Speaker 1Welcome back to South African Border Wars with me, your host, Des Latham. This is episode 97. We're wrapping up Operation Modular this episode and throwing forward to the next assault on Kuito Kwanabali, which was to fixate the South African political leadership at a time when the Cold War was beginning to melt away. This was to have a direct effect on the satellite wars such as those in Angola. Assessing the stage of the conflict, it all appeared to be in South Africa's favour on the surface. Combat groups Alpha, Bravo and Charlie had fought running battles against FAPLA's 2125 Brigade, 66 Brigade and 59 Brigade for weeks, pushing them back to close to where they had started their own Operation October. Instead of overcoming UNITA at Mavinga and taking the HQ at Jamba, FAPLA had been defeated. Between July and mid-November. In November 1987, FAPLA had lost 1,059 dead, more than 2,000 wounded, 61 tanks had been blown up, along with 84 armoured cars and 20 artillery pieces. FAPLA still had around 6,000 troops based around Kuito Kwanabali and the remainder were digging in for a big fight. It's true that the number of tanks lost was significant. There were fewer than 40 left for the Angolans to deploy against the SEDF, which had now arrived at the Chambinga River east of the strategic town of Kuito Kwanabali. The date was the 19th of November, and a fortnight many of the National Servicemen fighting with Forsyth would leave their two-year stint at an end. Ruland de Vries, who had planned Modula, was highly aware that he was facing additional problems when it came to his fighting force. Some have suggested that if Forsyth and the tank squadron of 12 Ulifants were available from the start of Modula, the South Africans would have overrun the Angolans with ease. That is, I'm afraid, an incorrect assessment for two main reasons. The first was that the South African Air Force did not control the air war. The Angolans did. And anyone who understands modern warfare knows that those who control the air, controls the battle. Russia, for example, has failed to take complete control of the airspace over Ukraine since their invasion in February 1922, and Vladimir Putin has paid the price for that failure. Unlike the UN and American forces that overran Iraq in Desert Storm, they decimated and completely destroyed the Iraqi Air Force. And then bludgeoned its anti-aircraft system into dust. The war was lost from then on for Saddam Hussein, whatever his Republican guards thought. Secondly, the SADF was attacking entrenched defensive positions without the advantage of surprise, and were numerically weaker. Tactical college interns at military school will tell you that is not a blueprint for success. Even if Forsyth and the tanks had arrived earlier, they would still have had to face MiGs. They were spending more time over the ground forces than the Mirages. Perhaps the SADF would have managed to overcome Faplas 21 and 25 Brigade, but then they would have to face four more brigades, two east of Kwitu and two others in reserve. 59 Brigade fought well, and in fact deflected an Ulefant attack on the days before the 16th of November 1987. This war is not a simple body count, it was a Cold War affiliate action, where the Russians had decided that the unused equipment would be used for combat. It was not a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was a simple attack. It was an extraordinary attack. It was an extraordinary attack. Marxist theology and those against Marxism. Whatever your political leaning, whatever your personal opinion, this is what was behind this war. Pretoria merely exploited that logic in its continued attempts to retain some sort of control over South Africa in its failed project they called apartheid. By sending young white South Africans into Angola without full support, it was these very same political hawks, the PW Buddhas and so on, who were condemning these men to die. And they died courageously while the men back in Pretoria fiddled with the political propaganda machines. They lied about the death rate. They lied about the real situation. They lied about who was in Angola and why. They withheld information from their frontline commanders, the Vincels and the Gladwins, the Staines and the Britzes, their fudged tactics and even their overarching strategy. What was Operation Modula supposed to achieve? The commanders were confused when asked. Take Kuito Kwanawali? Crush four brigades of FAPLA? That had been the command, but if you look at the geography and the towns that obviously called for bridgeheads to be taken, logistics routes to be cut, towns to be surrounded in classical, conventional logic. But Pretoria fudged these commands, leaving the frontline officers baffled at times about when to stop and when to go. They had requested tanks at the outset, no, said P.W. Buter's cabinet. Then later, yes, but don't let any get damaged or seized. I mean, really, either you're pregnant or you're not. Buter's regime was terrified of the bad news of body bags, which popped up at Waterclough and other airports. Like the Vietnam War, the political effect of real battles on the psyche of the citizen back home was more important to these political leaders than actually defeating an enemy. Moreover, in what could be called grand larceny, there is proof that these political leaders knew that the continued fighting in Angola was unsustainable. But they carried on sending South Africans into the shornas and the humid Angolan bush to die anyway. The National Party was hemmed in by now. The struggle for democracy inside South Africa had ramped up, and Buter's