or a logistics base, on the other hand, this would be quite realistic.”[39]
This inference was backed up by information from PLAN prisoners captured north of the Angolan border by 32 Battalion patrols. They told their interrogators of a base they called “the Farm”, where PLAN’s commander, Dimo Hamaambo, had his headquarters. After a while, the exact location was discovered by an SAAF Canberra photo-reconnaissance plane from 12 Squadron. Intelligence also discovered the existence of the PLAN base at Chetequera, about 22 km inside Angola, and confirmed it with a Canberra photo sortie.[40]
In a memorandum to convince the SADF leadership that the attack was necessary, it was categorically stated: “No civilians will be involved.” Cassinga (referred to by its SADF designation, Alpha), was described as “the operational military headquarters of SWAPO from where all operations against SWA are planned and the execution coordinated. From the base all supplies and weaponry are forwarded to the bases nearer to the front. Here training takes place too. In short, it is probably the most important base of SWAPO in Angola.”[41]
Yet another major document, signed by the Chief of Staff Operations and dated 1 April 1978, was silent about the presence of civilians or refugees at Cassinga. The camp was described as PLAN’s headquarters, where Hamaambo planned and coordinated all operations in South West Africa from a central operations room. It was also a logistics, training and medical facility, the destruction of which would disrupt SWAPO’s operations for at least six months. The population was described “as varying between 300 and 1 200 terrorists and an unknown number of armed women terrorists”.[42]
Even the TRC, which in general condemned the National Party government and its institutions, after examining the SADF documents, acknowledged “that the SADF command was convinced that Kassinga [sic] was the planning headquarters of PLAN, and thus a military target of key importance”.[43]
It may therefore be stated unequivocally that, whatever the actual composition of the population at Cassinga on 4 May 1978, the SADF was under the impression that what it was attacking was a PLAN military headquarters and base.
But what, then, of the photographs of the mass grave taken a few days after the event? In one widely disseminated photo, one sees a mass of bodies, with a woman in civilian dress lying on top, legs wide. No other women or children are visible. The rest of the bodies appear to be men (recognisable by the unclad upper torsos) and/or women in uniform. Most bodies lie face down. Other photographs show one and two women, respectively, in civilian clothes visible among a host of uniformed men.[44] These photographs are all of the second trench; none are available of the other one, which was already covered up when the journalists arrived on the scene on 8 May.[45] Certainly the available photographic evidence does not back up the claims of “gaily coloured frocks” and “blue jeans”, or “the bodies of young girls”, even though some of the photos are in colour. In none of the photographs are any children visible, let alone babies.
SWAPO apologists make much of a report by a UNICEF team only a few days before the attack, which alleged that about 70% of the inhabitants of Cassinga were “adolescents, children and infants”, while the rest were “essentially adults with very few elderly persons”.[46] However, even Annemarie Heywood, who finds it hard to hide her disapproval of the SADF, states that the report is totally wrong about the physical environment: “When describing the Cassinga water supply, this report details arrangements which seem to match those at Chetequera (or possibly elsewhere) but do not make sense for Cassinga.”[47]
There is also an interesting report by MK cadre Joseph Kobo, who was in the vicinity when the battle was raging. Kobo, whose job was “supervising supply routes for SWAPO-ANC camps near the border”, described Cassinga as “the main SWAPO command post in southern Angola”. Kobo happened to witness the assault from a distance and realised, as he wrote later, that SAAF aerial reconnaissance aircraft “had seen the build-up of supplies for an obvious SWAPO infiltration campaign and it was being nailed right on the head”. Entering Cassinga after the paratroopers’ extraction by helicopter, he saw that it had been razed to the ground. “Six months of logistics work had literally gone up in smoke. Thousands, millions of rounds of ammunition were still exploding . . .” The attack, he went on, had done a lot of damage to SWAPO’s war effort. “It had burnt away nearly all the infiltration lines into Namibia. Some of the SWAPO groups on the far side of the border were cut off without resupply and there would be no quick way to re-establish contact.”[48]
What Kobo was describing here was clearly not a refugee camp. According to Jan Breytenbach, Kobo told him that PLAN was engaged in a build-up “for an overwhelming incursion by heavily armed SWAPO gangs towards the end of April”. The Cubans at Cassinga, together with Dimo Hamaambo, “were at the centre of the planning process”.[49]
SWAPO’s defence secretary, Peter Nanyemba, wrote in a confidential report about the battle (unearthed by Mac Alexander in the SADF archive) that “[o]ur ground force consisted of about 600 cadres, 300 of whom were fresh from the Hainyeko Training Centre”.[50] This was never repeated in public by any SWAPO spokesman.
An American academic, Christian Williams, who has examined SWAPO’s atrocities against its own people, discovered that many of the dissidents arrested in 1976 (see Chapter 11) had been transferred to Cassinga shortly before the SADF attack. It must rank as one of the highest ironies of war that some of these prisoners were probably killed in the attack. “Also, as became evident in my research interviews, some SWAPO critics who lived in exile quietly question the dominant narrative about Cassinga and describe the camp in ways that resemble the South African alternative version of it,” Williams comments.[51]
It should be noted that the SADF never denied that its troops encountered – and killed – women and children during the fighting. There may be something in Mac Alexander’s conclusion that one cannot categorically classify “any guerrilla camp as either ‘military’ or ‘civilian’. The nature of a guerrilla or insurgency war is such that the two are inextricably intertwined.” This implies “a blurred differentiation between military and civilian activities”.[52] The journalist Willem Steenkamp comes to the same conclusion: “Yes, Cassinga had a strong military presence – not just a small protection element – because it was both a military base and the main PLAN command headquarters. And yes, it did house a large number of civilians of one description or another.”[53] Lastly, the TRC also accepted that Cassinga “was thus both a military base and a refugee camp”.[54]
The question may, of course, also be approached from the other side. If we accept – as we must, given the evidence – that Cassinga was, among other things, a military base, did SWAPO have any justification for housing civilian refugees there? Is it possible that they were kept there deliberately as human shields against an SADF attack? While it is possible, it does not sound very plausible, given that no SADF attack was expected here. Legalities such as keeping military and civilians apart – as the Geneva Convention stipulates – would hardly play a prominent role in a guerrilla conflict of this nature. On a balance of probabilities, the mixing of troops and civilians was most probably simple ineptitude on SWAPO’s part.
The attack on Chetequera
The airborne assault on Cassinga was so dramatic that the second and third phases of Operation Reindeer are often overlooked. Yet, on an operational level, the attack on Chetequera proved to be an even more valuable experience for the SADF. Cassinga was an airborne assault, and was never to be repeated. Chetequera was the first of many operations that employed a mixture of mechanised and motorised infantry, backed by armoured cars and air support. For the attack on other, smaller SWAPO bases closer to the border, an artillery battery with eight 140-mm G-2 guns was also included.
Chetequera would be attacked by Battle Group Juliet,[55] a force spawned mainly by 1 SAI at Bloemfontein.
