantes called What it is Like to Go to War. As Marlantes puts it: ‘What is this thing in young men? We were beyond ourselves, beyond politics, beyond good and evil. This was transcendence.’11

But there is another aspect – an important one I have not found in the psychological reports and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnoses and newspaper articles about Eugene. It is one that cannot be ignored: the space in which many former soldiers find themselves. The world of a former Koevoet member on the frontline, for example, differs vastly from the world of ordinary people who live in normal society. The two have no touchpoints. Their world is – and remains – the testosterone-saturated domain of the soldier, where warfare and firefights bring on high levels of adrenalin and where the rules are laid down by the brotherhood.

Men who have been there know this. Veteran soldiers and pilots who felt the heat of that bush war tell of an addiction. The godgevoel, the feeling of godlike omnipotence, where the urge to live throbs at its strongest, as a soldier once explained it. During battle, explains journalist and writer Jim Hooper, the conscious and the unconscious are acutely focused on survival.

‘It felt good to shoot someone, that’s all,’ said a former Koevoet member when we talked about the Border War. ‘I can’t explain it any other way. It gives you a kick. If you don’t shoot him first, he shoots you.’

To be god.

‘In considering the purposes of punishment, the court found that the crimes germinated in a particular milieu and era. The accused has been removed from those circumstances and will probably never return to them.
However, it remains important to warn that a repetition of such behaviour would not be tolerated. This warning had to be evident from a balanced sentence that does not prejudice the accused and is not unfair to him …
It is unlikely that the accused will ever be put in the same situation again and a balanced sentence would be sufficiently preventive of similar behaviour by others.’

– QUOTED FROM JUDGE WILLEM VAN DER MERWE’S SENTENCING PROCEEDINGS IN EUGENE DE KOCK’S CRIMINAL TRIAL, 30 OCTOBER 1996.