special forces were more engaged in murdering anti-apartheid activists in places like Craddock than actually fighting a war. It was game over long before the game ended. But we have much more to cover. Many more heroes, unfortunately, are to die before this series is over. Near the Chambinga River, the SADF was hunkered down, with two Zero SA Brigade commanders now trying to figure out what to do next. The enemy was dug in and deployed over defensive ground north of the river. UNITA continued harrying these troops, and SADF artillery continued bombarding the Angolan Brigade. On the 20th of November, the Russian army was deployed to the north of the river, and the SADF artillery continued bombarding the Angolan Brigade. The Russians followed two One Brigade artillery to a new position alongside an abandoned Portuguese farm, where they set up their billet. We toiled the whole day to make our place, writes Igor Zhdokin. To make our place, if only from afar, resembled a dwelling more or less suitable for civilized people. On the 21st of November, the SADF bombarded the HQ and the Angolans dug holes under the armored vehicles to try and escape from the anti-personnel fragments flying around. The SADF had pinpointed the spot, and the SADF had to move to the north of the river. The SADF had to move to the north of the river, and hit the spot with mortars and G5 shells while elements of the brigade moved back and forth trying to get out of the crosshairs. The whole day was spent doing cross-country racing, writes Zhdokin, running back and forth, hiding from shells. What really concerned the brigade command was that every time they broadcast their altered position, the South Africans seemed to be breaking their code and proceeded to hit their HQs. If you read the Angolan Brigade commander's telegrams, they are enlightening. On the 21st, the local Russian advisor, reported that they had 751 men left in the brigade. It's not clear. On the 19th of November, you had 909 people, and now 751. Why? Where are they? Came the rather terse question from the brigade commander advisor in Kuito, Kwanawale. That was at 1500 hours. By 1700, they had received no answer, and sent another telegram. They numbered 87. Study the issue, and urgently report artillery availability. You are not going to be able to get out of the brigade. You are not going to be able to You have a big inconsistency in your local figures. Eventually, a rather peeved-sounding advisor on the ground with the 21st replied, 909 minus 751 is 158. They began in a rather perverse bit of negative maths. This 158 represents military personnel that can't participate in combat. Wounded, ill, first aid posts. Meanwhile, the South Africans swung the town constantly, using the G5s. This means our friends over there are also busy with their cross-country racing. We made jokes about it, muttered Jadokin in his diary. The brigades were facing constant harassment from UNITA and the SADF artillery, as well as those inside Kuito, Kwanawale. The Russians told the Angolans they thought the South Africans were preparing for a full-scale attack on the town. But would the offensive being planned by the South Africans begin immediately, or after the National Servicemen returned home? The SADF was a conscript army of 18,000 full-timers, a backbone of 60,000 young National Servicemen, each serving two years of compulsory duty. That was followed by two years of camps. This was the 140,000 Citizen Force civilians who, once their National Service was over, would report for a month all three of military service each year for 10 years, after their 24-month full-time stint. What that meant in 1987 is that if the South Africans wanted to, they could mobilize the biggest army in Africa, but probably simultaneously destroy their own economy. The Christmas holidays were hallowed in the halls of the SADF, very important summer days off. Families got together, businesses and factories closed up for a month and people headed off to the beach or home or to the neighboring states and rural areas if there were workers. Nearly all the fighting men with 61 Meck and Forsyth were national servicemen. Had the South African government extended this period for these men it would have made tactical sense but no political sense. The public back home had no real idea about what was really going on. They were misinformed by Bute's cabinet. Everything was shrouded in secrecy, disinformation, censorship. Had Bute suddenly extended these men's period of service the backlash would have been swift and severe. The problem as Vladimir Putin is going to find out that with trying to control information when it eventually seeps out it does those who are trying to keep secrets the biggest damage when you cannot control the sentiment which turns out to be true. Back in 1987 Pretoria was paranoid about the truth. The White electorate regarded this as an heroic battle against the Cubans and the Russians perceived as outsiders with no real interest in African affairs other than to bribe crooked one-party states in order to steal their resources. But dying in large numbers was also not part of the South African white voter narrative. They believed that for every white soldier hundreds or even thousands of Angolans and Cubans and Russians should die. When those death rates closed up as they were starting to do politically the concept of superiority based on race began to unravel. The SADF's 2-0 brigade resented what happened next. 2,500 new national servicemen were going to join Forsyth and 61MEC inside Angola and they'd been training for a year but had no battle experience. These men had to be mentally trained up toughened for what they were about to get. These men had to be mentally trained up toughened for what they were about to get. These men had to be mentally trained up toughened for what they were about to get. they were about to experience. 