Episode 76 – Turned SWAPO cadres, Recce pseudo-operations & Soviet air strategy

Welcome back to South African Border Wars with me, your host, Dairs Latham, this is Episode 76. It's 1984 and special forces have been busy as you heard last episode. The waterborne operations were on the go but so two were opposite to southern Angola with three two battalion changing their colours so to speak. They began to patrol the area dressed in Swapu uniforms, so much for the SADF's promise to adhere to the terms of a joint monitoring commission where they had promised to pull out all their forces. It became a game of cat and mouse between the SADF and Fublarbide who would be tripped up in the lying game first. The special forces were increasing what were known as pseudo operations, which the Saluzkats had used to great effect during the Redesian bush war, all of these involved in war for independence, depending on your political position. A large number of the Scouts had made their way south to join the SADF and were now integrated in different units. But August 1984, Swapu had declared the far east of Ambaland, a liberated area, with codrays roaming around the bush and villages freely visiting the crawls and receiving food and support from the locals. They also collected intelligence from villages, and the SADF's hearts and minds campaign, which elements of 3-2 had tried so hard to initiate, head now failed. The Reckys had a new role to play here. The vegetation in this part of the border region is extremely dense, with large thickets of Akasha thorn trees and the going is hard. The sand is soft in most places along the rivers, but this also made it far easier to track Swapu when they crossed the cutline. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander, Swapu could also track their special forces. The SADF troops left a very specific track, carrying their heavy packs and with their boots clearly demarcated along the trails. Swapu meanwhile were walking inside villages, living cheap by jowl with the civilians, often barefoot like the Vietcong. The young herders from these settlements played a kind of game with the SADF, when Swapu had passed by they would herd their cattle sheep or goats across the insurgents' tracks. The South Africans had to change their modus operandi, which they began doing. Five Reckys had moved into the Ungongwa region and adopted a new tactic. They'd be operating in larger groups, with three two battalion, in sections or even platoon sars groups. The sounds counterintuitive until you hear what else they were up to. There would be no furtive anti-tracking and deception movement, it was going to be regular infantry-like behaviour through the bush. But they did try to avoid the crawls and stay away from the known trails used by civilians, and then began moving frequently. They'd then target a crawl for special attention. One of the men would approach this crawl, conducting close reconnaissance then report back. But eventually, the three two battalion troops indicated they weren't very happy doing this. So they changed their modus operandi again, breaking the larger company into two, a small group that would be based alongside the paths, in and out of the villages, and a larger group barracks, some distance away guarding the rock sacks in a temporary base. A number of skirmishes took place during this period. Small-scale contacts really, but one thing was abundantly clear. Swapu was in control of the villages along the stretch close to the Caprivi. Further west, the SADF had set up a special forces area in Ungongwa, called Fort Rev. Where the pseudo-operations concept was being fully exploited. It was a secret base alongside Ungongwa air force base, and it was full of ex-swapu soldiers. These men were known as masters of the bush, despite what the SADF soldier thought about them. The wreckies had a completely different view of the enemy, and we're now working with dozens of swapu who'd switched sides. These men knew the area intimately, and could speak the local dialects. It was smuggled in and out of the secret base, for obvious reasons. I'll explain in a moment why they were in a lose-lose situation. When a swapper insurgent was captured, they were well treated. Then they'd be sent to this base dressed as a civilian, or even an SADF uniform. Then they'd be interrogated in special rooms without violence. Many had been there to believe that the Buddha would torture them to death, but this didn't happen. Some arrived wounded, and they were treated with great care by the medics. This was not expected, and had a major impact psychologically on these swapu fighters. Remember, for most, they'd be left to bleed to death by the insurgents, if they were wounded in action, or sometimes they were even shot out of hand by their own men. They were being trained by Soviets and others who followed the communist model of fighting men and women, you're basically suicide warriors who die for a cause. So once they realized that the SADF were treating them like individuals, they changed their tune, or most did. But there was another reason. They knew that if they escaped or returned to swapu, they'd be shot as spies, or suspected of being sellouts, so they really had no choice. The SADF treatment of these wounded just made it easier for them to change sides. The South Africans also paid them well. They received the same danger pay, and R&R as other soldiers, their benefits were many compared to the scavenging they'd been doing as swapu. Incredibly, most agreed to change sides and fight for the SADF, and even more incredibly, if they had recovered from their wounds, they would often be back in the bush fighting for the South Africans against swapu within a month. Sometimes, it was even two weeks. I mentioned repeatedly through the series that the border war on the surface appeared to be a simple