'Red cat') is a South African armoured reconnaissance vehicle equipped with a stabilised 76 mm (3.0 in) high velocity gun for organic anti-tank and fire support purposes.

The Rooikat's main armament was built with the Oto Melara 76 naval gun as its basis, to which it is nearly identical in terms of technical performance and statistics.

[4] From the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, the standard reconnaissance vehicle of the South African Defence Force was the Eland-90, a four-wheeled armoured car modelled closely after the Panhard AML-90.

[6] In 1984, South Africa launched Operation Askari, which saw its mechanised and motorised infantry contingents threatened by large Angolan tank formations for the first time.

[7] The armoured cars were decisively outranged by the Angolan tanks, and their inability to fire on the move resulted in a poor rate of engagement.

[8] As a direct result of Askari, the Eland was removed from combat service and a squadron of Olifant tanks kept on permanent standby to assist with neutralising enemy armour during future South African operations.

[10] These trials were primarily for the purpose of evaluating the vehicles' performance on different types of local terrain; while none of the three were deemed acceptable for the New Generation Armoured Car programme, the chassis built with Eland components continued to influence later prototypes—particularly with regards to its suspension features.

[13] A fourth, multirole eight-wheeled prototype evaluated in 1984 was rejected and a decision was made to retain the Ratel for the foreseeable future while pursuing the separate development of the Cheetah Mk2, now denoted as the Rooikat.

[11] In its final form the Rooikat incorporated several features adopted directly from the Eland-90, namely a similar commander's cupola, the same turret periscopes, and the mounting of all eight wheels on trailing arms, with the same hydropneumatic shock absorbers and coil springs.

[10] The Rooikat did not enter service in large numbers until August 1989, when a single South African armoured squadron began receiving it.

In a marked departure from the manoeuvre-oriented anti-tank tactics of the South African Border War, Rooikat crews were also trained to engage tanks only from defilade or otherwise static defensive positions.

[22]: 399 One Rooikat was turned into a conventional vehicle electric drive technology demonstrator (CVED) and displayed at AAD2006 in Cape Town in September of that year.

VEG Magazine reported in 2006 the vehicle was fitted with a power supply control system feeding eight wheel-hub mounted M67/0 electric units and a two-phase pneumatic gearbox.