SHOULDER FLASHES
The “official” badge of the Koevoet Unit during the early ‘80’s was the map of SWA (Namibia) inside a circle on the SA Police badge star, with a Casspir moving from left to right over the map of SWA (Namibia). This badge was never worn on any uniform, but was produced on t-shirts and beer mugs, etc. The first team shoulder flashes were made by members of the teams when they went on leave to the RSA, and no more than 100 of a specific badge was made at any time. It happened that a team would have two different badges at the same time. ZC for instance had two badges made by Chris “Moondag” Brits in 1982, one in the form of a triangle and a second in the form of a shield.
As there were no regulations in wearing the team badges, some members had sleeves made out of camoe material with the badge sown onto the sleeve. This was worn on the shoulder of the uniform shirt or jacket. Some members of some teams, e.g. ZN wore their team badge on both shoulders of their uniform shirts. This practice continued into 1985 with the green Koevoet uniform.
In 1985 a Koevoet shoulder flash was produced consisting of the word KOEVOET above a white rubberized badge of SWAPOL. Unfortunately an error had occurred in the manufacturer of this shoulder flash, as the word KOEVOET was to be printed on the South African National Colours of orange, white and blue. The manufacturer made a error by printing it on the French National Colours of red, white and blue. Only 200 of these badges were produced.
The Koevoet shoulder flash was worn on the right arm and was replaced by the SWAPOL-TIN (SWA Police Counter-Insurgency) shoulder flash when Koevoet was transferred to the Southwest African Police on 10 June 1985 and became SWAPOL-TIN, being seconded to the South-West African Police. The shoulder flash of the base or combat team was worn on the left arm. Even though there were only forty-two combat teams, there were more than forty-two types of shoulder flashes because of changes in leadership of the combat teams. A new leader would often change the design of the flash but the name and the animal portrayed on the flash would remain the same.
Most shoulder flashes had a picture of an animal on them. The animal depicted was the mascot (in name only) of that combat team and the name of that animal was usually printed on the flash in the home language of the team members, Ovambo, Kavango or Ovahimba. Two other regular features on some of the flashes were the Casspir or weapon, with the AK-47 and RPG-7 featuring prominently.