battle between whites and blacks, but this is not what special operations was all about. It was kill or be killed, and often the enemy turned out to be your friend when they changed sides. It's true that none of the special forces fully trusted these turned swapu guerrillas and vice versa, by the way. But it's also true that they fought side by side when the chips were done. In the rounds began flying, it turned into fight or flight, and the X swapu shut back at their former comrades. Of course, if they were captured by their former comrades, they would be shot anyway. So here, at Fort Rev in 1984, X swapu and Reckys gathered to fight together. Captain Dave Drew from 51 Commander was an expert at pseudo operations. He could read the minds of these turned men, and was profoundly skilled at motivating them to lead the SETF units back to where they'd last deployed. The special force commander also knew the names of the swapu senior staff and dropped these names constantly, further frightening the X swapu incursions by threatening to send them back to Ingoda. So by threat and cajoling by carrot and stick, the SETF ensured that most swapu who captured signed up for their new secret brigade. One of the Reckys who has written about this is Quistadler. He had a long history of fighting on the border, and ended up leading one of these sticks of turned swapu guerrillas. It was a culture shock, as he writes. He was now using the tactics and style of swapu, not the SETF. He was dropped off with a stick of eight at an unnamed area north of the cutline in 1984, without much preamble. The stick did not patrol information. They merely strolled along in single file, chatting away with weapons slung in all directions. When they reached the crawl, some would enter while the others continued on their way. Later, those who entered the crawl, would catch up, with goat meat and other food, including mahango, or bap, a corn-based porridge, which the men would stop and eat. They carried almost nothing, except firearms and ammunition, and perhaps one or two tins of food, as well as water in case of an emergency. It was a rag-tag existence, but highly effective, and a huge shock for the special forces men, who'd been trained in the art of two man-teams silently moving through the bush like ghosts. Now they were wondering around the sandy bush like it was a Sunday hike. Standard operation kit turned into a small rucksack, and swapu's makeshift webbing. The wider wreckies had to wear afro wigs cut to size, so that it wasn't too ostentatious. They also applied dollops of what we know, as black as beautiful, black camouflage cream to hide their origin. Some of the wreckies adopted a far clever, tactic and used brown cream, and donned a large swapu hat to cover their features even more effectively. They grew what they called a Sam Nujama bed, and when they approached a village, the other men in the platoon would protect these wreckies by standing in front of them, so civilians couldn't see they weren't black. They smeared black as beautiful on their hands, as well. They sometimes bumped into swapu codrays, and amazingly, these wreckies went unnoticed, and yet all the wreckies assigned to these ex-swapu units slipped, they say, with one eye open. Later, some of these wreckies, such as Stadler, admitted that they alienated their fellow turn swapu codrays by sleeping separately, afraid of being knifeed in the night. The stresses involved were obviously immense. The rickies did not know whether or not these swap of cadres would turn another 180 degree degrees and then shoot them. They less than formal approach to discipline led to other challenges, as you can well imagine. I'll return to 51 Commando in future podcasts, but right now we need to move on. By September 1984, the Soviets had taken over command in Angola from the Cubans, and they'd been shocked into action by Fouplers' defeat during Operation Ascari. The Soviets wanted to start a series of large-scale defensives, with all the firepower at their disposal to crash unit her in the east. The Cubans, however, preferred the Chinese way, the Viet Cong way, to adopt a classic counterinsurgency approach. The Russians began to taunt the Cubans for failing to stand up in fight, always darting about and avoiding full-scale clashes with the South Africans. All of this was true. Pidel Castro had told the Russians that his people were not going to obey any orders from Moscow, and the Soviet leaders never managed to make him. Soviet military doctrine is similar to the Russian military doctrine now, 40 years later. You can see from the invasion of Ukraine that this doctrine is both corrupt and riddled with inconsistencies. And so it was, too, back in 1984. The CIA was in Angola at this time, monitoring UNITA, and they knew that the Russians fixated about carrying a war to the opponent's territory to destroy the military and political coalition facing them. That was, of course, in South East Angola. The Russians believed that only a strategic offensive offers them victory, not a series of tactical victories leading to their enemy collapsing. This is all about loads of blunt instruments like artillery, shelling in vast bombardments, and then the complete destruction of the cities they approached. This was the mentality facing the South Africans, the SADIF in 1984, and would it lead eventually to that major battle in 1987 called Guitolk Guanabali? The MPLA, meanwhile, was trying to hang onto their towns, and in most cases had just given up on the countryside of southern Angola. Perhaps the most important difference of opinion, however, was about the control of the skies. The more aggressive Soviet attitude was built on the evaluation of the South African Air Force and its capabilities. Moscow scoffed, saying the SA Air Force was overestimated, and that the South Africans were short