The South African Border War - Meanwhile back at the South West African Border and 32 Battalion.

With Angola now independent and firmly in the hands of the new MPLA government, with its Cuban and Soviet backing, South Africa's fears regarding SWA quickly materialized.

The MPLA was more than willing to allow SWAPO or PLAN fighters to set up bases inside Angola and conduct insurgencies directly from Angolan soil.

The South African reaction was to change a previous lottery draft system to 2 year compulsory military conscription for all white South African males.

Part of this two year conscription and the "camps" or reservist yearly duty was likely to be spent inside the "Operational Areas" or "border duty" as it was known.

The general SA conscripts were initially deployed at bases inside northern South West Africa in a maintenance or counter insurgency role.

For general infantry this often consisted of week long or fortnight long foot patrols monitoring insurgency routs etc.

In 1975 during operation Savannah the former FNLA soldiers had done plenty and proved themselves as dedicated fighters and career soldiers.

These were formed into 32 Battalion and, being Angolan, operated mainly in southern Angola, as a buffer between the communist backed forces and South Africa's regular forces.

Early on some of the officers came from Australia, Rhodesia, Portugal and the United States but later they were mainly white South Africans.

The main base was at Buffalo on the banks of the SWA side of the Okavango River and their insignia was the buffalo.

By MrPenguin20 , CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Hence there nickname Buffalo's, they were feared by the Angolan forces and some of their Russian advisers noted that if it was rumored that "Buffalo's" were attacking, the battle was often over, as the Angolan forces would down weapons and run.

In Portuguese they were nicknamed Os Terríveis or "The Terrible Ones".

They distinguished themselves throughout the conflict as a highly effective combat force but were always plagued by a reputation for brutality, torture, rape, desecration of fallen opponents bodies and other atrocities including against civilians.

How much of it was based on real facts and how much of it was reputation and rumor is hard to tell; and will probably never be known. The white sands of Southern Angola are a long way from everything and anything can happen with nobody any the wiser.

This reputation was so entrenched that part of the negotiated transition that would come to South Africa decades later was the disbanding of this unit before transition to full democratic rule.

Other posts in this series

The piece of the cold war nobody told you about - Africa's forgotten war

The Air Battles
The SA Fighter Aircraft
The SA Bomber Aircraft
The conflicts deep roots and start
Regional Tensions
Africa's forgotten cold war - Angolan War of Independence.
Africa's forgotten cold war - Mozambican War of Independence.
Africa's forgotten cold war - Rhodesian Bush War
Africa's forgotten cold war - The Angolan War of Independence transitions to the Angolan Civil War
The South African Border War - The start of Operation Savannah and Large scale South African involvement.
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - the wheels start coming off.
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - Battle of Quifangondo
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - Battle of Ebo
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - Battle of Bridge 14
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - Battle of Luso
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah comes to an end.
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah the withdrawal.
The South African Border War - Meanwhile back on the home front.
The South African Border War - Meanwhile over in neighboring Mozambique.