Bush Brothers: Life and Death Across the Border

By Steve De Witt

Bush Brothers is not about special forces or heroic, secret missions. Instead, it is an intimate look at the daily life of ordinary soldiers – and the unbreakable bonds they formed under fire. This is the story of thousands of infantry men who were deployed in the SADF, on or across the Border. Colourful characters and wild partying are interspersed with the life-and-death choices troops were forced to make as they sacrificed life and limb, not so much for their country, but for each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Oct 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9780624094821

Steve De Witt

As an 18-year-old, Steve de Witt was conscripted into the South African army, a life-changing experience that he has always wanted to write about. De Witt has lived in Los Angeles, where he launched a successful IT firm, and retired to Cape Town. He traced many of his erstwhile ‘bush brothers’ via social media, and arranged their recent reunion.

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STEVE DE WITT

BUSH

BROTHERS

LIFE AND DEATH ACROSS

THE BORDER

TAFELBERG

Scale is approximate.

This book is dedicated to the memory of those I served alongside, either as friend or acquaintance, Killed in Action in our ambit:

Russell Barrett

Gerhard Blignaut

Daryl Croeser

Coert Grobler

Alan de Klerk

Stephen Hoare

Anton Kruger

Grant Krull

Martin le Roux

Esuas Lombard

Shane Mallon

James Marshall

Craig Moody

Christiaan Pietersen

John Twaddle

Andries van Niekerk

Andre Wolmarans

Epigraph

Troepe. They swore and stank and hated those with rank. They got drunk and fought in the bar and the next day went out on patrol again with sore heads and cut lips. They were rugged and filthy and loyal and proud to be members of the platoon. They shared tinned food and campfires and lies about the girls they’d screwed at home. They were hard as baobabs and you could count on them under enemy fire. You couldn’t break them and you were one of them.

 Preface 

This work of creative non-fiction is based on my conscription in the South African Defence Force (SADF) in the early 1980s and the Border War.

I didn’t want to write just another memoir filled with dry, sequential facts. Instead I wanted to evoke the drama, humour and complexity of our service – those things fellow conscripts can relate to, and creative non-fiction lends itself to that. To that end, I loop between fact and fiction, following the sequential journey of my own service.

Among other things, the aspects of my training are factual, as are our Angolan operations and all combat events (contacts) mentioned in the tale. Further, the ebb and flow of morale around the various bases in the operational area – the general disposition to the war – has been faithfully recounted. For all these things and more, I was greatly aided by my journals and by the corroboration of former platoon mates.

Some characters in the book are composites. Others correspond more accurately to people with whom I served. Much content comes from the memories of the aforementioned and others in our veterans’ organisation, the Bush Brothers Reunited, to whom I am obliged.

I’ve elected to use the slang, colloquialisms and coarse language of the time. This includes the use of loaded terms such as ‘terr’, ‘gook’ and others. While now regarded as politically incorrect, they are authentic to the day.

To all who served in this contentious and challenging conflict, to those who believe the cause was just and those who don’t, to those with pride and those with regret – I hope you are at peace after all these decades.

We cannot change the past, only reflect on the paths we took and how they shaped us. And, if we are still in contact with men from those days, enjoy the privilege of their friendship into old age.

Steve de Witt

Cape Town, May 2023

 1 

The first rule

‘The FN rifle is a man’s best friend,’ says Captain T, handing me one from the wall. ‘It’s for shooting terrs, buck and people who fuck my daughter.’

It’s Rhodesia at the end of the Bush War. I’ve just arrived for a few months to work on his cattle ranch, a gig my dad organised with what he calls ‘an old mate of mine’. Capt T is Genghis Khan, the devil incarnate, the last of the great elephant hunters, a former Congo mercenary and the possessor of only one eye – the other was shot out long ago. Head tilted sideways, he glares at me. I sense the elaboration coming.

‘That’s the second rule. The first one is Thou Shalt Not Fuck My Daughter.’

Why not? I ask myself. I’m seventeen, recently matriculated and searching for adventure before conscription into the South African army. And she’s sixteen, bursting with oestrogen and hormoning around in denim shorts and vest, Junoesque boobs brushing way too close.

The next few months are an intense, condensed induction to manhood. As a farmhand, I fall in with Capt T’s sons, tasked with everything from herding and dipping cattle to hunting for the pot, fixing gates and fences, patching Land Rovers and sewing up dogs after baboon fights.

