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Mdontswa (Z M)

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No photograph available — remembrance poppy
Identity
Person No.
36075
Service No.
453009-8
Last Name
First Name
Unknown
Initials
Z M
Date of Birth
Unknown
Est. Birth Year
Age at Death
Unknown
Death Record
Cause code
DUTY 1,421
Died on duty
Cause of Death
Died in the execution of his duty as a member of the South African Police
Military Service
Rank
Inspector
Regiment
Unknown
Secondary Unit
South African Police Service
Defence Force
SAPS 1,739
South African Police Service
Memorial
Memorial
Location
In the gardens of the Union Buildings, on the eastern flank of the grounds, Pretoria
Address
Coordinates
Panel
Not listed against a numbered panel
On the panel
Position on the panel will be added with photographs
Unit History
Notes

ref. Gallantry Awards of the South African Police 1913-1994

Research notes

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 'Mpinzi', Age 45 and Unit 'Mpumalanga' were forward-filled from PersonNumber 36072 down a contiguous run of 10 records -- this record's own LastName ('Mdontswa'), Initials ('Z M'), ServiceNo ('453009-8') and DateDeath ('2005-02-06') 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
Unknown
External References
Stories 1
on 09 May 2011 · via source
I have finally tracked down details on my late cousin and his friend who were killed in a car accident in 1974 whilst in the SADF and stationed at Lenz. Neither of them appear on any SADF Memorial or Roll of Honour list, which is strange given that both families were offered full military funerals at the time of their deaths (an offer not taken up by my cousin's family, but which was taken up by his friend's family). The two killed were Gordon Daubermann, my cousin, who was a National Serviceman signaller stationed at Lenz, and his best friend Rodney Pugh, also a National Serviceman stationed at Lenz. I'm not sure if Rodney was also a signaller, although I suspect he was. They were on their way back to camp in my aunt's car, a VW Beetle, on the night of 17 August 1974, when they collided head-on near Lenasia with a bigger car being driven on the wrong side of the road by a drunk driver, who fled the scene afterwards but was apprehended by police, thanks to a suspicious driver who picked him up and took him to the local police station. Both Gordon and Rodney were killed instantly in the crash, but they were only found after the police had coerced the information about the crash from the drunk. I was 14 at the time, and I recall that both families were offered full military funerals for the two, but only Rodney Pugh's family accepted this offer. The army chaplain from Lenz did attend my cousin Gordon's funeral, and spoke briefly, as I can well remember it. I was a pall
Dedications

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