Episode 59 – A SWAPO ambush leaves 11 dead as a Ratel is blown up at Effense Chana

In Episode 58 we heard how two SWAPO platoon had created an obvious trail near Tsumeb, it was bait for a trap they were planning – an ambush that would surprise the trailing 61 Mech follow up. This was a change in tactics by the SWAPOs commander Danger Ashapalo who’d sent 150 men to attack the white farming areas in the Triangle of Death. The South Africans were aware of a series of tracks – this had been a large group of SWAPO and couldn’t be missed. What they had no idea about was that their enemy had decided that in this case, they wouldn’t run but stand and fight. On the evening of April 14th 1982, 61 Mech had been enjoying entertainment laid on at Tsumeb town hall when word came of the large number of tracks discovered near the border with Angola. And it appeared the enemy was heading their way. Less than 90 minutes later, these troops suddenly were in the bush trying to make contact with two SWAPO platoons nearby. There were two Alouette gunships and two Puma’s ready to fly over the area at first light on the 15th, and it wasn’t clear at this stage how fast SWAPO was moving. Of course, they weren’t moving fast at all, and had moved and stopped exactly where they were going to lay their trap. Alongside Effense Chana, west of Tsumeb, on the Bravo area cutline. Tantie Pompie van der Westhuizen, the civilian farmer’s wife who was so critically important in the relaying of information in the Triangle, was up and about in her kitchen at Koedoesvlei farm. 61 Mech commander Roland de Vries radiod her asking for assistance from her husband Daantjie who knew the area so well. SWAPOs platoons under their commanders Kayofa and Kalulu had ordered their men to dig in behind thick bush, on the western side of a large open area – Effense Chana.