by J H Thompson
– Anthony, age 18
It was quite prestigious to be in the army in the early eighties. They looked after you and we had good equipment and really good food. By about the second month of Basics, we knew the importance of eating well, because of all the physical training we had to do. Once we went in for breakfast and the chefs had messed up our food. There were blue-green eggs and the bacon was this congealed mass. Our RSM used to eat with us, and when he came in and saw that we were refusing to eat, he took one look at the food and understood why. He said that it was unacceptable and pulled out all the chefs, every one of them that was currently on duty in the kitchen and all the others that were off duty and resting in their bungalows. Now we used to call the chefs tippy-toes ’cause many of them were of the more ‘softer’ persuasion. The RSM made them all do pole PT. A tar road ran through the camp for about a kilometre, and our entire battalion lined the road to watch. We didn’t cheer – we wouldn’t take away a man’s dignity like that – but our presence was enough to show our displeasure at these guys in their white uniforms and brown boots, who were not used to physical exercise, running up and down the road. It was very funny to watch. One pair was trying to carry the pole, but one was very tall and the other very short, so they just didn’t get it right. The RSM drilled them hard for three hours, and then they had to make our lunch. We never had another bad meal.
– Clint, age 18
I was on watch on board SAS Fleur in Simonstown harbour when the new chef arrived. He presented himself, and then the petty officer took him off to show him his bunk and where everything was. Shortly after lunch the bell sounded and shouts went up that there was a man overboard. I rushed to the edge and looked down – there was this youngster, the new chef. The lunch he had prepared was kak, so the guys had thrown him overboard! It was amusing, but there is so much protocol and paperwork and so many procedures involved when a man goes overboard, and as it happened on my watch, I had to deal with all that. Dinner was no better, so that evening the chef ended up overboard again. The next morning he made everyone breakfast in bed.
– Louis, age 17
Being a chef in the army was a very powerful position. We ran the bars and handled all the food. I had the keys to the fridges, so I could trade or sell anything. A box of meat could be traded for anything, especially to the troops who had been out on patrol for six weeks; they craved meat after living on rat packs. Anything I wanted. Anything. I could get it from them. I traded a case of meat to the loadies for a legitimate ticket on a Flossie from the Border to Pretoria and back. This saved me ten days’ travelling pass, and I could spend more time on pass at home. For a one-litre sachet of milk I got a new pair of those flat-soled takkie boots, the ones that real soldiers, the Recces or 32 Battalion, wear. None of those normal army boots with a heel for me. I sold so much stuff too. I’d sell the old oil to the Ovambos for … I can’t remember exactly, about R20 a drum. I never had to touch my army pay and I made a fortune on the Border. I made a lot of money. I was able to buy my first car when I klaared out. The army taught me how to wheel and deal.
– Anthony, age 18
Basic Training in ’93 was bad. We lived in tents and the food was shocking. The first day would be some sort of meat, the next day green kidneys, the third day black liver, and the fourth day mincemeat from all the leftover meat from the previous days. After a week, everyone started getting sick and lost weight. I complained about it, and because of that we had to clean up the kitchen. I was very unpopular. When we cleaned the kitchen, we found worms in the mincing machine. I was so happy when my folks drove down to see me in Ladysmith for an Open Day. I asked them to bring food. It was the only thing I asked for. They even brought me some KFC, which was like a dream! They brought tons of tinned food, which I used mainly to swop out for favours and duties. The condensed milk and bully beef were the most valuable. Condensed milk was like gold. We had to bite our bed to get the edges of the blanket sharp and neat. I swopped a tin of condensed milk out for a guy to bite my bed for me for inspections. I wasn’t going to ruin my teeth on that crap!
– Martin, age 23
We were up at 4 a.m. this one time for breakfast. Thousands of us were standing in line to eat our blue eggs, two slices of brown toast and the lumpiest mieliepap I’ve ever eaten in my life. I remember looking up at the stars and seeing the Three Kings. That’s one good thing I remember from there: the stars there were unbelievably bright. It’s like those three stars were shining down on me like some sort of protection. They were a comfort to me. To this day, I still think of that time when I looked up and saw those Three Kings.
