page_title: Koevoet
section_title: Formation of Koevoet
hierarchical_section_title: Koevoet / History / Formation of Koevoet
caption_attribution_description: English: People's Liberation Army of Namibia on the move.
context_page_description: Koevoet was the counter-insurgency branch of the South West African Police. Its formations included white South African police officers, usually seconded from the South African Security Branch or Special Task Force, and black volunteers from Ovamboland. Koevoet was patterned after the Selous Scouts, a multiracial Rhodesian military unit which specialised in counter-insurgency operations. Its title was an allusion to the metaphor of "prying" insurgents from the civilian population.
  Koevoet was active during the South African Border War between 1979 and 1989, during which it carried out hundreds of search and destroy operations against the People's Liberation Army of Namibia. Koevoet's methods were controversial, and the unit was accused of committing numerous atrocities against civilians. Over the course of the war, it killed or captured 3,225 insurgents and participated in 1,615 individual engagements. Koevoet was disbanded in 1989 as part of the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 435, which effectively ended the South African Border War and ushered in South West African independence as Namibia.
context_section_description: From the early to late 1970s, the brunt of counter-insurgency operations was borne by the South African Defence Force (SADF). The SADF's primary source of manpower were white national servicemen fulfilling their terms of compulsory military service under the leadership of professional career officers. The initial commitment of South African troops to the South West African theatre in 1974 was about 15,000 men. Beginning the same year, however, there was also increasingly widespread enlistment of local armed auxiliaries and semi-official militias. The most powerful armed group outside the direct command structure of the SADF emerged in Ovamboland, SWAPO's traditional political stronghold and the source of its support base. The Ovamboland civil administration employed a local militia known as the Ovambo Home Guard, established to protect local officials who were often the target of PLAN assassination attempts.
  The Ovambo Home Guard was assembled, as time passed, into larger numbered units or attached to regular SADF battalions. By late 1978, the number of Ovambo Home Guard personnel stood at about 3,000. Their relative effectiveness compared to national servicemen sent out from South Africa, who were unfamiliar with the terrain and environment and had more difficulty adapting to Ovamboland, was noted by the government. This and other developments resulted in a deliberate policy of "Namibianisation", a reference to the Vietnamization programme the United States had pursued during the Vietnam War. The war effort became less likely to entail clear-cut confrontations between foreign South African troops and local PLAN insurgents, but significant numbers of Namibians fighting under South African command. The main objectives of Namibianisation were to establish a self-sufficient military infrastructure in South West Africa, reinforce the perception of a domestic civil conflict rather than an independence struggle, and reduce casualty rates among South Africa's national servicemen, to which the government was especially sensitive. Furthermore, the SADF was overstretched and if efficient local forces could be raised to take over the bulk of the defensive and local security tasks, it would be more free to pursue conventional offensive operations.
  Both the SADF and South African Police (SAP) launched parallel initiatives to create Ovambo counter-insurgency units between 1976 and 1980. The SADF's programme resulted in 101 Battalion, while the SAP formed Koevoet. A senior officer with the SAP's Security Branch, Hans Dreyer, was appointed to lead the latter. Dreyer had served with the SAP in Rhodesia during the Rhodesian Bush War and drew heavily on his operational experiences there while shaping Koevoet's mandate and organisational structure. Koevoet was to be patterned directly after the Selous Scouts, a Rhodesian special forces unit which included large numbers of former insurgents. The SAP especially appreciated the small unit tactics of the Selous Scouts, which had demonstrated how a few operators, disguised as insurgents and trained to high levels of subterfuge, could have an effect utterly disproportionate to their size.
  Koevoet was established in June 1979, at which time the unit consisted of six white South African policemen and 60 of the most skilled trackers from the Ovambo Home Guard. The trackers received three months of additional reconnaissance training from SADF special forces before being deployed into Ovamboland. They were also instructed in criminal investigation techniques and police procedure by the SAP. In May 1979, they captured their first insurgent.
  Koevoet was formally known as "Operation K" of the SAP Security Branch's special operations division, but that title was almost never used. Its existence remained a closely guarded secret until June 1980, when church newspapers in Ovamboland began circulating rumours of a new special forces group linked to assassination of SWAPO sympathisers. The rumours had their basis in a "death list" of prominent Ovambo political figures and businessmen who were covert sympathis
caption: PLAN insurgents on the march
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