Cuito Cuanavale and the Success of the African Revolution in Angola

Cuito Cuanavale and the Success of the African Revolution in Angola

After the 23 March 1988 reversals at Cuito Cuanavale, apartheid South Africa began talks that culminated in the December 22 agreements. For the Angolans, who had been fighting continuously since 1961, the war and diplomacy were focused not only on the limited question of the apartheid South African Defence Force (SADF) withdrawal from Angola, but also on ending apartheid destabilisation of the region and on the independence for Namibia. The talks and the contentions about the independence of Namibia was an attempt by the United States to win at the conference table what apartheid had lost in battle. In reality, apartheid South Africa had to negotiate a capitulation or to surrender openly. The siege of Cuito Cuanavale ended after the apartheid SADF agreed to withdraw from Namibia.

On 10 November 1988, following a press conference of the General Staff of Angola, wherein Lieutenant-General Antonio dos Santos Franca Ndalu, Chief of the People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA), declared that his forces had killed over 230 South African troops in the course of the offensive and had destroyed large numbers of vehicles, the apartheid SADF responded by claiming that not all the soldiers that were killed were theirs. SADF admitted to the loss of only twelve soldiers, meaning the rest that were claimed by Dos Santos belonged to South West African Territorial Force (SWATF). It was believed in many quarters that the SADF was using tactics to cover-up the actual number of soldiers killed, for fear of antagonising the public against involvement in a war that was not theirs at all.

According to Horace Campbell, between October 1987 and June 1988, in the fiercest conventional battles on African soil since Erwin Rommel was defeated at El Amien, the apartheid SADF fought pitched tank and artillery battles with the Angolan FAPLA armed forces and their Cuban allies at Cuito Cuanavale. This small base located in south-eastern Angola became important in the military history of Africa, for there the South African armed forces, supposedly the best on the continent, were trapped with their tanks and artillery and held down more than 480 kilometres from their bases in Namibia.

Failing to take Cuito Cuanavale with over 9,000 soldiers, even after announcing that they had done so, losing air superiority, and faced with mutinies among black troops and a high casualty rate among whites, the apartheid South African forces reached such a desperate situation that apartheid President P.W. Botha had to fly to the war zone when the operational command of the SADF broke down, in order to boost the morale of the soldiers.

Supported by Cuban reinforcements, the Angolan armed forces withstood major assaults on January 23, February 25 and March 23. The apartheid South African forces were repulsed with heavy losses, and the Angolan-Cuban forces seized the initiative. For the first time since 1981, the Angolan armed forces were able to reoccupy the area adjacent to Namibia. So confident were the Angolans and Cubans, that in the space of less than three months they built two air strips to consolidate their recapture of the southern province of Cunene. By the time of the March attack, the conditions of battle had begun to turn terribly wrong against the SADF.

First there was a mutiny by the troops of the SWATF because of racism even in military tactics, as black troops were placed in front of their white counterparts to bear the brunt of the fighting. Second, the heavy equipment was bogged down on the eastern bank of the Cuito River during the rainy season. Without air support, the SADF was outgunned by the Angolans and Cubans, which were also reinforced by the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) forces. By the 23rd of March the SADF siege was over and the SADF were themselves trapped and encircled at Tchipa. The SADF made one desperate attempt to break out on 27 June 1988 and was again defeated. Failure to break out of their encirclement, one South African newspaper called the defeat “a crushing humiliation”.

Angola was always regarded as “the firm trench of the African revolution”, particularly after it had declared its unswerving support for the armed wings of the national liberation movements of the Southern African states that were still under colonial and white racist domination. These included the ZIPRA (Zimbabwean People’s Revolutionary Army) forces, an armed wing of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), before the liberation of Zimbabwe from the racist Ian Smith regime, as well as the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN, the armed wing of the South West Africa People’s Organisation – SWAPO) and Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). The African revolution therefore refers to the process of decolonisation of the continent as well as the efforts to liberate those countries that were still under colonial and white racist domination at the tip of the continent.

Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the glorious People’s Army of the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, as an internationalist force, contributed hugely to this process. It contributed physically, materially and otherwise, as it fought in various battles alongside its sister organisations in the sub-continent. However, the most important contribution made by MK to the defence of the African revolution, was in Angola in the period 1987 to 1988, in what came to be labelled as the “Northern Front”, against the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) between the Uige, Cuanza Norte and Bengo provinces of Angola. These engagements occurred simultaneously with the skirmishes that ended in the military victory for the joint FAPLA-Cuban-PLAN forces in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale.

Ultimately the New York and the Geneva Agreements were signed in July and August 1988 respectively by the representatives of Angola, Cuba, South Africa and the United States. These agreements also led to the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 435/78 for the independence of Namibia and the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Angola – including MK. The President of the ANC and Commander-in-Chief of MK, Oliver Tambo, pledged that the ANC will do “everything in our power to facilitate this process, recognising the fact the agreements signed in New York constitute an advance of great strategic significance for our region” (Zambia Times, 9 January 1989). As a consequence of a steadfast conviction to defend Angola, MK, as an internationalist force, with the joint FAPLA, Cuban and PLAN forces, played “a critical role in promoting the success of the African revolution in Angola”.

When Fidel Castro was reflecting on the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, he emphasised that “…our objective was not to achieve a humiliating and destructive military victory over our enemy. If we had to wage the battle, we had to be ready to do so with all the conditions for success and for victory, which are the conditions that were created there; but we were not looking for military victory, we were looking for a political, just solution to the conflict. That was the main objective, and that’s why the possibilities of negotiation were not discarded, the alternatives for a negotiated political solution were not discarded, and we worked seriously and responsibly to take advantage of the slightest possibility of a solution of the kind.”

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Horace Campbell, “The Siege of Cuito Cuanavale”, Uppsala: The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1990.
Fidel Castro, “The Battle for Angola”, Sechaba, November 1988.
G.C. Khwela, “Umkhonto We Sizwe’s Contribution to The Defence of The African Revolution in Angola”, Journal for Contemporary History, Vol 28, No. 2, September 2003.
Times (Zambia), “ANC Forces On Way Out of Base”, Zambia Times, 9 January 1989.

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!