– Nick, age 20
Afkak, Opfok, Rondfok, Vasbyt
We called the Parabats ‘Vleisbomme’, the State President’s Guard ‘Trompoppies’, Gunners ‘Kanondonkies’. Personeeldiens was called ‘The PD Sun’, and Valhalla was ‘Valhalla Beach’, ’cause we, being Infantry, thought we had the toughest time and the guys there had it easy. We had to deal with opfok. ‘You see that leaf over there? Go and fetch me that leaf.’ And you run miles to that bloody tree – that’s opfok. And when you come back, he tells you it’s the wrong leaf – that’s rondfok. Opfok is more physical: all that running up and down. The fact that you’ve got to go again ’cause he says you have the wrong leaf is the rondfok. Physically it won’t really harm you. It’s more psychological. Another example was this one particular lieutenant, who hated my guts. He would take water and pour it all over my bed during inspection. This was a full inspection: all your stuff was laid out on the bed, your rifle was stripped, and everything in your kas and trommel had to be just so. All your shirts had to be ironed and hung up with the sleeves all pointing the same way. Your pakkie of folded clothing had to be perfectly squared off. What a lot of guys didn’t cotton on to was the fact that it didn’t matter how perfect everything was, ’cause the first time they came around they were going to say, ‘Wat se kak is dié!’ [What shit is this!], and pull stuff out and drag it around. Physically it won’t kill you to put it all back together, and when he comes around again, the things will probably look worse than the first time, but he’ll say, ‘Nee, dis baie beter’ [No, that’s much better]. That’s rondfok.
– Nick, age 20
There was rondfok, opfok and vasbyt. The first is just stuffing you around. If the corporals were bored, they’d tell us to do things like take our beds to the parade ground and sleep there, but they had to be back in the bungalow for inspection the next morning. Opfok is more a punishment, but it can be constructive, like a very heavy physical session, but the outcome is still geared towards improving the situation or your fitness. We had a vasbyt at Golden Gate in the middle of winter once. Up and down the hills, swimming through freezing rivers so all our kit was wet, and the white mist blowing towards us wasn’t mist but tear gas. At the end of the day they’d say, ‘There’s a lekker braai down at the bottom; all you have to do is walk down there. Yes, we’ll take you off the course, but, shame man, aren’t your blisters hurting? Just take your boots off and walk down with us for some food. C’mon, the guys are having a lekker time down there, come and join us.’ If it’s done properly, the purpose of vasbyt is to show how quickly things can break down; morale can be broken very easily, and as potential leaders you need to deliver on your promises. If you tell your troops they don’t need to take much food ’cause more will be delivered, and then for two nights it isn’t and when the truck does come all it has are beetroot slices, the guys are going to start bitching and negativity sets in.
– Paul, age 17
The word vasbyt originated with 1 Parachute Battalion. It was a form of initiation started by the Parabats. New recruits arrived at the battalion and had to undergo this form of physical initiation by tensing their stomach muscles as a big guy hit them in the gut as hard as he could. The word is now used all over the place, on the rugby field, the rest of the SADF, but that’s where it came from – 1 Parachute Battalion.
– John, age 18
I wa
s extremely fit, so I didn’t battle with the physical side of opfok. I could do 132 push-ups in two minutes. Running with a heavy backpack and carrying a Samil tyre and a tree trunk wasn’t quite what I was used to, but the only thing I really battled with was running in boots. There was no cure for blisters; you just had to work your way through them. I still have scars on the top of my foot and on my heel. The only thing they seemed worried about was sunburn. You were in so much shit if you got sunburnt. You were never allowed to walk around without a shirt on, because if you got burnt on your shoulders, you couldn’t carry a pack.
– Paul, age 18
We had the Olympics in State President’s Guard. For three days you would get messed around horribly. Rondfok, opfok – everything. It was like an initiation. You knew it was starting when they did roll-call at 2 a.m. We’d do a 10-kay route march, 10-kay run, pole PT and fluitjie – whistle – PT. Fluitjie op, fluitjie af. They’d blow the whistle and you’d fall on your stomach, then they’d blow the whistle and you’d jump up, blow the whistle, back down. Then we’d have to drink water, roll on the ground in this fine powdery red dust, stand up, drink more water, roll, drink, roll, until you hurled. Then you still had to continue, so you were rolling in vomit and you and your uniform were filthy. Then they’d tell us to get back to our rooms. And they’d been in there. They had emptied the sand buckets and sprayed water over everything, and we were told we were standing major inspection at 6 a.m. Tempers frayed as everyone rushed to get everything done. But somehow we did it – in half an hour. During Olympics it was the only time the guys would go to the clerks and beg them to put them on guard duty.
