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Wimba (A)

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Identity
Person No.
33889
Service No.
78911898SP
Last Name
First Name
Unknown
Initials
A
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
Unknown
Death Record
Date of Death
Cause code
MVA 2,635
Motor vehicle accident
Cause of Death
Died in a Vehicle Accident, run over
Military Service
Branch
Army
Rank
Rifleman
Unit
Unknown
Defence Force
SADF 3,839
South African Defence Force
Location
Awards
Pro Patria Medal
South Africa
Pro Patria Medal warrant, Government Gazette No. 5171 (25 Jun 1976), Rule 5, as amended by GG No. 5575 (3 Jun 1977); discontinued by GG No. 25213 (25 Jul 2003, Schedule corrected by GG No. 26778, 17 Sep 2004) for service on/after 27 Apr 2003. Gazette extracts: https://rohsa.co.za/award.php?id=24
Notes

ref "Die Buffel Struikel" by LJ Bothma

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 26 against this record's 25 (a difference of one year, so most likely a birthday-not-yet-reached transcription difference rather than a real disagreement). This record has no date of birth, so there is nothing to adjudicate with. Flagged, not changed.
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 'David Herculaas', Age 25 and Unit '' were forward-filled from PersonNumber 33888 down a contiguous run of 2 records -- this record's own LastName ('Wimba'), Initials ('A'), ServiceNo ('78911898SP') and DateDeath ('1988-06-04') 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.

Citations
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