South African Defence Force Research Articles

BATTLE ON THE LOMBA, 1987 THE DAY A SOUTH AFRICAN ARMOURED BATTALION SHATTRED ANGOLA’S LAST MECHANISED OFFENSIVE: A CREW COMMANDER’S ACCOUNT

CITATION: Esterhuyse, A. 2015. Battle on the Lomba, 1987 the day a South African armoured battalion shattred Angola’s last mechanised offensive : a crew commander’s account. Scientia Militaria, South African Journal of Military Studies, 43(2):204–207, doi:10.5787/43-2-1132.

The militarisation of the Platfontein San (!Xun and Khwe): The initial years 1966–1974

The resettlement of 372 San (Bushmen) soldiers with dependents from 31/201 and 203 Battalions in Namibia to Schmidtsdrift in the Northern Cape during March 1990 was the last chapter in the process of militarisation of the !Xun and Khwe communities. However, there is a popular perception that the South African Defence Force (SADF) was primarily responsible for the militarisation of this particular San community, with the founding of 31 Battalion during 1974. This ignores the fact that the !Xun and Khwe originated in Angola, where they were actively involved with the Portuguese security forces. With one exception, only superficial mention is made in the literature about the role of the San soldiers in Angola before independence in November 1975. This article shows that the militarisation of the San actually started in 1966, when members of the !Xun were recruited by the Portuguese Security Police (PIDE) and successfully used against the Angolan liberation movements MPLA, FNLA and UNITA. The lifestyle of the San before the PIDE era is discussed, as is the period in which they were raised to a superior status as flecha fighters. This period of military prowess ended with the independence of Angola and resulted in the !Xun and Khwe seeking refuge with the SADF. These geo-political events led to the founding of 31 Battalion, situated in the Western Caprivi, where former flecha soldiers were retrained and incorporated into SADF structures. In closing, brief mention is made of the resettlement of the !Xun and Khwe to Schmidtsdrift in South Africa.

South African Performance and Archives of Memory by Yvette Hutchison (review)

Reviewed by: South African Performance and Archives of Memory by Yvette Hutchison Gibson Alessandro Cima SOUTH AFRICAN PERFORMANCE AND ARCHIVES OF MEMORY. By Yvette Hutchison. Theatre: Theory–Practice–Performance series. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013; pp. 256. Post-apartheid South Africans renegotiate their apartheid memories through performance and embodied repertoires (protest theatre, folksongs, dances, rituals), as well as through archives (testimonies, monuments, memorials, museum exhibits). This compelling argument underpins Yvette Hutchison’s South African Performance and Archives of Memory. Central to her thesis is nostalgia: physical and psychological exiles “returning to a country they have dreamed about, but do not necessarily recognise” (8). In order to support this idea, Hutchison cites Svetlana Boyim’s The Future of Nostalgia, which describes “a longing for home that no longer exists or has never existed . . . a sentiment of [End Page 639] loss and displacement . . . a romance with one’s own fantasy” (qtd. in Hutchison 8). According to Hutchison, this longing prompts the performative rewriting of dominant apartheid and post-apartheid discourses, such as “Afrikaner nationalism” (99), “the liberation struggle” (123), and “the rainbow nation” (133). Surveying the past twenty years of democracy in the country, she argues persuasively that South Africans foregrounded certain memories and discarded others. Her analysis proceeds methodologically through multidisciplinary readings of public events, such as South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the South Africa–Mali Timbuktu Manuscript Project, and the 2010 World Cup—theatrical productions that supported or challenged the TRC, as well as memorial sites like Pretoria’s Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park. The virtue of Hutchison’s approach in her first two chapters is that she evaluates the TRC’s “script” (24) by drawing together Diana Taylor’s archive and repertoire and Catherine Cole’s understanding of the TRC as a site-specific performance. Her first chapter, “The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Reconfiguring of the Past: Remembering and Forgetting,” views the TRC as “rehearsals of an ideal state of the nation” (36). The second chapter, “Dramatising the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: The Role of Theatre Practitioners in Exploring the Past,” details how the commission required theatre artists to shift from bearing witness to using verbatim testimony (54). In both chapters, Hutchison rightly questions the means by which TRC commissioners chose certain narratives and excluded others. She notes the absence of nonverbal cues, such as sighs and silences, as well as the effect of these embodied repertoires on the archive’s formation. By staging these omitted stories alongside certain narratives from the TRC, theatre artists both critiqued and continued the commission’s mandate. Like Cole, Hutchison passionately advocates for opening the TRC archive (the majority of which remains inaccessible) and allowing such “backstage” (27) moments as unheard victims’ statements and unsuccessful amnesty applications to inform the official narrative. Hutchison’s polyvocal intervention develops in chapter 3, “Staging a Nation: The Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park.” She contrasts the Voortrekker Monument, a symbol of Afrikaner nationalism, to the newly constructed Freedom Park on the opposite hill. The sites are connected both literally and metaphorically by a winding road. Although much has been written concerning these two sites, Hutchison’s innovative comparison parallels the 1910 Pageant of the Union of South Africa, which performed reconciliation between English and Dutch-speaking South Africans, and the TRC. Similarly, the 1938 Voortrekker Centenary restaged the famed “Great Trek,” bringing local repertoires of Afrikaner folksongs and dances into a national narrative of Afrikaner-ness. Hutchison holds this nostalgic “myth of a glorious past” as key to the Afrikaner nationalism that later undergirded apartheid (111). According to her, post-apartheid political actors drew on this nostalgia, emphasizing interdependency among South African identities and histories. She notes that Nelson Mandela compared his own liberation struggle to the Afrikaner resistance to English oppression; he imagined Freedom Park as a site of “symbolic reparations” (129). For Hutchison, the expansive Freedom Park site resists colonial and apartheid memorialization strategies by designating areas for remembrance, cleansing, healing, and decision-making. She acknowledges, however, the paradox of a space that invites all South Africans to consider their interconnectedness from a decidedly black South African perspective. Furthermore, the fractious debate over excluding South African Defence Force soldiers from the...

