The End of Apartheid by Robin Renwick

streets of the tiny capital, Windhoek, werenamed Kaiser Wilhelmstrasse and Goeringstrasse – the latter a reference to Hermann Goering’s father, Heinrich, the first governor of South West Africa. At the outbreak of the First World War, at Britain’s request, South Africa had invaded and seized the colony. On the coast, populated mainly by flamingos, lay the Baltic-style village of Swakopmund with, in the cemetery, the graves of Germans killed in that long-forgotten conflict. In the north, there were plenty more graves in evidence, of more recent origin.
    I went to South Africa determined to combine my efforts with those of my friend Dr Chester Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa under President Ronald Reagan, to achieve an end to the protracted war in the territory. Chet Crocker at the time was being severely criticised by the European foreign ministries, including our own, for linking South African withdrawal from Namibia to the withdrawal of the thirty thousand Cuban troops in Angola. This was a good example of the bizarre positions diplomats from time to time get themselves into. Personally I thought the linkage was entirely justified. For it was, in any event, desirable to get the Cubans out of Angola and I did not see how, otherwise, we were going to persuade the South Africans to withdraw from Namibia.
October 1987
    The MPLA government in Angola, led by President Eduardo dos Santos, launched a major offensive designed finally to crush Jonas Savimbi’s Unita guerrillas in their main redoubt in southeastern Angola. The attack was meticulously planned by the Angolan army’s Soviet military advisors. As the massive force they assembled advancedsouth and east from the provincial capital of Cuito Cuanavale towards Savimbi’s headquarters at Jamba, they were ambushed by South African forces on the Lomba River. The leading Angolan brigade was decimated. The rest of the Angolan force withdrew in confusion to Cuito Cuanavale, suffering further losses as it did so. Savimbi claimed a great victory.
    The South Africans had been operating in Angola ever since 1975, when Henry Kissinger encouraged them to intervene to prevent the Communist-backed MPLA from seizing the capital, Luanda. When that venture failed, the main South African forces withdrew. Having fallen back to the Namibian border, they soon discovered that the most effective way to disrupt infiltration by Swapo guerrillas into northern Namibia was by intercepting them in southern Angola. This was done through the use of small but determined special forces units, South African-led but with Bushman trackers. Angolan opponents of the regime in Luanda were organised into the Portuguese-speaking 32 Battalion, which specialised in cross-border operations. At the same time, the SADF continued the supply of weaponry and fuel to Unita and sought to coordinate military operations with them. As necessary, these were supported by South African mechanised units. By these tactics, and through the exercise of local air superiority, over the next fourteen years the South Africans turned much of southern Angola into a free-fire zone.
    The South African foreign ministry continued to issue strenuous denials that South Africa was involved in any way in the fighting in Angola. Pik Botha was particularly eloquent on this subject. South African military units, operating deep inside Angola or Mozambique,used to listen on their radios with amusement to their government’s indignant denials. Nor did Colonel Jan Breytenbach, the 32 Battalion commander, and his colleagues on the border very often bother to seek political approval for their operations. These received all the support they required from the South African military command. As PW Botha and his colleagues became frequent visitors to Savimbi’s South African-supplied headquarters in Jamba, they knew perfectly well the extent of these cross-border incursions.
    Stopping the massive Soviet- and