In all matters I learn that submission and following instructions come first. That’s until you become semi-proficient, whereafter you can allow character to emerge, pulling your 9 mm on a son trying to interfere with the way you remove a Landy part, or secretly meeting the daughter behind the reservoir. Such indiscretions enhance your reputation and begin building your identity. Mine, it seems, comprises being a decent shot (unexpected), a hard worker (as expected) and a lover who discharges way too quickly (somewhat disappointing).

Behind the scenes, Capt T knows everything you’re doing, updated by informers on every corner or spying on things himself with his angry blue eye.

In time I become a lot harder, aided by Capt T’s personal mission to make me fit for the army. At sunset he has me running across valleys and up koppies with a rucksack of rocks. I do it willingly and in time he gives me slack where I least expect it.

‘Better get yourself some condoms,’ he orders as we drive into town one day.

Someone has to deflower his daughter, I suppose, and grudgingly he’s accepted it’s me.

Eventually, supremely fit and well-fornicated, it’s time to leave. Shaking my hand, he appraises me with that blue eye; I think he’s satisfied with the way he’s donnered the Slope into shape. Ahead lies a new chapter – conscription into the South African Defence Force (SADF) for which I feel inwardly and physically well prepared. But do I really want to go?

 2 

Only you can decide

In the South Africa of 1981 there are two types of men: those who’ve been to the army and those who haven’t. We’re about to join the first category – conscripts inducted for two years to ‘defeat communism’ or fight the ‘rooi gevaar’. Registered in classrooms at sixteen, assigned to military units at seventeen, we’ll be sent at eighteen to army bases across the land.

Many go reluctantly, resigned to the inevitable. For years we’ve seen brothers and friends disappear as boys and return as men, surviving the rite of passage. Their advice is similar: keep your head down and don’t volunteer for anything. It’s a long two years and you don’t want to make things more difficult for yourself.

What exactly are we fighting for?

It’s a question that vexes me in my final year at school. I’ll probably be sent to the infantry; most of us are. To which base I don’t know – hopefully it won’t be Walvis Bay, dreaded for its sand dunes up which they chase recruits. That’s in our neighbouring country, South West Africa (SWA), where the war’s being fought.

In the end, I’m sent to the 6th South African Infantry Battalion, Grahamstown – ten hours by car from Cape Town, my home, up the relentless N2 highway. I’ll have to hitchhike that road when going home on pass, standing in uniform in sun and rain at Ride Safe lay-bys outside towns.

I mull over my induction into the infantry. Everyone knows it’s the toughest mustering. Images of World War One come to mind: route marches, trenches, cannon fodder, forgotten soldiers at the end of the food chain.

But what are we fighting for? I keep asking myself.

Rewind a few years. Our school hostel erupts excitedly one night as past students visit – infantrymen, their hair cropped, faces tanned, eyes hard. They’re muscular and fit, frames bulked up, postures erect. They show off trophies: enemy bayonets and Angolan banknotes. They’ve been fighting in Angola? Politicians strongly deny it in the newspapers. South Africa rules SWA so feels justified in maintaining law and order there, but Angola is an independent country; crossing the border escalates the war exponentially.

One of the infantrymen eyes me. He was a prefect two years ago; I remember him beating me with a pillow during a rough-and-tumble fight.

‘Your turn next, sucker. Where’ve you been called up to?’

‘Grahamstown.’

‘Kak place. Don’t volunteer for anything.’

‘You been in Angola?’

‘Fuck sure,’ he says. ‘Almost to Luanda.’

I’m cowed by his imposing presence. It’s just taken for granted: there’s a war going on and we all have to serve. That’s it.

Actually that’s not true. Many have sidestepped the army by going to university. The government allows this – in fact, it encourages it. Once graduated, students will still be sucked into conscription, mostly as officers in specialist units. They need brains as well as troops – engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants, dentists – there’s a mustering for every profession. University is just a delay in conscription, not an exemption. Eventually the brown envelope drops in your letterbox.

The navy and air force are alternatives but you need connections to be sent there and I don’t have anyone to pull strings.

A handful of guys have fled overseas after school, mostly those with British passports. Some uitlanders elect to stay and serve. It’s each to his own; we don’t discuss these things among ourselves. Probably because most are resigned to the inevitable and they’re simply going to comply with conscription as a prelude to starting real life. An unspoken truth prevails: if you don’t serve, you’ll be a lesser man.