THE SOUTH AFRICAN DEFENCE FORCE AND OPERATION HOOPER, SOUTHEAST ANGOLA, DECEMBER 1987 TO MARCH 1988

The South African Defence Force (SADF) supported UNITA during Operation Modular (June to December 1987) to stop an extensive FAPLA offensive, known as Operation Saludando a Octubre (‘Salute October’). FAPLA and its Cuban–Russian allies intended to eliminate the ‘UNITA problem’ once and for all, and they set the conquest of Mavinga and Jamba as their first target. The SADF–UNITA alliance was, however, able to stop this advance during the Battle of the Lomba River (3 October 1987) successfully, and thereby achieved the first objective of Operation Modular. The remaining phases of Operation Modular (October to December 1987) were unsuccessfully aimed at the primary objective, namely to destroy the FAPLA brigades east of the Cuito River, or at least to force them west, across the Cuito River. The SADF–UNITA allies therefore agreed to continue military operations in the Sixth Military Region in an attempt to achieve this goal. After Operation Modular had formally come to an end early in December 1987, the planning of follow-up Operation Hooper was continued in all earnest. This article focuses on the claim of General Jannie Geldenhuys, head of the SADF (1985–1990), that Operation Hooper was an unqualified success and also on his controversial claim that Operation Hooper entered its last phase with successful attacks by the UNITA–SADF forces on 13 January, and 14 and 25 February 1988. Only the offensive/battle of 14 February 1988 was a success, however, and the SADF–UNITA alliance was unable to destroy the FAPLA brigades east of the Cuito River or to force them across the river at least. Thus, once again, not all the objectives pursued after Operation Modular could be achieved. Within a period of approximately two weeks, two unsuccessful attacks were launched against Tumpo – each time from the same direction or line of approach. The FAPLA forces were very well entrenched and equipped, and they furthermore dominated the air. In contrast, factors such as inadequate intelligence (particularly regarding the second minefield and the death acres), insufficient military equipment and manpower, inadequate logistics operations and the almost impassable sandy and bushy terrain hampered the SADF–UNITA attacks.