61Mex Commandant Mike Muller said, "The training period in my combat group Alpha greatly reduced our momentum." Which is probably an understatement. By now, some of these veterans of Operation Modular had seen more fighting in three months than many South African soldiers saw in the whole of World War II. Morale was low. Commandant Liam Ray and Forsyth in particular were angry about their treatment, mostly because the equipment needed replacing. And just before they left, the South Africans wanted to send a message, some kind of distant hope that they'd succeed in overcoming FAPLA around Kuito-Gwanabali. It was a kind of weird compromise, a last throw of the dice if you like, a calling all pockets shot. SAGF HQ decided that 2-0 SA Brigade would make a last effort to push FAPLA off the east bank of the Kuito River before demobilization day, earmarked for 30th November. This was just more bad news for some of the officers. They wanted the generals to plan an attack on Kuito-Gwanabali from the west, because four FAPLA's brigades had dug in well by now, on the east side. Robbie Hotsliff, Mike Muller and Liam Ray were the main commanders who returned to the idea of a westerly strike, and once again they were overruled. What was going on was also beyond their level of security clearance, and it involved Cuban leader Fidel Castro. By now he'd lost over 10,000 and some say closer to 20,000 troops as casualties of this never-ending war across the Atlantic from his small island nation. Initially he had supported the war, sending his men and women into fight. Cuban women for example made up most of the anti-aircraft battery crews around the towns of Angola. Castro began to think about negotiating a solution rather than fighting to the death against the SAGF and sent his diplomats to the United Nations to contact the South African mission in New York. Castro was wanting out of Angola. By now the signs that the Soviet Union was becoming undone were everywhere, and he had been funded by Moscow for so long that Castro realized that the free ride was coming to an end. No more swapping sugar for arms and oil and other goods from Russia. The Russians were finding it difficult to find basic foodstuffs at home. The USSR had been a false economy from the start, and now they were forced to give up on foodstuffs, and now they were forced to give up on foodstuffs, and now the chickens were coming home to roost. Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and openness had started to open the eyes of the Russian people to the lies they had been fed over decades of oppressive rule. His perestroika reconstruction meant that Cuba could no longer rely on a high price for its sugar. Castro would be paid the market price. This was 30 years of false business which had helped suck the Soviet economy dry. It was just before New Year 1987 that Castro, in one of his notorious six-hour speeches, had admitted that the last 12 months had been the most difficult since he came to power in 1959. On the 11th of November 1987, Soviet journalist Valery Grigoriev had broadcast a broadside aimed at the Luanda government and its corruption. More than half of Angola's budget was now being spent on defense. The level of thieving and fraud was unprecedented. Inflation was raging. Castro had a unique offer, one which Muller and co. back in the Angolan bush had no idea was under discussion. The Cuban was suggesting that not only should Angola be discussed, but the future of Namibia, its elections, the real cause behind the long border war. South African Foreign Minister Puk Buete had been hoping for just such a deal and leapt at the opportunity. The SADF top brass realized that a full-scale attack on Kuito Kwanawale now from the West could set these talks back. If the SADF destroyed the four brigades around Kuito and took the town, with a likely high cost to civilians, Victoria would cause Luanda to lose face and provide them, the Cubans and the Russians, with renewed vigor. The Cubans in particular were constantly talking about their machismo and lording it over other Central American regimes. Fanning the dying embers of Soviet communism was not a wise strategic exercise right now. So instead of victory, they wanted just enough pressure to be placed on Faplar and the Angolans with another incremental push. And so somehow the officers of 2-0 SA Brigade had to explain to the tired Thruppis that they'd be fighting one more battle before going home, and this battle would be just like the last. You don't need to be a trained psychologist to see this incompatible command, both to evict Faplar from east of the Kuito River and to somehow finish the job they hadn't managed to do in three months, and to do this within the next four or five days. This was certainly an insult to the Thruppis' intelligence. Faplar was readying itself for the next attack in the east. Why would the SADF change now, they thought. Of course, the commanders of the four main brigades had no idea what Castro was up to either. Neither did the Russians on the ground. These Russians picked up strange sounds on the night of the 24th of November. Helicopters that sounded closer than usual. And they were told these were diversionary scouts, the Requis probably. Maybe some 3-2 battalion Buffaloes. A few minutes after 1700, SAF's mirages swept in low and fired rockets at 2-1 Brigade's command