– Nick, age 20
During COIN – counter-insurgency – training at Tempe, we were trained in map reading, orientation, standing guard duty and stuff like that. We were given our map and had to travel from one point to another carrying poles and ammo boxes. We were supposed to dig a trench when we reached the point where we were supposed to be for the night. But we got lucky and found an old trench dug by the guys who had been there before us. We were also supposed to set potjiefakkels, which we didn’t, as we felt quite safe. We tied ourselves together, wrist to wrist, and there were two guys on either side of the trench, supposedly on guard. If they heard something they just pulled on the utility rope, this small green rope you got in Basics, and woke up the next man, and so it went down the line, everyone waking the next person by tugging on the rope. The first thing that happened was we heard these other guys approaching. We cocked our rifles – with live ammo – and instructed these guys to get down, identify themselves, the whole thing. We thought we had stopped our corporals, who were probably sneaking up to check on us. Meantime it was another, completely separate group that had accidentally, due to a communication error, stumbled across our trenches. We could have shot them.
A few nights after that, we’re at another point where we had scraped out trenches for the night. The guards fell asleep and the instructors woke us by chucking thunderflashes at us. One landed inside my trench and blew a huge hole in my sleeping bag. It gave us a real wake-up call. Because the guards were asleep, we got the opfok of our lives. I think it was about three o’clock in the morning and the instructors went crazy. We had to do pole PT and fluitjie PT. They’d blow the whistle and we had to drop and crawl. The whistle blew and we had to get up and run, down again, leopard-crawl, up again – this was over rough terrain, mind you, not a smooth parade ground or anything, and if the guy in front of you vomited, you just crawled through it. If he stopped, you just crawled over him. It went on like that all the way back to base. When I saw the base, I thought it would be over and we could drop the poles and ammo boxes. But no, we then had to march with our rifles held out horizontally with stiff arms. It went on until mid-morning. It was a good lesson. As they said: ‘In the war you won’t get a second chance, they’ll just kill you,’ so ja, it was a good lesson.
– Tallies, age 17
In Berede – Mounted Infantry – in Potch, we did all the usual nonsense like everyone else – wake up at the crack of dawn, go and do your 2,4-kilometre run like everybody else, have inspection like everybody else – then early breakfast and straight to the horses. We’d muck out the stables; yes, we did all that ourselves, as we didn’t have stable hands. In the early days of learning to ride, you ran with all your kit and your horse’s kit. I hated it, ’cause we had these McLellan saddles which were supposed to be light, but let me tell you, they got pretty heavy, especially when you had to carry them on top of your head and carry your rifle. The idea behind it was that if your horse was shot or injured, you had to be able to carry all the kit out. You also had to do this while leading your horse, and if you had a horse that didn’t like being led or was full of nonsense … wow … you had a rough time. We did horse training until 11, and then it would be ‘too hot for the horses but not for the men’. We ran or whatever, and then did classes like learning how to set up roadblocks or take apart landmines. Once a week we would have perdeparade in the afternoon. All other days it was just the usual parade at five in the afternoon. Then, when we got back to base, we would have to clean up, shower, change, get allocated duties like guard duty, then have supper. We had to march everywhere; we could not just walk. If there were two of you, you had to march in step, and if there were more than two, one had to take control and call cadence for the others to march to. After dinner you went back to the bungalow and had about an hour to polish and clean your equipment – that’s the usual inventory plus saddle, reins and all the additional equipment. You had to buy all your own stuff too: boot polish, dubbin and such. Then you prepared for inspection the next morning. Then it was Bible time. You had 15 minutes to read, and they checked up on you to make sure you were reading your Bible. After Bible time, we slept under our beds so that we didn’t have to make them in the morning.