Then there’s another issue when considering conscription. It’s the elephant in the room, and it disturbs me deeply. Our country’s ruled by the National Party – the apartheid government. The bottom line is: I don’t want to be known as an apartheid soldier. My instinct says it’ll be a curse I’ll bear forever.

I was born into South Africa under apartheid rule. It’s all I’ve ever known, apart from Rhodesia with its own homespun version of the ideology. Yet indoctrinated as I am by pervasive government propaganda in our schools and media, I’m not stupid. Apartheid is a fuck-up, I’ve decided.

‘Legislated racism keeping people disenfranchised; brutal suppressions of human rights.’ These are the phrases of our history teacher, forbidden to say such things but who says them anyway. He teaches the European-oriented curriculum grudgingly, filling in the spaces where our questions linger. Apartheid is the last kick of colonisation, he tells us. European settlers resisting black rule, refusing to cave in, maintaining privilege and control.

‘Open your eyes, boys. Rhodesia is the rigor mortis of dying colonialism. And what happened in Mozambique and Angola? – power was seized through revolution. Colonisation was just a phase in history. Do you honestly think South Africa will be any different?’

His thoughts are deeply unsettling. We’re only seventeen, not yet adults, carefree and indecisive and flailing in dangerous political currents.

‘You’ll be fighting communism,’ says another teacher paradoxically, slapping an automatic rifle on the classroom table one day. ‘Those bastards want to take over South Africa. It’ll be your job to kill them – with this weapon, an R1.’ He strips it deftly, removing the firing pin and gas chamber. ‘You might as well get used to it; come up and have a look.’

We boys crowd around his desk, fumbling with the pieces. He reassembles the rifle and points it out a window. ‘Don’t worry, lads, it’s not loaded.’ Roving around, he searches for a target, settles on the groundsman pulling a roller across the cricket pitch and pulls the trigger. ‘Bang,’ he says softly.

Truth is, we’ve become used to the stark imagery of death in our world. A classmate’s father was killed that year by protesters in a township street. Pictures of his body appeared in the newspapers. The townships around Cape Town are in flames – a sign of the growing insurrection against apartheid. Our hostel workers, mostly coloured women, disappeared for a while and returned breathless with excitement, telling us how they’d protested and been shot at by the police. Yet they’re still friendly to us, which confuses me. Perhaps white people generally are not the enemy – just those tasked with violently upholding the law at all costs.

My parents live between Cape Town and Stellenbosch, where my mom buys wine by the case from a farm nearby. She tans by the pool of our home in the suburbs, leafy and plush in a middle-class way, doing crosswords and writing me letters at boarding school. When I was younger, I thought I needed to go to the army for my mom to maintain her lifestyle.

‘It’s important to go,’ says Mom. ‘If we lose the war in South West Africa, we’ll also lose South Africa. And if the blacks take over, your father will lose his job. Then there’ll be no more wine.’

It’s a simplistic argument, dumbed down in a lame attempt at humour. My mother is much more intelligent than that. Deeply caring, she worries about the impact of the army on me. I try to allay her fears but to no avail. I love her dearly, and her rebellious nature, some of which has rubbed off on me. A family myth tells of her and a friend being expelled from school in Durban. Summoning a rickshaw, they rode through the playground, the rickshaw man leaping and yelping as they shouted ‘Fuck off!’ at the teachers.

At age twelve I was sent to boarding school in Cape Town’s southern suburbs but Mom stayed close in heart, writing letters prolifically, telling funny anecdotes and painting hilarious caricatures with words. By then she had become secretary of our local golf club.

‘What do you think of our prime minister, BJ Vorster? He always looks upset on TV, probably because he’s named after a Blow Job. Perhaps he doesn’t get many. I saw him at the golf club the other day and he was very upset. There’s something constipated about his expression. Imagine the most famous person you know sitting on the toilet. What would his face look like?’

*

Times have changed and my eyes have opened a bit – I’m back from Rhodesia, about to be inducted and, truth is, having my doubts. The mantle of ‘apartheid soldier’ remains my foremost concern. It’s time to discuss things with my dad. A liberal Afrikaner, he’s managing director of an international company.

‘I’m not sure about going to the army,’ I reveal to him as we braai by the swimming pool. He frowns.

‘I went,’ he says after a pause.

I knew he’d been in the army briefly in the early sixties but he never spoke of it.

‘Why’d you go?’

‘They had a ballot system. I was called up.’

‘Where did you serve?’

‘Potchefstroom, the infantry. It was tough. We were sent to put down protests after the Sharpeville uprising.’

