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The first years and Operation Savannah
The Border War is generally assumed to have started on 26 August 1966 when a force of 130 men –121 policemen and 9 members of 1 Parachute Battalion hastily attested as temporary policemen in Alouette III helicopters – under the command of Captain (later Colonel) Jan Breytenbach attacked a base of the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN, SWAPO’s armed force) base at Ongulumbashe in Ovambo.[1] Apparently, because of its unwillingness to acknowledge that SWAPO formed a real danger to South African domination in South West Africa, the government decided to entrust the fight against the insurgency not to the Defence Force, but to the South African Police (SAP). This would remain the case until 1974, when the SADF did take over responsibility.
At this stage, the army still suffered from the after-effects of neglect during the post-Second World War era, and particularly from the exodus of experienced English-speaking members. This was a direct result of the policy of the first National Party Minister of Defence, Frans Erasmus, who instituted a kind of affirmative action in favour of Afrikaner officers.[2]
Most of the army’s weaponry dated from the Second World War, although a limited modernisation programme had started in the early 1960s.[3] The infantry’s Lee-Enfield rifle was replaced with the R1, and the Bren light machine gun (LMG) with an LMG of 7,62-mm calibre. The infantry also had a number of Saracen armoured personnel carriers (APCs) dating from the early 1950s. But their most important antitank weapon was still the old Second World War-vintage six-pounder gun and 3,5-inch rocket launcher (the ENTAC antitank missile was imported in 1966). The process of replacing the old 3-inch mortar with the 81-mm had barely begun. The First World War-vintage Vickers would remain the main medium machine gun for a good decade more. The army had purchased some 206 Centurion tanks from the UK in the 1950s, but quickly sold half of them to Switzerland. For the rest, Shermans and Comets from the Second World War were still operational.
The army did have a useful new armoured car, the Eland – an improved version of the French Panhard – with a 90-mm gun. But the four-wheeled Eland (affectionately known as the “Noddy”, due to the way it rocked when riding over uneven terrain) had limited mobility in the African bush, was powered by an inflammable petrol engine instead of diesel, and carried only 20 shells for its gun, so it was not really adequate.[4] The artillery was equipped with light 25-pounder (88-mm) and medium 5,5-inch (140-mm) guns, both dating from before 1945.[5]
The voluntary military service system was replaced in 1962 with a ballot system, according to which some young white men had to serve for nine months. But this was too short a period to train them and then utilise them operationally, and so in 1968 the period of general military service was extended to 12 months. However, most infantry battalions were not very good, a rigid Second World War mentality still being pervasive.
I was trained in 1966 at the old Army Gymnasium in Voortrekkerhoogte, outside Pretoria, and can confirm from experience that my co-members of this unit and I respected only two units – the Gymnasium itself and 1 Parachute Battalion. The Special Forces – the “Recces” – were founded only in 1969.[6] The Gymnasium members would undoubtedly have respected them too!
The fact is that, in 1966, the army was not in a position to fight a war of any kind. Even so, the legacy that would transform the organisation into a highly mobile and battle-hardened force was already present. The army of the 1960s was the descendant of two forefathers, namely, the British Army and the Boer commandos of the 18th and 19th centuries. In terms of its organisation and visible culture, the army was virtually a clone of the British Army: the uniforms, the way in which soldiers marched and saluted, the officers’ public manners were all intensely British. The British experience in the Second World War had heavily influenced the army’s doctrine, because the senior officers and NCOs were mostly veterans of the Libyan and/or Italian campaigns against the Italians and Germans. Nevertheless, the mounted infantry tradition, the most outstanding legacy of the Boer commandos, was always near the surface. During the occupation of Somalia and Ethiopia in 1940/1941 – the only Second World War campaign in which South African forces had operated relatively independently – officers such as Major General Dan Pienaar had organised their units into motorised infantry columns, very much like the Boer commandos, and kicked dust into the eyes of the Italians in a whirlwind campaign.[7] After 1975, and the start of cross-border operations in Angola, this mounted infantry tradition would resurface very quickly indeed.
The South African Air Force (SAAF) was equally unprepared for a war. Equipment-wise, the force was relatively well off. In the 1960s, South Africa had acquired a number of GAM Dassault Mirage III aircraft (of which 16 were Mirage IIICZ interceptors, 17 Mirage IIIEZ ground-attack aircraft, as well as several two-seat trainers and reconnaissance aircraft) from France.[8] But by the time the war started to hot up, in 1975, the Mirage III was already obsolescent. Its range was too limited for southern Africa’s vast spaces, and sorties sometimes lasted only 40 minutes. Just in time, in 1975, the first of a new batch of Mirage F1s (consisting of 16 F1CZ interceptors and 32 F1AZ ground-attack fighters) was received, although these would become operational only in the course of 1978. Nevertheless, when Major Dick Lord (later Brigadier General) joined the SAAF in the early 1970s from the British Fleet Air Arm, he found a force that “had fallen into the trap of becoming a ‘peace-time’ air force”, so “flying had become rather like the activities of an exclusive aviation club”.[9]
The air force had also purchased 16 Blackburn Buccaneer S.Mk.50 and 8 Canberra B (1) Mk 12 and T Mk 4 bombers and trainers in the 1960s, which, together with the Mirages, provided a formidable air strike capability. However, as the 1980s approached, the Buccaneer force had become sadly depleted through accidents. Apparently some senior SAAF officers – again according to Dick Lord – thought they knew better than the British how to maintain and fly the “Buc”, with the result that in SAAF service the aircraft had an “abysmal safety record”.[10] By April 1978, nine Buccaneers had been lost in flight accidents. When the climax of the Border War came in 1987/1988, only five were left.[11]
The other important asset in the SAAF arsenal was helicopters, without which the army simply wouldn’t have been able to fight. A total of 128 Sud-Aviation Alouette III light helicopters had been obtained in different batches since the 1960s.[12] Later on, they would be used in a role they were never designed for, that of helicopter gunship against SWAPO infiltrants in the operational area in northern South West Africa (SWA) and southern Angola. For trooping – critical for the rapid deployment of troops in a counterinsurgency role – a bigger workhorse was needed, and this was found in the form of the Aérospatiale Puma, of which 20 were bought in 1970. Several subsequent batches followed, for a total of 69 by 1978, when a UN weapons embargo was slapped on South Africa. This force was augmented by 16 Aérospatiale Super Frelons. All these helicopters were French in origin.[13]
The other important task of the air force was transport, but the SAAF – with about 40 Second World War-vintage Douglas DC-3 Dakotas, 9 Transall C-160s and 7 Lockheed C-130 Hercules – was not adequately equipped to keep a large army on the move on the battlefield. General Constand Viljoen (later Chief of the SADF) recognised that “we will not be able to haul a significant portion of the logistics load by air” and that it would have to be moved “over land by truck”.[14] This inability would prove a substantial limitation on the army’s capability to strike deep into Angola for extended periods with large forces.
