Without really thinking it out, I opened the throttles wide and kept the aircraft in the dive, levelling off at the last moment, and flying over the tank very low and doing nearly Mach One.
Turning, we went in again from the front, this time doing the same thing with the tank once more shooting at us. I assumed that the crew would have no idea that we were out of ammunition, and hoping to intimidate them, we continued to make fast, head-on low level mock attacks. The Buccaneer from close up is an intimidating aircraft. Flying low, it makes a terrific noise compressed into a single instant as a shock wave, and if this had an amplified resonance inside the tank, the crew would have to be well-trained to stay with it, were my thoughts!
Again I can only praise God, for I remember distinctly having felt during those minutes which followed, being an instrument in His hands; myself a perfect part of the aircraft, and He the Pilot. As it was, the tank crews were eventually sufficiently intimidated to once again seek cover in the heavy bush, enabling the helicopters to load their precious cargo and get away safely.[25]
After Marais returned to Grootfontein, an astounding 17 hits were counted on the Buccaneer. This included a 76-mm hit through one of the wings and a 37-mm AA hit through the port wing flap. There were 14,5-mm hits through both engines and a 14,5-mm hit right through the windscreen. Marais received the Honoris Crux for his bravery.
The air attack provided enough cover for the choppers to land and take aboard the South Africans still on the ground. Obviously, the carefully planned order of extraction was thrown to the winds, and everybody scrambled onto any available helicopter, an understandable measure of panic helping them along. The surviving Cuban T-34 was at this stage only 200 m away, but it happened to be on an up-slope and could not depress its gun enough to be accurate. Its shells burst way beyond the South Africans. Some civilians pleaded with the officers to be taken home, claiming they had been abducted. They even tried to clamber aboard, but there was simply no room and the soldiers were the first priority. By then, the Cuban tank was taking pot shots at the choppers.
One Puma, piloted by Major John Church, spotted a soldier left behind, waving forlornly to the departing choppers. Church did not hesitate. He turned back, landed, and not one, but five, paratroopers frantically scrambled aboard. He took off again, this time under heavy small-arms and tank fire. But he got away and flew a final circuit over the mining town to make doubly sure no one had been left behind. The battle was over. Four South African soldiers had died and 12 had been wounded. The Buccaneer that had replaced that of Dries Marais fired a few parting shots, while two Mirages destroyed the last of the Cuban tanks and shot up the town again.
Cassinga: the controversy
The attack on Cassinga was undoubtedly the single most controversial battle of the entire Border War. Subsequent to the battle, a major controversy developed around the nature of the camp at Cassinga. Was it, as SWAPO claimed, a refugee camp housing hundreds of civilians (mainly women and children who had fled, in SWAPO’s view, cruel colonial oppression), or was it, as the SADF said, a military planning, logistics and training base? The fact that about 600 people died in the attack made it, whatever the truth, an excellent opportunity for propaganda. Indeed, the smoke still largely obscures the battlefield.
A few days after the attack, SWAPO flew in a number of journalists to view the results of the carnage. One mass grave was already covered, but another was still littered with bodies. Jane Bergerol reported for the BBC and The Guardian: “First we saw gaily coloured frocks, blue jeans, shirts and a few uniforms. Then there was the sight of the bodies inside them. Swollen, blood-stained, they were the bodies of young girls, young men, a few older adults, some young children, all apparently recent arrivals from Namibia . . .”[26] Sara Rodriguez from the Guardian, a left-wing New York publication, who was also in the party, used similar words to describe the “brightly coloured cotton frocks of young girls, jeans, checkered shirts of the boys, a few khaki uniforms and the swollen bodies of the dead. The victims were mostly very young and had no defence.”[27]
These quotations set the scene and became the primary sources for many of the allegations against the SADF. Many other allegations were added later, such as that the SAAF dropped poison gas on the inhabitants of Cassinga, and that the paratroopers indiscriminately bayoneted innocent old people, women and children, even raping women before killing them.[28] The left-wing activist Randolph Vigne wrote: “There was no battle. Botha’s troops parachuted in on May 4, slaughtering 600, the great majority of ‘other followers’ being women and children as revealed by photographs of the great mass graves taken by the international media flown in in May 8.”[29]
Piero Gleijeses, who, as we have seen, has trouble hiding his pro-Castro bias, also wrote that “it is more important than ever to remember the crime of Cassinga . . .”.[30] British journalist Gavin Cawthra accepted SWAPO’s version without any discussion.[31] None of these commentators bothered to examine the evidence. One academic who did, Annemarie Heywood, accepted SWAPO’s contention that Cassinga was a refugee camp, but with the qualification that there was a protection unit of 200 to 300 men with two anti-aircraft guns. According to Heywood, Cassinga was not primarily a PLAN establishment, but “was under strict military control and was run on military lines . . .” She also alleged that the South African soldiers killed or bayoneted everyone they could find.[32] Heywood’s version was, by and large, echoed by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the 1990s.[33]
SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma, displaying a remarkable disregard for facts, told an international conference in 1987 that “heavy bombers and helicopter gunships”, which he described as “twelve French-made Mirage jets [sic], British-made Hercules troop carriers [sic] and five helicopters [sic] took part in this operation . . . Chemical weapons, including inflammable phosphate liquid, tear gas and paralysing nerve gas [sic] were also used.”[34] (Nujoma did not explain how the SADF paratroopers, who landed immediately after these barbaric weapons were allegedly used, were supposed to have protected themselves from them.) On another occasion, he said that among those “shot and bayoneted to death” were “pregnant women, babies and elderly persons”.[35]
On the other hand, South African participants in the attack indignantly denied any wrongdoing. Cassinga was a legitimate military target, populated by PLAN fighters who bravely defended the base, they contended. Lieutenant General Constand Viljoen stated in an interview that Cassinga was “a huge logistics support base” from which it was suspected SWAPO was gathering its forces for an infiltration into SWA to upset the Turnhalle talks (held between the internal South West African parties to discuss the territory’s future). “It is true there were some women and children, but completely untrue to say they made up most of those killed. SWAPO had some women in uniform and there were also girlfriends of fighters present. When I was standing at the main objective in Cassinga, there were many buildings around me that were apparently magazines, because they were all exploding,” he told a journalist.[36]
Colonel Jan Breytenbach later wrote a book fiercely defending his men from the charges of wanton cruelty and murder. He found “no or very few refugees at the base. The civilians comprised mostly abductees who were forcibly plucked from their neighbourhoods to fill the role of refugees . . .”[37]
So what was the nature of Cassinga?
First of all, it should be asked what the SADF planners actually knew – or thought they knew – about Cassinga. The documentary evidence is clear. First of all, the aerial photographs taken by SAAF reconnaissance aircraft and published in several sources show an extensive system of defensive trenches typical of a military installation.[38] This is what the planners saw, and it formed part of the intelligence upon which they based the operation. McGill “Mac” Alexander, a seasoned paratroop officer with considerable operational experience, says that “a spurt of development and extension” was observed in the days leading up to the attack. The “vast array of sophisticated defensive trenches and bunkers” indicated “a defensive