Fighting Transnational Insurgents: The South African Defence Force in Namibia, 1966–1989

Transnational insurgents are a common feature of contemporary wars, but research on how to address this problem is still scarce. This article examines the South African Defence Force's (SADF) counterinsurgency against Namibian transnational insurgents. It concludes that the South African forces focused a large amount of their efforts outside the borders of Namibia. Highly coercive operations in Angola and Zambia created the space for hearts and minds activities in Namibia, as well as forcing neighboring states to end their support for the insurgents. Although the war in Namibia is somewhat different from contemporary wars, SADF's cross-border strategy gives us some important insights into the regional dynamics of civil wars.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN MILITARY IN TRANSITION: PART 2 – FROM STRATEGIC CULTURE TO STRATEGIC REALITY

The analysis reported here focused on the dynamic interaction between a preferred strategic management model of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) on the one hand, and the SANDF’s acquired strategic culture on the other. From a theoretical perspective, the analysis draws attention to the fact that the properties of institutional culture inform the extent to which an organisation (such as the SANDF) suffers the deleterious consequences of an inappropriate management model. The article therefore argues that the military’s lack of consensus on an appropriate political culture, the lack of a suitable social culture and the lack of an effective military culture have resulted in maintaining the continued viability of two discrete, concurrent strategic cultural paradigms in the SANDF: that of the defunct SADF [i] (initially dominant), and that of the obsolete MK [ii] (currently governing). The uneasy co-existence of these two paradigms, each with its own worldview and value system, has confounded the efforts of the SANDF to form an appropriate intended strategy and to realise military effectiveness in its execution. A dichotomous strategic culture has, in effect, reinforced the weaknesses of the SANDF’s strategic management model, impeded organisational responsiveness, maximised organisational entropy, and encouraged the defence force’s systemic decline – the latter, a fact that the Defence Review 2014 specifically acknowledges in the discussion of the review’s first milestone. [iii] This part mainly employs deductive reasoning and draws its conclusions from a focused literary review. [i] The South African Defence Force, prior to 27 April 1994. [ii] The abbreviation MK is used for Umkhonto we Sizwe (translated as “Spear of the Nation”), the armed force of the African National Congress (ANC) before 1994. It was the most important revolutionary armed force mobilised against the apartheid state. [iii] Republic of South Africa. “South African Defence Review 2014”. Accessed on 21 October 2014.

Counter-Revolutionary Warfare: the Soweto Intelligence Unit and Southern Itineraries

The Soweto Intelligence Unit (SIU) was a specialised security police unit responsible for recruiting deep-cover agents. Accounts to the Amnesty Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) suggest that through the 1980s the SIU operated far beyond its Soweto base, extending its network into Botswana, Swaziland and other liberation movement bases. Membership included several police veterans of the South West Africa1 ‘border wars’, at least two Mozambicans who had previously been deployed to South West Africa, an askari2 abducted from Botswana, and a network of informers and deep-cover agents stretching from Soweto into several of the frontline states. The TRC was given accounts of numerous ‘false-flag’ operations, including bombings and other acts of sabotage ostensibly aimed at providing credibility for informers and undercover agents, as well as several cross-border operations against African National Congress (ANC) targets in the mid 1980s. Several of these were conducted jointly with a covert military unit of the South African Defence Force (SADF) that included ex-Rhodesian soldiers and intelligence personnel. The SIU thus provides a way of exploring the multiple intersections of regional struggles and modes of belonging: its theatre of war extended far beyond its local jurisdiction, crossing multiple physical and institutional borders. Its operatives dragged with them diverse histories and legacies, which in turn both shaped and blurred the boundaries of insurgency and counter-insurgency. These aspects arguably have wider implications for the national, and require us to rethink the frames through which we have come to understand the struggle for and against apartheid to have been waged. They also require us to think more carefully about the evidence, including that of the TRC, on which such frames rest.

