Andrew Mlangeni Regiment
South African Army reserve unit
The Andrew Mlangeni Regiment (formerly the South African Irish Regiment) is a reserve infantry regiment of the South African Army.
History
Origins
Although all the regular units of Irish origin in the British Army have served in South Africa at some time during its colonial involvement in South Africa, the first autonomous South African units shaped by Irish influences were the Cape Town Irish Volunteer Rifles (raised by a Major O'Reilly in 1885) and Driscoll's Scouts (raised by Capt D.P. Driscoll during the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899 – 1902).
However, an Irish Brigade also fought on the side of the Boer republics.
World War I
The South African Irish was formed at the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 when three officers (Major George Twomey, Captain J. Jeoffreys and a Captain MacDonald) met at the Irish Club in Johannesburg to raise an Irish regiment from among the citizens of Johannesburg and its surrounding areas.
After a request to The Union Defence Force (UDF) Headquarters, authority was granted to form the regiment and Lieutenant-Colonel Brennan was appointed as its first commanding officer. Major Twomey was appointed as its recruiting officer. The wife of General Louis Botha (a lady of Irish descent with the maiden name of Emmett) was appointed as the regiment's first honorary colonel.
Sources are not clear on the official date of formation of the South African Irish, but it is either 9 September or 1 December 1914. In any case, the battalion, consisting of six companies, first formed up at Booysens Camp in Johannesburg on the former date.
After training, the regiment was made part of 4 South African Infantry Brigade (part of the Northern Force) and embarked from Cape Town to the (then) German South-West Africa on 21 December 1914.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Andrew Mlangeni Regiment” is south African Army reserve unit. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Andrew, Mlangeni and Regiment, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7565717. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1885, 1899, 1902 and 1914.
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This entry incorporates text from “Andrew Mlangeni Regiment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.