The Selous Scouts in Port St Johns

The Selous Scouts in Port St Johns

The region known as Transkei in South Africa, gained self rule in 1963; and became a semi autonomous area. Then in 1976, it became an independent homeland. The Republic of Transkei. Inserting Banana before Republic is optional, but recommended.

There was nothing independent about Transkei; it was financially controlled by South Africa, who poured a million Rands into it on a daily basis. And one million was a lot of money then. South African taxpayers (read: whites – blacks didn’t pay much tax, if any), footed this enormous bill every day. Angola, and one in Mozambique, and….)  on the government coffers, the economy didn’t collapse.

The Port St Johns aitstrip in the
military base on Mount Thesiger

Without complaining, after all, who said anything against the President? And it just goes to show how hard working South Africans are – with this enormous drain (actually, one of many, there were other ‘independent homelands, and a war in

Of course Transkei had its own set of rules, just to show how independent they were. You had to enter the country with a passport, when going through one of the two border posts. Nobody did anything about the other 40 roads leading into the Transkei. One woman, who was on a European passport (duly visa’ed so she could live in the Transkei with her South African husband), had to have her Transkei born children have passports at the tender age of three weeks, in case they had to travel to South Africa with their father for any reason.

Its own rules included the fact that whites couldn’t own property. Which was kinda harsh, after all, many white Transkeians were born and bred in the territory,

The Umzimvubu River was used for
water borne training.

and many of their forefathers had settled there since the mid 1800’s, long before a lot of the Transkeian Transkeians had thought of living there. But the South African government dictated that Transkei was to be independent, and hundreds of families were literally deported from their own country, to their own other country, without so much as a by your leave.

Ben Dekker - Port St Johns'
most famous hippy.

As mentioned above, South Africa was at war. Keeping ‘the Communists’ out. And young South African men, after school were drafted into the army, for a two year stint of learning how to hate the enemy and kill them. These boys, often no more than 17 years old, were required to behave like MEN in the bush, but were still regarded as too young to smoke, drive a car (driving an armoured vehicle was OK), drink or have sex. And people now wonder why our men folk are screwed up? Go figure. And so, understandably there were draft dodgers. Draft dodgers that went to live in Port St Johns, in a hut, live on fish, and smoke the local doobie.

The draft dodgers added some more colour to Port St Johns, they dressed and behaved like 60’s hippies in a time warp – psychedelic hand dyed clothing, long hair, and language that included outdated phrases like “Peace Man”, “hang loose”, and “Bro”.

Then, into this anti – war society came a new breed. Real soldiers, the tried and tested variety, complete with shrapnel scars and badly healed bullet wounds. The Rhodesian Selous Scouts had arrived in Port St Johns. Why? Well, as an independent country, Transkei needed their own independent army didn’t they?

Zimbabwe was free, Rhodesia gone, the elite troops were definitely not wanted there, and somebody had the brain wave of selling the idea of Transkei having an equally elite regiment. And the powers that be, fell for it.

Ron Reid Daly. Commander
of the Transkei Special Forces

So, the officers of the most feared elite African regiment moved to Port St Johns. The bachelors came, the married with children came. They had come to paradise. Never in their wildest dreams had they, as Rhodesian soldiers dreamt that they would become super soldiers. Almost overnight, their lives changed. They earned unheard of un-army salaries, they worked nine to five, they had weekends off, and on top of it all, they got free housing at the seaside!

Jungle Training in Port St Johns

And in exchange for this, all they had to do was train a bunch of rookies to be hardened elite troops. Blacks had never been part of the South African army, so the men who were recruited, had no idea what was expected of them. Vietnam like Jungle trails mapped out. A state of the art shooting range was built. Not very cleverly – it was built right next to the dam, which had been home to many water birds – they disappeared to more friendly homes – for some reason the trainees with their machine guns couldn’t resist use them as live targets.

They were in for wake up call. An army base was built. Complete with parade grounds, barracks and officers’ mess. The nearby forests had

The wannabe troops of the Special Forces were put through the same stringent training as the troops in Rhodesia.

Transkei Special Forces emblem.

They were drilled hard, and they did emerge as soldiers. One difference was that they were extremely well fed, catering the right amount seemed to be an unnecessary part of the cooks’ duties, so there was a huge amount of wastage every day (compliments of the SA taxpayer). This was dumped, not given to the needy, with the result that Port St Johns developed a huge population of (fat) White Necked Ravens. These ravens in turn, raided the other birds’ nests, eating their young, and having a totally detrimental effect on PSJ’s birdlife – adding insult to the injury of the water birds being used as targets.

Transkei Army 1st Battalion

The ex Rhodesians worked hard, played hard, but all good things come to an end. Transkei was as corrupt as any African nation could be, and with that, jealousy of power was rife. Military coups became common, Transkei was referred to as coup coup land (do I have to explain that? Cuckooland). We all knew the first sign of another coup – telecommunications would be cut off – and developed the attitude of ‘so? Who’s in power now?’ And then there was one coup too many. The Special Forces being perceived to be on the wrong side, they were disbanded, and the officers went off to live in South Africa. No more paradise for them, they now had very ordinary lives, and ran garden services, guarded strategic water installations, or joined the South African army. A few carried on doing what they did best, they became ‘body guards’ to British and American army bigwigs in Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq.