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The 32 Battalion, or “the terrible ones” was a light infantry battalion of the South African Defence Force, founded in 1975 and deployed in Angola as a counter-insurgency force to assist UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) against Communist forces. Colonel Jan Breytenbach commanded this force In 1997 he published his memoirs Eden’s Exiles: One Soldier’s Fight for Paradise in which he drew attention to the trafficking and mass laugher of elephants and rhino during the Angolan war. He writes: 

“Savimbi considered his fight for his version of democracy to be of greater importance than the continued existence of elephant herds and black rhinos belonging to the scarce Chobiense sub-species. He started to shoot these two species on an organised basis. The tusks and rhino horn were stockpiled at Jamba, while a means was sought to export the loot to the Far East, particularly Hong Kong.”