but – as with the accounts of most South African participants – they suffer from the fact that the war is viewed through a keyhole.[6]
The only historian who has been admitted to the Cuban archives is an American, Professor Piero Gleijeses, who has done historical writing a great service by lifting the veil on the Cuban side. Unfortunately, because of his uncritical admiration for Fidel Castro, as well as his utter revulsion for apartheid South Africa, one is also forced to read his writings critically.[7]
This book can therefore not be truly balanced, as the accuracy and completeness of the existing accounts from the Soviet and Cuban perspective cannot be guaranteed. One may be able to piece together a battle or operation rather accurately from the South African side, but the picture on the other side of the hill remains obscured. Had it been clearer, it is possible that my interpretation of certain South African actions would also have been somewhat different.
This book is not the final word on the Border War; it is anything but that. While the SADF sources have not nearly been exhausted, in time many more sources will also come to light to fill in the gaps on the Soviet, Angolan, Cuban and SWAPO side. Such new sources may even still turn on its head everything expounded in this book. That is the nature of academic research. This book may best be viewed as an interim report, which could be followed up by either other academics or me – just as long as the political and ideological tail does not wag the academic dog.
There is yet another thing this book is emphatically not. It is not politically correct. To put my cards on the table: I come from a conservative Afrikaner family who sternly believed in God and the National Party. I served in the old SADF Citizen Force and in the new SANDF Reserve Force. However, I have left apartheid behind me and therefore do not feel the urge to defend either the National Party government’s ideology or its actions. At the same time, I have no desire to pander to left-wing pressure to interpret in the worst possible light everything done by the previous government and the SADF.
I am an academic historian, not a moral judge. Moral judgments should be left to those who find emotional satisfaction in pronouncing them. My task as a historian is to try to reconstruct the past as accurately as I can, to analyse the facts as fairly as possible and to understand (which is not the same as condoning) as best I can. In the process, I try to steer away from two extremes – on the one hand romanticising the SADF, and on the other blankly condemning everything the previous government and the SADF did. Those who romanticise the SADF in the war usually see any criticism of the military as tantamount to treason.[8] Another variant of this is the belief that whatever the military did was good and wonderful, but that the politicians mucked everything up. Those who have nothing good to say about the SADF are often left-wing politicians, academics and journalists whose criticism is seldom backed up by proper research.
In the course of my analysis, some criticism will be levelled at a number of individuals. Some of them – including SADF members who fought in the war – might ask what gives me the moral right to criticise them, given that I did not see action in the real sense of the word nor was I an eyewitness to the events described and analysed. I can only say that if being an eyewitness were a prerequisite for writing about historical events, then 90% of all history books would be worthless.
The research material is analysed thematically as well as chronologically. The book starts with the rude shock of the failed Operation Savannah. Then I switch to a thematic approach, analysing the development of the SADF’s military doctrine and its military and security strategy. This is followed by a chronological analysis of the successive cross-border operations from 1978 to 1984, when there was an attempt at peace negotiations. Three further thematic chapters examine the counterinsurgency war inside South West Africa, SWAPO’s exile record and international developments. Then the climax of the war – the so-called Battle of Cuito Cuanavale – is once again discussed chronologically.
A final word: the central theme of the book is that the South African posture was offensive on the tactical, operational and military strategic levels, but defensive on the security-strategic level. My reconstruction of the South African security strategy is that the government wanted primarily to preserve the status quo, but realised that a defensive military strategy and operational and tactical approach would not be sufficient to win the war. Therefore, in a certain sense, the armed actions of the SADF in northern South West Africa and southern Angola may be seen as a counteroffensive.
1
The origins of the Border War may be traced to the annexation of what was then called South West Africa by Germany in 1884. This was much against the wishes of the German Reich Chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck, who viewed his country primarily as a European continental power. But he had to give in to the pressure of a powerful lobby, which saw that other European powers – especially Britain and France – had already annexed several prime pieces of land in Africa, and that Germany had to be part of the “Scramble for Africa” if it wanted to count on the international scene. The present-day Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Cameroon and Togo were thus also brought under German rule.[1]
The Germans were no benevolent masters to the indigenous population. Immigration of German (and Afrikaner) settlers was encouraged, and the indigenous people were – as happened in several British colonies as well – confined to “agreed” territories to create space for the settlers. Several uprisings ensued, especially by the Herero people, which were mercilessly suppressed. In 1904, another revolt occurred. In reaction, the German military commander, General Lothar von Trotha, enacted the first genocide of the 20th century. On 2 October 1904, he ordered that the entire Herero people – men, women and children – be driven into the desert to die of hunger and thirst. Some made it to Bechuanaland (now Botswana) or Walvis Bay (a British enclave on the coast), but by far most of the Hereros died. In total, only some 16 000 Hereros survived out of a population of 60 000 to 80 000.[2]
An uprising by the Nama people in the south was also drenched in blood, and by 1907 the German colonial government controlled the entire territory. Many of those who survived were incarcerated in concentration camps, where approximately half of the inmates died. By 1911, the Nama population, which was estimated to be about 15 000 to 20 000 in 1892, had been reduced to 9 800.[3]
In 1914, the First World War broke out, and the new Union of South Africa decided to weigh in on the side of Britain against Germany. South African forces invaded and occupied German South West Africa, and later German East Africa (now Tanzania), in a campaign lasting only a few months. At the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919, it was decided to turn the German colonies over to members of the victorious Allied coalition to administer in the name of a new international body, the League of Nations. South West Africa (SWA) became a so-called C Mandate territory, to be administered by the Union of South Africa, without the prospect of independence.[4]
An uprising of the Kwanyama clan, the largest among the Ovambo people of the far north, was forcibly put down, although not with the terrible ruthlessness of the German campaigns. King Mandume ya Ndemufayo was killed and the Kwanyama were subdued. “The Ovambos never forgot this thing, just as we Boers never forgot that the Zulus murdered Piet Retief. It is a long story which has nothing to do with communism . . .,” Louis Bothma writes.[5] Apparently, this memory played a significant role in SWAPO’s uprising against South African rule in the 1960s.
In South West Africa (SWA), South Africa maintained a policy of racial segregation between the indigenous people and the settlers – as was the case in the rest of the colonial world. After the National Party (NP) won power in South Africa in 1948, the policy of apartheid was extended to SWA as well. In accordance with the apartheid idea of partitioning the country into black reserves or “homelands” and “white territories”, the so-called Odendaal Commission recommended a similar policy for SWA. Borders were drawn on maps, and it
