Twelve Months That Transformed A Continent

 

THE WAR FOR AFRICA covers the 1987/88 operations in which the South African Defence Force faced Cuban and Angolan troops in what was to become the biggest war in black Africa's history, costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment.

The war involved only 3,000 South African soldiers and about 8,000 UNITA guerrillas against a total of some 50,000 Cuban and FAPLA troops, directed by Soviet officers.

The more flexible Boer War style tactics of the South African and UNITA forces, together with a much higher level of training, enabled the SADF to largely control the progress of the war, despite their small numbers and the huge amount of sophisticated military hardware thrown into action against them. Also of considerable importance was the support that UNITA enjoyed from the population and their higher morale and motivation in fighting the war. Bridgland points out that without UNITA:
 

South Africa would have faced a large Cuban force on the Namibian border demanding liberty for the territory with wide international support. The South African government had already concluded that Namibia's independence was inevitable, but that it would not come at the behest of Havana, whose military dictator Fidel Castro was demanding for Namibians and South Africans the kind of freedoms he denied his own fellow Cubans. Much as South Africans desired an end to their pariah status in the international community, they were not so soft-headed as even to consider succumbing to this kind of hypocrisy. They knew what the consequences would be of a militarily and ideologically confident Cuban force sitting on the Namibian border free of any challenge from within Angola.

Equally, UNITA was totally dependent on the SADF to add conventional muscle to their guerrilla operations - without it they could not hope to withstand an all-out determined frontal assault by the Cuban forces. The extent of the forces ranged against them showed the degree of seriousness with which the Soviets regarded them. In 1985 Soviet General Shaganovitch took over control of the Angolan forces, the highest ranking Soviet officer ever posted on active service outside Europe or Afghanistan. Under him served some 950 Soviet and 2,000 East German military "advisers".

What they lacked in numbers and equipment the South Africans made up for in quality and initiative. Their "Recce" units, for example, were special forces units, easily the equal of the British SAS. They were given the toughest and most dangerous tasks of the war, usually behind enemy lines. Many of their operations were carried out at night, in contrast to the UNITA guerrillas who regarded day-time as the time for fighting, and the nights as a time to relax!

The difference in tactics became obvious in September 1987 when the Angolan troops of 21 Brigade tried to cross the Lomba River and were caught in the act by troops of the South African 32 "Buffalo" Battalion and 101 Battalion. Calling in artillery fire from the new G5 guns, the bridge used by FAPLA was soon destroyed. Bridgland relates that:
 

At the end of the short encounter, the South Africans quickly counted more than 300 dead on the battlefield from 21 Brigade, but estimated the enemy's total losses in all the September encounters at 400 to 600 dead. The SADF had suffered only one man slightly wounded from shrapnel. 21 Brigade, although partly emasculated, continued to make desultory efforts to cross at the same point, but were easily repulsed by Battle Group Bravo. Ferreira, well acquainted with the inflexibility of Soviet military doctrine, nevertheless marvelled at the futility of the exercise: 'It is unbelievable that a tenet can be so rigid that it can force people to commit suicide all the time.

After particularly heavy fighting on the Lomba in October, both UNITA and the SADF profited greatly from the wealth of equipment they were able to capture. The SADF found itself in possession of a complete SAM-8 missile system, the first time the West had captured one, and UNITA was able to supplement its armoury with T54/55 tanks. SADF men taught the guerrillas how to drive the metal monsters and for some time the area was decidedly unsafe as tanks careered off in unexpected directions, vanished into the bush and reappeared from the opposite direction...

 Much of the credit for the SADF victories must go to the G5/G6 guns, which proved their worth time and again. Manufactured by South Africa, they were extremely accurate and regarded by most foreign experts as the best in the world. The guns were in action almost non-stop, day and night, and often their targets were relayed to them by UNITA units. The G5 gunners exhibited the equivalent of Boer machismo by refusing to use European- style shell carrying cradles (4 men to a cradle) and instead using brute strength to hoist each shell in their arms.

 In October South African-made Olifant tanks joined the conflict, the first time that South African tanks had been used in battle since World War II. In their first action against the Angolan 16 Brigade the Olifants destroyed 5 T54/55s and captured one intact for the loss of one damaged track. The technical superiority of the Olifants was demonstrated by the fact that not once was their armour penetrated by enemy fire. By November, on the other hand, over 90 Angolan tanks had been destroyed.

