South African Defence Force Totally Explained

Everything about South African Defense Force totally explained

The South African Defence Force (SADF) were the South African armed forces from 1957 until 1994. The former Union Defence Force was renamed to the South African Defence Force in the Defence Act (No. 44) of 1957. The SADF was superseded by the South African National Defence Force in 1994.
   The SADF was involved in the South African Border War and in the Angolan Civil War on the side of UNITA and Angola rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.
   Within South Africa, the SADF was also widely used in the suppression of opposition to apartheid.
   The SADF implemented conscription of white men, opposed by organisations such as the End Conscription Campaign.

Organization

The State President was the Commander-in-Chief of the SADF with:

Chief of the Defence Staff - overall senior command officer
Chief of the Army
Chief of the Air Force
Chief of the Navy
Surgeon General
Joint Forces Commander

Staff Divisions under the Chief of Defence Staff included:

Personnel

Intelligence

Operations

Logistics

Finance Other Support Services commands included:

Inspector General of the SADF

Chaplain General of the SADF A list of Chiefs of Defence Staff of the SADF:

General A.J. Liebenberg, SSA, SD, SOE, SM, MMM

General Constand Viljoen, SSA, SD, SOE, SM

General J.J. Geldenhuys, SSA, SD, SOE, SM

General Magnus Malan, SSA, OMSG, SD, SM Other senior officers:

Lieutenant General D.P. Knobel, SSAS, SD, SOE, SM, MMM, K St J

Vice Admiral G. Syndercombe, SAA, SD, SOE, SM, Chief of SAN

Colonel N.C. Parkins

Brigader Philip Schalkwyk

Major General D.R. Marais

Personnel

Permanent Forces - Full time Active members

National Servicemen - called up for 2 years national service and were generally fully trained for operational duty within the space of 12 months

Citizen Forces - fully trained part-time members

Commando Forces - AKA "Active Citizen Force" - fully trained members

Special forces - including 32 Battalion, the Reconnaissance Commandos, and the Civil Co-operation Bureau

Voluntary Term Service - created in 1992 to replace the National Service

Service Volunteers - non-permanent full time members

Auxiliary Service - limited duty personnel who didn't meet the academic or physical requirements for national service but performed guard, COIN, labour, and driving duties. Prior to the dissolution, the SADF had the following force:

Full-time - 40 000 Volunteer Service, 5 000 National Service

auxiliaries - 16 000
civilians - 24 000

Part-time - 500 000

Citizen Force (approximately 120 000)
Commando Force (approximately 130 000 in 200 Units)
Reserves (approximately 180 000)

Four armed services

Four armed services made up the forces of the SADF:

South African Army

South African Air Force

South African Navy

South African Medical Service The Ciskei Defence Force (CDF) was established during March 1981 from the 141 Battalion of the South African Defence Force (SADF). It functioned as part of the 21 Battalion based in Lenasia, Johannesburg.

Nuclear weapons

South Africa at one time possessed weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, but its stockpile was dismantled during the political transition of the early 1990s. There have been no reported attempts to build more nuclear weapons.

Integration

At the end of apartheid in 1994, the SADF was amalgamated with the defence forces of a number of formerly independent homelands as well as personnel from the former anti-apartheid guerrilla forces such as the African National Congress's Umkhonto we Sizwe, the Pan Africanist Congress's APLA and the Self-Protection Units of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). The new integrated force became known as the South African National Defence Force.

Further Information

Get more info on 'South African Defense Force'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://south_african_defence_force.totallyexplained.com">South African Defence Force Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.