Intelligence Organisation.’16
Many former Scouts and SAS paratroopers retreated into the shadows in a continuation of the regional covert war to defend the tattered remnants of white-ruled Africa. On 14 March 1980, just prior to independence, about 100 Rhodesian SAS parachutists who had opted to join the South African Special Forces were incorporated as 6 Reconnaissance Commando under the command of Commandant Garth Barrett of the SAS,17 alongside 1 Reconnaissance Commando at the Bluff in Durban.
The Rhodesian SAS was disbanded on 31 December 1980. A telegraph from 22 SAS in Britain paid the following tribute. ‘Farewell to a much-admired sister unit. Your professionalism and fighting expertise have always been second to none throughout the history of the Rhodesian SAS. C Sqn still remains vacant in 22 SAS orbat [order of battle].’18
A former MI6 agent, the late Nigel Morgan, told this author in July 2018 that at the last British SAS dinner he attended, he had been informed that the Rhodesian C-Squadron SAS was still considered to be in the regiment’s order of battle, a highly unusual honour for a disbanded unit.
In April 1980, a group of former Selous Scouts who opted to come south were incorporated as 7 Reconnaissance Commando at the new Special Forces base outside Phalaborwa. The name was soon changed to 3 Reconnaissance Commando to avoid confusion with 7 South African Infantry Battalion, also stationed at Phalaborwa. The 3 Recce name also replaced that of the defunct small-teams 3 Recce from the 1970s. Small-teams capacity was, however, retained in other units of the SADF and the auxiliary South West Africa Territorial Force (SWATF).
Scott recalls that he was briefed at Special Forces HQ, on the 13th floor of the Zanza building in Pretoria, where he, Major Geoff Atkinson, and Major Boet Swart put together the new unit. Peter Stiff says Swart, operating out of the Zanza building, was the unit’s de facto OC while it was being consolidated and building of the Phalaborwa base was completed, but Atkinson took over as soon as it was fully formed.
Scott gives initial 7 Recce numbers of about 40 white and 30 black ex-Scouts under the command of Atkinson, who would later be replaced by Barrett.19 Paul Els indicates that 3 Recce’s numbers soon swelled to about 120.20 All the new Rhodesian recruits were required to get their wings, or at least convert to the SADF parachute system. Training was conducted at the military airfield at Dukuduku in northeastern Zululand.
According to Stiff, various white Selous Scouts ‘drifted in’ and signed up at 3/7 Recce over the next few months. These included Lieutenant Jean-Michel Desblé, Lieutenant Piet van der Riet, Colour Sergeant Noel Robey and Scouts Recce Group 2IC Captain Tim Bax. ‘During the next few months, there was a trickle of experienced black policemen and soldiers from such units as the BSA Police and the Rhodesian African Rifles, who crossed the Limpopo River to seek a future in South Africa.’ Most of the men were routed through Phalaborwa. Some enlisted and some ‘went on their way to other things’, Stiff writes.21
Integration of the markedly ‘English’ Rhodesians into the majority Afrikaans-speaking SADF Special Forces was far from smooth, and cultural dissonance and other grudges would lead to most Rhodesians resigning from the SADF after their initial contracted year or few years thereafter – with some notable exceptions, which will be discussed later.
Major Peter Schofield, a former British Red Devils freefall display team leader turned 1 Recce operator, contrasts the long-haired and bearded – but supremely disciplined – Rhodesian ex-SAS soldiers with their sloppy South African Recce counterparts: ‘The first day they [the Rhodesians] came on parade, about a week after they’d come south, with 1 Recce, when they were going to form up 6 Reconnaissance Commando … they formed up out of sight and they marched on as a unit with their commanding officer, little Garth Barrett, … and the RSM with his pace stick and his two coloured sergeants22 with their pace sticks … they were immaculate. They marched on, their drill was perfect, they halted, turned, faced 1 Recce that was a shambles. The RSM was a scruffy bugger with long hair. He was a tough cookie, Trevor Floyd, but he was an ugly piece of work. And the moment they marched on and I saw them march on like that, I said to myself, guys, you’ve just blown it. You are finished, you are stone dead in the South African Defence Force. It was so resented that they were so smart, that they were so disciplined, that they were so organised.’23
Although, Stiff notes, the ex-C-Squadron SAS men got on exceptionally well with their 1 Recce comrades at the Bluff, as they had a camaraderie dating back to their days together with D-Squadron SAS, there were some serious cultural ‘minefields’ to cross: the Rhodesians didn’t speak any Afrikaans, did not hold morning church parades as the South Africans did (considering a man’s religion to be a private matter), and came from a background in which many of their grandfathers had fought the Boers. To the Rhodesians, the Anglo-Boer Wars were ancient history, but to the Afrikaners, the experiences of the British concentration camps and scorched-earth policy were an intense and painful part of their families’ living memories. In the event, despite the expense the SADF had gone to to expand the Bluff base and build the new one at Phalaborwa, it is curious that neither the ex-Scouts 3 Recce nor the ex-SAS 6 Recce ever received any official unit colours or flashes.
8
Recruiting a few hard men
Months before most of the Rhodesian operatives enlisted in the SADF, one key operative was already carving out a new career south of the border.
Major Neil Kriel had joined 1 Reconnaissance Commando, stationed at the Bluff in Durban, in February 1979. He was a group commander, but that post would prove ephemeral, as within days he was called to a meeting in Pretoria with the General Officer Commanding (GOC) Special Forces, Major-General Fritz Loots.
It is likely that Kriel’s notable operational command skills and his reputation for a high kill rate in counterinsurgency operations had brought him to the attention of Loots, though Kriel stated that, as a staff officer at 2 Brigade (or Group, at Mount Darwin), he had ‘trained about 11 companies of South African policemen’1 and that ‘from about 1976 onwards’ he had liaised with Loots personally. The latter ‘would put me into the right positions and I would then meet the other staff officers who would then supply us … the specialised equipment.’
Kriel recalled: ‘When I got into Pretoria on 9 February, I made contact with the headquarters, being at the Zanza building, and I was asked by General Loots, who was the GOC Special Forces, to come and see him the next day … He wanted to discuss something with me. I then went in the next day and we went by car to see [Defence Minister] General [Magnus] Malan … discussions took place as to what they wanted me to do, which was a little different to what I was originally posted to.’
That difference was immediately apparent to Kriel: Malan and Loots asked him if he could carefully select a discrete team of diverse specialists for a clandestine pseudo-operations unit from among his former Scouts and associated colleagues. The nature of the new unit was initially to be ‘deep penetration reconnaissance’ which involved, Kriel said, ‘a two-man team being dropped 600–700 miles into enemy territory, identifying a base, staying out for approximately six/seven weeks, no resupply; identifying the routes that the enemy is using and then either directing an airstrike or an attack onto the … target intended.’
The authority for the plan appears to have been a State Security Council (SSC) strategy document dated February 1979 that gave the green light for top-secret intelligence-gathering reconnaissance operations – and ‘unrestricted’ clandestine operations.2 However, according to Colonel Johan Theron, whose career covers the entire period of the new pseudoops unit’s existence, having been involved with Kriel in recruiting Selous Scouts in Rhodesia, the unit’s primary role was not recon ops, but rather black-ops killings. It was to be, he stressed, primarily ‘a hit team against the ANC – and against SWAPO’.3 The new unit was called the Section of Pseudo-Operations (SPO).
According
