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Hamukwaya , Shitelgipo (S)

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Identity
Person No.
30612
Service No.
Unknown
Last Name
Hamukwaya 2
First Name
Shitelgipo
Initials
S
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
1929 (±1 yr) 87
Age at Death
53
Death Record
Date of Death
10 April 1982 233
Cause code
KIA 14,779
Killed in action
Cause of Death
Killed in action 14,653
Killed in action, Counter-insurgency duty in South West Africa. Member of Koevoet
Military Service
Rank
Special Constable
Regiment
South West African Police 158
Unit
South West Africa Police Counter-Insurgency Wing: Ops-K Division (KOEVOET) 214
Secondary Unit
Army
Defence Force
SWAPOL 159
South West African Police
Location
Country
South Africa 23,872
Locality
Unknown
Cemetery
UNKNOWN CEMETERY 3,272
Grave Reference
Likely buried in Namibia - Alternative Commemoration until grave found 135
Notes

ref. "The Covert War" by Peter Stiff

Research notes


Mike Sandham's research log ("List 1"), imported 16 Sep 2026, credited to The South Africa War Graves Project unless his entry says otherwise: gives Age 27 against this record's 53. This record has no date of birth, so there is nothing to adjudicate with. Flagged, not changed.
16 Sep 2026, ServiceNo contamination sweep: the stored ServiceNo '82904962SW' was CLEARED. It was not a reading of this man's record. PersonNumbers 30611 to 30614 -- 4 consecutive records -- all carried the identical number, which belongs to the record at the head of that run (30611, Hamukwaya, First Name Unknown (F N U)). A value repeated down an unbroken block of PersonNumbers is a forward-fill import artefact, not men who shared a service number; the pattern holds across 850 such runs on this roll and is independently confirmed by Mike Sandham's research log, which attaches such numbers to the head of the run 167 times against 6 contradictions (all examined). No replacement is guessed: this man's real service number is simply not known, and a blank field says so honestly where another man's number did not.

Citations
Unknown
External References
Stories

No stories have been added yet.

Dedications 1
by whaka on 10 April 2021 · via War in Angola
RIP S/Constable S Hamukwaya (Stirripo). Just to add if anyone might be interested. Koevoet was not a wing of the South West African Police Counter-Insurgency at that stage. Koevoet was a unit of the South African Police, Special Operations (K) Koevoet under the SAP security branch HQ Pretoria from inception in 1979 until about December 1984. It was only from beginning 1985 that the unit changed from SAP Special Ops K Koevoet to SWAPOL TIN/COIN Koevoet. The change was purely administrative and resulted in a much bigger budget for the unit. At the same time we acquired our own unique plain olive green uniform. (Our team ZG buried Stirripo a few days later at the cemetery at Ongwediva where our unit buried most of our black members that were killed. Stirripo was our teams finest tracker and highly respected member of our team.)

Source: https://rohsa.co.za/person.php?PersonNumber=30612&pdf=1

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South African Roll of Honour — Remembering those who served and fell. Lest We Forget.