CHAPTER 6

SOUTH AFRICA’S FIRST DISASTER

The SAAF also began flying light Bosbok spotter planes at night from Rundu to Mavinga. The Bosboks were to help 32 Battalion carry out visual reconnaissance of the advancing enemy brigades and help bring in artillery fire as accurately as possible.

Hougaard particularly needed help in locating the precise positions of 21 Brigade, massing north of the Lomba alongside a small stream called the Gombe, 26 km east of the Cunzumbia-Lomba confluence. The terrain was very flat, which made ‘eyes on the ground’ observation by recce teams and artillery observers very difficult.

The first Bosbok took off into Angola from Rundu at dusk on Wednesday 2 September, landing at Mavinga in darkness about an hour later. It arrived as the first G-5 battery from the Artillery Regiment moved into firing positions about 21 km south of the Lomba River. With the SAAF pilot of the Bosbok was the commander of the Artillery Regiment, Commandant Johan Du Randt, as the observation officer.

SADF intelligence appreciation at the time was that 21 Brigade had anti-aircraft protection only with 23 mm guns, Sam-7 missiles and a few somewhat more sophisticated Sam-9 missiles mounted on BRDM armoured cars. ‘We knew the capabilities of those weapons, so they didn’t worry us,’ said Hougaard. ‘Flying east-west along the Lomba, the pilot kept out of their range. Du Randt, using binoculars by moonlight, brought in the first G-5 battery shots of the war. On our radio intercepts we heard both the Cubans and the Russians saying that we had hit 21’s HQ.’

That night the Bosbok returned to Rundu. It could not stay at Mavinga because enemy Migs were now in the air every day from first light.

Whatever damage the G-5 fire had caused, it did not halt 21 Brigade’s advance. More units continued to move up behind the advance group near the Lomba’s north bank, so Hougaard asked the Bosbok to return the following night for another artillery reconnaissance mission.

The pilot reached Mavinga, refuelled, and took off again towards the Lomba, receiving radio messages from Hougaard about the positions of SADF and UNITA forces.

Then the Bosbok pilot, Lieutenant Glynn, reported that Fapla had fired an RPG-7 at the plane which had missed. Hougaard checked Glynn’s position and instantly became alarmed: the plane was too far south of the Lomba to be within the maximum 500 m range of an RPG-7.

Hougaard’s immediate thought was that SADF-UNITA forces south of the Lomba had fired on their own aircraft. He radioed angry messages to his own commanders, but all denied that they had fired at the tiny single-engined Bosbok weighing barely more than a tonne.

On the ground, north of the Lomba, Piet Fourie, a pocket-sized, chunky little Afrikaner, the son of a High Court judge, was sitting in a tree within 800 m of three big advance units of 21 Brigade. ‘They made fires and then dampened them down. But with night sight binoculars I could pick up the glow and clearly see the circles of fires,’ said Fourie, a recce sergeant with 32 Battalion.

From his tree perch Fourie was calling in SADF artillery on 21 Brigade. Then he saw a streak of fire, glowing white-hot like an oxy-acetylene blowtorch, heading skywards and southwards from a position about 25 km to his north. He recognised it immediately as a very powerful long-distance ground-to-air missile. The SADF had assumed the Angolans would not be able to move heavy missiles, and their lumbering launch and control platforms, hundreds of kilometres across the punishing sands of the south-east.

Fourie sent radio messages to the Bosbok that it must get out of the area.

Independently, Hougaard was also sending messages to the Bosbok to break off and head south for Rundu and not even bother to stop at Mavinga. ‘At first, I couldn’t get the Bosbok, but then the pilot came on to say a second RPG-7 had exploded very near to the plane and it had shaken them. I told them to move out and then they went radio-quiet. We feared something had gone wrong ...’

Sergeant Fourie had watched two missiles flash overhead and he saw the Bosbok in the glow of the explosion from the second. Then a third missile covered 30 km and exploded near the little plane. For a split second, Fourie saw the Bosbok diving vertically towards the earth.

He was witnessing the first two South African deaths in the 1987–88 War for Africa.

★ ★ ★

The Bosbok had been flying at about 1,000 m just south of the Lomba as Fourie watched it begin its death dive. Like Fourie, Commandant Du Randt had been pinpointing 21 Brigade’s positions and directing G-5 fire on to them until seconds before his death.

‘I reported the Bosbok’s disappearance back to Rundu with deep foreboding,’ said Hougaard. ‘Both Sergeant Fourie and UNITA had reported the plane had been hit by missiles. There was no real possibility that Du Randt and the pilot had survived, but we didn’t know, and so we hoped they were alive. At the time our government was incredibly sensitive about anyone getting captured – they warned us: “If you let anyone get caught, you’ve got problems. It must never happen”.’

Hougaard ordered SADF forces to begin an urgent search for the plane before the enemy could get to it. He also requested help from UNITA.

‘UNITA proved then that in that type of situation you can really rely on them to do their utter best,’ said Hougaard. ‘Our own guys said they couldn’t recover the plane because it had crashed among the enemy. But UNITA got to it. It had dived nose-first up to its wings into the marshes to the south of the Lomba.’

UNITA’s tactical headquarters ordered the guerrillas to remove the plane and the bodies before Fapla could get to it. ‘They cut it up and pulled it out bit by bit,’ said Hougaard. By daybreak the Bosbok had been removed entirely, along with the bodies, which were sent back to Rundu by Puma the following night.

Captain Herman Mulder, busily monitoring and deciphering enemy radio communications from his intelligence headquarters, beneath camouflage netting under a tree south of the Lomba, heard the delight of the enemy as messages told of the shooting down of the SADF plane. But Fapla’s use of the code word ‘Cosasa’ gave away the weapon they had used. From previous intelligence, Mulder realised they had fired powerful Sam-8 missiles: against a Bosbok, it was rather like crushing an ant with a steamroller. But the discovery of the steamroller – coupled with the deaths of Du Randt and Glynn, and the loss of the Bosbok – led to an immediate strategic reappraisal by SADF chiefs.