Between 1968 and 1970, the South African Railways placed 115 Class 33-400 General Electric type U20C diesel-electric locomotives in service.

Many of them were transferred to TransNamib, the Namibian Railways, upon South West Africa’s independence on 21 March 1990.

[1] The Class 33-400 type GE U20C diesel-electric locomotive was designed for the South African Railways (SAR) by General Electric (GE) and built by the South African General Electric-Dorman Long Locomotive Group (SA GE-DL, later Dorbyl).

1435, sold to the Congolese Company for Transportation and Ports (SCTP), illustrated below, of which the left-side door on the nose had apparently been swapped with that of their Class 33-000 no.

Upon being commissioned, many of the Class 33-400 locomotives were placed in service in South West Africa (SWA) while some went to the Mafeking line working out of Johannesburg.

Forty-five of them were eventually transferred to TransNamib, the Namibian Railways, upon SWA’s independence on 21 March 1990.

From 2009, some were also employed out of Cape Town on the Overberg line across Sir Lowry's Pass to Caledon and on the Bitterfontein line up the West Coast where they replaced several Classes 35-000 and 35-400 locomotives that were leased to private railway operators in several Southern African countries.

These include the three units sold to FOB and subsequently resold to EFO and SQM, five locomotives reported as non-operating and two which were returned to Rede Ferroviária Federal, Sociedade Anônima (RFFSA), the state-owned federal railroad network of Brazil.

33-487 has been marked down on TRANSnet Heritage Foundation as a historic locomotive set to be preserved in the near future it currently resides at East London - Cambridge.