An Analysis of Defence Expenditure and Economic Growth in South Africa

This research paper investigates the relationship between defence expenditure and economic growth in South Africa. It is understood that South African Defence Force plays a vital role in peace keeping security in African and SADC as a region. This makes it a particularly interesting case study on nexus between defence expenditure and economic growth. This investigation presents such a study, by estimating an econometric model of the South African military expenditure in considering pure economic factors. The period of the study covers from 1988 to 2012. On the basis of determining the long term equilibrium the application of Johansen cointegration and Engel-Granger were applied. At the later stage the technique of Granger causality was performed on variables of interest in the study. The study concludes that there is long run relationship between defence expenditure and economic growth. Also for causal analysis military expenditure seem to granger cause gross domestic product per capita at 5 percent significance level. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p2769

Achieving the Impossible: The 1∶500 000 ‘Irrigation Map’ of South Africa, 1935–1937

Since 1906, South Africa boasted an excellent geodetic framework, and in 1920 an official Trigonometrical Survey Office (TSO) was established. In spite of these achievements, the country, by the 1930s, still lacked reliable topographical maps. One reason for this was that the secondary and tertiary triangulations of the country were still incomplete; another was that the decision-making process as regards surveys and mapping rested with a variety of statutory bodies instead of just one. In 1934, A. D. Lewis, Director of the Department of Irrigation, committed his department to execute a general topographical survey of the country and produce a topographical map on a scale of 1∶500 000. Lewis’ decision met with much resistance from within the country and abroad, but the project was completed in a record period of 4 years. Published just before the Second World War, the map was of inestimable value to the South African Defense Force. It not only became the standard topographical map of large parts of South Africa for many years, but its contents also figured in the first map series of the TSO.

What is one datum worth?

What is one datum worth?

Yes, Minister: Reassessing South Africa's Intervention in the Angolan Civil War, 1975–1976

In 1975–1976, South Africa's apartheid regime took the momentous step of intervening in the Angolan civil war to counter the Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola and its backers in Havana and Moscow. The failure of this intervention and the subsequent ignominious withdrawal had major repercussions for the evolution of the regime and the history of the Cold War in southern Africa. This article is the first comprehensive study of how and why Pretoria became involved. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources from South African archives as well as interviews with key protagonists, the article shows that the South African Defence Force and Defence Minister P. W. Botha pushed vigorously and successfully for deeper engagement to cope with security threats perceived through the prism of the emerging doctrine of “total onslaught.” South Africa's intervention in Angola was first and foremost the product of strategic calculations derived from a sense of threat perception expressed and experienced in Cold War terms, but applied and developed in a localized southern African context.

The South African Defence Force and Horse Mounted Infantry Operations, 1974-1985

The South African Defence Force (SADF) made effective use of the horse mounted soldier in the Namibian Independence War or ‘Border War’, 1966 to 1989, in Namibia (South West African) and Angola, in a conflict usually depicted as a series of high profile mechanised infantry operations. Nevertheless, the legacy of the horse-mounted infantryman of the South African War era commando was evident in this unit, which proved competent in the counter-insurgency patrol in the Area of Operations, and subsequently domestic deployment during civilian struggle during the State of Emergency. This article offers an exploration of the Potchefstroom Equestrian Centre’s contribution to horse and rider training and the military use of horses in counterinsurgency and urban peace enforcement operations in the period c.1974-1985.

THE SAGA OF SOUTH AFRICAN POWS IN ANGOLA, 1975–82

This article narrates the story of nine soldiers captured during and shortly after Operation Savannah, the codename for the South African Defence Force invasion of Angola in 1975–6. Eight of these soldiers were captured in Angola in three separate incidents by Angolan and/or Cuban forces, whereas the last was abducted from northern Namibia by SWAPO (the South West Africa Peoples’ Organisation). The article then provides a chronological account of the sequels to this story that interweaves a number of threads: first, the account relates the South African government’s attempts to suppress press coverage of these stories for fear of the political ‘fall-out’ that the matter might cause amongst the white electorate and in case it jeopardised secret negotiations to secure the release of the prisoners; and second, it uncovers the role played by intermediaries, especially the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in the sensitive and fraught negotiation process. It will be shown that the South African authorities adopted divergent approaches when dealing with SWAPO and the Angolans/Cubans to secure the release of prisoners of war (POWs). This is because the South African authorities regarded the former as involved in an internal insurrection whereas the latter were members of the military forces of sovereign states. Accordingly, they paid lip service to the Geneva Conventions in the case of Angolan and Cuban POWs but treated captured SWAPO cadres as ‘terrorists’ or ‘criminals’.

