Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

SA National Defence Force chief Siphiwe Nyanda visited three soldiers at Pretoria's 1 Military Hospital on Thursday who were injured while on peacekeeping duty in the Democratic Republic of Congo last week.

One of the patients, Private Sibongiseni Ntapane, recounted how he and his colleagues were ambushed while underway to Goma from the Rutshura military camp on Sunday.

"We suddenly heard shots and we ourselves had to shoot back," he said.

"We did not know what happened. We were near the border between Uganda and Rwanda when it all happened so fast."

The gun battle lasted half an hour before their attackers withdrew, Ntapane said.

One soldier, Rifleman Martin Mokgatle Tau, 33, was injured in the ambush. He and Rifleman Reitumetse David Matlakele, 32, died when the personnel carrier transporting them and their colleagues back to base overturned.

Eleven others were injured and admitted to different hospitals in the DRC.

With blood-shot eyes and stitches in his face, the driver of the overturned vehicle, Private Mpumelelo Kraai, 32, turned uncomfortably in his bed when asked to describe what happened.

"I just lost control of the vehicle," he murmured.

With his wife Elda and four-month old baby Yoliwa at his bedside, Kraai, from 10 SA Infantry Battalion (10 SAI), told how he raced back to Rutshura with the injured after the skirmish. He had been in the DRC for a month.

Elda Kraai said she was shocked and worried when informed on Monday of the events, and relieved to see her husband safe.

Six of those injured in the accident were transferred to 1 Military Hospital on Monday. Three of them have since been discharged.

Nyanda said the South African soldiers remaining in the DRC as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force were being made as safe as possible.

"I told Parliament last week it was safe, but not as safe as houses," he told reporters at the hospital.

South African troops were prepared to "become more robust" should the UN force's mandate in the DRC change, Nyanda added. At present they were restricted to using force only to defend themselves or civilians.

Nyanda believed Sunday's attack had not been aimed at the South Africans as such, but at the UN force as a whole by parties outside the peace negotiations.

"We are perceived by everybody to be impartial and not a single complaint had been received -- at least by me," he said.

Some of the hospitalised soldiers said the DRC's civilian population was divided over the presence of the peacekeeping force.

Tau and Matlakele are to be buried with full military honours this weekend, the SANDF said.

Matlakele is to be buried from his home in Mmabatho in the North West at 7am on Saturday. The funeral would be conducted by 10 SAI.

Tau would be buried at the Dinokana Village in Zeerust in the North West at 7am on Sunday. His funeral would be conducted by 2 SAI.

"The Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota, the Secretary for Defence January Masilela, and the chief of the SANDF, General Siphiwe Nyanda, express their sincere condolences to the bereaved families," the SANDF said in a statement.

Lekota would visit the families of the two deceased soldiers later in the day.