The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale

Leopold Scholz

• Publisher: Helion and Company
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781912174331
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia moderna

In the broad history of the Cold War, the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was the climax of a far-off, but nonetheless important African war. It was waged between the apartheid South African Defence Force (SADF) and the armed forces of the communist MPLA government in Angola and the People's Republic of Cuba. Led by Soviet generals, the MPLA embarked on a grand offensive in order to knock out the pro-Western rebel movement UNITA in southeastern Angola. As UNITA's survival was crucial to South Africa's military strategy in fighting its own counterinsurgency war against the South West African rebel movement SWAPO, the SADF stepped in with a single mechanized brigade and broke the back of the overwhelming MPLA offensive. The MPLA forces were subsequently driven back over a hundred kilometers, before the SADF advance was finally stopped just short of the town of Cuito Cuanavale. Since then, a hot war of words have been waged about who actually won. In this book, a South African military historian and retired journalist examines the campaign, the adversaries, and their achievements on the basis of his research in SADF archives. His scrupulous attempt at objectivity results in interesting conclusions. While the MPLA lost hands down, he posits a draw between the Cubans and the SADF. Although having been a South African reservist officer himself, he has critical words for the SADF leadership. Many misunderstandings, some of which were purposefully created by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, are put to rest. While not sharing Castro's political beliefs, he acknowledges Castro's military acumen and political savvy in extricating his country from an unwinnable war while smelling of roses. The analysis contains many lessons about mechanized warfare in the African context from which both laymen and military professionals alike may learn.

CHAPTER 1

BACKGROUND

The campaign which culminated in the conventional clashes between the Lomba River and the Tumpo bridgehead in 1987-1988 did not fall out of the sky. In order to properly understand what went on there, we will have to identify several strands of the background and then weave them together.

Firstly, the Border War – the South African umbrella name for the conflict of which the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale formed the final act – in fact consisted of several wars, all rolled into one. First of all, it was an anti-colonial liberation war, fought by the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) against South African domination. Secondly, it was also a war against the South African policy of apartheid – enforced racial separation – which was experienced by blacks as being racist. This part of the war manifested itself in a classic counterinsurgency war, fought by SWAPO guerrillas and the SADF, south of the Angolan border. Finally, it was part of the Cold War, especially when the Cubans were drawn in as well. This last element of the conflict was fought out in southern Angola, in the form of several SADF operations against SWAPO’s back areas, as well as against the Angolan and Cuban armies. It took the form of highly mobile, mechanised operations.

The early war

The war started in August 1966, when a force of South African paratroopers and policemen swooped on a SWAPO base at Ongulumbashe in Ovamboland. (Notwithstanding propaganda, this was the only military base the movement ever had in SWA.) In the early years, SWAPO was politically and militarily based in Zambia. To reach SWA, insurgents had to move through Angola, still a Portuguese colony, which proved a considerable impediment. However, in April 1974, a military coup d’etat in Lisbon removed the fascist dictatorship and paved the way for Angola and other Portuguese colonies in Africa to become independent.

This meant a drastic improvement in SWAPO’s strategic position. Now the insurgents could set up safe bases just across the border in neighbouring Angola, a factor which is often a prerequisite for a successful guerrilla war. And indeed, within a short time SWAPO bands swarmed all over the north of SWA, and the SADF found itself in trouble.

An unwilling South African Government was persuaded by several African states (as well as nods and winks from Washington, paralysed by the final American humiliation in Vietnam just months before) to intervene in Angola to prevent the Marxist MPLA liberation movement from taking over the territory in the ensuing civil war. Several SADF motorised columns, supported by armoured cars and artillery, raced northward from October 1975 to enable the other two liberation movements, FNLA and UNITA, to occupy as much territory as possible. The idea was to put them in a strong negotiation position vis-a-vis the MPLA. But it became a political and strategic debacle. The Soviet Union, as well as Cuba’s dictator, Fidel Castro, started sending military aid to the MPLA towards the end of 1974, long before South Africa’s intervention. But when the SADF columns started racing northwards, the Communists – wrongly, as it turned out – feared that the purpose was to chase out the MPLA from Luanda. This was indeed debated behind the scenes in South Africa, but the powers that be decided against it because of the expected high casualties. (This was the first of several mutual misunderstandings, lasting throughout the conflict. We shall see them returning during the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale as well.) Fidel Castro then intervened on a grand scale, moving thousands of troops to Angola, where they soon tangled with the SADF in several bloody clashes. South Africa’s international support evaporated, and the Government decided to cut its losses and pull out, in spite of the impressive tactical and operational success of the fighting troops at the front.