of long-range bombers, and they also believed it was time to put more pressure on South African pilots. The blasting to pieces of Kangamba in 1983 had shocked the Angolans and the Cubans. Castro's men had fled in helicopters and by road, leaving Foupler to face the SADIF alone. But the SA Air Force bombing had also changed the minds of the Angolan leadership and did lead directly to the Cubans sending another 5,000 troops to Africa. Moscow also dispatched 10 naval vessels and support ships, including an aircraft carrier, which docked in Luwanda as a show of support. During 1984, SA Air Force Commander Brigadier General Dick Lord had been sent a top secret document, which was an intelligence outline of the new Russian approach, and on the list was the Russian's comment about their need for more effective air power. Moscow was going to deploy their new air support system in two phases. Firstly, they would support the MPLA more closely, perhaps even using ground support, and second, they would increase air support in Zambia, possibly Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Moscow was basically considering setting up a prototype airbase in Angola with a possible opportunity to expand in the future. The Angolans, however, were distinctly unhappy with that suggestion. There was a prevailing sense these days to consider that Luwanda was a kind of pet for the Russians, but it was not as simple as that. The Angolans didn't want the Russians to exploit them in a colonial sense, so there was always a tension between what Moscow wanted and what Moscow got. But the Air Force, back in Pretoria, viewed these snippets of intelligence very seriously indeed. So Major Ioann Opramun, who worked in intelligence and Brigadier General Lord, decided to clear an entire wall in an office to construct a visual guide to what could be going on. Within a few short weeks, they had started to pull together a matrix of information and realize that something extremely important was taking place along the entire length of South Africa's northern borders. The Air War concept that Moscow was developing took shape on this map. A new radar chain had been developed through the period, extending all the way into northern South Africa, most of Zambia and a broad area around Khabaroni in Botswana. In the east, the Soviet radar system now extended all the way north of Pember across the border with Tanzania into eastern Zimbabwe and possibly the most worrying sign of all into the heartfelt of South Africa, ending only a few kilometers east of Pretoria. However, there was a gap. One of the major gaps was in northern Botswana, just alongside the southwestern portion of Zambia, including part of the Khabrivi strip. This area near Livingston, Molobezi, and heading towards the Kineni River, was exploited by the SAFers as they sought to take action behind enemy lines. This radar extended from 2000 feet above ground level to well over 40,000 feet, so the South Africans knew that if they came in extremely low and fast, there was a good chance radar would miss their entry over enemy territory. At night, the gap along the Zambian and Golan border was exploited by the SAFers C-130 and C-160 transport aircraft flying missions in support of the UNITA. Later, the Angolans and the Russians would aim at trying to seize the UNITA TAN at Mavinga, this would lead eventually to the battles of Kuito Kornabali. Some inside the SAF believed that it was the gap in this radar shield that was the main reason for this strategy. But why did the Russians and the Cubans never enter southwest African airspace, and bomb or crude fountaine, or Rundu, or Ashikati, let alone air force based on Dungwa, when he had the target inside of Umba land? The SAFers publicly said it was because the Russians were afraid of them, but the reality was somewhat different. Attacking southwest Africa was never part of Soviet doctrine. They were adhering very strictly to the strategic aims and bombing the SADF in Umba land was not part of this broad strategy. That they wanted to, things would have turned extremely messy, with the SAF was probably replying by a bombing lawanda. It would have been raised as far south as Vintuk by the Russians and after this, the gloves would have been off, and the Cold War could have become much hotter. After Operation Askari, it was a major change in the border war. It shifted from a low intensity insurgency to a fully fledged conventional war. Swapo could not achieve its military aim and the Russians knew this. The USS Cuba and the MPLA were going to pump vast amounts of heavy weapons into southern Angola and attempted overcoming the SADF. And this massive heavyweight threat shifted the SADF's view towards what was known as the eastern front north of Rundu in Kavango. The western front remained an insurgency where Swapo launched their cross-border invasions of men on foot in the classic Vietcong style, but in the east it began to look very different indeed. The civil war between Unita and the MPLA in this area was about ideology and the South Africans supported Unita. There was a contradiction. While Unita controlled over half the borderline between South Africa and Angola and it meant the SADF's resources could be better spent elsewhere, it also meant the SADF were not in control of what Unita was up to. Eventually and inexorably, the South Africans would be drawn into this conventional war in the east in the three final years of the border war. Before then, in September 1984, an audacious plan to blow up Angola and railway rolling stock including locomotives was on the cards. You'll hear about that next episode. Please rate the podcast on iTunes. It helps increase the series' visibility. If you want to contact me, you can email me through the website abwoparkos.com or direct message on Twitter @DezLothie. Until next, Pussbait. [BLANK_AUDIO]