Africa-Press – Botswana. Forty members of Botswana Defence Force have graduated from a 28-week basic combat swimming course conducted at Shashe Dam.
The soldiers were equipped with the necessary skills to neutralise or destroy an enemy threat and the demonstrations involved simulation exercises for soldiers undertaking patrols in waterborne terrains.
The course also entailed capsising and anti capsising from the boat, tower jumping, narrow wet gap crossing and wide wet gap crossing.
In one of the exercises, participants simulated a BDF patrol boat, which had been shot by the enemy while navigating the water on its daily mission to guard the country’s wildlife resources and borders.
In an interview, Private Chabo Mudala, who is in the army anti poaching unit at Kwandu area in the Okavango District said she had learnt a lot from the course and the skills gained would help her to traverse the wetland terrains.
She gave credit to her male counterparts who continued to encourage her not to despair, but to work harder, adding that initially there were two female soldiers in the combat, but the other one discontinued due to overwhelming activities.
In his closing remarks, Colonel Moakanyi Ditshana said BDF strove to achieve its mandate as a professional force by equipping its members with the relevant equipment and training.
He explained that the demonstration exercises were a testimony that soldiers had the capability to traverse the wetland terrains that soldiers operated in.
“Today’s contemporary operational environment requires a well-rounded, versatile and determined soldiers who will not hesitate to locate and fix the enemy even in wetland terrains,” said Colonel Ditshana.
He said the demonstrations clearly showed how fluent and competent the soldiers were in watermanship skills, adding that there was no doubt that they would carry out any wetlands mission assigned to them in the future.
He told graduates that having acquired the necessary skills, they would be deployed to the wetlands to assist in fighting poaching.
One of the course instructors, Captain Basuti Gagoitseope explained that some of the challenges they countered included bad weather as training had to be suspended for some days due to bad weather conditions.
Captain Gagoitseope further indicated that another challenge was that of shortage of instructors, as some had to be pulled out from training to go and perform other military duties.
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