As for the navy, it would play a rather minor tactical and operational role in the Border War. During the early 1970s, the navy was equipped with two modernised Second World War-vintage destroyers (which were withdrawn from service during the decade), three Type 12 President-class frigates (all bought from Britain), and three French-built Daphne-class submarines. Although the submarines, with their excellent stealth qualities, would be of much use for special force operations, the five major surface ships were not suited to the demands of the Border War. In any case, they were not meant to fulfil South Africa’s maritime needs, so much as those of Britain against the background of the Cold War. In the latter half of the decade, Israeli-built strike craft, also eminently suitable for clandestine operations, would begin replacing them as the navy’s principal surface vessels.[15]
Early low-level insurgency
The first years of the Border War were very low-key. After having been decimated at Ongulumbashe in 1966, SWAPO did not enter Ovamboland again for some years. The group wiped out here was the first of ten groups that tried to infiltrate Ovamboland through southeastern Angola or through Botswana from Zambia and the only one that actually succeeded in crossing the border. The others were all intercepted and neutralised by the Portuguese before reaching the border.[16]
Instead, the Caprivi Strip, being relatively accessible from Zambia, for the time being became the main battleground. SWAPO had moved its headquarters to Lusaka in 1962, and so Zambia became the main staging ground for the insurgency.[17] This was favourable to South Africa, as the war’s centre of gravity proved not to be in Caprivi, but in Ovamboland further west, where 46% of the South West African population lived. Ovamboland was also the area where SWAPO, most of their leaders being Ovambos, would have the best chance of gaining the support and trust of the locals. The Caprivians were loyal to the Caprivi African National Union (CANU), and their support hinged on the precarious alliance between SWAPO and CANU holding up.[18]
Even this route did not bring about much success for SWAPO. Two groups that tried to infiltrate the Caprivi in 1968 were both intercepted, and the insurgents were in rapid order killed or taken prisoner – some fled back to Zambia. Only in 1971 and 1972 did SWAPO try again, this time with somewhat more success.[19] In June 1974, a large group of insurgents infiltrated the Caprivi Strip, but in a battle on 23 June all but six were killed by the SAP. The survivors barely escaped.[20]
The extreme difficulties experienced by SWAPO insurgents at the time were described by one of their field commanders, Rahimisa Kahimise:
We had to walk a long distance from Zambia through Angola. Some of our people also died in Angola and some missions could not reach Namibia, because they had to fight through Angola . . . the battles we were involved in, most of them were in Angola with the Portuguese . . . by then we had to train new recruits and we also had to fight to get food as we had to walk long distances, and then we had to try and get transport; also after a battle, then you must have more ammunition . . .[21]
The SADF looked on in growing frustration as its role in the fight at Ongulumbashe was publicly denied and the SAP was given the task of nipping in the bud an uprising by what was seen as “a few uppity blacks”. The SADF was also denied the chance to get much-needed combat experience in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where the police took the honours of helping the Rhodesians fight their war.[22] Moreover, most of the men employed in patrolling the operational area were riot policemen whose effectiveness was dubious at best. According to historian Annette Seegers, their approach “seems to have been search-and-capture, consistent with policing that aims at a criminal trial”. Patrols and hearts-and-mind activities, which later became the key elements of the SADF’s counterinsurgency campaign, played a secondary role. The riot policemen were pulled out of SWA in 1968, after which the SAP started a counterinsurgency training course in Pretoria. Until 1972, only whites were employed, but the Rhodesian experience convinced the SAP to recruit black policemen as well.[23]
Although things were fairly quiet on the face of it, the Defence Force was apprehensive. In a confidential report in the early 1970s, senior officers told the Minister of Defence, PW Botha, that the SADF was not adequately prepared for the expected struggle.[24] And so, when several countrywide strikes broke out in South West Africa in 1972 and the police found it impossible to cope with internal security as well as the insurgency, the government at last decided to turn the responsibility for the war over to the military.
In spite of its lack of combat experience, the SADF was better placed to do the job. It had the edge in both manpower and firepower, and had already started training some of its soldiers in counterinsurgency operations in 1960.[25] Several senior-ranking members, such as General CA “Pop” Fraser, had also given considerable attention to the theory of how a counterinsurgency war should be fought. And, as General Constand Viljoen later told writer Hilton Hamann, “we knew the police would not have the capacity to do the job. We wanted to do it. I wanted to give my people the experience of fighting that kind of war because we all knew it was going to come South Africa’s way.” And, therefore, when the time came, “[w]e jumped at the opportunity . . .”.[26]
The military finally took over responsibility for the war on 1 April 1974. It was just in time; barely three weeks later, on 25 April, a coup d’état toppled Portugal’s fascist dictatorship. Soon afterwards, that country’s new government announced its intention to pull out of its African colonies – Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau. This changed everything.
Operation Savannah
The South African invasion of Angola in 1975/1976 had profound consequences for the Border War. Although the conflicts in SWA and Angola remained separate in principle, they became ever more intertwined until they finally merged in a spasm of blood-letting.
The particulars of Operation Savannah, as the invasion was called, have been well documented elsewhere.[27] For our purposes, its relevance lies in the fact that Savannah helped to form a certain political and operational pattern that would have considerable importance later on.
