What’s secret about ‘secret’ camping?

The biggest surprise about the apparently secret military training camp raided by the police last week ... is that anyone’s surprised there’s a secret military training camp open for business in the bush outside White River in Mpumalanga.

Old habits die hard. If there’s one thing that should be listed as a Brand SA speciality, along with biltong and Table Mountain, it’s secret military-style training camps.

Not so long ago, similar camps were called “veldskool”. While light on military facilities such as genuine army obstacle courses and live-fire drills, they paved the way for lots of young men to head for those other military training camps straight from school.

There was also Greefswald, set in the shadow of the lost hilltop city of Mapungubwe, where drug addicts and others, including gay men, were sent for “corrective training” in the 1970s.

Then there was Kamp Staaldraad, a notorious rugby hell camp for the national team which allegedly drew on the lessons of national service to instil a bit of rage, sorry, character, in the players.

That may seem like small beer compared with an army base whose Libyan clients — all 95 of them — spent the weekend in jail.

Some reports suggest they were being trained for a Libyan strongman ... and that it was being done in South Africa because it couldn’t be done at home, for reasons of an arms embargo.

It seems the recruits were busted only after they began selling their possessions — such as shoes and T-shirts — to people in nearby Masoyi, before allegedly turning to robbery in the same community.

That, and the fact that dagga and cocaine were also found during the subsequent police raid, suggest that their training is rubbish — or that these recruits are not Libya’s finest soldier material.