 Although the Angolan Air Force claimed superiority in the air, it was largely a result of the fact that the SAAF was reluctant to risk losing any of their valuable aircraft unless it was absolutely necessary to commit them to battle. Despite Angolan propaganda claiming over 40 "kills" of Mirages, a tally that was widely accepted by the Western media, Bridgland confirms that throughout the entire campaign only one Mirage of the SAAF was shot down. It happened while four Mirages were "toss-bombing" a convoy at Cuatir on 19 February 1988. The toss-bombing technique was developed by the SAAF and was the opposite of accepted tactics. Instead of flying into enemy territory at great height and then diving at great speed to deliver the bombs, the Mirages flew in to their targets at a height of 50 metres above the ground, then rose up steep and fast while seven or eight kilometres away from the target, releasing the bombs and thus "lobbing" them onto it and then immediately returning to a height of 30 metres for the return journey. During the Cuatir attack the Mirage piloted by Major Every was hit by Angolan anti-aircraft fire and went down. By nightfall the wreckage was swarming with Cuban troops looking for documents. The South Africans gave them time to reach the site and then fired 96 rockets onto the position of the wreck, destroying it completely and killing over 150 Cuban and Angolan soldiers at the same time.

Although the Angolan planes were flying up to 60 sorties per day, they were largely ineffective and on at least 6 occasions bombed their own infantry positions. Their tally at the end of the war was four SADF men killed.

 Towards the middle of 1988, Castro, who had taken personal control of the war, wanted to withdraw from Angola and discussions began on how this could be accomplished without losing face. One of Castro's top generals in Angola had already tried to defect and Moscow was pressing Castro to reach a settlement. The Cuban leader adopted an aggressive stance and threw more Cuban troops into the front line in order to lend weight to his negotiating position in the peace talks. General Del Pino, who also defected to the West, pointed out that it was pure bluff on Castro's part and that he feared defeat was imminent.

 Cuban forces, integrated with SWAPO units, nevertheless pressed on to within 12 kilometres of the Namibian border. Facing 11,000 Cubans and perhaps 2,000 SWAPO was a force of 500 battle-hardened men from 32 "Buffalo" Battalion, the only available troops at the border until reinforcements could arrive. They held the line until tanks and artillery could be moved up. Cuban MiG-23s joined the fray and one was shot down. As the South African forces prepared to move North to engage the Cubans in what promised to be a Cuban nemesis, the Cubans signed the New York peace accords and avoided disaster.

 The Cubans immediately claimed victory, which Bridgland points out was 'nonsense', but that:
 

the Cuban story was taken at face value by Castro's sympathisers in the Western press and repeated so many times that it became received truth. The Cubans were helped by the South Africans' own clumsy efforts at propaganda, which amounted to saying as little as possible about the full-scale war they fought in Angola.

The SADF at no stage had wanted an all-out war that would take them to Luanda as conquerors. Their objectives had been to fight a limited war in support of UNITA and prevent the Cubans from capturing UNITA's strongholds. The SADF had succeeded in this and was content to let the Cubans take the limelight. As Bridgland points out in his final summary of the war:
 

The War for Africa and the New York accords provided Cuba with pretexts for slipping out of a commitment that had become too hot and too expensive to handle. In 1975, when the Cuban adventure in Angola began, the 'scientific socialist' and 'internationalist' tide running from Moscow looked unstoppable. By 1988 it was a faded dream. Despite 13 years of Cuban support, the Angolan economy was ruined. The Marxist MPLA was in utter disarray and was trying desperately to shed its 'scientific-socialist' past... Castro's dreams of a Marxist revolution spreading from Angola to encompass the whole of Southern Africa had become a poor music hall joke...

 

Soft Cover, 403 Pages, illustrated throughout. Used. $175

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The Final South African Phase

We highly recommend this book..

Chapters include:

Operation Moduler - The First Phase - Stopping Fapla

Operation Moduler - The Second Phase - Following up

Operation Moduler - The Third Phase - Offensive Operations

Operation Hooper

Operation Packer

Winding up the Campaign

The Conflict Ends

Reflections

Hard Cover Edition, Used,  266 pages, illustrated. $130

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Border Strike

New Revised Edition.

 

 

A generation ago soldiers of the South African Army slipped discretely over the northern border of what was then South West Africa on the country’s first real external combat operation since World War II. Operation Savannah marked the start of a protracted campaign, part counter-insurgency and part conventional, that did not end until 1989, a decade and a half later.