The invasion was triggered by the uprising in Lisbon on 25 April 1974, when a group of dissatisfied army officers overthrew the fascist dictatorship of premier Marcelo Caetano. The fall of the Portuguese dictatorship had tremendous strategic consequences for southern Africa. The South African government could no longer use Angola as a buffer territory or count on Portuguese colonial forces to prevent SWAPO fighters from infiltrating South West Africa. The Portuguese, in fact, informed the South Africans that they would no longer be allowed to conduct anti-SWAPO patrols north of the border, and on 26 October the last South African liaison officers attached to the Portuguese forces left Angola.[28]
In his memoirs, SWAPO leader (and later Namibian president) Sam Nujoma wrote perceptively: “Our geographical isolation was over. It was as if a locked door had suddenly swung open. I realized instantly that the struggle was in a new phase . . . For us [it] meant that . . . we could at last make direct attacks across our northern frontier and send in our forces and weapons on a large scale.”[29]
To reflect the new reality, SWAPO moved its headquarters from Lusaka to Luanda.[30] At the same time, Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere spearheaded a meeting between Nujoma and MPLA leader Agostinho Neto, which led to a pact between the two movements.[31] For the first time, SWAPO got an important “prerequisite for a successful insurgency, namely a safe border across which he could fall back”, as General Jannie Geldenhuys remarked in his memoirs.[32] An optimistic Nujoma told his Soviet contacts in Moscow that he planned “to broaden the area of armed operations, first to the Atlantic coast and then to the centre of the country”.[33]
SWAPO moved swiftly to exploit the new possibilities. Within a few months of the collapse of Portuguese control in southern Angola, the area was swarming with SWAPO armed bands. By November 1974, SWAPO bases of up to 70 men were functioning in the area.[34] From October 1975, SWAPO made its presence felt in Ovamboland with an incursion by over 500 trained guerrillas.[35] The SADF responded in August and September with a series of cross-border operations north of Ovamboland and the Caprivi Strip, known as Operation Sausage, in which four SWAPO bases were attacked. But although 26 SWAPO and MPLA fighters were killed, most SWAPO bases were found to be empty, and the operation did not achieve much.[36]
South African Recces participated in a clandestine operation against SWAPO in southern Angola in May/June 1974 (in which the SADF suffered its first combat death, Lieutenant Freddie Zeelie), but this did not do much to hinder SWAPO’s build-up.[37] In a rather short time, the South African security forces had got into really big trouble.
SWAPO thus succeeded in breaking out of the strategically unimportant territory of Caprivi. By being able to utilise southern Angola, they were in a position to infiltrate large bands of guerrillas into Kavango, as well as into the war’s geographic centre of gravity, Ovamboland, greatly enlarging the operational area and threatening to overstretch the security forces. But SWAPO was even more ambitious than this. According to David “Ho Chi Minh” Namholo, PLAN’s chief of staff, their strategy “was changed to cross into farming areas, going to urban areas rather than just being in the north or in Caprivi . . .”.[38] Indeed, sabotage and bomb explosions were soon reported in towns like Windhoek, Gobabis and Swakopmund.[39]
This in itself was probably enough for the hawks in the SADF to eye the Angolan border, hot with desire to cross it and clobber SWAPO on the other side. But although PW Botha sympathised, Prime Minister John Vorster was a very cautious man, and held back.[40] He relented only when the governments of the United States (US), Zambia, Zaire and Liberia implored him to move in and stop the Marxist MPLA from taking power in Luanda.
There is a lot of confusion regarding US pressure on South Africa to intervene in Angola. American historian Piero Gleijeses, who has minutely examined Cuba’s role in the conflict, indicates that US records have been carefully censored to exclude any proof of collusion with South Africa.[41] But Chester Crocker, the Reagan administration’s point man for Africa, who seems to have had free access to the US archives, writes that not only was America “well aware” of South Africa’s intentions, but “our winks and nods formed part of the calculus of Angola’s neighbours”.[42]
The Alvor Agreement
The political situation in Angola was extremely chaotic. Three anticolonial movements had fought against the Portuguese, namely, the Marxist MPLA under the leadership of Agostinho Neto, the Maoist (later pro-Western) UNITA under Jonas Savimbi, and the ideology-less and corrupt FNLA under Holden Roberto. On 5 January 1975, the three movements signed the so-called Alvor Agreement in Portugal, which granted independence to Angola. The agreement stipulated that a government of national unity had to administer the territory until free and fair elections could be held in October. The date for independence was fixed for 11 November. Although no one will ever really know, some informed observers were of the opinion that UNITA “would win at least a plurality, and possibly a majority, in the elections to be held under the Alvor Agreement”.[43]
It is, therefore, interesting to note that Cuban president Fidel Castro told his Bulgarian counterpart, Todor Zhivkov, that the MPLA admitted shortly afterwards “that they have made a mistake agreeing to a coalition government with these people”.[44] It became clear that the MPLA had decided to sabotage the Alvor Agreement soon after signing it. In a conversation with the Soviet ambassador to Angola in July 1975, MPLA leader Agostinho Neto described the existence of three liberation movements as “a favourable opportunity for reactionary forces in the country, which in turn was leading to a further intensification of political, social, and economic conflicts”. He was in favour of “a tactical alliance” with UNITA, which he described as commanding “no significant military forces” (and was therefore easily controllable). From his side, the Soviet ambassador assured Neto that “[t]he Soviet people are interested in the victory of democratic [read: socialist] forces in Angola”.[45]
Judging by its aggressive actions in the months before independence, it may be assumed that the FNLA also had no intention of honouring the Alvor Agreement. (The FNLA was rather a strange beast. Corrupt and inefficient, it had only one goal – total power. After it was virtually eliminated in 1976, South Africa no longer provided it with support.)
The outgoing Portuguese governor, Admiral Rosa Coutinho, was a committed socialist and actively channelled Portuguese military equipment to the Marxist MPLA.[46] Chester Crocker claimed that Coutinho’s actions started even as the Alvor Agreement was being signed. In June of that year, Coutinho secretly visited Havana to coordinate the cooperation between Cuba and the MPLA.[47] As a matter of fact, in 1987, the “Red Admiral”, as he became known, openly admitted in a television interview that he never wanted elections to take place, that he worked for an MPLA takeover and that he was the architect of the Cuban intervention.[48]
According to recent research, the ailing Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had very little interest in the Angolan situation and gave no strategic leadership to his own government on the matter. However, Fidel Castro used this power vacuum astutely to further his own goals. Nevertheless, the Soviets played along because it gave them a chance to flex their muscles globally and prove that they were as much a superpower as the US. After the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the Kremlin was humiliated because it did not have a sizeable ocean-going navy, the Soviets developed a navy and strategic airlift capable of projecting their power considerably. They were anxious to experiment and see how far they could go.[49]
Within a few weeks, MPLA forces drove the FLNA out of Luanda, after which UNITA, which had no more than a token presence in the capital, withdrew to the south.
