State President: Jacobus Johannes Fouché
May
3 – Onkgopotse Abram Tiro is expelled from the University of the North and students protest the expulsion.
4 – South Africa and Lesotho decide to establish reciprocal consular representation.
August
12 – The Oswego-Guardian and Texanita, two oil tankers, collide near Stilbaai.
October
1 – 1 Reconnaissance Commando is established at Oudtshoorn.
Unknown date
A South African special forces team carry out a submarine-borne raid on the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam using the SAS Emily Hobhouse, a Daphne class submarine.
The South African Police deploys to South West Africa.
Conscription for all white males is extended from 9 to 12 months, followed by a 19-day annual call-up for five years.
Operation Plathond, a joint South African Defence Force and South African Bureau of State Security operation, is launched to train dissident Zambians in the Caprivi Strip, South West Africa.
12 March – Arno Carstens, lead singer of the rock group Springbok Nude Girls, is born in Worcester.
25 August – Elmarie Gerryts, pole vaulter.
8 September – Os du Randt, Springbok rugby player.
14 May – Lawrence G. Green, author, dies in Cape Town at the age of 72. (b. 1900)
11 August – Max Theiler, a virologist and the first South African to receive a Nobel Prize (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine), dies in New Haven, Connecticut at the age of 73. (b. 1899)
7 September – Cyprian Shilakoe, artist and sculpturer, is killed in a vehicle accident in Krugersdorp, Transvaal.
In March the South African Railways places the first of seventy Class 35-000 General Electric type U15C diesel-electric locomotives in branchline service.
1972 in South Africa Wikipedia (Text) CC BY-SA
