The South African Border War - 1976, The end of a chapter and the beginning of a new phase.
1976 was a very pivotal year in the decades of Southern African conflict from a South African perspective.
Operation Savannah escalated and cemented Cuban involvement in Angola.
PLAN or the military wing of SWAPO renounced its neutrality in the Angolan civil war and firmly threw its lot in with the Cubans and MPLA.
The poor handling of the Soweto Uprising at home and the meddling in Angola further served to Isolate South Africa internationally and draw even more harsh criticisms of its Apartheid policies.
Military conscription became compulsory for all fit white South African males.
The Shipanga Affair would lead to SWAPO relocating from Zambia to Lubango, Angola
The Soviet, Cuban, MPLA, SWAPO alliance was now firmly entrenched against the South African, UNITA alliance. South Africa would also begin more intensively recruiting South West African citizens to create specialized units.
Added to this alliance would be the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) and Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), insurgency forces that would be active in Rhodesia and South Africa.
The war for South West Africa was now in some respects brother against brother, as the civil war in Angola was countryman vs fellow countryman and the whole was compounded by global proxy against territorial proxy.
SWAPO change in stance.
In September 1975, SWAPO issued a public statement declaring its intention to remain neutral in the Angolan Civil War and refrain from supporting any single political faction or party. With the South African withdrawal in March, Sam Nujoma retracted his movement's earlier position and endorsed the MPLA as the "authentic representative of the Angolan people". During the same month, Cuba began flying in small numbers of PLAN recruits from Zambia to Angola to commence guerrilla training. PLAN shared intelligence with the Cubans and FAPLA, and from April 1976 even fought alongside them against UNITA. FAPLA often used PLAN cadres to garrison strategic sites while freeing up more of its own personnel for deployments elsewhere.
The Shipanga Affair
Up till now PLAN had been operating mostly out of Zambia. This had resulted in reprisals against Zambia from South Africa. A number of PLAN mutinies blamed on Andreas Shipanga (SWAPO's Secretary for Information) lead to a crackdown by the Zambian National Defence Force (ZNDF)
Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda deported Shipanga and several other high-ranking dissidents to Tanzania, while incarcerating the others at remote army facilities. Sam Nujoma (head of SWAPO) accused them of being South African agents and carried out a purge of the surviving political leadership and PLAN ranks. Forty mutineers were sentenced to death by a PLAN tribunal in Lusaka, while hundreds of others disappeared. The heightened tension between Kaunda's government and PLAN began to have repercussions in the ZNDF. Zambian officers and enlisted men confiscated PLAN arms and harassed loyal insurgents, straining relations and eroding morale.
With things having gone so sour in Zambia PLAN relocated headquarters to Angola.
By 1977 Cuba and the Soviet Union established many new training camps in Angola to accommodate PLAN, ZIPRA and MK.
The Cubans provided instructors and specialist officers, while the Soviets provided more hardware for the guerrillas. This convergence of interests between the Cuban and Soviet military missions in Angola proved successful as it drew on each partner's comparative strengths. The Soviet Union's strength lay in its vast military industrial complex, which furbished the raw material for bolstering FAPLA and its allies. Cuba's strength lay in its manpower and troop commitment to Angola, which included technical advisers who were familiar with the sophisticated weaponry supplied by the Soviets and possessed combat experience. In order to reduce the likelihood of a South African attack, the training camps were sited near Cuban or FAPLA military installations, with the added advantage of being able to rely on the logistical and communications infrastructure of PLAN's allies.
Quoted text from Wikipedia
Other posts so far
The piece of the cold war nobody told you about - Africa's forgotten war
The Air Battles
The SA Fighter Aircraft
The SA Bomber Aircraft
The conflicts deep roots and start
Regional Tensions
Africa's forgotten cold war - Angolan War of Independence.
Africa's forgotten cold war - Mozambican War of Independence.
Africa's forgotten cold war - Rhodesian Bush War
Africa's forgotten cold war - The Angolan War of Independence transitions to the Angolan Civil War
The South African Border War - The start of Operation Savannah and Large scale South African involvement.
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - the wheels start coming off.
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - Battle of Quifangondo
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - Battle of Ebo
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - Battle of Bridge 14
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - Battle of Luso
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah comes to an end.
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah the withdrawal.
The South African Border War - Meanwhile back on the home front.
The South African Border War - Meanwhile over in neighboring Mozambique.
The South African Border War - Meanwhile back at the South West African Border and 32 Battalion.
From the stone age to modern warfare in a couple of years and the hunter-gatherer lifestyle lost.
This was way before my time so it's interesting to read about what happened up there. My mom's second husband served as a chaplain on the Namibian border and has some interesting stories to tell.
He tells one where they needed helicopter gunships but didn't have anything except a little Allouette scout chopper that they swiftly proceeded to mount 0.50 cal machine guns on.
He says it worked but you could see the little chopper bouncing backwards when they fired the 50's.
Apparently the French rep from Allouette had a minor heart attack when he saw what they'd done!
Still - score one for ingenuity!
That is a really interesting story @rahvin84. Back in those days they had to make do with what they had, but I think it may have been easier to adapt. Like think about cars for example. Good luck trying to DIY your 2017 Hyundai with all its computerized systems. There is this company in SA - I had a friend who worked there. They specialized in technology that ensures helicopters remain stable while firing. Kind of reminds me of the bot, anti-bot conundrum on steemit. What if we could design good bots that immediately cancel out the bad bots as soon as the bad bots do anything! Self learning police bots 😋
Liked your remark (where u mentioned it reminds u of the bot, anti-bot conundrum on #Steemit ) - Ha ! Indeed it does.