REFUGEES, RESETTLEMENT, AND LAND AND RESOURCE CONFLICTS: THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY AMONG !XUN AND KHWE SAN IN NORTHEASTERN NAMIBIA

This study examines land use, natural resource, and development conflicts, and the effects of government policies in a remote area in northeastern Namibia, known formerly as West Bushmanland, now Tsumkwe West. !Xun and Khwe San who had been soldiers of the South African Defense Force in the Angolan and Namibian wars of independence in the 1970s and 1980s were resettled in this area along with their families. Namibian government resettle- ment and development projects were planned and implemented in the Tsumkwe West in the early 1990s. In part because of the ways in which !Xun and Khwe San identities were con- structed over time by settlers, academics, policy-makers, the South African Defense Force, the colonial and post-colonial state, and San themselves, the people of Tsumkwe West, later, the N≠a Jaqna Conservancy, have had to struggle against other groups and the state for the stake in their land and resources. Drawing on anthropological research, work of non-government organizations, and interviews of people in the area over a period of two and a half decades, this study assesses some of the ways in which resettlement and land and resource policies have mutually affected the Namibian government, the military, private companies, donor agencies, non-government and community-based organizations, and a diverse set of peoples in north- eastern Namibia.

Division in the (Inner) Ranks: The Psychosocial Legacies of the Border Wars

During the apartheid era, a key component of the Nationalist government's strategy in combating both African nationalism and the perceived threat of communism was the compulsory conscription of young white men into the South African Defence Force (SADF) between 1968 and 1993. Conscription was one relatively small component of a system in which all South Africans' lives were profoundly affected by the political domain's imposition of racial, class and gender stratifications. This paper is based on ongoing research into the psychosocial legacies of the apartheid wars. It explores how some of the burgeoning publications about this period of South African history reflect the intrapersonal legacies and psychological stresses that were caused by the social and political discourses of this context. A particular focus in this discussion is the way in which the social and political fracturings that characterised South African society during the apartheid era have been mirrored in the psychosocial constructs that significantly shaped some conscripts' lives, both at the time and in the post-apartheid context, and continue to influence current South African society.

Silence, Voices, and “the Camp”: Perspectives on and from Southern Africa’s Exile Histories

Silence, Voices, and “the Camp”: Perspectives on and from Southern Africa’s Exile Histories Christian A. Williams (bio) Between 1960 and 1990, thousands of people from present-day Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe fled oppressive white minority regimes for “exile,” a place located outside their national “home.” Many exiles settled in Africa’s “front-line states,” including Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, and, following their independence, Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. There, national liberation movements were granted resources from allies to lead a liberation war and to look after fellow nationals in camps. Although some exiles eventually made their way to other places, receiving scholarships or representing their liberation movements across the globe, almost all spent time in camps, and many lived there for years prior to their country’s independence and the fall of apartheid. Camps, therefore, were central to the national communities which formed among Southern African exiles during the 1960s–80s. And they became key sites in the histories which the liberation movements, now ruling parties, have constructed about their respective nations’ resistance to colonialism in the recent past. In some respects, the camps administered by Southern Africa’s liberation movements resemble other sites referenced in a growing literature on “the camp.” They were enclosed spaces in which people lived under a sovereign with control over all resources necessary for maintaining human life. Like refugee camps, they were open only to those who had been displaced from a particular national home, and they generated nationalism as their inhabitants accessed limited resources and faced common threats through their association with a nation.1 In other respects, however, Southern Africa’s liberation movement camps are unique. They were governed directly by a liberation movement with little or no oversight from a host nation or transnational humanitarian agency. Inhabitants belonged to an organization leading a liberation war and might identify themselves not only as “refugees” fleeing from political violence but also as “freedom fighters” liberating their country of origin from colonial rule. And, in Southern Africa’s postcolonial nations they have assumed new meanings as citizens seek recognition for their contributions during the liberation struggle. These qualities of liberation movement camps call into question the idea of “the camp” as a space which, because it separates inhabitants from a broader social world, can be abstracted from the particular histories which have generated it and shaped its modes of representation. And they open perspectives from which to see camps in new ways, undermining tropes that define “the subject” which “the camp” will produce. This essay examines camps administered by one liberation movement, the South [End Page 65] West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), in order to critique one trope, “the voiceless refugee.”2 In contrast to literature which emphasizes how camps and humanitarian discourse render refugees silent by removing them from political life,3 I view camps as sites which have produced multiple voices as inhabitants make claims to belonging in a national community.4 Drawing from histories of SWAPO settlements at Cassinga and Lubango, Angola, I demonstrate how Namibians have voiced claims in and through these camps even as certain voices have repeatedly been privileged by nationalist discourse and the global system of nation-states which structures it. Thus, camp inhabitants may sound silent, and the humanitarian (and human rights) language deployed to represent camps may appear to have silenced Namibians, but these “refugees” have been far from voiceless. Following these observations with respect to SWAPO camps, the essay returns to liberation movement camps and to “the camp” broadly conceived. As I maintain, the voices encountered in my research reflect qualities both of liberation movement camps and of the ethnographic/historical research methods through which one may study them in Southern Africa today. They are, therefore, especially productive sites from which to rethink “the camp” as well as the nationalist and humanitarian discourses through which camps and their inhabitants are consistently portrayed. Camp, Nation, and Voices: Remember Cassinga? Since May 4, 1978, the day it was attacked by the South African Defense Force, SWAPO’s camp at Cassinga, Angola, has been remembered through two competing national narratives. Within a few days of the attack, SWAPO and its supporters presented Cassinga to...