In 1983 Willem Steenkamp wrote the first detailed account about the early days. Entitled "Borderstrike!", it went into two editions and is still a standard reference work on the place and period. In this new third edition, he has updated and greatly expanded his original work to provide what is virtually a new book, which retains most of the old material but has a great deal that is new.

Amoung the provocative comments, observations and revelations which emerge from the revised version of Borderstrike! are the following:

Why the "border war" came within an inch of ending in 1978 instead of 1989 ... but didn’t.

How the Cold War drastically affected every single military war and insurrection in Southern and Central Africa for almost three decades.

Why none of the three home-grown movements involved in the Angolan civil war had any proven legitimacy in terms of popular support.

What was the real planning failure - not the flawed drop about which the Army and Air Force have been arguing for 30 years, but the actual defect - which nearly turned the 1978 Cassinga parachute attack into a disaster.

Why did Operation Savannah end up becoming virtually a private war between the South Africans and Cubans?

What happened to the three 5.5-inch guns the South African artillerymen had reluctantly abandoned after the disastrous Battle of Death Road on 10th November 1975?

Why did the SWA/Namibia peace talks break down on several occasions when they were close to a resolution?

Was there a third alternative in 1975 which might have prevented both a protracted counter-insurgency campaign in SWA/Namibia and a South African incursion into Angola?

How the frigate SAS President Steyn sneaked along the Angolan coast and snatched up a top-secret South African mission which was in danger of being captured by the MPLA: the first time the full story has been told.

How Operation Savannah’s tactical legacy, both good and bad, affected the South African military, then and much later.

What happened to some of the "cast of characters" in later years.

 

Soft Cover, Oversized, New, illustrated. $70

Soft Cover Edition, 587 pages, illustrated. $95

 

A story about the last phase of the South African Border War

as experienced by a junior officer of 32-Battalion.

There was a time when the world was still embroiled in the Cold War and when the communist threat was a reality for many South Africans.  That was a time when the phrase “going-to-the-bush” had a meaning of its own and when many a South African conscript was obliged to do his “tour” on the Namibian border.  This book tells the story about the bush; the war as well as the people.  It gives a personal account about a young man who reported for military service with the South African Defence Force in the late 1980’s and takes the reader on a tour de force from Basic- and Officers Training all the way to the bush of Namibia and Angola during the last battles of the Border War – including the so-called battle of Cuito Cuanavale.  It also details the rigorous training; life in the Caprivi, as well as the constant operational deployments.  Furthermore, the book describes the events directly after the war and relates the history of a legendary unit and its people at the time. 

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A frontline account of the 1988 Angolan war, as seen through the eyes of a conscripted soldier.

The Angolan War has been widely referred to and documented by historians and military writers alike as one of the most significant events in African history. Whilst this is undoubtedly true and conjecture still persists as to who actually ‘won’ the war, the effect this war had (and still does have in many cases) on those who fought in it has not been fully explored or placed into context; yet.

At Thy Call is a revealing frontline account of this war, seen through the eyes of a 19-year old conscript soldier who, along with his fellow conscripts, was thrust into a life-and-death battle for survival and sanity - without being afforded the freedom of choice. At a time when two years military conscription (National Service) was mandatory for white males in South Africa, no-one could have imagined that the situation in Angola would unfold into the largest, bloodiest and most significant series of operations ever undertaken by the South African Defence Force (SADF) since  World War 2 – and fought by a mere handful of ordinary young men.

 In this gripping and compelling personal account of these operations, the author transports the reader into the dark realms of war, and directly into the firing line. The brutality of war and gradual decay of moral values and sanity is vividly portrayed through actual diary extracts written by the author during the war, complimented by previously unpublished photographs. 

A massive build-up of Cuban and Angolan troops around the Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale in 1987 led the South African government to intervene under the guise of ‘supporting’ the UNITA rebel movement, which was opposed to the Cuban-backed Angolan government. The prevailing levels of secrecy imposed by the government of the day resulted in little or no information being conveyed to the South African public and the families of the conscripts fighting this war. This, coupled with the SADF’s total lack of support and recognition for these returning servicemen, only served to further compound the issues faced by many of them in dealing with their horrific and traumatic war experiences when attempting to fit back into civilised society.
 

The Story of South Africa's 32-Battalion 1975 - 1993

32-Battalion was forged from guerrilla irregulars during the South African military intervention in Angola in 1975 under the code name Operation Savannah. The author, Colonel Jan Breytenbach, was its founding commander. Because of the secrecy surrounding it, 32-Battalion not only became one of the finest fighting units in the South African Army, it also became the most controversial.
This is its story.