– Martin, age 23
There was this very shit place called Lohatla. I worked in the pay office, and at the end of every month a busload of us would head off to Lohatla. All the gay guys going off to pay the straight guys. It was like, la la la la la, because it was an outing, a road trip. It was exciting; we talked about the guys we would meet, all those Rambo types who were living in the bush there, surviving without food as they trained hard before being sent up to the Border to go and fight in the war. When we got there, we were given a tent far out in the middle of nowhere. It was so isolated, we thought it was a tent they used as a target for bombs and things. I mean it was completely by itself, far out in the veld. Of course, being gay, we decorated it and made it look nice with flowers and whatnot. We had to make it as pleasant as possible. You could feel the pain in the air. Lohatla was a hard place, and there were guys who were really messed up. Things like no food for days, all in preparation for going to the Border. I don’t know why it worked out like this, but we always got tea and sandwiches served to us as the guys were queuing for their pay. These guys were a mess, exhausted, filthy, tired and hungry, and there we sat behind tables draped with white tablecloths, drinking tea and eating sarmies! Maybe they wanted to mess with the guys’ heads, but we were only 18 and it was a game. We would send the tea back, declaring it was cold, or say we didn’t eat cheese and we would send the food back while we called out, ‘Next! Magsnommer ?’ It was also a way to get back at them. These were the guys who had judged me, victimised me and belittled me at school and had given me the hardest time of my life.
– Rick, age 18
Making and Breaking
You were a troep, you were fokall. Jy’s niks. Corporal used to say to us, ‘Jy’s nie my donnerse ma nie, jy’s nie my donnerse pa nie, jy’s net ’n fokkin’ troep’ [You’re not my bloody mother, you’re not my bloody father, you’re nothing but a fuckin’ troop]. The first two weeks is just a constant breakdown. You’re nothing. You’re nobody. You’re useless. Even if it was just water for shaving. Warm water? No ways. Ha! Try no water! Everyone had to shave dry, and if there was the slightest bit of stubble – opfok.
I understood why they did it, but it didn’t make it any easier. Sleep deprivation was one of the quickest ways to get to you. They would send us to bed around 10 p.m., saying we’d done a good day’s work and to get a good night’s sleep. Next thing we’d be woken at 11 p.m. and be up for the rest of the night. We had no normal sleep patterns; they broke those completely. Also, the waking up was never a gentle ‘Wakey wakey, it’s the corporal here, it’s time to get up.’ It was always abrupt, some loud noise or banging. We were constantly sleep deprived, and I’m sure medical opinion now would say what they did then was illegal. The military was a law unto itself.
– Paul, age 18
During training we had class competition between platoons. Things like bridge-or obstacle-building. We had this 20-kilometre run with a gum pole tree. It wasn’t just a pole, it was an entire tree. Our platoon was the last one to reach the place where we had to pick it up and it was the only tree left, so of course it was the largest one. Even our platoon commander joined in and helped us stagger back with this thing, but we still came in about four hours after the others. It took us an entire bloody day. There was a braai afterwards, but it was pretty much finished by the time we got back. That night, one of the big Afrikaans guys broke down and cried, and then attacked that pole with an axe.
– Paul, age 17
I have never seen such dramatic weight loss. These two strapping guys from Charlie Company were on Corporal’s Course, and each was given a rooi doibie and they went from being big guys to skin and bone in less than two weeks. Their major was an English guy, but a complete dick. The two had bunked from something, a meal or a lecture or something, and hidden under their beds. They got caught, and for punishment had to wear the doibies. Their CB punishment was brutal. They had to op die looppas, which meant they had to jog everywhere and all the time. They weren’t allowed to walk. They weren’t allowed to eat sitting down; they had to jog on the spot. Every hour on the hour they had to report to the hoofhek in full battle uniform. Even throughout the night, every hour on the hour, they had to go to the gate and get the lieutenant to sign that they had reported in, so they were not getting enough sleep. At any time, anywhere, any officer or NCO could stop them and tell them to drop and do 30 push-ups or whatever. It was inhumane. I got stuffed up in the army occasionally. I got a bossie, or a bosbus. That’s when the major or colonel drives in a Ratel or Land Rover or something and you have to run and try to keep up with the vehicle while he shouts and tells you what to do and where to go. He might tell you to run up and back down a hill and all the while he’s driving and you have to keep up. It absolutely killed you. He just kept driving and you would have to keep up. As tough as a bossie was, it still didn’t affect us the way it did those two guys. I’ve never seen physical exertion affect anyone like that. They looked like scarecrows. The worse thing was, at the end of it all, they were chucked off the course, so the whole punishment was for nothing.