All of this meant that apartheid, race discrimination and colonial domination diminished, though not vanished, as casus belli. What remained was SWAPO’s avowed aspiration to convert SWA into a Marxist one-party state (see Chapter 10), thereby enabling Pretoria, ironically enough, to present the conflict in the rather more respectable cloak of communist dictatorship versus liberal multiparty democracy. And that, we may surmise, weakened SWAPO and strengthened Pretoria to some extent.
The importance placed upon the military in South Africa’s purported struggle for survival may also be seen in the increase in defence spending. From a very low R36 million in 1958/59, it increased to exactly double that in 1961/1962 (R72 million), but concomitant with the first security-strategic analysis conducted in 1961, it suddenly jumped to R129 million in the next financial year. The steady increases then resumed until the Savannah debacle, when the R692 million budgeted for 1974/1975 shot up sharply to R1 043 million for 1975/1976. By 1982/1983, the budget stood at R2 668 million. Put differently, whereas 0,9% of South Africa’s Gross National Product (GNP) was allocated to defence in 1969/1970, by 1979/1980 this had risen to 5%.[28]
A strategy for Angola
Major General Jannie Geldenhuys took command in SWA in September 1977. To him and his staff at their headquarters in Windhoek, debating the question of how to turn a losing war into a winning one, things must have looked rather bleak. His orders, as relayed by the Chief of the SADF, General Magnus Malan, were “to keep the level of the insurgency at least at the level necessary to ensure that the constitutional development could take place in an atmosphere of stability and peace.”[29] But SWAPO insurgents were infiltrating across the border in sufficient numbers to cause severe headaches to the South Africans, and the army’s ham-fisted counterinsurgency operations had practically no success.
The key word was initiative. SWAPO had it; the SADF did not. This had to be changed around. But how?
There was a way, and Colonel Jan Breytenbach was the pioneer. Breytenbach took the FNLA troops he had commanded during Operation Savannah to South West Africa, and transformed them into a highly efficient and feared secret unit: 32 Battalion. With these fighters, who spoke Portuguese and the indigenous Angolan languages, he began clandestine cross-border operations against SWAPO soon after the SADF pulled out of Angola in the wake of Operation Savannah. Under his inspired but unorthodox leadership, 32 Battalion struck repeatedly inside Angola and harassed SWAPO in places where it deemed itself safe.
It was his intention, Breytenbach wrote, “to turn the southern Angolan bush into a menacing, hostile environment for SWAPO”. In short, he wanted to “out-guerrilla the guerrillas”. The purpose was “to get them off balance and keep them on the wrong foot until they began to collapse psychologically and subsequently also militarily”.[30] (This approach was behind all SADF cross-border operations in the late 1970s and early 1980s.) The army allowed him to undertake clandestine operations – as the command directive put it, “to deny SWAPO an area of 50 kilometres north of the South West African border”.[31] Nevertheless, by the end of 1977 it was clear to the SADF that even 32 Battalion’s operations across the border were not enough.[32]
According to James Roherty, Geldenhuys noted, after taking over command in Windhoek,
[t]hat while South Africa was in a strategic defensive posture this must be understood in operational terms as requiring aggressive, offensive operations. It would be folly, he informed his superiors in Pretoria, to rely on defensive operations (or a defensive mind-set) in what would certainly be a protracted conflict. It reduces very simply, Geldenhuys argued, to a matter of casualties. The SADF cannot and must not sustain the casualties that would be an inevitable concomitant of manpower-intensive, counterinsurgency and conventional warfare. By carrying the war to the enemy – by inflicting disproportionally heavy casualties – the task becomes manageable. SADF units will have again to be trained in “the way of their forebears”.[33]
Geldenhuys’s approach, which was built on Breytenbach’s example, was adopted by the SADF high command. In a document entitled “The SADF basic doctrine for counter insurgency (rural)”, dated November 1977 and generated by the office of the Chief of Staff Operations, it was stated that hitherto the Defence Force’s strategic doctrine “was based on defensive reaction”. This meant that the insurgents, with their bases outside South Africa’s borders, retained the initiative. Because of political considerations, the SADF could not go after them. “Freedom of action was thus largely the prerogative of the enemy and the SADF had perforce to dance to their tune.”[34]
This had to change, the document stated. If the SADF remained on the defensive, offensive tactics notwithstanding, “it will not win the war against terrorism”. Consequently, the SADF “must now go over to the strategic offensive if it hopes for any success against the communist insurgent strategy being employed against it”. The object of such operations should be “destroying the terrorists, their organisation and infrastructure”. The basic theme in counterinsurgency strategic doctrine, the document declared, “is to wrest the initiative from the terrorists by offensive action”.[35] Here, in a nutshell, is the rationale for the series of cross-border offensives the SADF conducted into Angola in the decade between 1978 and 1988.
This type of posture was in line with South Africa’s history. Successive governments had always seen the country’s first defence line, not on its northern borders, but far northwards in Africa. This was, for instance, one of the rationales of Prime Minister Jan Smuts in taking South Africa to war against Italy and Germany in 1939.[36] This point of view was, of course, articulated with a view to the threat posed by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, but the idea took root that South Africa’s true defence line should be as far to the north as possible. And this influenced thinking during the 1970s and 1980s as well.
How did all of this influence South Africa’s view of Angola and the war between the MPLA and UNITA? In March 1978, Magnus Malan, then still Chief of the SADF, visited Salisbury and told the Rhodesians that South Africa’s course was changing. He said that the military would in future dominate Pretoria’s security policy, that a realpolitik approach would be followed, and that the interests of his country would be followed above all else. He said there would be no further compromise regarding South West Africa, and that the idea was to keep southern Angola destabilised, to assist UNITA and to attack SWAPO whenever the opportunity arose.[37]
A year later, Malan’s thoughts crystallised in two documents for the State Security Council (SSC), in which a strategy regarding Angola was proposed. The second document made provision for the following: “The political situation in Angola must be kept as unstable and fluid as possible . . .” This aggressive thought was, however, motivated by a defensive purpose: “[T]o ensure the national security of SWA against the Marxist onslaught from without Angola.” Therefore, the Angolan government had to be forced to “prevent SWAPO from deploying in South Angola”.
The document refers to a future state “when the political situation, especially in South Angola, has improved to the extent that a stable anti-communist government can be brought to power to the advantage of Southern Africa”. It further states that the Angolan rebel movements – UNITA, FNLA and FLEC – “should operate under the leadership of UNITA as a united front with the end objective to create an anti-Marxist government in Angola”. South Africa also had to support UNITA, according to Malan.[38]
Not everyone agreed with Malan’s aggressive stance. The reaction of the Department of Foreign Affairs was distinctly unenthusiastic: whatever their ideological preferences, the Angolan and Mozambican governments were both internationally recognised, and South Africa had to act circumspectly. “Our freedom of movement to bring about changes to the governments of these two countries is limited . . . We have to apply more orthodox diplomatic methods, of which the economic weapon constitutes an important part,” the diplomats said.[39]
At about the same time, an agreement was reached between Jonas Savimbi, leader of UNITA, and senior officers