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
