This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory,
but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the
product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses,
chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the
apartheid and post-apartheid eras. 23 Aug 2000: Davidson,
Christo POM Christo, you were saying? This is in relation to the
question of - CD Casspir or Nyala which are armoured vehicles
used by the police. There is a common saying among the black
people, especially in those days and I think still today, that
whenever they refer to these vehicles they refer to 'Hippos'.
Now before we introduced the Casspirs we had vehicles called
Hippos. It was basically the same thing as a Casspir but it was
a very unsophisticated vehicle, an older type of vehicle, it was
an experimental vehicle. The Casspir was developed from the
Hippo but the Hippo was on a Bedford chassis, it was a very slow
vehicle. The Casspir is built on a Mercedes Benz chassis and
engine. We used those vehic