South Africa was drawn hesitantly and incrementally into this cauldron. As an anonymous South African military official who was “present when the decision was made” told US academic Gillian Gunn:
We had a request from these movements [the MPLA’s rivals] for aid, and we decided to expend a relatively small sum initially . . . Our intuitive feeling was that we should have the most friendly power possible on that border . . . We [subsequently] found that our new allies were totally disorganised. They could not utilise cash, so we provided arms. They could not use the arms, so we sent in officers to train them to use the arms. The training process was too slow, so we handled the weapons ourselves. We got pulled in gradually, needing to commit ourselves more if the past commitment was not to be wasted.[50]
In fact, the Cabinet was deeply divided. Prime Minister John Vorster, who had invested a lot of political capital in a détente policy with black African states – and even had some modest success – was unwilling to jeopardise it. He was supported by the influential head of the Bureau of State Security (popularly known as BOSS), General Hendrik van den Bergh, who felt that securing the Angolan border would be enough to keep SWAPO out. General Constand Viljoen wrote to PW Botha that Van den Bergh saw Angola solely as a political matter. “He says there are no SWAPO terrorists in Angola. This differs from our opinion,” he informed Botha.[51] Botha and his generals, therefore, told Vorster that South Africa needed to take the initiative if it wanted to win the war. In the end, Vorster was won over, although his misgivings remained.[52]
Castro’s propaganda after the fact was that the South Africans wanted “to rob the Angolan people of its legitimate rights and install a puppet government” and that their aim was “dismembering Angola and robbing it of its independence”.[53] He even claimed that he had to intervene in order “to prevent apartheid from being installed in Angola”.[54] He raved about the South African “tank columns, blitzkrieg-type, Nazi-type, apartheid style”. “Either we would sit idle, and South Africa would take over Angola, or we would make an effort to help.”[55]
In fact, the South African objectives were rather modest. In a first operational instruction emanating from the Chief of the SADF, the army was tasked only to help UNITA to win back the areas it had previously controlled.[56] On 24 September, the SADF’s final operational approach – a four-phase plan – was laid before the Minister of Defence, PW Botha. This was the beginning of Operation Savannah. The idea, the SADF said, was to carry it out clandestinely and with the minimum number of soldiers. The four phases consisted of the following:
• Aid to the anti-Marxist movements in Angola with regard to battle training, logistics and intelligence;
• Preventing any further advance by the enemy;
• The recapture of all areas occupied by the MPLA and Cubans in their southward march;
• The capture of the southern Angolan harbours.[57]
At the same time, the Chief of the Army, Lieutenant General Magnus Malan, also ordered operations against SWAPO, which had been ensconcing itself in the southern parts of Angola in order to infiltrate southwards over the border. A ceiling of 3 000 men and 600 vehicles of all kinds was placed on the operation.[58]
The strategic aim, as Constand Viljoen explained later, was to employ “a limited war to apply pressure on the OAU [Organisation of African Unity] so they’d put in place a government of national unity”, as the Alvor Agreement stipulated. (The OAU was scheduled to meet early in 1976 to deliberate about the matter.) This was done at the request of Savimbi and Roberto “to enable them to remain forces of influence in Angola until the Organisation of African Unity meeting scheduled to take place after the elections”.[59] The capture of Luanda by South African forces and the establishment of a UNITA/FLNA government in place of the MPLA was discussed, but rejected. The consensus was that it would entail higher costs than was justified by the prize.[60]
The South African government laboured under the naive idea that all of this could be done in secret. After the first rumours of SADF troops inside Angola hit the international media, PW Botha kept his countrymen in the dark about South Africa’s military involvement in the country. However, the government’s lack of a clear strategic view, certainly in the first weeks, filtered down to the troops on the ground. Much later Jan Breytenbach would spell out the adverse results for him and his men at the front:
At the sharp end, during Savannah, we never really knew whether we were to take over the potential SWAPO guerrilla base area by destroying the guerrillas already in residence there, capture as much of Angola as possible before 11 November, attack and take over Luanda, the capital, to install Savimbi . . . or “whatever”. As combat soldiers, we hardly knew what the hell was going on and where we were going to. But we went nonetheless.[61]
In the process, several South African battle groups embarked on a series of astonishingly rapid northward advances, flattening everything in their path. As Willem Steenkamp says, the South African commander, Colonel Koos van Heerden, led a “little half-trained army more than 3 100 km up a hostile coast in a mere 33 days of movement, winning every one of the 30 actions he fought, for a cost of five dead (including one South African) and 41 wounded (including 20 South Africans).”[62]
This was a classic rapid advance, reminiscent of the German Army in France in 1940 and the Soviet Union the following year, where the blistering pace of the movement became a weapon in itself. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative John Stockwell wrote of “the most effective military strike force ever seen in black Africa, exploding through the MPLA/Cuban ranks in a blitzkrieg”.[63] Jan Breytenbach, in command of one of the battle groups, commented: “The reason Task Force Zulu advanced so rapidly, overrunning one delaying or defensive locality after another, was because FAPLA/Cuban forces were caught off balance when the opening shots were fired. Thereafter they were totally dislocated by never being given a chance to catch their breath, regroup and redeploy into well prepared defensive positions.”[64]
But in spite of the military success, things were about to unravel on the political level, and, in the end, this would prove decisive. Although several hundred Cuban advisors and instructors had been in Angola for several months already,[65] Fidel Castro decided to send a large force of Cuban troops to Angola in reaction to the South African invasion without consulting Moscow. The first of these arrived by air in the first week of November, a few days before independence day on 11 November.[66] Within a few weeks, the Cuban contingent grew into a formidable force of 36 000 men and 300 tanks.[67]
South African troops soon clashed with advance elements of the Cuban force. On 23 November, they moved into a Cuban ambush at Ebo and were punished severely. However, a few days later, the SADF took revenge by mauling a Cuban force at Bridge 14, south of Ebo.[68] It is fair to say that the soldiers on both sides developed a healthy respect for each other. Castro noted “serious mistakes” made by his own forces and acknowledged that the South Africans broke through the Cuban lines at least once.[69] At the same time, according to the official South African historian of the operation, the South Africans noted that the Cubans rarely surrendered and often fought to the death.[70]
On the northern side, the FNLA advanced down towards Luanda with South African artillery support. However, on the morning of the decisive clash, FNLA leader Holden Roberto slept late and started the attack only after the MPLA defenders had had a chance to take up strong positions. Predictably, the attack was a dismal failure, and the South African leader element had to be evacuated by a navy frigate patrolling off the coast of Angola. The battery of 140-mm guns was later extricated via Zaire.[71] This was the end of the South African support for the FNLA.