This not only resulted in a massive loss of political face for South Africa, but SWAPO immediately exploited the new situation. The SWAPO fighters surged in great numbers over the border. Reading SADF documents and eyewitness accounts of the time, one is struck by the helplessness the South African military felt in the face of insurgents being indistinguishable from the local population, attacking isolated patrols and bases where and when they wanted. The SADF’s large-scale sweeps were clumsy and achieved practically nothing. At this stage, SWAPO ran rings around the SADF.

Turn-around

However, things were about to change. In 1977, a new Commanding General was appointed in Windhoek, SWA’s capital. He was Major-General Jannie Geldenhuys, who later became Chief of the Army and Chief of the Defence Force. Although he – like other senior South African officers – had no operational experience, Geldenhuys had an excellent understanding of higher strategy and counterinsurgency warfare. He reorganised the SADF’s war effort accordingly in several ways.

South of the border, the emphasis was moved away from South African white conscripts – often city boys who didn’t understand the physical and cultural environment – to native troops, mostly Ovambos and Bushmen who knew the vicinity and the people intimately. The operational area was deluged by infantry patrols to show the flag, as it were. When these chanced upon insurgents, they would radio for reinforcements from nearby bases. There, so-called Romeo Mike units (reaksiemag in Afrikaans, or “reaction force”) would be flown in by Puma helicopter, sometimes dropped with parachutes, or else charged to the scene in Casspir armoured personnel carriers. Together with air support from converted Alouette III helicopter gunships, equipped with 20 mm side-firing cannon, this was more often than not sufficient to win virtually every single clash, killing or wounding many insurgents and forcing the others to flee back to Angola.

Operational area for Moduler, Hooper and Packer.

This was coupled with a massive civil action campaign to build roads, schools and clinics in order to win the hearts and minds of the local population. Winning the locals’ hearts and minds became a central element of the South African counterinsurgency doctrine. In Ovamboland, SWAPO’s main support base, this had only limited success, as the Ovambos continued to see SWAPO as “our” boys and the SADF as the occupiers. In the ethnically unrelated Okavangoland, Caprivi and Kaokoland more success was booked.

At the same time, apartheid was progressively dismantled in SWA, removing it as a casus belli.

Indeed, SADF statistics show how the South Africans (militarily, that is) handsomely won the counterinsurgency war. The number of SWAPO guerrillas in northern SWA dwindled. Firefights were overwhelmingly initiated by the SADF, indicating that the South Africans were dominating the battlefield. The number of mines detected went up dramatically, and those exploding went down.

But there was also another – crucial – element in the South African strategy. Geldenhuys realised that it made no sense to wait passively south of the border until the insurgents crossed it and started creating mayhem. This meant that the enemy held the initiative, and that was no way for South Africa to win the war. Therefore, he recommended to the SADF high command to start huge cross-border operations in Angola to disrupt SWAPO’s infiltrations before they could take place and to attack the movement’s bases in its rear areas.

The first such operation was the controversial parachute attack on Cassinga deep in Angola (which, by the way, was demonstrably not the innocent refugee centre alleged by SWAPO propaganda) and a mechanised attack on the SWAPO base of Chetequera just across the border in May 1978. The Cassinga attack turned on a knife-edge and was never repeated, but the Chetequera operation became the template for all subsequent operations into Angola. The biggest ones were Rekstok and Saffraan (1979), Sceptic (1980), Protea and Daisy (1981), Super, Makro and Meebos I and II (1982), and Askari (1983-1984).

