The SA Navy (SAN) Roll of Honour in Simon’s Town has been updated and the occasion suitably commemorated with a wreath laying.
The commemorative event formed part of last month’s Navy Festival at Naval Base (NB) Simon’s Town with SAN Chief, Vice Admiral Monde Lobese, doing the honours.
The SAN Roll of Honour is part of the Wall of Remembrance at Fleet Command Headquarters and its updating is a continuation of Project Tshintsha (a Xhosa word meaning “modification of a value”) according to a 2019 SAN statement to mark commencement of the project.
The SAN Roll of Honour carries the names of naval personnel who died on active duty (on service/in the line of duty) engraved on panels, Commander Leon Steyn, Officer in Charge, SA Naval Museum, writes.
The panels carry three separate groups – SA Naval Forces and South Africans seconded to the Royal Navy (RN) who died in World War II and listed per ship/unit; SAS President Kruger (F150) crew who died when the frigate sank after a collision at sea on 18 February 1982, and former SA Marine Corps mariners who died between 1979 and 1990.
“Individual deaths on active duty outside these three groups were previously not recognised on the Wall of Remembrance,” according to Steyn.
This is now rectified with three new panels, sub-divided into sections/eras. They are 1946 to 1960, post-war SA Naval Service and SAN; 1961 to 1993, South Africa becomes a republic and 1994 onward, the birth of the Sa National Defence Force (SANDF) and SAN in a democratic South Africa. The Wall of Remembrance will be an ongoing project with names to be added annually.
“The former SA Defence Force (SADF) maintained an official Roll of Honour for the period 1966 – 1989, which covered the period of the South West Africa/Angolan conflict. An annual memorial service was held by the old SADF in Pretoria where the official Wall of Remembrance was maintained. The updating of the official SADF Roll of Honour ceased in 1993. The activity was continued on a decentralised basis and many military units continued to maintain their own Walls of Remembrance after 1994 to remember their fallen.
“The SA Air Force (SAAF) maintains a Roll of Honour and associated Wall of Remembrance at Bays Hill above Air Force Base (AFB) Swartkop [now renamed the Air Force Mobile Deployment Wing]. An annual memorial service is held there, on the first Sunday in February and during that occasion the names of those that have passed away on active duty are added to the Roll of Honour and Wall of Remembrance.”
