The Soldier who Said No

by Chris Marnewick

  De Villiers headed for the shallows where the Pacific meets the coarse volcanic sand of Eastern Beach. He removed his shoes and tied the laces together to carry them slung around his neck. He entered the water and started walking north. In the distance, the regatta was under way now, with small boats rushing from one brightly coloured marker buoy to the next. Anxious parents watched from the shore as their offspring struggled with the subtleties of competitive yachting. Race marshals in the regatta’s small motorboats followed the tiny sailors.

  Copious quantities of broken shells had washed up on the beach, leaving a ridge that marked the high tide. Further out in the bay, De Villiers could see one of the Eastern Beach regulars on his kayak, the small vessel tied to a navigation post about four hundred metres into the ocean. De Villiers had seen the man on the beach. On one occasion he had been offered a snapper fresh from the sea. While there was, to De Villiers’s eye, a shortage of wildlife on land, there appeared to be an abundance of fish. In the sand under his feet there were edible shellfish, tuatua, tuangi and teheroa, not to mention the ubiquitous periwinkle. At the rocky northern end of the beach there were mussels, not the green-lipped mussels for which New Zealand was famous, but ordinary brown mussels. He had on many occasions collected these for paella.

  The sea sand was rough but somehow soothing under his feet and between his toes. In the back of his mind was a memory of a time, long ago, when he had walked more than four hundred kilometres barefoot through the softer sands of the Kalahari.

  He turned at the northern end of the beach and slowly made his way back to the house.

  Southern Angola

  May 1985 5

  The soldier was a young man, but battle-hardened, a veteran of three years’ combat. Captain Pierre de Villiers checked his watch. It was exactly 04:00. His aching muscles and headache had not affected the accuracy of his body clock or the instinctive awareness of his circumstances. He could not hope to outpace his pursuers, so he would have to lay a false trail first and then double back to get behind them. Once behind them, he could create his own exfiltration route. He slowly completed a set of stretching exercises while still lying down. The headache was worse when he moved. He quickly reviewed his options.

  Unlike prior operations which had always been directed by his Special Forces commanders, he had been sent on this deep infiltration mission by Military Intelligence in such secrecy that even his own unit was unaware of his whereabouts. According to their records, De Villiers and Lieutenant Jacques Verster were on annual leave.

  Exfiltration was always going to be problematic. The evacuation team would have to be despatched from Rundu an hour before the operation reached its climax. There would be a small window of about five to ten minutes before the FAPLA forces would be swarming all over their position.

  Before their selection for this operation, De Villiers and Verster had been paired on various missions for more than a year, sometimes just the two of them against the enemy and the elements, sometimes as part of a larger operation. The Recces usually worked in teams of two or twelve. They were men trained for special tasks deep inside enemy territory, but this time De Villiers and Verster had been briefed for something different, and it required their special talents. As members of 4 Reconnaissance Unit, they had received most of their training at Donkergat, a SpesOps unit in Langebaan. 4 Recce’s special expertise was in marine-based operations, but for this operation Verster and De Villiers were dropped deep into Southern Angola, north of a small town called Vila Nova Armada where, at the height of their own war in Angola, the Portuguese had established a small naval facility on the Cuito River to patrol the river north and south of the town and to ferry troops and machines of war across it.

  Verster and De Villiers had been sent to kill a man, a single soldier, a high-ranking terrorist, they had been told, who would be sent to inspire and motivate the FAPLA and SWAPO soldiers fighting in the south-eastern provinces of Angola.

  The men behind the scheme were expert in covert operations of a special kind. Their operations were often planned in distant, unimportant bases, far from the eyes and ears of the top brass in Pretoria. They did their dry runs on the secluded farms of sympathisers, or in abandoned city apartment blocks, always arriving in unmarked minibuses and dressed in mufti. They wore uniforms only when it was necessary for subterfuge. While they were in the pay of the regular army, their operations were neither official nor legal.

  De Villiers and Verster had reached their position in the early hours after midnight and had covered themselves with the camouflage provided by the shrubbery on the outskirts of the town. They were at the distant end of a broad and uneven airstrip that had been carved out of the bush. The town was without electricity and was situated at the opposite end of the airstrip. It could not be seen at night from where they were.

  Then they waited.

  Outwardly they presented as UNITA guerrillas, carrying the stock AK47 assault rifles millions of soldiers use across continents, simple and reliable under field conditions, the brainchild of Mr Mikhail Kalashnikov. They had grown their beards and De Villiers had had his hair and beard dyed black. They carried no means of identification or any equipment, rations or clothing that could be traced back to South Africa. What little food they had had been vacuum sealed in plastic tubes like processed cheese, even their cooked maize porridge.

  They took turns to sleep. They watched the sunrise and drank from their water bottles and ate their sparse provisions. They watched through the spotter’s scope as the soldiers assembled in the town square. They knew it was time to set up their weapon.

  But they had not been told the name of their target. All they knew was that he would come to address the FAPLA soldiers they could now see as small as ants in the distance.

