Truth+is+always+the+first+casualty,+Brendan+Seery,+Saturday+Star



=Truth is always the first casualty=


 * Brendan Seery, Saturday Star, 19 January 2008**

A year before, most of them hadn't even started shaving. A year before, Saturdays were for fun. Back home, 2 000km away as the C130 transport aircraft flew, some of their lucky mates - those who managed to duck the call-up or who got deferments of their two-year national service so that they could go to varsity - continued to enjoy the good life of white South Africa.

Now, in a hot, dusty, blood-spattered hell, their Saturdays had long since ceased to be about anything but survival; not being killed or ending up spending the rest of their days in wheelchairs.

Twenty years later, South African veterans of the battles of the Lomba River and Cuito Cuanavale still don't talk, outside of their own circles, about their involvement in the fiercest fighting on the African continent since the massed armour battles at El Alamein in World War 2.

That's why many of them reacted with outrage this week after the ANC's national working committee announced that it planned to join Angolans, Namibians, Cubans and Russians in celebrating the "defeat of the racist forces" at Cuito Cuanavale.

The biggest difficulty in trying to decide what actually happened at the battles which were fought in Angola in 1987 and 1988 - and the fighting involved more than just the provincial outpost town of Cuito Cuanavale - is that there is so much emotional dust and so much propaganda, from all sides.

The ANC - which had a small number of uMkhonto weSizwe cadres as observers attached to Angolan brigades involved in the battles, along with its allies, claims Cuito Cuanavale was a victory because the SADF was repulsed and forced to retreat.

The victory at the town, their version goes, paved the way for Namibian independence, and later South Africa's own historic liberation, because it showed the white regime that it could be defeated by freedom fighters.

In 1991, Nelson Mandela said: "The defeat of the apartheid army was an inspiration to the struggling people in South Africa. Without the defeat of Cuito Cuanavale, our organisations would not have been unbanned. The defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale has made it possible for me to be here today. Cuito Cuanavale was a milestone in the history of the struggle for Southern African liberation."

Chester Crocker, the former US assistant secretary of state for African affairs during the Reagan administration, took a different view in his book High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood: that the battles were a Cold War victory for the West over the Soviet Union and its allies and surrogates.

In his version, which dovetails with the former SADF's, the ultimate goal of the Soviets was to overthrow Namibia and South Africa and gain access not only to the valuable Cape sea route, but the strategic metals and minerals of South Africa.

Crocker and a number of South African and American historians argue that the defeat of the Soviets and their allies, coupled with the difficulties the Soviets were suffering in Afghanistan in trying to eradicate the Mujahideen, helped precipitate the collapse of the communist Eastern bloc - and the end of the Cold War - less than two years later.

The Angolan/Cuban/Soviet massed brigades formed up in mid-1987 to finally rout South Africa's Angolan ally, Jonas Savimbi, and his Unita organisation from the south-eastern part of Angola around Mavinga and Jamba.

There is no doubt strategically that if they had succeeded, the South Africans would have been forced to double the length of border in Namibia they were defending, alone. This would have been militarily impossible and would have led, probably, to the collapse of Namibia. Had that occurred, then the South African politicians might well have felt themselves cornered and might have resorted to deploying the nuclear weapons they had. That in turn might have led to an even larger conflagration.

So there were large stakes indeed at play in south-eastern Angola in 1987.

It is not disputed by most historians - even those sympathetic to Angola and Cuba - that in the first battles of the campaign, on the Lomba River, the combined Soviet-backed forces suffered a terrible mauling. Advancing out of Cuito Cuanavale, they were led into a well-prepared series of ambush battles by the South Africans, who had chosen the Lomba River valley as their "killing ground".

Using Olifant tanks, supported by G5 155mm artillery and the South African version of the Russian 122mm "Stalin Organ" multiple rocket launcher, the South Africans sowed chaos among the ranks of the advancing columns.

There were about 4 500 SADF soldiers (the bulk of them national servicemen, as well as 1 500 black soldiers in various units) ranged against 12 brigades of mixed Soviet/Cuban/Angolan (Fapla) troops, tanks, mechanised infantry, and artillery. Later, around 4 000 Unita troops joined in the ground battles alongside the South Africans.

Few people know the extent of foreign support for the South Africans. The Americans supplied CIA advisers and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles; there was a French military contingent deployed with anti-tank rockets; as well as small contingents from Zaire, Uganda and even Morocco.

However, because of the air superiority of the attacking forces - with fearsome MiG fighters and Mi-24 helicopter gunships - the South Africans and their allies didn't have everything their own way. Also, sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons (including the SAM-8 missile used for the first time outside Russia) saw the South Africans losing, or having damaged, a number of aircraft, which could not be replaced because of the arms embargo.

Yet, in the bloody battles which raged across the Lomba floodplain, the Angolan/Cuban Russian brigades lost upwards of 4 000 killed and an estimated $ 1-billion in armaments.

The attacking forces withdrew to Cuito Cuanavale and set up a heavily defended perimeter.