post. The South Africans began firing 120mm mortars across the river. The Angolans had begun to deploy a few tricks of their own. One was to cause the artillery some confusion. They planted explosives in positions around their bunkers, hundreds of meters away, and when the G5s began to shell them, they'd detonate these to bamboozle the spotters. Staring at this map before the attack was disconcerting. The South African commanders knew there were not enough troops, nor tanks, to throw FAPLA from their defensive positions. And the main hope was that an attack over the Chambinga high ground might frighten FAPLA into withdrawing across the Quito River. They had more help than they realized, because only 24 hours earlier, a BBC report in Portuguese had been heard by the men of the 2-1 Brigade. The clearly ill-informed reporters said there were 30,000 South Africans with 400 pieces of artillery and 80 aircraft attacking FAPLA outside Quito. That was quite a shock. As you know, it was more like 3,000 South Africans. So the threat appeared real to these Angolans huddled in their trenches on the evening of the 24th of November. This attack has been called fundamentally stupid, and of course it was. But the men did not know all of this, and were determined to succeed. There were two FAPLA brigades adding to the others, the 8th and the 13th, based around Quito, but the SDF was going to advance through the thickest vegetation instead of heading around this veritable jungle. Nevertheless, the plan was hatched. UNITA would lead the assault this time with the main thrust against 2-5 Brigade at the Chambinga Bridge. Robbie Hotsleeve's combat group BRAVO would work with the Ulefant Tank Squadron under Mike Muller. The first order months ago was to chase all FAPLA brigades across the bridge, but to remain south. Now they were told to cross the bridge. The South Africans were trying to drive FAPLA from the east bank of the Quito River by Saturday, the 28th of November. It was only 48 hours later that 4 Sai and 61 Mech troops would be demobilized. Talk about 11th hour. Combat group Alpha would deploy to the north as a distraction, keeping 59 Brigade busy, while BRAVO and Charlie under Robbie Hotsleeve and Diomare would head along the river to their south, with UNITA's 3rd and 5th battalions aiming at the 2-5 Brigade. As with other attacks, everything went out of sync. First the artillery only managed to start firing at 7:30 AM instead of 0400. BRAVO rolled off even later because UNITA's reconnaissance teams missed the combat group in their first attempt. The going then was extremely tough. It was slower than walking pace, with the drivers of the armoured vehicles and the gunners almost blinded by the vegetation which was so thick They couldn't rotate their turrets. On Feitler's side, they heard the SADF moving hours before they arrived, and these brigades withdrew in a leisurely fashion, apparently. The Russian advisors woke up with the sound of the earth rumbling while it was still dark. They reported that the SADF bombardments were aimed at the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 2-5 Brigade. Luckily for them, they'd moved to the next line of defense, wrote Zhudokhin. At 1100 hours, Bravo entered a minefield which slowed them still further, and behind, Charlie Combat Group was being hit by one 20mm mortar fire. At least three South Africans were wounded. At 1500, Bravo were still struggling through the bush. They'd taken four hours to move 800 meters. That was slower than leopard crawling. When Bravo hit an impenetrable wall of trees and bush, the Ulefand tanks were then moved to their right, to the northwest, where there was some high ground, and they could act as an observation group. Eventually, at 1700 hours, Bravo reached Fapler's forward positions, and UNITA surged into attack. They were immediately cut down, particularly 5th Battalion, which took heavy casualties. Fapler's artillery was more than ready, and an accurate salvo landed on top of Bravo's rattles. One shell fell through an opened hatch, killing the gunner and wounding two others seriously. This shook the resolve of the men, and, unable to move forward, Commandant Hatzliff ordered a retreat. Combat Group Charlie was next in line, with the Ulefand squadron now reattached, and they'd have to throw themselves into the next attack, set for the next day, November 26th. Fapler, though, realized that the old SADF 1-2 attack was likely, so instead of retreating, which they usually did, they actually reinforced their positions at the bridge with another 10 T-54-55 tanks. The next day, it was more of the same. A late start, slow moving, another minefield. The Russians had also reinforced their positions with the big Soviet M-46 guns that now ranged into the killing zone all the way from Quito, Cuanavale. A fierce barrage followed, and Commandant Diomarae deemed it wise to withdraw once more. They were moving too slowly to overcome this deadly menace. The National Servicemen, who survived, breathed a sigh of relief. For them, the war was over, and they left Angola to head home for Christmas. It was now that the Fapler bridgehead attack on the Quito River began to be planned with fresh SADF troops and new equipment. Operation Hooper was upcoming, set for Sunday, 13th December 1987. Please rate the podcast on iTunes, it helps raise the visibility of the series. If you want to contact me, head off to abwarpodcast.com. There's a contact form on the homepage, or direct message me on Twitter, at Deslaven. Until next, fast bait. Transcription by CastingWords
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