‘You’ve never told me that.’

He sips on his beer.

‘No. I haven’t. But I faced the same questions in my mind as you are. Why are you unsure about going to the army?’

‘I don’t want to fight for apartheid.’

‘You’re not being called to fight for apartheid. You’re being called to defend your country.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘Apartheid is the government of the day. Your country’s forever.’

‘Apartheid’s been here forever.’

‘But it won’t last,’ he says. ‘Things are going south. Ask yourself this: will you be defending apartheid or trying to prevent a worse future?’

‘You’re worried about the future?’

‘Look at Mozambique and Angola – what’s happened since Portugal withdrew? – corruption and they’ve effectively become one-party states. Democracy se voet. The people must be really happy with their freedom.’

‘Same way they feel about apartheid in South Africa right now, I guess.’

‘Yes but we need to build a new country with the blacks here. One that guarantees our security in the future while giving them the vote. Until then, we stand firm.’

‘The government’s not even talking to the ANC.’

‘The government are idiots. Narrow-minded Nats. The way forward is obvious. There’s Mandela locked up on Robben Island – just talk to him. Make a deal.’

‘I dunno if he wants a deal.’

‘Then he’s stupid, like the Nats.’

‘So you reckon I should go to the army and defend apartheid for now?’

‘You won’t be defending apartheid, my boy. You’re preventing us becoming victims in the future.’

‘It’s a fine line,’ I sigh.

‘Eventually we’ll have to negotiate with the blacks,’ he reinforces. ‘If our hand is strong because we’re holding off a revolution, we’ll secure a better future. That’s what the fight’s for – not for apartheid.’

Truly, I’m between a rock and a hard place. I sense my dad’s argument will be difficult to explain in the future when apartheid’s gone. But if I don’t go to the army now, I’ll be seen as a coward. I can’t win. I hate this dilemma forced on me with its flawed alternatives on both sides.

‘Only you can decide,’ he commiserates, arm around my shoulders. ‘Whatever course you choose, I’ll be proud of you.’

 3 

Basic Training

The night before I report for service, my mom suggests we go to the pub for a farewell. She invites friends from the golf club and we sit in the beer garden around a big table. Many toasts are made to me. Fathers trumpet the loudest with a sincerity that comes from having bid their own sons farewell. Mothers are more subdued, intuitively feeling the pain of those they birthed.

The drinks flow and my dad slurs proudly about ‘my boy doing his bit’ and my mom dances on the table. When the song ends, she pulls up her top: ‘My soldier boy was fed by these boobs!’

Everyone cheers. I don’t think it’s for me.

The next morning I’m brutally hung over at Cape Town station. The troop train seems a big hearse on the platform: long, dark and sad. Boys with long hair, city slickers mostly, mope around like cattle for the abattoir. Parents and girlfriends hug them tearfully. When their boys return on pass, it’ll be without the innocence of youth.

My mom finds a bottle in the railway canteen and is ready to party. I’m praying the train will just leave. The corporals don’t need to see the breasts that suckled me.

I find a compartment with an empty bunk and ask if it’s available. A surfer says ‘Pull in, bru’ and an Afrikaans boy ‘Geen probleem.’ We wind up in the same platoon eventually. The surfer soon wangles a transfer to the Castle and is never seen again.

The Afrikaans boy is young, perhaps sixteen, and bewildered by the world he finds himself in. In time he copes well, owing to his benign personality. Courteous and friendly, he produces a trekklavier which we encourage him to play. Prodigiously talented, his jovial boeremusiek summons admiring Afrikaans boys from other carriages. Too soft for an infantryman, I suspect he’ll be diverted to another division within the army. Time proves me right – they turn him into a truck driver. But war is a cruel god. It finds the most virtuous and exercises its wrath mercilessly, eliminating goodness where it tempers evil. A Russian missile will target the truck he’s driving and shear off a leg, making him suffer for the sins of many of us left unscathed.

The boeremusiek in our compartment ends and we lapse into silence, thinking with concern of our fate at journey’s end. Coming to Laingsburg, parts of which were recently washed away by a flood, our train crosses the only surviving bridge and we stare solemnly through our windows. All around is carnage; houses and streets obliterated by the swollen river. Heading for the army, my life feels the same. I’m not overwhelmingly happy with my choice but here I am.