OPVOEDKUNDIGE TEGNOLOGIE IN DIE SAW

Although the term Educational Technology is in common use in the South African Defence Force, many people are still not familiar with the meaning of the word. In this article an overview is given of the origin, development an current interpretation of the term. The application of Educational Technology in the South African Defence Force is also briefly examined.

DIE INSPEKTEUR-GENERAAL IN DIE SUID AFRIKAANSE WEERMAG 1912 - 1983

This historical review of the role of the Inspector General in the South African Defence Force since 1912 is by the author's own admission, not an unbroken saga of continuous events. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the post of Inspector General had been abolished (and created) on several occasions. In view of this it is perhaps understandable that from a diachronical viewpoint, opinions on the role and status of the Inspector General will differ. The aim of this article is to review the aspect of semantics within a historical framework and the author bases his arguments on the premise that the post of the Inspector General is to a large extent influenced by evolutionary change within the organizational framework. It is also claimed that the history of the Inspector General in the South African Defence Force should not be viewed in isolation and in this regard note is taken of the role played by the Inspector General in the forces of Britain (origins) and the United States (currently). The move away from the traditional centralized Inspector General towards a decentralized system which makes provision for Inspectors General allocated to the respective arms of service, is seen as a normal development in the evolutionary process which will contribute towards improved efficiency.

THE MILITARY USE OF ANIMALS IN SOUTH AFRICA (1400-1881)

The extent to which military operations depended on animals prior to the gradual mechanisation of armed forces which has taken place this century, is seldom fully appreciated by the soldier in a modern army. In South Africa, with its relatively short history profusely studded with belligerent actions ranging from internecine tribal squabbles through riots, rebellions, civil wars, invasions and conquests to international conflicts, animals have played a significant role in the conduct of military affairs. The varied topography and climate of the sub-continent has enabled animals to be utilized under many conditions which have taxed their capabilities in various fields to the utmost. It is the aim of this paper to examine the part played by animals in South African military annals, primarily in their combat and support roles, with brief reference to their ceremonial role. An effort will be made to assess their usefulness in each role at the time, and compare this to the modern application of animals in the South African Defence Force.

AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN ARTILLERY

It has been said that 'Necessity is the mother of invention' and there can be few countries, if any, where this is more true than in South Africa. In the late 1930's, prior to World War II, the South African Artillery was severely restricted due to its lack of mobility. The inventiveness shown in tackling this probelm is surely not a thing of the past and the possiblity of adapting South African artillery to current South african needs in warfare should not be overlooked. The South African Defence Force is not able to purchase armament in a free and open market place and the costs of developing new artillery are prohibitive in a country of South Africa's size. it will be argued that it is necessary and possible, in the short term, to take what is currently available and adapt this to South Africa's needs.