  Their operation had its origins in the events that made 1985 the watershed year in the history of South Africa. The cumulative effect of a large number of seemingly unrelated facts and events was such that something needed to be done to break the country out of what seemed to be a stalemate. The war that had started in Angola in 1975 was dragging on, costing millions of rands every day, while the losses in lives and equipment were increasing by the month. The national sports teams could not compete overseas and foreign teams no longer came to visit. The tricameral parliamentary system was a failure, with the Indian and Coloured Houses contributing nothing except protest speeches and the expense of duplicated and triplicated administrations. The government should have known better. Their plan had not worked with the creation of the homelands either. Transkei, Ciskei, Venda and Boputhatswana had all failed the test of democracy, with coups, corruption and poor service delivery the order of the day.

  In the meantime the South African taxpayer had to foot the bill and that in a currency that had, but a year earlier, bought one dollar forty and was now worth less than forty cents.

  The internal protest action had gained momentum after the Soweto uprising in 1976 and the townships were in flames. The military response and police action came to nought. The protesters became more daring and confrontations with the police and the army left many dead. Strike action brought the country to a standstill, for days and weeks on end. The government responded with the declaration of a series of states of emergency, which suspended the operation of laws protecting human rights and civil liberties and muzzled the media. The result was as inevitable as it was predictable: the protesters formed a united front and their movement became unstoppable.

  Not everyone in government could see that. The Cabinet was split between those who wanted to negotiate, and those who wanted to draw the wagons into a laager and fight. The security forces were equally divided, with the police and the army certain that a military solution was to be had, while the National Intelligence Service reported to the State President that the war in Angola could be won, that those who sought to overthrow the government by force would be defeated, but that the existing political and social order could not be maintained in the long run. Change had t
o come. Apartheid had failed.

  The State President began to see the light. International sanctions were forcing the country to its knees. In the inner circle, where the hands that held the strings of power gathered, he started mooting change. The reaction was uncertain at first. The hawks and doves separated and went their own way, some pursuing theirs in clandestine meetings at the State President’s house and in Switzerland and London, while others built special military vehicles they named after African animals: Ratels, Buffels and Olifante and Rooivalk helicopters. Their atomic bombs they kept secret, but their military hardware was exposed for all to see in the townships, in Angola and at military shows in the Middle East, where they hoped to find buyers.

  The opposition was also divided, but better organised. They were prepared to negotiate and fight at the same time. They knew that they would have to step up their military campaign in order to gain leverage at the negotiating table. They planted bombs in public places, outside the courts, in public eateries, in front of military buildings. They killed impimpi, those suspected of being informers. And they cordoned off whole townships, making it impossible for the police to operate or for the sheriff to serve court documents. The few residents who dared to venture out of the townships to do their shopping in town were stopped on their way back and made to eat the soap they had bought.

  Traitors on both sides crossed the lines and were employed as askari to do the dirty work their new masters required of them. More crude explosive devices were detonated, but now by more sophisticated bombers. Opponents were shot or strangled or eliminated by the necklace method and buried in shallow graves or cremated over open fires.

  Something needed to be done.

  Some chose to meet force with force. Within the military establishment a covert structure developed and gained stature, a third force of sorts, bridging the gap between the regular police and army. Malcontent generals, disgraced policemen, foot soldiers with a lust for killing, a Minister of State or two who shared their lack of restraint. This third force also had back-up in many civilian disciplines – journalists, lawyers, electronic engineers and medical specialists from a range of disciplines who identified with their cause and their methods. The third force had large amounts of cash which they kept in foreign bank accounts in the name of dummy companies. Their reach was unlimited. They did their work under the cover of the media blackout and the protection the state of emergency provided. Assassinations in Paris, Lusaka and Pretoria, killing those they deemed a threat, including clergymen, doctors and nurses. Operations in London, under the nose of MI5 and the CIA. Strikes into Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland, bombing safe houses. Letter bombs destroying limbs and eyes. Crude murders, forcing their victims to undress and dig their own graves before shooting them in the back of the head.

  In Zimbabwe the transition to a democratic government based on universal franchise appeared to be working, but its President was providing support in word and deed to the external forces seeking to overthrow the South African government. This was a bitter pill to swallow for those who still thought of him as a terrorist. Three times their efforts to assassinate him had been thwarted.

  The preparations had begun less than a month earlier. First De Villiers and Verster were placed on special leave. Then they were given detailed briefings and contingency planning at a secret location in a suburb in the north of Pretoria, out of sight of the regular SADF in the south of the city. When the planning had been completed, they were taken to a private shooting range next to a village called Swartwater three hundred and fifty kilometres north of Pretoria. Swartwater wasn’t a town. It didn’t even have electricity except for the primary school’s generator. There was also a contingent of soldiers billeted at the school. They had marched from the school to the shooting range to stand guard as De Villiers and Verster tested the weapon.

  When they saw the weapon, De Villiers and Verster had objected simultaneously. The weapon was over two metres long and weighed nearly thirty kilograms. ‘How do you expect us to lug that thing fifty kilometres to the ops site and make our escape with it?’ Verster had asked.

