A Breed Apart. The Inside Story of a Recce's Special Forces Training Year, by Johan Raath

A Breed Apart. The Inside Story of a Recce's Special Forces Training Year, by Johan Raath. Jonathan Ball Publishers South Africa, Delta Books. Johannesburg-Cape Town, South Africa 2022. ISBN 9781928248248 / ISBN 978-1-92-824824-8

Comprehensive and revealing, A Breed Apart - The Inside Story of a Recce's Special Forces Training Year, by Johan Raath, shows why the South African Reconnaissance Commandos truly are a breed apart.

Johan Raath  

Special Forces. These two words instil respect, admiration, esteem, reverence and mystique among the general population but create fear, anxiety and distress in the hearts of insurgents, warlords, criminal syndicates, drug lords and any wrongdoers who find themselves in the crosshairs of Special Forces teams. Unfortunately, these two words are also sometimes hijacked by wannabes who dream up fantasies in order to boost their own low self-esteem. We call it 'stolen valour'. The South African Special Forces was established in the early 1970s and in a short space of time became operationally active. To this day it is a prestigious and vital unit of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF). The first Special Forces unit, 1 Reconnaissance Commando, was established in 1972 at the highly respected South African Infantry (SAI) School in Oudtshoorn. Reconnaissance Commando then moved to the coastal city of Durban in 1974. Two more operational Special Forces units and the Special Forces Headquarters (known as Speskop) were spawned in the late 1970s. Selection and training doctrines were initially based on those of the British Special Air Service (SAS), with some influence from the French Special Forces, particularly on the combat diving and seaborne operations side. Air capabilities were drawn from the highly esteemed 1 Parachute Battalion, based in my hometown of Bloemfontein in the central highlands of South Africa. It wasn't long before Special Forces operators were being referred to as 'Recces' - an abbreviation of Reconnaissance Commando. From the outset these Recce operators were involved in hair-raising and difficult operations in Angola, Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), Mozambique and other sub-equatorial African countries. After Angola and Mozambique received their independence from Portugal in 1975, communist governments were installed in both countries. The National Party government in South Africa perceived these black majority-ruled states as a threat to white minority rule but also as part of the so-called Red Peril - the threat posed by communism at the height of the Cold War. The United States (US), through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), encouraged South Africa to take a stand against communism in southern Africa. South Africa also faced an insurgency in the then South West Africa (today Namibia) by the South West Africa People's Organisation (Swapo). At the time, South West Africa was governed by South Africa as a protectorate. The National Party government also had to deal with the threat from Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), and from the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA), the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress. From the viewpoint of the apartheid regime, these groups were insurgents or terrorists, but as I point out in my book Blood Money, one person's insurgent is another's freedom fighter or liberator. These armed groups were fighting the apartheid system for the independence of South West Africa, on the one hand, and for a democratic South Africa, on the other. The first South African Defence Force (SADF) soldier killed in action in Angola, in March 1974, was Lieutenant Fred Zeelie. It is probably significant that he was a Recce operator from 1 Reconnaissance Commando. The Recces were very busy from 1975 onwards after Angola and Mozambique gained their independence and received backing from the Soviet Union and its satellites, while the white-minority regime in Rhodesia faced an onslaught from liberation movements. [...]

This is an excerpt from A Breed Apart. The Inside Story of a Recce's Special Forces Training Year, by Johan Raath.

Title: A Breed Apart
Subtitle: The Inside Story of a Recce's Special Forces Training Year
Author: Johan Raath
Genre: War memoirs
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers South Africa
Imprint: Delta Books
Johannesburg-Cape Town, South Africa 2022
ISBN 9781928248248 / ISBN 978-1-92-824824-8
Softcover, 15 x 23 cm, 304 pages, numerous b/w and colour photographs