Secondly, viewed as a deed of power politics, it came at exactly the right time. The US had been demoralised by its humiliating defeat in Vietnam and was not able to act strongly against the Cubans and Soviets. Castro, with his keen political instinct, surely realised this. And, in the third place, his chief opponent in Angola was the widely discredited apartheid regime of South Africa. This gave Cuba extra credibility in the eyes of the Third World.
The political consequences
The historical significance of Operation Savannah lies in the patterns it established, patterns that continued to dog the Border War until peace came in 1989. The first of these was that the Cubans proved themselves to be absolute masters of propaganda. Castro immediately launched a huge propaganda offensive, briefing a left-wing Colombian journalist, Gabriel García Márquez, to write an account of Operation Carlota, as the Cuban operation was named.[92] Márquez portrayed the campaign as a huge military triumph for the Cuban army and the MPLA and as a humiliating defeat for the hitherto invincible SADF.
The SADF itself generated a manuscript with a large part of the story, but, in spite of Magnus Malan’s support, it was shot down by PW Botha. A British journalist, Robert Moss, produced a more balanced analysis based on the SADF manuscript,[93] but the damage was done – Castro got his blow in first. The fact that the South African government had at first denied the presence of South African troops in Angola did not help its cause. In the eyes of most of the world – including the black populations of SWA and South Africa – these lies destroyed what little credibility Pretoria had. The result was that Castro was widely believed and Botha not.
In actual fact, though, at a tactical level the South Africans performed well. They lost one fight against the Cubans – at Ebo – but won several more. Operationally, they did astoundingly well with the blistering pace of their northward advance. On the levels of military and security strategy, they lost badly due to the changing political situation, over which they had no control. They pulled out, not having been defeated militarily (as Gleijeses asserts),[94] but because they had lost the political fight. But propaganda often has little to do with the facts.
What was true, however, was that South Africa’s prestige had been severely dented. Colin Legum pointed out at the time that this had been the first time since 1943 that “the South African Army had been committed to fight in an African war”, in which “for the first time in their modern history white South African soldiers ended up as prisoners of war in African hands”.[95] A perception took root in Africa that the mighty Boers could be beaten on the battlefield. Castro himself told Todor Zhivkov a few weeks later that “the myth of South Africa” had been exposed. South Africa “is something like Israel in Southern Africa”, he said.[96]
Castro’s propaganda was also good news to the banned African National Congress (ANC). Its mouthpiece, Sechaba, spoke of “wide-spread fear and panic amongst the white population and the racist ruling clique”. Thus, “the boast that the South African Army could not be beaten has become a mere propaganda nonsense”.[97]
A second pattern that emerged was that the two opposing sides (Cuba and its allies on the one side and South Africa on the other) completely misunderstood each other’s motivation and objectives. At the time Castro decided to counter the South African invasion with Operation Carlota, Piero Gleijeses was told by Jorge Risquet Valdés, a senior Cuban official, Castro was convinced that the South Africans wanted to take Luanda itself.[98] Years later, Castro told his biographer: “The objective was for the racist South African forces coming from the south to meet up with [Zairean president] Mobutu’s mercenaries from the north and occupy Luanda before Angola proclaimed its independence . . .”.[99]
It is only human to ascribe the basest motives to your enemies, and this undoubtedly played a role in the Cuban exaggeration of the South African objectives. But it also had a practical propagandistic effect. When you want to add credibility to your own claims, it helps to make the enemy seem stronger than he really is and to exaggerate his objectives. When analysing the Cuban propaganda victory, this is something to take into account.
According to military historian Sophia du Preez, who had access to all the relevant SADF documents, the capture of Luanda was indeed discussed in South African military circles, but realism prevailed. It was decided that the resources needed for such an operation, and the likely price that would be paid, would be too great and the advantages too small.[100] The Cabinet was advised that a force of 1 500 soldiers would be needed to take Luanda, while casualties were expected to be as high as 40%, which was totally unacceptable.[101]
On the other hand, the South Africans (and the Americans) also misunderstood the Cuban position. For years, both countries would refer in their secret documents to the Cubans as “Soviet surrogate forces”. They thought that Castro was simply a puppet dancing on a Soviet string. Piero Gleijeses in general is very partial to Castro, and makes every effort to interpret South African actions in a negative light. But he makes a very convincing case that Castro’s decision to intervene in Angola was taken independently of Moscow.[102]
The Cuban intervention and advance towards the South West African border set the alarm bells ringing. There was a real fear in South African government circles that they would invade SWA. From this a third pattern emerged: the fusion of a local anticolonial war with the global Cold War.
Castro had a fine military mind and keen political instincts. He knew that his own army was at the end of a long supply line and that the SAAF held command of the air. In March 1976 he told Todor Zhivkov that his short-term goal was “to reach a political agreement, to avoid a collision, since they outnumber us in terms of aircraft and are also much closer to their supply bases”. In the middle term, he was looking beyond the consolidation of his victory in Angola to the liberation of Rhodesia and South West Africa. But, he went on, to conquer South West Africa “we will need to advance further inland and surround it. However, such action involves our troops invading Namibia and thus bringing negative consequences on the international stage.” Nevertheless, the Cuban troops had to stay in Angola “at least until an Angolan army capable of defending its country is set up”.[103]
MPLA leader Agostinho Neto was more aggressive. “Our independence will not be complete until South Africa is liberated,” he informed a visiting East German official in February 1976. He added: “[W]e will help our brothers in Namibia with all the means at our disposal . . . The struggle will not be over with the liberation of Angola.”[104]
Perhaps unknowingly, Neto confirmed South African fears of the communists. Their apprehensions were well founded; Neto had agreed to the training of PLAN insurgents at MPLA army camps, and SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma moved into an Angolan presidential guesthouse in one of Luanda’s posh residential areas.[105] In this way a war, which began as a local conflict with its own civil rights and anticolonialist dynamic, irrevocably became part of the broader, global Cold War. Of course, it was far from the most important element of the Cold War, but this did not lessen South African feelings of being under serious and imminent threat.
A fourth pattern that emerged during Savannah was the incremental development of the operation. Jan Breytenbach was quite justified in asking: “Was Operation Savannah the product of a proper analysis of all factors – terrain, weather and enemy capabilities – or was it just the ad hoc chucking together of ideas over beers in some army pub?”[106]
There was no proper analysis; that much has become clear. Neither were there clear political or military objectives from the start; these developed only as South Africa was drawn in deeper. Even so, taking into account what the decision-makers actually knew at the time, plus their general mind-set, it is not surprising that they floundered about. Events developed so fast in Angola that even the Cubans and the Soviets were at times caught unawares.[107]
Lastly, for the time being at least, the Americans lost all the political capital and influence they had with the South African government, who regarded Washington as having left them in the lurch. The full extent of American duplicity would only become known later. Secretary of State