A warning by M23 rebels that they were waiting for South African troops to deploy in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has, as feared, turned deadly.
The death toll among the Southern African Development Community peacekeeping force, which includes personnel forces from Malawi and Tanzania, in North Kivu, home to 8.1-million people, has risen to 10 and is all but certain to climb further.
The rebels, backed by neighbouring Rwanda, are equipped with the latest weapons while the South African contingent has been exposed by poor equipment thanks to the ever-shrinking budget of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and a lack of commanders experienced in conventional warfare.
President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered 2,900 soldiers for Operation Thiba in February and South African forces suffered the first two casualties when mortar fire struck their camp near Sake, 25km northwest of the regional capital, Goma, soon afterwards.
The disparity in armaments prompted a former South African general to say that you cannot get into a bar fight with a white flag.
The SANDF’s armoured personnel carriers and weapons date back to the war in Angola in the late 1980s. Now, the soldiers also have to adapt to jungle warfare without air support and an enemy that controls the high ground.
The first few hundred South African soldiers arrived in Goma about three weeks ago. For many of them — all two-year service volunteers — it is their first active deployment.
They faced an early-morning bombardment by rebels a week later on the outskirts of Sake. The regional force responded with a ground attack, in which two South African armoured vehicles and a Tanzanian truck were ambushed. A South African armoured ambulance that came to their rescue was also hit and two soldiers were killed, one of them from South Africa.
The rebels took personal documents from the ambushed vehicles and published those on social media even before their families had been informed.
A day later the South African base was attacked again, with two more armoured vehicles hit by a suspected Russian AT-4 Spigot anti-tank guided missile. The damaged vehicles couldn’t be recovered and were subsequently destroyed by the regional force’s artillery.
Another former general said this was the first known such incident since 1987, when South African forces destroyed their vehicles that had run into a minefield in Quito, Angola.
Aside from the lost equipment, at least 20 South African troops were injured, eight of them seriously. They included one who required a foot amputation and another with serious chest wounds. A lack of heavy-lift aircraft means the necessary medical equipment for a field hospital still hasn’t arrived in the DRC.
As a result, the SANDF has been forced into revised planning. One solution was to send a full mechanised battle group, including a squadron of 16 Rooikat reconnaissance armoured vehicles and two Ratel command vehicles.
The Rooikat is equipped with a 76mm high-velocity gun and weighs about 28t. The available Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft can haul just 40t per flight, making for as many as 20 flights to move the squadron to Goma — at a cost of about R10m per trip.
Military experts warn that the DRC mission could easily turn into a repeat of the Battle of Bangui in the Central African Republic in 2013 for the SANDF. Then, a lack of aircraft left about 1,200 South African troops facing an onslaught by about 5,000 Seleka rebels. In the ensuing battle 15 South Africans were killed and 46 wounded.
The situation is similar in the DRC, where a regional force of 5,000 is expected to defeat the M23 even though a UN force of about 20,000 failed to achieve that in 20 years.
Clearly, an end to the loss of lives in the DRC — and South African taxpayers’ money — lies on the political front, not the battlefield.
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