Its a blast, now move on

Surviving the Ride, tells how South Africa leads the fray

MANY of the mine-resistant and ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles around the world have South African roots.

Two South African authors have now for the first time presented this little-known and fascinating story of South Africa’s panzer vehicles in a well-researched coffee-table book, titled Surviving the Ride.

Steve Camp and Helmoed Heitman co-authored the 250-page book, which has over 400 colour
photos and lists over 200 different vehicles and their variants that were South African designed and manufactured.

Camp was a lieutenant-colonel in the South African Army Reserves and had first-hand experience on how these vehicles saved lives during the Border War. Helmoed Heitman is an internationally respected military writer.

Camp assured us the book was not just good only for mechanics. “We didn’t want a boring technical book. Each page is beautifully designed with a good balance of text and photos, making it very easy on the eye.”

He said the pictorial history of South African-manufactured vehicles is certainly a fascinating one that very few people know much about and South Africa is still a world leader in this technology, with several companies exporting vehicles around the world from Benoni and Midrand. 

South African engineers are also head-hunted to work in the U.S. to develop MRAPs for specific climes.

Protecting soldiers against pipe bombs and AK47 rounds is a very lucrative business. The Pentagon alone has to date spent $50 billion (R606 billion) purchasing some 28 000 of these vehicles — which have saved an estimated 70 000 lives in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Camp said many of the vehicles shown in Surviving the Ride were one-off prototype designs that were carefully researched and evaluated under operational conditions by South Africa scientists and engineers, but for various reasons never went into production.

He and Heitman traced the development of today’s modern MRAPs from the panzers the South African Army was routinely using 40 years ago in the Border War.

The ferocity of the border war soon led to the SA Defence Force becoming the first army to deploy entire combat groups into battle zones equipped with only mine-protected vehicles, including their ambulances and supply trucks.

While those personnel carriers and patrol vehicles look primitive and ungainly by today’s standards, they formed the basis on which South Africa became the leader in this field.

Camp told Wheels further development soon saw mine-protected vehicles become effective combat vehicles, rather than just protected transport, with the Casspir being the chief example.

They saved countless soldiers and policemen from death or serious injury, and the basic concepts now live on in the various MRAP types in service today. The valuable lessons learned by the South Africans with their early designs of these combat-proven vehicles has made the country one of the global leaders in the design of MRAPs, which are locally manufactured and exported around the world.

The electric Rooikat in its mothballed state. 

The book also covers rarities like the electric Rooikat first reported in here in 2013; and what has been described on these pages as the world’s best SUV — the RG32M, a fast, agile and virtually indestructible armour-plated SUV and double cab built in Benoni using South African ingenuity and sold to several armies in the northern hemisphere.

"Surviving the Ride" is published by 30 Degrees South and sells for R495.