Local Context • 1978 • IV
Operation Koevoet is formed as a highly specialised wing of the South African Police Service. Consisting of around 900 Ovambo tribesmen and 300 white police officers, who are financially rewarded through a bounty system, the Koevoet platoons use guerilla-styled military tactics to suppress armed SWAPO insurgents in South West Africa (now Namibia).
An entry from the timeline included in the exhibition Dada South? Experimentation, Radicalism and Resistance (2009–2010) at the Iziko National Gallery, which proposed connections between art production in South Africa and abroad against the social and political contexts that framed them. A revised version of this timeline was later featured in the retroactive Flight Paths (2011) exhibition guide commissioned by Clare Butcher.