And so independence day – 11 November – dawned, with the fighting preventing the planned elections from being held. At this point, having installed UNITA safely in its traditional home ground in southern Angola, the South African forces were supposed to withdraw. But it was clear that the job was not yet done and Operation Savannah was not yet over. At the request of the US, France, UNITA and the FLNA, the South African government extended its soldiers’ role. They now were ordered to continue the advance to an easily defendable position.[72]
However, the whole initiative was about to come unstuck. On 19 December, the US Senate passed the Clark Amendment, barring aid to groups engaged in military operations in Angola. The idea was to force the South African government to stop aiding the FNLA and UNITA. This sent out a powerful negative signal, although the US government still asked the South Africans to delay their withdrawal until the OAU had assembled in January 1976 for its annual summit in Addis Ababa. The Americans hoped that the OAU member states might decide to censure the Cubans for their intervention.[73]
To be sure, the OAU was split right down the middle, with 22 countries supporting a call for a government of national unity in Angola, in accordance with the Alvor Agreement, and 22 in favour of recognising the MPLA straight away as the country’s legitimate government. The OAU member countries’ disapproval of the white apartheid government was as intense as their fear of the communist states. The organisation’s chairman, President Idi Amin of Uganda, exercised his deciding vote and supported the MPLA.[74] Thus, the fact that the MPLA became the internationally recognised – and therefore legal – government of Angola was thanks to one of the most brutal dictators Africa has ever known.
With this, the rug was finally pulled out from under the South African government’s feet. Its international backing evaporated completely, and so the Cabinet decided to pull out a few days afterwards. Members of 35 Citizen Force units were called up and put into positions on the Angolan side of the border to block a possible Cuban invasion of South West Africa.[75] The South Africans kept a force of 4 000 to 5 000 men at the Calueque water supply dam, until the MPLA promised not to impede the flow of water to the north of SWA, which was dependent on the big dam. Then, by 27 March the last South African troops recrossed the border into SWA. Altogether, 29 of their comrades had been killed in action.[76]
Ominously, the Cubans moved to within striking distance of the South West African border. But Castro stopped there; South African fears that he might invade South West Africa were unfounded. As he explained in a speech in December 1988, “we had men, we had a good number of tanks and cannons, but we didn’t have planes or anti-aircraft rockets or much of the equipment we have today!”[77]
The Cuban question
Piero Gleijeses, the only academic ever to have been granted access to the Cuban archives, maintains that South Africa’s decision to invade Angola had nothing to do with any Cuban presence in the country, as Pretoria afterwards alleged. In fact, he says, things were the other way round: Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s initiative to intervene in force was in reaction to the South African invasion.[78] Strictly speaking, he is quite correct but the argument loses its relevance when all the facts are taken into account.
Castro’s decision to start moving his main force of several thousand men was taken only on 5 November 1975, about two weeks after the South Africans crossed the border on 23 October. But Gleijeses is quite silent about the fact that, by 1974, the Cuba and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union) had already decided to aid their friends in the MPLA to attain sole power in Angola. The huge quantities of military equipment channelled to the MPLA from late 1974, a flow that accelerated in March 1975, and the hundreds of Soviet and Cuban instructors and military advisors who were sent to Angola, tell their own story.[79] Soviet aid to the MPLA was duly noted in an SADF report, dated 26 April 1975, to PW Botha. It was recommended that South Africa should try to bring the FNLA and UNITA together in an anti-communist alliance.[80] Military involvement was not on the agenda at this stage.
It is now known that the Soviet Union started its military aid to the MPLA in early December 1974, long before the South African involvement was even a glint in PW Botha’s eye.[81] Cuba’s Deputy Prime Minister, Carlos Rafael Rodrigues, admitted to journalists in January 1976 that 238 military instructors had been sent to Angola in May 1975 to train MPLA fighters – months before the South Africans even entertained the thought of intervening. These were followed by another 200 instructors in August, as well as 1 000 combat troops, armoured cars and trucks aboard three ships, which docked on 4, 5 and 12 October, also well before the South African intervention.[82] The fact that Castro sent the bulk of his army only after the South African invasion cannot alter these facts.
Even Colin Legum, an academic and journalist who is not known for his sympathy with the National Party government, called the assertion that the Cuban intervention was a reaction to the South African invasion “clearly a post facto rationalisation”.[83]
In a lengthy secret analysis of the Soviet and Cuban involvement in Angola, the CIA’s conclusion was that the large-scale military aid coming from the Soviet Union in early 1975 – the report refers to an “escalation of Soviet support” involving “tanks and large mortars” – was not in response to the small amount of aid the FNLA had been getting from China and the US itself. Because the escalation came at a time of relative calm, it could also not be seen “as a response to the immediate battlefield needs of the MPLA”. Rather, the Soviet build-up “reflected a decision by the Soviets to try to give their faction in Angola the wherewithal to achieve military dominance”. This came about at a stage when the USSR, Cuba and the MPLA all “considered South African intervention unlikely”.[84]
Castro’s thinking was explained by Brigadier General Rafael del Pino, of the Cuban air force, who defected to the West in 1987. Del Pino was ordered by the Cuban leader in January 1975 to begin preparations for air force involvement. “Castro assumed that the Alvor Accord was going to be honoured by no one, and he wanted to get ahead of the field; he knew that the Chinese and North Koreans were giving aid to the FNLA. The arrangement was that the Soviet Union would send the weapons to Angola and Cuba would send the personnel.”[85]
According to another Cuban defector, Juan Benemelis (who at the time was head of the Africa department of the Cuban Foreign Ministry), the first contingent of Cuban instructors reached Angola in March 1975 – months before the South African intervention.[86] Somewhat later, Castro himself admitted, in a secret conversation with Todor Zhivkov, that he had sent arms for 14 000 to 15 000 MPLA fighters in September.[87] On 15 August, he proposed to Moscow that he send Cuban troops to Angola, and requested Soviet logistical help. However, the Soviets did not consider the time to be opportune.[88]
This gives the lie to Cuban propaganda, eagerly disseminated by Gleijeses, that the presence of Cuban troops in Angola was “a legal act”, as they “were in Angola at the invitation of the government”.[89] When the Cubans intervened, first on a limited scale, and then in earnest in early November, this was done at the request, not of an internationally recognised legal government, but of only one of three rebel movements. One could reason that South Africa had no business invading Angola either, but that still does not legitimise the Cuban and Soviet intervention.
