Customer Reviews

The Silent War: South African Recce Operations 1969-1994

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This book covers South African covert operations from the 1960s to 1980s. It gives details of many undercover operations as far afield as Nigeria and includes many counter-insurgency operations and meddling in the affairs of South Africa's neighboors including raids on Maputo and Lesotho and Gabarone in Botswana. A very interesting, rip roaring account. Perhaps more interesting to those interested in the military than those interested in politics.

Seth J. Frantzman

This book is for people that now what it is like to go that bit further to achieve an objective. It is easy reading, i couldn't put the book down. You have to take a step back and appretiate what these men went through. There is only one thing that comes to mind, they are harder than a bag of hard things, without a dought!

A somewhat frustrating book to read. It is evident that Peter Stiff never knew what he wanted to achieve writing this book - political discussion, military history, anecdotes of war, or something else? As a consequence, the title is highly misleading. It's most likely a commissioned work by the SADF, and I speculate that Stiff struggled to put together anything substantial on operations of a surreptitious and close-knit elite brotherhood; hence the hundreds of pages of information tangential to the titular content.

The first two hundred pages have virtually nothing to do with Reconnaissance Commando (Recce) operations and only mention fleetingly that South African Special Forces were used in African conflicts in the 1960s and early 1970s. The book starts to fulfil its title from the years when the Rhodesians (mainly SAS & Selous Scouts) are recruited into the South African Special Forces. Perhaps more operators from this era were available to regale Stiff with stories then for the previous period. Similarly, the last 100 pages have almost nothing to do with Recce operations.

As one would expect, most operations are discussed without much real detail, with Stiff padding the pages with peripheral information on the politics and history of the time, interspersed liberally with his own, unresearched, ill-judged and often ignorant comments. As a consequence, of the nearly 600 pages, only about 200 are really about Recce operations - which saves the book from "absolute rubbish" status. He does spend a chapter on recruitment, selection & training - which was enlightening, albeit superficial.

There are several photos, but many are of training, and some are dubiously associated (Operation Colosseum - Recces wearing helmets - possible, but not likely).

Content-wise, Stiff misses many contextual points which are far more relevant than his poorly researched attempts at historical context. He fails to discuss how the Recces worked with other special force units and how the lines between special forces and the Civil Cooperation Bureau became blurred, with many operators "transferring", or straddling the two units. An interesting take-away is how elite operators can be let down by poor quality or unserviceable equipment, outdated or incorrect intelligence, lack of tactical and operational support, or political interference.

While the book is generally an easy read, Stiff's writing style wavers between vain attempts at pomposity, and indifferent, lazy colloquialism. The editor should be shot: the chapters have no apparent flow and are devoid of overall sequencing; spelling mistakes abound and the grammar is, in places, disgraceful. The 2009 edition that I read had made very little effort to update the content with Recce information publically available on the web, or through the TRC submissions.

If you really want to buy the book, it's at best a skim-read for superficial interest and not for any real understanding or analysis.