They were pursued by the SADF, which now deployed Citizen Force part-time soldiers to replace the exhausted national servicemen who had fought themselves to a standstill at the Lomba River. The fact that the SADF command could deploy the part-timers showed that the generals believed the threat to Unita was over.

The South Africans were halted as they moved towards Cuito Cuanavale at the Tumpo River, 22km east of the town, by Angolan and Cuban troops dug into strong positions surrounded by minefields.

Stalled, the SADF then employed what it termed a holding operation, aimed at preventing any further forays towards Mavinga and Jamba. To that end, they turned Cuito Cuanavale into rubble, with shelling and rocket fire. The airstrip runway was shredded in the process.

So, it is correct that Cuito Cuanavale was never captured. The SADF maintained it never intended to capture the town. That campaign effectively ended in a stalemate.

That much was acknowledged by a Soviet analyst M Ponoromov, who wrote in the Krasnaya Zvezda magazine on May 20 1988: "The People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola have not been able either, even with the help of the Cubans, to decisively defeat the enemy and drive him out of the territory or the country. The result, frankly speaking, was an impasse."

Yet, Cuito Cuanavale was a defeat for the South Africans on the broader political, diplomatic and strategic level - and on the propaganda level.

Both sides were forced to accept that hostilities in Angola would produce no clear winner and that the body count, and materiel cost, would be huge.

Sending home hundreds of white boys in body bags would, former SADF chief Jannie Geldenhuys told Beeld this week, have resulted in the collapse of PW Botha's government. Equally, the Soviets and Cubans could not afford the massive costs of the war in monetary terms. So, peace talks were given the impetus they needed.

Agreement was reached on Namibian independence and a withdrawal from Angola of both the South Africans and the Cubans. Namibia's independence led directly to the release of Nelson Mandela, the unbanning of the ANC and PAC and the start of the negotiation process in South Africa. So, it is also correct that the battles of 1987/88, whoever is regarded as the winner, were the start of a domino effect which led to the end of apartheid.

Piero Gleijeses, professor of US foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, wrote in the Mail & Guardian last year that, having reviewed both American and Cuban documentation, he was confident the South Africans did intend to capture Cuito Cuanavale, having cornered Angola and Cuban units outside the town. This provoked Cuban leader Fidel Castro into committing huge numbers of reinforcements.

These reinforcements, wrote Gleijeses, included Castro's "best planes with his best pilots, his most sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons and his most modern tanks. Castro's goal was not merely to defend Cuito, it was to force the SADF out of Angola once and for all. Castro later described this strategy to SA Communist Party leader Joe Slovo: Cuba would halt the South African onslaught and then attack from another direction, 'like a boxer who with his left hand blocks the blow and, with his right, strikes'".

According to the historian, the Cubans helped the Angolans hold Cuito Cuanavale, but at the same time launched another column towards the Namibian border through south-western Angola.

Despite propaganda to the contrary disseminated by the SADF in newspapers in South Africa which dismissed the threat of the column, Gleijeses said the South African hierarchy took the advancing column very seriously. However, former SADF sources have commented that the column did not even carry with it so-called "first-line logistics" - the materiel needed to resupply troops in the field if they engage in combat. These sources maintain that this clearly shows that the column's purpose was limited solely to a show of force, intended to try to obtain leverage at the peace negotiations.

At the end of June 1988, Cuban MiG fighters attacked South African positions at Calueque Dam just inside Angola. In one of these a South African Buffel armoured vehicle was hit by a rocket, killing all 12 white national servicemen it was carrying.

The South Africans immediately claimed that the strike had been a mistake by the MiG pilot, who, they claimed, was trying to bomb the dam itself. That excuse, accepted by the South African media, does not stand up to scrutiny because a MiG's normal armament - and particularly a rocket - would not destroy a dam.

The combined effects of the stalemate at Cuito Cuanavale and the prospects of more bloodshed (as evidenced by the Buffel attack) further stimulated the moves towards a settlement.

Yet, on the Cuban side, too, there was a pressing need to settle: the war had cost more than Castro and his advisers had reckoned on in both human and financial terms. (Interestingly, a senior Cuban general who was in charge of the operations in 1987/88 was summoned home and executed by firing squad, allegedly for "smuggling".)

Gleijeses concluded that "Cuba changed the course of Southern African history".

"The Cubans' battlefield prowess and negotiating skills were instrumental in forcing South Africa to accept Namibia's independence. Their successful defence of Cuito was the prelude for a campaign that forced the SADF out of Angola. This victory reverberated beyond Namibia."

The truth of Cuito Cuanavale is always going to be elusive, but even more so now that those who beat apartheid can edit the history books.

It is even more difficult because many of the documents from SADF and South African government archives relating to those campaigns were either shredded before 1994 or since (as happened in the case of detailed operational logbooks from the operations which were part of the SADF's documentation).

For the embittered SADF veterans who have been writing to newspapers to decry the ANC's celebration plans, there will never be the opportunity to commemorate their own efforts - efforts which on a winning side and in another war would have been hailed as "heroic".

In any war, the first casualty is the truth.


 * Brendan Seery served as bureau chief of Argus Africa News Service in Windhoek, Namibia, from 1985 to 1990.


 * From: http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4212561**

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