In the matter of the battle for Cangamba there have been many conflicting reports on the extent to which South Africa was involved. According to UNITA’s own version, after six months of starving out the 3,000 MPLA defenders, Savimbi began the battle on 3 August 1983 by shelling the town with some of the Sovietmade 76mm artillery pieces that had been captured three years earlier. He then sent in several battalion-strength detachments of semi-conventional troops as well as irregulars and ‘commandos’. Over eight days of heavy fighting UNITA suffered serious losses from mines and strafing from MiGs and Mi-8 attack helicopters operating from Luena and against which UNITA could offer little in the way of practical defence. But by mid-August, the defences of Cangamba had been so comprehensively compromised that more than 100 surviving Cubans were airlifted out by helicopter. Cangamba was finally taken on 14 August at a heavy cost in UNITA and MPLA/Cuban lives.
Although no mention of the fact is made in the preceding account, according to Brigadier-General Dick Lord, Savimbi did indeed request active South African assistance in the battle, claiming that, although the area around the town had been cleared, the MPLA HQ itself remained occupied and functioning and that without immediate help the likelihood was that UNITA would soon need to withdraw. Bearing mind that the scene of this battle lay significantly outside of SWAPO’s and South Africa’s sphere of activity, the request was received with caution. Direct South African involvement could hardly have been construed as anything other than an overt intervention in the Angolan civil war. A meeting of high-level South African sectorial commanders was quickly convened and the matter subjected to much discussion.
Huyser [Brigadier ‘Bossie’ Huyser, commander of Western Air Command] attended this meeting and listened to all the arguments for and against. When negotiations reached stalemate Huyser jumped into the whirlpool with both feet and said, “Give authority to the SAAF for one airstrike and UNITA will take Cangamba!” Silence greeted his career-jeopardizing announcement but, after consideration, the authority was given.[20]
With this, the reputation of the SAAF was on the line as, no doubt, was the personal reputation and future career prospects of Brigadier Bossie Huyser himself. However, with minute planning and the hope of a fair wind behind it, Operation Karton went into effect early in the morning of 14 August, utilizing Buccaneers and Canberras from 3, 12 and 24 squadrons. The attack succeeded in what has since come to be regarded as one of the most effective and well-executed operations of its kind undertaken at any time during the war. Within a few hours, the final walk-in took place and Cangamba was in UNITA hands. The negative result – for there always seemed to be one of these, often the same one – was an immediate and significant escalation in the amount and sophistication of Soviet replacement weaponry shipped to Angola and channelled to the front, as well as the arrival in the country of an additional investment of several thousand Cuban troops.
In the short term, however, the UNITA position in the southeast had been buttressed and the SADF could return its attention to dealing with a new arc of SWAPO/FAPLA brigade positions established north of the Shallow Area since the completion of Operation Protea, and located variously at Cahama, Cuvelai, Caindo in the north of the Cunene Province and Mulondo in the adjacent Huila Province. Intelligence soon began to seep south that PLAN intended to launch its heaviest infiltration thus far into South West Africa as soon as the 1983/84 wet season commenced. To counter this, the SADF began planning for Operation Askari, a follow-up to Operation Protea and perhaps one of the most important major combined external operations of the war.
Operation Askari was earmarked for launch in mid-November 1983, unusual timing, bearing in mind that it would correspond more or less with the onset of the wet season and all the difficulties associated with mounting a mechanized operation in southern Angola in the teeth of the annual rains.
It is worth noting in this regard that the cycle of war in the region tended to correspond more or less with seasonal variations of rainfall and drought. The tropical/subtropical weather system of southern Africa follows a pattern of summer rainfall – often in a short and a long phase – occurring annually between late November and February/March and a dry winter season that peaks between the months of June and September. During the wet season, heat and humidity levels tend to be high while veld conditions are lush with rich ground cover and heavy tree foliage, and with a tendency also for there to be large expanses of shallow standing water in alkaline pans known locally as shonas.[21]
Since the earliest days of European activity in the region, it has always been understood that the dry winter season is the time for warfare and ambulation. Wheeled transport is feasible on untreated road surfaces only at this time, while cool conditions and a paucity of disease-carrying parasites such as mosquitoes and tsetse flies render human and animal movement much more practical. During the wet summer months, however, the opposite has always been true: bushveld conditions become impossible for the movement of livestock and wagons, and in later years motor vehicles, while high levels of humidity and rain tend to see correspondingly high levels of lethargy, discomfort and disease, particularly among non-natives.
It therefore made perfect sense for SWAPO units to disperse into the countryside and begin the long overland journey south from its forward bases as the rains set in. For them the principal hazard was malaria, but certainly not limits on vehicle transport, since a bulk of the journey would be undertaken on foot and, besides which, any limitations on SADF capacity to mobilize would always be an advantage. Perhaps a greater advantage than this was the large expanses of standing water scattered across the bushveld, without which long-distance deployment over an otherwise parched and arid landscape would have been suicidal. Flooded shonas also offered the opportunity for small groups of guerrillas moving through any given area the opportunity to obscure their tracks by hopping from one flooded pan to another, with the additional advantage of regular downpours washing away what tracks they did leave. Moreover, thick savannah woodland of the type common throughout southern Angola would usually be bare of foliage in the dry season, but heavily canopied during the rains which helped in the matter of concealment both from ground patrols and from the air.
Conversely, for the SADF, large mechanized columns became an utter liability in the rough and undeveloped conditions of southern Angola during the wet season, which meant that the style of operations during this period was likely to be limited to containment, tracking and follow-up foot patrols in the border area.
At the onset of the dry season, however, most SWAPO units would be recalled from the field for what was termed ‘rehearsals’ which saw them concentrated in bases, perfect circumstances for the launch of large-scale offensive operations to deal with them in numbers.
The planning for Operation Askari also went ahead against these and other difficulties, among them international pressure, as well as a great deal of concern in Pretoria regarding another bout of re-armament in Angola in the aftermath of the most recent destruction wrought in Cangamba. The arrival in Luanda had been observed of at least ten Russian cargo ships packed to the gunwales with everything from T-62 battle tanks to helicopters and high-altitude anti-aircraft missiles. In addition, Cuba shipped over 5,000 fresh troops, bringing the total based in Angola to a South African estimate, probably conservative, of 25,000.
20
Lord, Brig-Gen Dick.
21
Arguably the most famous of these is Etosha Pan, situated in north/central Namibia and part of the Etosha Pan National Park. Similar features are scattered throughout the region and may be as small as a few dozen metres across or as expansive as Etosha Pan which is 120km long at its widest girth.