Diary of NATO - SA Exercises

From Sowetan Online:

Sowetan Online multimedia reporter Thobeka Magcai fought off seasickness and crossed the language barrier during her two days onboard a Portuguese warship off the coast of Cape Town.

Here, she tells us more about her experiences while on ship.

An excerpt from her diary as reported.

We are on board the Portuguese warship, Marhina N.R.P. Alvares Cabral, and I just had an interview with the captain, commanding officer Luis Carlos de Souza Pereira.

According to him, Nato decided to set sail to Africa and they decided that South Africa would be the best place to stop over and while they are here, to see if our navy could take part in some battle exercises with them.

They have been sailing for a month already and it will take them another month to arrive in Portugal.

From what he is saying there is no specific reason why they are here, however he couldn’t elaborate on other special missions such as whether there were any intelligence officers sent over before they began the trip.

However, he did say they were interested in the South African navy refining their skill and experimenting with the navy in "testing the capability of the South African navy to work with us".

The tasks are not very difficult for the Portuguese navy to perform, considering that this is what they do on a day-to-day basis. They continuously carry out on-board exercises such as emergency rescue missions to ensure that everybody is alert and knows what to do incase of emergency.

It isn't a bad read, talks about the PHOTOEX on the 3rd of which I intend to find some photos. Other than what Eagle1 posted about the NATO mission, I was losing interest in the SNMG1 circumnavigation of Africa right up until SAS Manthatisi took the force to school the other day. It also didn't hurt when I found some new sub porn in researching the SAS Manthatisi, which as far as I can tell is one of the newest exported submarines in the world.

I have a fairly Northern Hemisphere perspective of the world, but I imagine the world looks a lot different when your Australia, India, Brazil, and South Africa, all of which have expanding Navies looking at the Northern Hemisphere thinking there is a bunch of water down there and an entire continent to the south on which very little attention is given. I thought I read somewhere about a India-South Africa-Brazil naval partnership (or perhaps it was just exercises) in the future, but I can't seem to find it. If anyone knows anything post a link.