Eden’s Exiles: One Soldier’s Fight for Paradise, by Jan Breytenbach
I know of Jan Breytenbach from reading books about the war in Angola in which South Africa was involved from 1966 to 1989. South Africans usually refer to their involvement in the conflict as The Border War. Most things about those conflicts are still contentious, including how one refers to them.
Jan Breytenbach was, or rather is, as he is still alive (he’s now 90 years of age), a very hard nut. They rarely get tougher, in terms of character and military experience. He was the first commander of the South African Reccies (1 Reconnaissance Commando) special forces later known as the 32 Battalion (also known as the “Buffalo Battalion”) and saw action during, among other operations, Operation Savannah, and the Battle of Cassinga. How one refers to the Cassinga battle is also still controversial. There is still much disagreement about what happened at Cassinga. I won’t go into any of these issues.
I read his book Eden’s Exiles because it is set in the Caprivi Strip in northern Namibia, and as I will be travelling through that region in September I wanted to do some prep. As well as running a training camp and operational launch pad for special forces in Fort Doppies, which was in the eastern part of the Caprivi Strip, Breytenbach was involved in wildlife conservation work in the area. He took care of various orphaned lions and a leopard, and was outspoken about the destruction of wildlife in the Cuando Cubango province of Angola as a result of the war. UNITA forces regularly shot game for food, and later on even the South African Military Intelligence was involved in the illegal wildlife trade, which Breytenbach tried to expose. Tsetse fly eradication operations also didn’t help, as they encouraged farming encroachment into what had until recently been a natural and very well-stocked garden of Eden.
I didn’t take to Breytenbach’s barracks-humour writing style. He is overly fond of relating how various cooks, visiting military personnel, and others were terrified of his lions who were allowed to roam around his camps. Otherwise, this book gave me some useful information about the Caprivi Strip.