I concur.
kinda like this? https://steemit.com/steemit/@pjcswart/because-you-can-succeed-without-bots
Thank you. He says the funniest part was the little Frenchman jumping up and down swearing at everyone in French for messing with his helicopter! The thing with the little Allouette was that it was never designed to be a gunship so it probably never had the stabilization technology that something like the Rooivalk has.
But it's true what you say. Stuff used to be made so that you can take it apart and fix it yourself. I replaced my wife's laptop harddrive the other day and it's almost like they design stuff so it's as hard as possible to do. Same with software. Look at Windows 10 vs 7 even. The settings are getting harder and harder to find if you want to change from the default.
I think bots like cheetoh and sadkitten are the start of something like what you're mentioning. But I also think it's up to us as users to flag and report spam when we come across it. The bots can only do so much.
Thanks that's the word I was looking for, stabilization technology. The Rooivalk is supposed to be really advanced I have heard. Have you seen I Robot?
Supposedly it is. Or was back when it was designed. Not sure what happened since then. Our army isn't so hot anymore. No one even batted an eye when they went on strike and were fighting the police on the lawns of the Union Buildings in 2011. It was more entertaining than frightening.
I saw I Robot a few years ago, read the book it was based on about 20 years ago. What is the connection?
Thanks, often the books are better!
I Robot - we talked about sadkitten and cheetoh - Self learning robots like in I Robot could be dangerous if they are not encountered somehow.
In terms of politics, I often wonder whether it is not best to vote for the most anti-establishment party possible. Which in our case would probably be the EFF. Only problem is I don't agree with their policies regarding private property.
Self learning robots are the future. I'm involved with www.robotswithoutborders.io where we're building AI's that can function as teachers and doctors in places where there aren't any.
In terms of politics I think that people voting dor the most anti-establishment party possible is what got us Brexit and Trump. Just look how great that's going for the Brits and the Yanks...
I'm scared of the EFF. Malema seems to be maturing as a politician but their policies are likely to turn us into another Zimbabwe. We've seen how great things turn out when the government just takes people's farms.
People say, "But ours will be different." Like our government has a stellar record of running SOE's...
Yeah I say privatize everything like in the USA
This story would make an excellent scene in a movie about this war.
Perhaps, a movie financed on the Steem blockchain?
It would provide a funny moment in what would otherwise be a pretty gruesome movie. You read the bit in one of the previous posts where the SWAPO guys get massacred by artillery?
No, I have not. I will try to do so later.
Even Edward Zwick's 2006 Blood Diamond had the funny sad long sleeve or short sleeve scene that works well to remind us of the atrocities of that conflict.
Thank you so much for this gavvet. Many people don't know about this war. I have heard that it was more extreme and shocking than many dare to tell. A veteran has told me that real war is not like in the movies. He was on the front lines of this particular conflict. He said he lost his two best friends in battle. Imagine how many people are still stuck with PTSD today from this. And not only that, the ripple effects on individuals in all spheres of life must be tremendous. But I think the future for South Africa looks bright.
we all want the best for south africa
We sure do and the future looks bright.
We all know that 'war is hell' but does this mean that peace -- at any price -- will do?
Wars are really not good things to happen...but if you look in another perspective, these wars have help in having a change in the world with many countries getting their independence which is good.
Well that's my perpective!
Ah. I had missed these posts of yours, @gavvet. The Cold War may have been cold in Moscow and Washington but it sure as hell wasn't cold in Africa, that's for damn sure!
It's fascinating to read these articles and then look at the present day state of these places and realize that the past isn't really past, it's caught in an eternal moebius loop with the present. For instance, we all know about how communism and the black liberation struggles made strange bedfellows since their weirdly mutual enemy was (white) imperialist colonialist (capitalism) hence the presence of the Cubans who were of course mostly a Soviet catspaw at the time. What a lot of people don't know about the period is just how big a presence the North Koreans had at the time and how helpful they were to countries like Namibia (SWAPO guerillas received training in NK for example) in the struggle. Apparently Nujoma established a friendship with the Kim family and to this day, North Korea is providing construction assistance there. Quite a few other African countries can make similar claims.
Very strange indeed especially since I think apartheid South Africa was a lot like North Korea is now. 😀😀😎😎😏😏
Valid point - although, I suspect in NK, all are equally unequal under Great Leader. You know, as opposed to Apartheid SA with two sides and one oppressing the other -- but yrah, definitely some overlap.
Good point, thank you so much for your wonderful comment! 😀 😃 😄 😁 😆
wars are leaving a trace of a very sad trail and embracing our hearts like the story in your article 1976 was a very pivotal year in the decades of Southern African conflict from a South African perspective. I as the Acehnese people understand the conditions and sistuasi that happened south africa. but the question that munjul then whether the reconstruction of violations of humanitarian law in south africa has been completed the perpetrators have been on trial ... because in Aceh even to this day the human rights violators have not been in Adili
wars are a significant way to get one countries freedom however the results and devastation are hard enough to view at
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Muy buena información, en verdad súper recomendado. Gracias por compartir!
Interesting report, very readable!