South African Border Wars

This is episode 13 and its October 1975. Two SADF Task Forces are busy in Angola, Foxbat is in the south East, the other - Zulu has just taken the port of Namibe and will now head north aiming at Benguela and Lobito after initially swinging back eastwards to the main road. We begin this episode with an update about what had developed with Eddie Webb and his Foxbat Task Force. The name Foxbat emerg...

This is episode 12 and we’re covering the first weeks of Operation Savannah which began in October 1975. Battle Group Zulu had entered Angola and then turned east first, then west and finally southwards to attack the major town of Ongiva from the north. After taking Ongiva, Zulu would turn back north westerly towards Xangongo and then head onwards to the port of Namibe. As we heard last epis...

We heard last episode how Battle Group Foxbat had been heading towards Norton de Matos or Balombo as its now know, en route to the port of Lobito in support of Unita and opposing the MPLA as well as its army FAPLA. That battle group had only just been formed up on 2nd October 1975 before it was thrust into the conflict, rushing towards at least one and possibly more Fapla companies supported by ar...

We ended last week with the growing signs of an Angolan civil war becoming a major problem for South West Africa and the South African Defence Force. The number of incidents involving SWAPO had risen through early 1975 – but there was also UNITA which continued to attack Portuguese-developed infrastructure in southern Angola. FJ Du toit Spies writes about this in his work, Operation Savannah...

By 1974 the number of desertions from the Portuguese military numbered 25 000 the youngsters of the country were unwilling to fight non-winnable colonial wars in Africa. We heard in episode 10 about what happened during the Carnation Revolution and how expats living in Africa were taking off-guard by the coup. In the end, almost 800 000 Portuguese men and women served in the army in Africa startin...

This is episode 8 and we’re dealing with the period in the early 1970s as the border war began to escalate - and the first death of an SADF soldier inside Angola. The Portuguese had fought a ten year war in Angola by early 1970 which was showing some signs of success until the rug was pulled out from the local military and security forces because of a military coup in Lisbon. The South Afric...

This is episode 7 and the political pressure is building when it comes to the United Nations and South West African independence. At the time that South Africa had started a series of show trials under the Terrorism and Suppression of Communism Act in 1967 for SWAPO members, the UN Council for South West Africa was drawing up a timetable for the territories independence supposedly set for 1968. Wh...

The concerted campaign against South Africa’s mandate to run South West Africa began in 1960 with the shock of both the Sharpeville Massacre and the Old Location massacre in Windhoek sealing Pretoria’s fate. All armed movements have their trigger moment and these two triggered the ANC in the first instance, and SWAPO in the second. In both cases, the South African Police were involved...

It was inevitable that the South West African People’s Organisation or SWAPO would begin to mobilise south of the border. Pretoria’s response according to war researcher Leopold Scholtz was based on their unwillingness to acknowledge that SWAPO formed a real danger to South Africa’s domination in South West. The first years of the battle against SWAPO was going to be led by the S...

We’re going to focus on the first two years - 1961 and 1962 in this episode which was about the same time as the South West African People’s Organisation took off. South Africa was supported by America until it became clear that the threat of a nuclear war reduced the possibility of a conventional war between the U.S. and Russia. For those who did not live through this period, it is qu...

The scramble for Africa accelerated after the 1884 partition of the continent where European nations agreed to divvy up Africa in a meeting arranged by the Germans. Soon afterwards, King Leopold II of Belgium became frustrated by Belgium's lack of international power and prestige. He tried to persuade the Belgian government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexplored Congo Bas...

By 1914 the German colony had been developing slowly but steadily – but it was very much a backwater even amongst the hazy list of obscure colonies. It was the discovery of diamonds in 1908 near Luderitz in the south of the country that sparked a frenzy of German interest. An avalanche of fortune hunters descended on this desert land in a few months – and if you travel there today the...

Much has been written about the South African Border war which is also known as the Namibian War of Independence. While the fighting was ostensibly about Namibia, most of the significant battles were fought inside Angola. This conflict has almost been almost forgotten as the Cold War ebbed away and bygones were swept under the political carpet back home. Four years after the last shots were fired...