Chairman's message to South Australian Members

Members of SAMVOA (South Australia), family and friends of SAMVOA (SA) members and all other South African Veterans visiting this site. We wish to extend heartfelt and sincere greetings from the SAMVOA (SA) leadership team.

For SAMVOA (SA) the past two years have been very quiet in South Australia primarily due to the impact / disruption caused by the COVID pandemic and the cancellation of public gathering activities such as ANZAC day commemorations / marches and Remembrance Day services.

The COVID Pandemic and the continued ‘political’ challenges we face as a result of the policy of ‘non inclusion’ of South African Veterans in the Adelaide Metropolitan ANZAC Day march, managed by the Adelaide RSL, has resulted in SAMVOA not participating in the City of Adelaide ANZAC Day march.

However, we have received hearty welcomes from several of the rural RSL’s and where possible we have participated in activities planned and executed at the smaller, rural RSLs. Active engagement at the RSL in Tanunda, Murray Bridge, Pt. Pirie and Mt Gambier are but a few that we are aware of.

The Tanunda RSL has extended an open invitation to members of SAMVOA to attend ANZAC Day services and the marches, if conducted, every year in Tanunda.

With the wide dispersion of South African veterans in South Australia it is and has been challenging to gather the members at a single event, but we are looking to improve on the ability of gathering veterans at events and affording all veterans the opportunity to engage.

There remain some members whose recognition of service, in the form of a medal, has not been completed and we are looking for an opportune occasion in 2022 to have an official presentation of the awards to these members as a recognition of their service.

The SAMVOA (SA) leadership team wishes to encourage veterans to engage with local RSL’s and also to encourage veterans who may not be a member of SAMVOA to join the organisation.

We cannot foresee the future and we can only hope that an opportune time (ANZAC Day 2022) will soon present itself where our veterans may be recognized for their service. It would be encouraging to have as many veterans present as possible.

Information on planned activities for 2022 will be published on this site in the near future.

Please do not hesitate to make contact with the SAMVOA SA team (as limited as our numbers may be at this time) as we can only go from strength to strength here in South Australia.

Here’s trusting that 2022 will afford the resumption of ‘normal’ activities and commemorative events.

Veteran Nico Robbertse
Chairperson SAMVOA SA

Email : nrobbertse@samvoint.org