In this way, slowly but surely, the SADF started getting the upper hand from 1980 onwards. SWAPO was forced back about 250 km into Angola, and the insurgents had to walk, heavily loaded with weapons, ammunition, mines and food, through an area dominated (though not always occupied) by the SADF. If they survived this harrowing experience, more SADF patrols were awaiting them in SWA. By 1988, their presence would become known within a few days, and they mostly did not last long before being either neutralised or forced to flee back across the border.

South Africa is sucked in

As time marched on, however, there were two closely interrelated developments which led to the climactic events of 1987-1988. First, as the SADF mechanised forces swarmed over southern Angola and disrupted SWAPO’s plans, the insurgents turned to FAPLA, the MPLA’s army, for protection, and got it. From 1981 onwards, therefore, in order to get at SWAPO, the SADF often had to forcefully push FAPLA out of the way first. The South Africans did not have any interest in fighting the MPLA government in Luanda as such. Their primary concern and objective was SWAPO, and FAPLA was only assaulted when it barred the way. But, by the early eighties, it seemed at times as if South Africa and Angola were at war.

Secondly, after the FNLA was practically eliminated in 1976, there was a civil war in Angola between the MPLA (supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba) and UNITA, supported by South Africa.

It is perhaps necessary to briefly outline the South African security strategy at this stage in order to understand its involvement in Angola. The South African government had already accepted independence as such for SWA in the second half of the seventies. But it was not willing to hand over power to SWAPO, which it viewed as a Communist proxy of the Soviet Union and Cuba. Therefore, the purpose was to create a situation in which that movement would lose an election, even if that took place under auspices of the United Nations. Acquiring political power through the barrel of a gun would also have been a major boost for the African National Congress (ANC) in its struggle in South Africa.

In April 1981, speaking to Reagan Administration officials, Defence Minister Magnus Malan (according to the officials’ notes which were leaked to the press)

flatly declared that the [South African Government] can’t accept prospects of a SWAPO victory which brings Soviet/Cuban forces to Walvis Bay. This would result from any election which left SWAPO in a dominant position. Therefore a SWAPO victory would be unacceptable in the context of a Westminster-type political system. [South Africa] does not rule out an internationally acceptable settlement, but could not live with a SWAPO victory that left SWAPO unchecked power.5

In similar vein, Pik Botha explained to the Americans during a visit by Haig’s Deputy Secretary of State, Dick Clark, to South Africa in 1981, that his government was not against independence for Namibia as such. But

SWAPO must not be allowed to win an election in South West Africa. We were not prepared to exchange a war on the Kunene for a war on the Orange … If South West Africa would be governed by SWAPO, then a serious risk would rise that the Russians could threaten South Africa from the Territory. South Africa would then have to decide to invade the Territory in order to protect its interests. Such a situation would probably be less acceptable to the USA than the status quo. If SWAPO would govern South West Africa, Botswana would directly feel threatened, dr. Savimbi would be eliminated and South Africa would be totally encircled with Russian-inspired powers. If the entire Southern Africa then came under Russian tyranny, the strategic sea route around the Cape and its critical minerals would be lost to the West.6

Against this background, the SADF military strategy was to limit the insurgency as far as possible to the relatively small area of Ovamboland, SWAPO’s main support base which housed almost half of the SWA population. The SADF’s civic action programme helped to eliminate the insurgency to a great extent from Kavangoland, Caprivi and Kaokoland. This facilitated the counterinsurgency campaign. But the fact that UNITA occupied the entire southeastern corner of Angola also helped, as this made SWAPO’s infiltration into Kavangoland and Caprivi in the northeastern regions of SWA very difficult, if not impossible. It was, therefore, in South Africa’s strategic interest to keep UNITA alive and kicking. UNITA’s downfall would have dealt a devastating blow to South Africa’s war effort against SWAPO.