  They were in a military tent under a very large baobab tree. The rostrum of the shooting range was less than thirty metres away. In the distance De Villiers could see the earthen berms behind the target pits, at two hundred metre intervals, from two to six hundred metres.

  An ARMSCOR man had assembled the weapon, saying, ‘It’s quite nifty. It breaks down into two parts and fits into two special backpacks, one for the weapon receiver section and the other for the barrel and the ammunition. It takes three rounds.’

  ‘And that’s another thing,’ De Villiers had said. ‘The magazine. If it takes only three rounds, it’s not going to be of any use if we should get into a firefight.’

  The ARMSCOR man had shrugged his shoulders, leaving the explanation to the military.

  ‘I’m General van den Bergh and I’m in charge of this operation,’ a man in mufti had announced.

  He spoke with military emphasis, stressing every word. ‘You will each carry an AK and ammunition. You will carry only three of the special rounds and you will bring the weapon back in the special backpacks designed for it. You will disassemble the weapon first and bring it back. That is a top priority for us. It’s the first prototype, a copy of a Russian weapon, much better than anything the Americans have, and the only one we have.’

  The general paused for effect. ‘We want it back, understood?’

  De Villiers and Verster nodded.

  ‘And we want a report on the weapon’s performance when you get back,’ the ARMSCOR man added.

  De Villiers wasn’t convinced but kept his thoughts to himself. What’s wrong with the rifle I used in training and on a previous operation, the bolt action Accuracy International using .300 Winchester Magnum cartridges? Didn’t these same people from ARMSCOR smuggle that one in from the UK?

  De Villiers sat still, in the near attention soldiers adopt in the presence of a high-ranking officer. But he had not seen the general at any time during the previous briefings. He studied him while pretending to look past him at the map of Angola on the wall. An officer with the insignia of a major in the Air Force stood against the wall next to the map.

  The general was stocky, muscular and fit. He had a dark complexion and hair greying at the temples. He could have been anything between forty and seventy. But the general must have realised that he was being studied. He stood up and took up a position behind De Villiers. De Villiers studied the major. He was plump and pale, a desk soldier, De Villiers surmised. No colour to him. He was completely bald. The inner linings of his eyelids were a light pink. His eyelashes were long and white. When De Villiers dropped his gaze to the major’s hands, he noticed an apparent contradiction. The fingernails on the left hand were long and finely manicured, but the right hand’s fingernails had been clipped very short. A classical guitarist, De Villiers speculated, an albino classical guitarist and left-handed to boot. The hair on the major’s hands was soft and white.

  The general’s voice called De Villiers back to the business at hand. ‘There are reasons,’ he said, not dealing with the exfiltration issues worrying De Villiers. ‘One: this weapon has an effective range of two thousand three hundred metres,’ he said. ‘Yes, you heard me, twenty three hundred metres.’

  De Villiers tried not to show his surprise. There had been talk of a Russian sniper’s rifle with a range of up to two kilometres, but the rumours had never been confirmed. The general must have read his thoughts. ‘In case you are wondering where we got it, the Mujahedeen took a couple off the Russians in Afghanistan and gave them to the Americans in exchange for Stinger missiles. The Americans kept one and gave one to the Israelis and they in turn shared it with us to develop our own model. The cartridges we manufacture ourselves.’ He pointed to the ARMSCOR representative.

  ‘General, with respect, can’t we test it here? Why do we have to take it to Angola to test it there?’ Verster asked.

 
‘We have a special target there, that’s why.’

  De Villiers and Verster were silent, each considering the implications.

  ‘And another thing,’ the general said, ‘you are going to have to fire from more than fifteen hundred metres if you want to avoid capture.’ He chuckled. ‘It will give them a hell of a fright and they won’t know where to look for you.’

  ‘Who’s going to be our contact?’ Verster asked, looking the general in the eye. He was going to have to carry the radio during the operation and would be in charge of communications.

  The general pointed towards the Air Force officer at the back of the tent. ‘The major over there. He’s with me in MI. That’s all you need to know.’

  De Villiers was never to learn the name of the major.

  The shooting range at Swartwater was too short, only six hundred metres, but it was unkempt and overgrown, which was just as well because it simulated the conditions that could be expected in the field. At that range, six hundred metres, the weapon was accurate to the size of a tennis ball, once all Verster’s calculations and settings had been applied. When they had completed the tests at six hundred metres, their instructors sprang a surprise on them. The shooting range was part of a block of bush with a straight and cleared fence line nearly two kilometres long on the eastern side. That fence line appeared to have been freshly cut and cleared and to the casual onlooker would have looked like a road for the inspection of the fence or for game-viewing drives. From within a small tent, guarded on all sides by soldiers carrying R4s, De Villiers and Verster tested the weapon on targets which were moved in hundred metre increments further away from them, from one thousand metres up to sixteen hundred metres, all along the fence line. The degree of accuracy hardly changed and a target the size of an adult man was repeatedly hit in the chest even at the maximum range they tried, sixteen hundred metres.