The Cuban intervention rested on three factors. The first was Castro’s extraordinary ideological worldview. Angola held out little economic or strategic advantage for Cuba itself. But Castro was a true Marxist-Leninist idealist. The liberation struggle (presumably going hand in hand with a socialist revolution) was “the most moral thing in existence”, he told East German leader Erich Honecker in 1977. “If the socialist states take the right positions, they could gain a lot of influence. Here is where we can strike heavy blows against the imperialists.”[90] And a few weeks later he told a French magazine that Africa was “imperialism’s weakest link today . . . If we are militant revolutionaries, we must support the anti-imperialist, antiracist and anticolonialist struggle. Today, Africa has gained great importance. Imperialist domination is not as strong here as it is in Latin America.”[91]
Secondly, viewed as a deed of power politics, it came at exactly the right time. The US had been demoralised by its humiliating defeat in Vietnam and was not able to act strongly against the Cubans and Soviets. Castro, with his keen political instinct, surely realised this. And, in the third place, his chief opponent in Angola was the widely discredited apartheid regime of South Africa. This gave Cuba extra credibility in the eyes of the Third World.
The political consequences
The historical significance of Operation Savannah lies in the patterns it established, patterns that continued to dog the Border War until peace came in 1989. The first of these was that the Cubans proved themselves to be absolute masters of propaganda. Castro immediately launched a huge propaganda offensive, briefing a left-wing Colombian journalist, Gabriel García Márquez, to write an account of Operation Carlota, as the Cuban operation was named.[92] Márquez portrayed the campaign as a huge military triumph for the Cuban army and the MPLA and as a humiliating defeat for the hitherto invincible SADF.
The SADF itself generated a manuscript with a large part of the story, but, in spite of Magnus Malan’s support, it was shot down by PW Botha. A British journalist, Robert Moss, produced a more balanced analysis based on the SADF manuscript,[93] but the damage was done – Castro got his blow in first. The fact that the South African government had at first denied the presence of South African troops in Angola did not help its cause. In the eyes of most of the world – including the black populations of SWA and South Africa – these lies destroyed what little credibility Pretoria had. The result was that Castro was widely believed and Botha not.
In actual fact, though, at a tactical level the South Africans performed well. They lost one fight against the Cubans – at Ebo – but won several more. Operationally, they did astoundingly well with the blistering pace of their northward advance. On the levels of military and security strategy, they lost badly due to the changing political situation, over which they had no control. They pulled out, not having been defeated militarily (as Gleijeses asserts),[94] but because they had lost the political fight. But propaganda often has little to do with the facts.
What was true, however, was that South Africa’s prestige had been severely dented. Colin Legum pointed out at the time that this had been the first time since 1943 that “the South African Army had been committed to fight in an African war”, in which “for the first time in their modern history white South African soldiers ended up as prisoners of war in African hands”.[95] A perception took root in Africa that the mighty Boers could be beaten on the battlefield. Castro himself told Todor Zhivkov a few weeks later that “the myth of South Africa” had been exposed. South Africa “is something like Israel in Southern Africa”, he said.[96]
Castro’s propaganda was also good news to the banned African National Congress (ANC). Its mouthpiece, Sechaba, spoke of “wide-spread fear and panic amongst the white population and the racist ruling clique”. Thus, “the boast that the South African Army could not be beaten has become a mere propaganda nonsense”.[97]
A second pattern that emerged was that the two opposing sides (Cuba and its allies on the one side and South Africa on the other) completely misunderstood each other’s motivation and objectives. At the time Castro decided to counter the South African invasion with Operation Carlota, Piero Gleijeses was told by Jorge Risquet Valdés, a senior Cuban official, Castro was convinced that the South Africans wanted to take Luanda itself.[98] Years later, Castro told his biographer: “The objective was for the racist South African forces coming from the south to meet up with [Zairean president] Mobutu’s mercenaries from the north and occupy Luanda before Angola proclaimed its independence . . .”.[99]
It is only human to ascribe the basest motives to your enemies, and this undoubtedly played a role in the Cuban exaggeration of the South African objectives. But it also had a practical propagandistic effect. When you want to add credibility to your own claims, it helps to make the enemy seem stronger than he really is and to exaggerate his objectives. When analysing the Cuban propaganda victory, this is something to take into account.
According to military historian Sophia du Preez, who had access to all the relevant SADF documents, the capture of Luanda was indeed discussed in South African military circles, but realism prevailed. It was decided that the resources needed for such an operation, and the likely price that would be paid, would be too great and the advantages too small.[100] The Cabinet was advised that a force of 1 500 soldiers would be needed to take Luanda, while casualties were expected to be as high as 40%, which was totally unacceptable.[101]
On the other hand, the South Africans (and the Americans) also misunderstood the Cuban position. For years, both countries would refer in their secret documents to the Cubans as “Soviet surrogate forces”. They thought that Castro was simply a puppet dancing on a Soviet string. Piero Gleijeses in general is very partial to Castro, and makes every effort to interpret South African actions in a negative light. But he makes a very convincing case that Castro’s decision to intervene in Angola was taken independently of Moscow.[102]
The Cuban intervention and advance towards the South West African border set the alarm bells ringing. There was a real fear in South African government circles that they would invade SWA. From this a third pattern emerged: the fusion of a local anticolonial war with the global Cold War.
