advances, flattening everything in their path. As Willem Steenkamp says, the South African commander, Colonel Koos van Heerden, led a “little half-trained army more than 3 100 km up a hostile coast in a mere 33 days of movement, winning every one of the 30 actions he fought, for a cost of five dead (including one South African) and 41 wounded (including 20 South Africans).”[62]
This was a classic rapid advance, reminiscent of the German Army in France in 1940 and the Soviet Union the following year, where the blistering pace of the movement became a weapon in itself. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative John Stockwell wrote of “the most effective military strike force ever seen in black Africa, exploding through the MPLA/Cuban ranks in a blitzkrieg”.[63] Jan Breytenbach, in command of one of the battle groups, commented: “The reason Task Force Zulu advanced so rapidly, overrunning one delaying or defensive locality after another, was because FAPLA/Cuban forces were caught off balance when the opening shots were fired. Thereafter they were totally dislocated by never being given a chance to catch their breath, regroup and redeploy into well prepared defensive positions.”[64]
But in spite of the military success, things were about to unravel on the political level, and, in the end, this would prove decisive. Although several hundred Cuban advisors and instructors had been in Angola for several months already,[65] Fidel Castro decided to send a large force of Cuban troops to Angola in reaction to the South African invasion without consulting Moscow. The first of these arrived by air in the first week of November, a few days before independence day on 11 November.[66] Within a few weeks, the Cuban contingent grew into a formidable force of 36 000 men and 300 tanks.[67]
South African troops soon clashed with advance elements of the Cuban force. On 23 November, they moved into a Cuban ambush at Ebo and were punished severely. However, a few days later, the SADF took revenge by mauling a Cuban force at Bridge 14, south of Ebo.[68] It is fair to say that the soldiers on both sides developed a healthy respect for each other. Castro noted “serious mistakes” made by his own forces and acknowledged that the South Africans broke through the Cuban lines at least once.[69] At the same time, according to the official South African historian of the operation, the South Africans noted that the Cubans rarely surrendered and often fought to the death.[70]
On the northern side, the FNLA advanced down towards Luanda with South African artillery support. However, on the morning of the decisive clash, FNLA leader Holden Roberto slept late and started the attack only after the MPLA defenders had had a chance to take up strong positions. Predictably, the attack was a dismal failure, and the South African leader element had to be evacuated by a navy frigate patrolling off the coast of Angola. The battery of 140-mm guns was later extricated via Zaire.[71] This was the end of the South African support for the FNLA.
And so independence day – 11 November – dawned, with the fighting preventing the planned elections from being held. At this point, having installed UNITA safely in its traditional home ground in southern Angola, the South African forces were supposed to withdraw. But it was clear that the job was not yet done and Operation Savannah was not yet over. At the request of the US, France, UNITA and the FLNA, the South African government extended its soldiers’ role. They now were ordered to continue the advance to an easily defendable position.[72]
However, the whole initiative was about to come unstuck. On 19 December, the US Senate passed the Clark Amendment, barring aid to groups engaged in military operations in Angola. The idea was to force the South African government to stop aiding the FNLA and UNITA. This sent out a powerful negative signal, although the US government still asked the South Africans to delay their withdrawal until the OAU had assembled in January 1976 for its annual summit in Addis Ababa. The Americans hoped that the OAU member states might decide to censure the Cubans for their intervention.[73]
To be sure, the OAU was split right down the middle, with 22 countries supporting a call for a government of national unity in Angola, in accordance with the Alvor Agreement, and 22 in favour of recognising the MPLA straight away as the country’s legitimate government. The OAU member countries’ disapproval of the white apartheid government was as intense as their fear of the communist states. The organisation’s chairman, President Idi Amin of Uganda, exercised his deciding vote and supported the MPLA.[74] Thus, the fact that the MPLA became the internationally recognised – and therefore legal – government of Angola was thanks to one of the most brutal dictators Africa has ever known.
With this, the rug was finally pulled out from under the South African government’s feet. Its international backing evaporated completely, and so the Cabinet decided to pull out a few days afterwards. Members of 35 Citizen Force units were called up and put into positions on the Angolan side of the border to block a possible Cuban invasion of South West Africa.[75] The South Africans kept a force of 4 000 to 5 000 men at the Calueque water supply dam, until the MPLA promised not to impede the flow of water to the north of SWA, which was dependent on the big dam. Then, by 27 March the last South African troops recrossed the border into SWA. Altogether, 29 of their comrades had been killed in action.[76]
Ominously, the Cubans moved to within striking distance of the South West African border. But Castro stopped there; South African fears that he might invade South West Africa were unfounded. As he explained in a speech in December 1988, “we had men, we had a good number of tanks and cannons, but we didn’t have planes or anti-aircraft rockets or much of the equipment we have today!”[77]
The Cuban question
Piero Gleijeses, the only academic ever to have been granted access to the Cuban archives, maintains that South Africa’s decision to invade Angola had nothing to do with any Cuban presence in the country, as Pretoria afterwards alleged. In fact, he says, things were the other way round: Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s initiative to intervene in force was in reaction to the South African invasion.[78] Strictly speaking, he is quite correct but the argument loses its relevance when all the facts are taken into account.
Castro’s decision to start moving his main force of several thousand men was taken only on 5 November 1975, about two weeks after the South Africans crossed the border on 23 October. But Gleijeses is quite silent about the fact that, by 1974, the Cuba and the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union) had already decided to aid their friends in the MPLA to attain sole power in Angola. The huge quantities of military equipment channelled to the MPLA from late 1974, a flow that accelerated in March 1975, and the hundreds of Soviet and Cuban instructors and military advisors who were sent to Angola, tell their own story.[79] Soviet aid to the MPLA was duly noted in an SADF report, dated 26 April 1975, to PW Botha. It was recommended that South Africa should try to bring the FNLA and UNITA together in an anti-communist alliance.[80] Military involvement was not on the agenda at this stage.
It is now known that the Soviet Union started its military aid to the MPLA in early December 1974, long before the South African involvement was even a glint in PW Botha’s eye.[81] Cuba’s Deputy Prime Minister, Carlos Rafael Rodrigues, admitted to journalists in January 1976 that 238 military instructors had been sent to Angola in May 1975 to train MPLA fighters – months before the South Africans even entertained the thought of intervening. These were followed by another 200 instructors in August, as well as 1 000 combat troops, armoured cars and trucks aboard three ships, which docked on 4, 5 and 12 October, also well before the South African intervention.[82] The fact that Castro sent the bulk of his army only after the South African invasion cannot alter these facts.
Even Colin Legum, an academic and journalist who is not known for his sympathy with the National Party government, called the assertion that the Cuban intervention was a reaction to the South African invasion “clearly a post facto rationalisation”.[83]
In a lengthy secret analysis of the Soviet and Cuban involvement in Angola, the CIA’s conclusion was that the large-scale military aid coming from the Soviet Union in early 1975 – the report refers to an “escalation of Soviet support” involving “tanks and large mortars” – was not in response to the small amount of aid the
