South African casualties in the Central African Republic

In an exchange with a South African analyst, I mentioned that I was very sad and very surprised by the fact that the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) had lost 13 men out of 200 in the recent clashes with the Séléka rebels in the Central African Republic (CAR). That’s an awful lot of casualties. In particular, if one considers that on the other side, on the insurgent side, we had a ragtag bunch of armed men, poorly equipped, chaotically led and badly prepared to fight. I suggested that this SANDF loss needs to be properly reviewed by the authorities in Pretoria and a number of hard lessons extracted.