Nevertheless, South Africa did not want to get sucked into the Angolan civil war beyond aiding UNITA with weapons, logistical help and training. But, as wars are apt to do, the conflict escalated. A pattern developed which was important if one wants to understand the opening shots of the big campaign of 1987.

In 1983, the Government grudgingly gave permission to the SADF to use Buccaneer bombers and a 120 mm mortar battery to aid UNITA in capturing Cangamba, a central Angolan garrison town. In 1985 and 1986, they unleashed the new G-5 155 mm guns and Valkiri 127 mm rocket systems to help UNITA defend Mavinga against two somewhat chaotic FAPLA offensives. The South African Air Force (SAAF) also weighed in, while the Navy and Special Force operatives cooperated to sink several Soviet and Cuban freighters unloading supplies for the 1986 offensive in the harbour town of Namibe in a daring operation.

Thus a pattern evolved: All these operations were limited, short in duration, clandestine and plausibly deniable. The SADF seemed to get away with it each time. This was, therefore, the mind-set of the generals in Pretoria when the first reports of another looming FAPLA offensive started filtering in during the first months of 1987. If we are to understand the fateful decisions made before the fighting started, we need to keep this in the front of our minds.

The main adversaries

We may conclude this chapter with a few words about the main adversaries appearing in our story.

While the SADF was mostly unprepared for war when the conflict broke out in 1966, during the seventies and eighties it grew into a ferocious tactical force, greatly feared and respected by its opponents. New weapons systems were developed or existing ones upgraded. These included the highly mobile Ratel Infantry Fighting Vehicle (carrying a section of infantry and armed with a rapid-firing 20 mm gun), the one system without which the South Africans would never have been able to capture the initiative in the war.

Major-General Roland de Vries, who played a prominent role in developing the Ratel and the tactical and operational doctrine according to which the system was used, described it thus:

The Ratel’s primary role in fighting of this kind was to carry troops swiftly in and out of battle, and it was admirably suited for this purpose because it provided all the required mobility, fire-power and armoured protection required for such combat conditions. High mobility combined with flexibility was the essence of this mobile war-fighting game.7

He goes on, saying “that the Ratel could close with enemy formations under own heavy indirect fire support, whilst being protected against own and enemy shrapnel, due to adequate armour protection.”8

There also was a very successful armoured car version with a 90 mm gun, as well as a mobile 81 mm mortar version, enabling a balanced mechanised force to move rapidly across difficult terrain. In addition, two of the world’s best artillery pieces, the 155 mm G-5 gun and the 127 mm Valkiri rocket system, were introduced during the eighties, enabling the South Africans to kill the enemy from up to 39 and 27 km, compared to the 23 km of the Soviet D-30 gun. The Centurion tank was upgraded with extra armour, a 105 mm gun, a new suspension and a diesel engine. This Olifant tank, as it was called, was more than a match for the T-54/55 encountered on the other side and was in fact developed to counter even the more advanced T-62.

Most importantly, since the middle sixties, the SADF developed a new conventional operational and tactical doctrine, honed for the African battleground. It rested on a mix of extreme mobility, surprise, aggressiveness, doing the unexpected and being unorthodox. Posession of ground as such was seen as irrelevant, unless it provided a tactical advantage. Typically, the enemy would be lured into a killing ground and destroyed there. Young officers such as Roland de Vries, Deon Ferreira, Tony Savides, Paul Fouché, Jan Malan, Koos Liebenberg and others developed and practiced the doctrine to perfection.

Roland de Vries became the foremost proponent of this doctrine, and practised it as OC 61 Mechanised Battalion Group (61 Mech) during Operations Protea and Daisy (1981). He wrote a book in Afrikaans, Mobiele Oorlogvoering (“Mobile Warfare”, 1987) in which he expounded it at length.

Unfortunately, as we shall see, his bo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Background
• 2 Into the fray
• 3 Counteroffensive
• 4 Stormclouds arise
• 5 Into the cauldron
• 6 End-game
• 7 So, who won?
• Further reading
• Acknowledgments
• About the author