Grahamstown train station, small and empty, is held by a pack of pit-bull corporals. They’re as terrifying as former conscripts have reported, but I sense much of it is feigned hostility. Smartly togged up in brown uniforms and green berets and wearing shiny boots, they wait on the platform at regular intervals where our train doors will open. All look supremely fit and well sprung; some are short and stocky while others are fearsomely tall and built like heavyweight boxers. Regardless of their differences, they share a singular feature that defines their faces – a ubiquitous flourishing moustache, flaring into menacing points at each end. The train hasn’t even stopped and the cretins have begun hurling abuse. I wouldn’t be surprised if the most demented use their snors like buffalo horns to herd us down the platform.

Yelling with brandewyn breath, they compress us into a ragged line. A senior NCO with the roughest sandpaper vocals stalks by, eyeing us with distaste.

‘Daar’s ’n kont hier wat sy guitar saamgebring het!’ he informs his minions. A corporal shouts, ‘Wat is jy, seun, ’n moffie!’ The senior NCO then puffs up his chest and booms an unintelligible order for us to march to waiting Bedford trucks. A corporal calls out the beat: ‘Links, links, links yuck ay!’

There is no command for your right foot. It sort of follows, too scared to do anything else. There are gaps where authority doesn’t reach but you’re expected to do the right thing. Later we exploit this, using a phenomenon known as ‘gippo’.

A rough drive takes us to 6 SAI, a sprawling base five kilometres away. We’re dumped on a parade ground and greeted by two priests, a rabbi and a sergeant major. The latter seems respectful and pleasant, confusing us all. He welcomes us warmly and directs us to ‘the padres’. A few hundred gather around the dominee, a small bunch around the English minister and three Jews alongside the rabbi.

‘Now if you have any problems, dears,’ winks the Anglican, ‘just call me. And on Sunday do come to the Cathedral. I’d just luuuuuuv to see you.’

Their welcomes complete, God’s agents climb into an open Land Rover – coloured brown, as is everything else – and drive around a corner. An atomic bomb hits the parade ground.

‘Fok die dominees!’ roars the sergeant major, voluminous grey snor blotting out his face. ‘Val in, julle civvie konte!’

For the first time I’m being called a vagina in this place. It won’t be the last. Barking and biting from all sides, the pit bulls shrink us into a frightened huddle. The army has begun.

Infantry training is three phases of roughly three months each: basic training, conventional and counterinsurgency warfare. We’re 1 500 recruits, most of us school leavers. In charge of our training are the pit bulls and Permanent Force (PF) officers, men a few years older than us and all with experience in the Border War. Professional soldiers, they’re hard and terrifying, graduates of the Infantry School in Oudtshoorn. Some are former Rhodesians, betrayed by their clipped English accents, who’ve secured SADF contracts in an immigration deal. They keep to themselves mostly but are from the same stable – bush-hardened and biltong-wrinkled, radiating experience and thousand-yard stares.

Grouped in platoons, we’re housed in red-brick barracks. Stark but adequate, home to steel beds, foam mattresses and small cupboards, each houses 30 men. Centrally positioned lies the parade ground, a crunching gravel rectangle on which we muster, drill and are given PT. We’re Alpha Company, some 150 men, one of numerous such groupings at 6 SAI, each commanded by a captain.

Our platoon commander, 2nd Lieutenant Cassie, is an Afrikaner, well-educated, upright and correct. A broad hulk, strong as an ox, he’s also the battalion’s rugby captain and played for a provincial team at Craven Week. His tone is moderate, his attitude not demeaning, the sign of intelligence.

Our platoon corporal is short and sullen, with mousy brown hair and a heart bloated with venom. Picking on individuals regularly with coarse insults, he repeatedly sends us running around the parade ground as punishment for apparent indiscretions. ‘Julle manne werk nie saam nie,’ he sneers. My early impression is that he’s bitter and deranged and that view never changes over the next two years. Still, he’s competent and clearly experienced, and in time will teach us much about bush warfare.

Instructions alternate between languages, though Afrikaans dominates. Much has been said of the divisions between the boere and the souties. In my experience it’s embellished – we’re all one, although socially the groups mill by language. We’re culturally different, that’s all. I’m of mixed parentage but have been raised English so gravitate to that side. A bigger division lies between rural and urban boys – farm boys are conservative, city boys more liberal.

Atop the army tree sits God, the commandant – rarely seen, with his heavy gold pips. His right-hand man is the regimental sergeant major, a frightening hulk. To date, nearly a hundred of their troops from this base have returned in coffins from