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Ravhengani (R E)

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No photograph available — remembrance poppy
Identity
Person No.
32650
Service No.
94724374
Last Name
First Name
Unknown
Initials
R E
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
Unknown
Death Record
Date of Death
Cause code
DIS 6,078
Died of disease
Cause of Death
Died of Medical Reason, at 1 Mil Hospital, while off duty
Military Service
Branch
Army
Rank
Lance Corporal
Regiment
Unknown
Defence Force
SANDF 1,026
South African National Defence Force
Memorial
Memorial
Location
On a koppie at the Voortrekker Monument, overlooking Pretoria
Address
Coordinates
Panel
Not listed against a numbered panel
On the panel
Position on the panel will be added with photographs
Unit History
Role at time of death
Mechanised Infantry (combined-arms battalion group)
Status
Regular Force
Part of
Formed 1978 as Battle Group Juliet (SWAPO counter-insurgency, Ovamboland); formally named 61 Mechanised Battalion (Group) January 1979; disbanded 2005 at Lohatla. "Battalion Group" reflects its integral combined-arms structure: two Ratel-20-mounted infantry companies, an armoured car/tank squadron (Eland/Ratel-90, later Olifant), an integral G5 howitzer artillery battery, an 81mm mortar platoon, an anti-tank platoon, and an anti-aircraft troop -- not merely units attached for one operation. Fought at the Battle of the Lomba River, 1987. No evidence found that it was ever subordinated to or redesignated as a "61 Mechanised Brigade" -- see the note on that separate OrgEntity record.
Notes

Ref SANDF 1998 RoH

Research notes


4 Sep 2026: Regiment leftover "SA Army" cleared -- that's the service branch (Army, as distinct from Navy/Air Force), not a specific regiment; the actual unit ("61 Mechanised Battalion Group") is already captured in Unit. Per John's decision, the 52 records with no better Unit info were left as-is.
25 Sep 2026, Unit2 service-branch sweep: the stored Secondary Unit "Army" was CLEARED as a duplicate. It was not a sub-unit, it was a service-branch word repeating what the Branch column already says. Secondary Unit is for sub-units -- a company, a squadron, a commando -- and this record's branch of service is unchanged at "Army".
Database-wide FirstName/Age/Unit contamination sweep, 28 Sep 2026 (John's hypothesis, tested and confirmed on 3 sample groups before running at scale): FirstName 'Riaan Jakob', Age 20 and Unit '61 Mechanised Battalion Group' were forward-filled from PersonNumber 32649 down a contiguous run of 2 records -- this record's own LastName ('Ravhengani'), Initials ('R E'), ServiceNo ('94724374') and DateDeath ('1998-10-02') are all genuinely distinct from every other record in the run, confirming a different real person whose FirstName/Age/Unit were simply never captured (source pattern consistent with a SAPS memorial table using rowspan for Name/Age/Province, mis-copied by the scraper onto every row). FirstName, Age and Unit CLEARED; no replacement guessed. CauseDeath NOT touched -- it follows its own, narrower sub-block boundaries within this run and carries real distinguishing information.
CORRECTION, 28 Sep 2026: the earlier note on this record wrongly described Unit as forward-filled/contaminated alongside FirstName and Age. On review, Unit values proved to be common, genuinely correct data shared by many unrelated real people throughout this dataset (e.g. 'Western Cape' alone appears on 195 scattered, unrelated records with 111 distinct surnames) -- Unit was NOT part of this contamination and has been RESTORED from the pre-sweep backup. FirstName and Age remain correctly cleared -- both were 100% correlated across every contaminated run and independently confirmed absent on SAWGP's own record for spot-checked samples.

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