Castro had a fine military mind and keen political instincts. He knew that his own army was at the end of a long supply line and that the SAAF held command of the air. In March 1976 he told Todor Zhivkov that his short-term goal was “to reach a political agreement, to avoid a collision, since they outnumber us in terms of aircraft and are also much closer to their supply bases”. In the middle term, he was looking beyond the consolidation of his victory in Angola to the liberation of Rhodesia and South West Africa. But, he went on, to conquer South West Africa “we will need to advance further inland and surround it. However, such action involves our troops invading Namibia and thus bringing negative consequences on the international stage.” Nevertheless, the Cuban troops had to stay in Angola “at least until an Angolan army capable of defending its country is set up”.[103]
MPLA leader Agostinho Neto was more aggressive. “Our independence will not be complete until South Africa is liberated,” he informed a visiting East German official in February 1976. He added: “[W]e will help our brothers in Namibia with all the means at our disposal . . . The struggle will not be over with the liberation of Angola.”[104]
Perhaps unknowingly, Neto confirmed South African fears of the communists. Their apprehensions were well founded; Neto had agreed to the training of PLAN insurgents at MPLA army camps, and SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma moved into an Angolan presidential guesthouse in one of Luanda’s posh residential areas.[105] In this way a war, which began as a local conflict with its own civil rights and anticolonialist dynamic, irrevocably became part of the broader, global Cold War. Of course, it was far from the most important element of the Cold War, but this did not lessen South African feelings of being under serious and imminent threat.
A fourth pattern that emerged during Savannah was the incremental development of the operation. Jan Breytenbach was quite justified in asking: “Was Operation Savannah the product of a proper analysis of all factors – terrain, weather and enemy capabilities – or was it just the ad hoc chucking together of ideas over beers in some army pub?”[106]
There was no proper analysis; that much has become clear. Neither were there clear political or military objectives from the start; these developed only as South Africa was drawn in deeper. Even so, taking into account what the decision-makers actually knew at the time, plus their general mind-set, it is not surprising that they floundered about. Events developed so fast in Angola that even the Cubans and the Soviets were at times caught unawares.[107]
Lastly, for the time being at least, the Americans lost all the political capital and influence they had with the South African government, who regarded Washington as having left them in the lurch. The full extent of American duplicity would only become known later. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for instance, shamelessly denied that the US had encouraged South Africa to intervene in Angola, or that the US even knew about it beforehand. When Chinese leader Mao Zedong expressed uneasiness about South African involvement in December 1975, Kissinger told him: “We are prepared to push South Africa out as soon as an alternative military force can be created.”[108]
In January 1977, the Republican administration of Gerald Ford was replaced by the Democrat administration of Jimmy Carter, and relations deteriorated even further. South African suspicion of US machinations did not diminish until President Ronald Reagan took over in 1981, and even then a certain wariness survived.
Operation Savannah did have one lasting advantage for South Africa. The SADF gained a new ally, namely, Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA, which had previously supported SWAPO.[109] The liberation movement had made the mistake of treating UNITA supporters harshly, which had angered Savimbi. By the end of 1975, he had rescinded his permission for SWAPO fighters to use UNITA bases in southeastern Angola.[110] “We will never let them operate against the South Africans in Namibia again. Never!” he exclaimed in November 1976 to a British journalist.[111]
The military consequences
On an operational level, the Angolan debacle had negative consequences for South Africa. Firstly, the harshness of the apartheid system and the perceived South African beating at the hands of the Cubans and the MPLA increased support for SWAPO,[112] which moved swiftly to exploit this support and the opportunities it offered. Many young South West Africans crossed the border to join the guerrillas. According to SADF intelligence, SWAPO’s military strength increased from about 400 trained guerrillas in 1974 to approximately 2 000 in 1976.[113] From radio intercepts, it became clear to the SADF that Angola had ceded several bases to SWAPO in the south of the country, and that Cuban instructors were training SWAPO fighters. Within a few months, SWAPO was transformed, as Magnus Malan writes, “from a plodding organisation into a powerful, well-trained and well-oiled military machine”.[114]
From just south of the Angolan border, where he was engaged in building up what would become 32 Battalion, Jan Breytenbach reported that “the military and political situation in South Angola has deteriorated to such an extent that it presents a critical threat”.[115] Military Intelligence established the existence of some 52 SWAPO forward operational bases immediately north of the border.[116]
By 1977, there was an average of a hundred contacts per month between SWAPO insurgents and SADF soldiers. The army estimated that there were about 300 insurgents inside SWA,[117] indicating that SWAPO was very active indeed. “The picture from this time on,” Susan Brown writes, “is of regular land-mine casualties among troops in Ovamboland, abduction or assassination of Ovambo headmen, construction workers shot at or injured (South Africa was constructing tarred roads, water towers, pipelines and canals), white construction foremen abducted, stores raided and burned . . .”[118]
SWAPO made use of typical guerrilla tactics – “little more than hit-and-run contacts”, as ex-soldier Piet Nortje recounts. “Even when they far outnumbered their opponents, it was customary for them to pour on the heat for a brief period, then disappear into the bush.”[119] Bombs were set off in Windhoek and even in Swakopmund and Keetmanshoop.[120] According to SADF planners in May 1977, SWAPO bands were avoiding contact with the security forces and concentrating on “intimidating and activating the local population”.[121] It was very effective, and indicative of the extent to which the movement had imbibed the guerrilla doctrines expounded by Marxist strategists like Mao Zedong and Che Guevara.[122]
In order to combat SWAPO, the SADF relied mainly on white conscripts and reservists, often from the cities, who proved to be unsuitable. Being a fair sample of the white community, with the paternalistic and often racist attitudes of the time, they were at a disadvantage in dealing with tribal people in northern SWA. This certainly did not help in winning the loyalty and support of the locals, which meant that the security forces got little or no intelligence, and when they did get it, it was mostly too old to be useful.[123]
According to Eugene de Kock, who was a station commander in Ruacana at the time, SWAPO “seemed to be doing what it liked”. In his memoirs, he writes that SWAPO “was ahead of us in most respects”. The main reason was that “our troops were not bush-savvy. We took a boy who had just matriculated, gave him a gun, two to three months of basic training – and then threw him in the middle of a country that he did not know, people he did not understand and an enemy that he had never seen. No wonder he did not do very well.”[124]
Indeed, how could one expect city boys to track and find guerrillas, who had grown up in the area and knew every bushcraft trick in the book, when they did not want to be found? A typical example of how the conscripts fared is given by a troepie who calls himself “Dennis” and shared online his experience of a patrol in 1979 near Etale in northern SWA:
The platoon sergeant was not interested in walking any further that day, so we bedded down where we were. We didn’t do any protective movement. We stayed where we were. We found a big tree and we slept in a half moon around the tree.
