Defence SA history

The Ndwandwe and the Zulus met again in combat at the Battle of Mhlatuze River in 1820.

Only known drawing of King Shaka Zulu holding an assegai and heavy shield, 1824.

The Battle of Blood River (Afrikaans language: Slag van Bloedrivier) was fought on 16 December 1838 on the banks of the Blood River (Bloedrivier) in what is today KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

It was the first clash between the British and the Transvaal Boers. It was precipitated by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who annexed the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic) for the British in 1877.

The Battle of Intombe was fought on 12 March 1879, between British and Zulu forces.

The Boers protested and in December 1880 they revolted.[citation needed]

After several disastrous battles, the British were unwilling to get further involved in a war which was already seen as lost. As a result, the British government of William Gladstone signed a truce on 6 March, and in the final peace treaty on 23 March 1881, they gave the Boers self-government in the Transvaal under a theoretical British oversight.[citation needed]

Growing impatient, Jameson launched the Jameson Raid in October 1895, and managed to push within twenty miles of Johannesburg before superior Boer forces compelled him and his men to surrender.

The last of the Boers surrendered in May 1902 and the war ended with the Treaty of Vereeniging in the same month.

The Union of South Africa was established in 1910.

South Australia has played a major role in Australian defence science and technology since the 1920s.

The converted Junkers Ju 86s of 12 Squadron, South African Air Force, carried out the first bombing raid of the campaign on a concentration of tanks at Moyale at 8am on 11 June 1940, mere hours after Italy's declaration of war.

In 28 May 1941, Smuts was appointed a Field Marshal of the British Army, becoming the first South African to hold that rank.

It won many American decorations, including the unusual honour of a United States Presidential Unit Citation in 1952:

In 1957 the New Defence Act, Act No.44 of 1957 was passed, merging the former Union Defence Force (including Reserves), the Citizen Force, Commandos and South African Permanent Force into the South African Defence Force (SADF), headquartered in Pretoria.

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The Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) - "Afrikaner Resistance Movement" - was formed in 1970 in Heidelberg, Transvaal, a town southeast of Johannesburg.

BHP had not built any naval vessels at Whyalla since the war, and merchant shipbuilding ceased there in 1978.

An international commission, appointed by the UN Security Council in 1982, concluded that South African defence agencies had been involved in the attempted takeover, including supplying weapons and ammunition.

The military as it exists today was created in 1994, following South Africa's first post-apartheid national elections and the adoption of a new constitution.