Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

Private collection in online auction of nearly 300 items dating back to Anglo-Boer War

BOOKS from a private collection on the South African border wars and the Rhodesian war are among the nearly 300 books offered by the AuctionExplorer online auction (www.auctionexplorerbooks.com).

The more than 30 books by authors such as Peter Stiff, Al J Venter, Jim Hooper, Ian Uys, Willem Steenkamp, Jan Bretyenbach and John Badcock deal with the operations of the South African and Rhodesian forces.

The Buffalo Soldiers — The Story of SA’s 32 Battalion 1975-1993 by Jan Breytenbach, the founder colonel of the battalion, is the history of an elite group which has been described as “probably the most controversial unit of the South African Defence Force (SADF)”. The battalion’s website says it consisted of former FNLA guerrillas from Angola under the command of SADF officers. The unit was disbanded in 1993. The book has a reserve price of $20.

Books by Peter Stiff include Taming the Landmine ($20), Warfare by Other Means — SA in the 1980s and 1990s ($20), and The Silent War — South African Recce Operations 1969-1994 ($20).

A more comprehensive history is provided by Willem Steenkamp in his book SA’s Border War 1966-1989 ($30).

A number of books on the Rhodesian war are on offer, including Rhodesian Soldier — And Others Who Fought ($30) by Chas Lotter, and Selous Scouts: A Pictorial Account ($60) by Peter Stiff. Dick Gledhill’s One Commando — Rhodesia’s Last Years: the Guerrilla War ($20), covers the last stages of the Rhodesian war.

The flip side of the SADF’s wars is given by A Long Night’s Damage — Working for the Apartheid State ($20) by Eugene de Kock (as told to Jeremy Gordin), and Jacques Pauw’s Into the Heart of Darkness — Confessions of Apartheid’s Assassins ($30).

Interestingly, the owner of this collection, who emigrated from the UK to SA about 30 years ago, in spite of his interest in military matters was never called up for military service in either the UK or SA.

Old Fourlegs, the Story of the Coelacanth ($30) by JLB Smith, an ichthyologist at Rhodes University who identified the ancient fish that was caught near East London by a fishing boat in December 1938. The captain notified Marjorie Courtney-Latimer, curator of the East London Museum, who in turn informed Smith.

He confirmed it was a coelacanth, believed to have been extinct for about 70-million years.

According to the Australian Museum website, this coelacanth specimen is still considered to be the zoological find of the past century. Coelacanths date back about 360-million years.

“This ‘living fossil’ comes from a lineage of fish that was thought to have been extinct since the time of the dinosaurs,” the website says.

The Concentration Camps in SA ($90) by Napier Devitt tells of a system that bedevilled Boer and Brit relations for decades.

Rayne Kruger said in Goodbye Dolly Gray that by May 1901 77 000 whites and 21 000 blacks had been interned. Although the original purpose was humane, the death rate was about one in five — with most of the deaths those of children who died of measles.

The Call of the Veld ($20) by Leonard Flemming, who was a well-known South African author in his lifetime.

He was one of the farmers who had been settled in the eastern and southeastern Free State under Lord Milner’s policy of anglicisation, when farmers of British stock were settled in the area.

Flemming is better known for his book, Fool on the Veld, a wry account of his attempts at farming in the Dewetsdorp district.