While we were there, about 45 terrorists actually crept in, and the nearest guy was about 20 feet away from me, and they were also in a half circle around us. Because we were close to a waterhole, there were cattle and we wouldn’t have heard them anyway. They dug in about 8 inches and made themselves a little wall in front of them. The guys were armed with AK47s and RPGs in between them. Then when they had set up, they looi-ed [hit] us.
I woke up and I thought I was dreaming. There were green and red tracers flying over my head. I could feel sand actually hitting me from the bullets that were landing around me. The guy sleeping next to me on a groundsheet was hit in the leg and in the stomach . . . He was pretty badly injured, and he was screaming and sitting up. I was trying to keep him down. I was trying to keep my head as low as possible as well, with my chin in the ground.
These guys were looi-ing us big time – RPGs were hitting the tree above us and exploding. I shot off one shot with my R1 and I had a storing [stoppage] because I had got sand in it while trying not to be hit. I managed to get hold of the weapon of the guy next to me, and I shot one shot off and that also had a storing.
By this time, the fire had going down – it only lasted maybe 30 seconds or a minute – I don’t know. Then these terrorists took off and ran.[125]
These shortcomings were caused partly by the SADF’s inefficient personnel system. As Willem Steenkamp explains, large numbers of Citizen Force and Commando members were regularly called up to man bases and escort convoys. Time for travel and refresher training “cut the actual operational service to something over two months . . . and no one stayed long enough in an area to build up a comprehensive knowledge of people and places . . .”[126]
South African tactics also were clumsy and unwieldy. Jan Breytenbach relates, with more than a touch of sarcasm, how Operation Kobra was launched in May 1976 with “masses of infantry”; “[s]upply bases, bursting at the seams, were set up in the operational area to provide everything from hot showers to ample issues of daily ration packs . . . It was the biggest deployment of South African troops since the Second World War. But this huge force did not get a single kill.”[127]
Eugene de Kock observed that the security forces had a disdain for SWAPO at the time because the guerrillas never stood and fought. “The fact that SWAPO soldiers were seldom seen, and resisted getting into set-piece engagements, reinforced the view that they were ineffectual and merely a nuisance. This was not so. SWAPO groups – large ones at that – moved freely around Ovamboland. But, because they could not be found, they did not exist for the security forces.”[128]
Recalling that era, a senior SWAPO commander told Susan Brown years later that “the enemy had no influence among the masses . . . During that time, even the SADF were under-trained. They were not specialised in guerrilla tactics. That is why they found it difficult to track down guerrillas during that time; they were not in a position to move in the areas where we used to operate and they got demoralised. At that time we had the upper hand.”[129]
SWAPO also moved to broaden the geographical scope of the war. PLAN’s chief of staff, David “Ho Chi Minh” Namholo, related: “[Strategy] was changed to cross into farming areas, going to urban areas rather than just being in the north or in Caprivi or in Kavango – to bring the war to the farming areas.”[130]
Moreover, SWAPO’s freedom of movement meant that they could intimidate the local population by assassinating local pro-South African headmen and officials almost at will. One of the first victims was the “chief minister” of Ovamboland, Filemon Elifas.[131] “Operating in teams of two,” Eugene de Kock remembered, “they killed members of the Home Guard and Defence Force and local chiefs”.[132] Selective terrorism can be a strong incentive for the locals to support an insurgent force.
The truth is that, by the end of 1977, as Recce member Jack Greeff experienced, “the SADF was losing the war” in SWA.[133] Although the SADF had in excess of 7 000 troops in Ovamboland, against never more than a few hundred SWAPO fighters at any given time,[134] the SADF’s “kill ratio” was not impressive. In the period 1966 to 1977, 363 SWAPO guerrillas were killed in action, compared with 88 security force members[135] – a “kill ratio” of only 4,1 to 1, and hopelessly inadequate in a guerrilla conflict. With an estimated 2 000 to 3 000 South West African exiles being trained by SWAPO in Angola, things were not going to get better either.[136]
A rather humorous story told by Breytenbach illustrates the quandary the South Africans found themselves in by early 1978. A major was giving a briefing to some politicians and generals about the situation in the operational area:
So the major picked up his six-foot pointer, walked to the almost blank wall map which was meant to depict the “enemy situation”. It covered the whole of Cunene province, in Angola, and all of Ovamboland south of the cutline.
Tentatively he pointed to an insignificant little spot in western Ovambo. “Generals, gentlemen,” he said. “This is Ongulumbashe, a former ‘terr’ base that was discovered in 1966, about twelve years ago. Police and paratroopers attacked the place. They shot the hell out of SWAPO and the survivors scattered all over the place.” He swept his pointer over all of the Cunene province and Ovamboland.
“And now we don’t know where the f*ck they are!” He stood his pointer in the corner against the wall and sat down.[137]
Beyond that, South African capabilities were eroded because of an internecine power struggle between the SADF and the SAP for control of the war and the gathering of intelligence. The matter was only rectified when PW Botha succeeded the police-inclined John Vorster as prime minister and had – as Magnus Malan related – “one of the biggest fights I’ve ever had in my life” with the police generals.[138]
However, all of this was about to change. In July 1977, Major General Jannie Geldenhuys was appointed GOC South West Africa Command. His orders were “to keep the insurgency at least on such a level that the constitutional development could take place in an atmosphere of stability and peace”.[139] This would prove to be a tall order indeed, given the rampant SWAPO insurgency and the way in which the Savannah campaign had laid bare fundamental weaknesses in the SADF’s strategy, doctrine, structure and equipment. Nevertheless, if anyone could do it, this “direct and unpretentious” man – “a soldier’s soldier”, as Chester Crocker called him[140] – would be it.
