South African Border War

South African Border War
Part of the Cold War and decolonisation of Africa

Clockwise from top left: South African Marines stage for an operation in the Caprivi Strip, 1984; an SADF patrol searches the "Cutline" for PLAN insurgents; FAPLA MiG-21bis seized by the SADF in 1988; SADF armoured cars prepare to cross into Angola during Operation Savannah; UNTAG peacekeepers deploy prior to the 1989 Namibian elections; a FAPLA staff car destroyed in an SADF ambush, late 1975.
Date26 August 1966 – 15 January 1990
(23 years, 4 months, 2 weeks and 6 days)
Location
South West Africa (Namibia), Angola, Zambia
Result

Military stalemate[10][11]

Territorial
changes		 South West Africa gains independence from South Africa as the Republic of Namibia
Belligerents

South Africa

Military advisers and pilots:
Commanders and leaders
Strength
c. 71,000 (1988)[3][12]
  • South Africa:
    • 30,743 SADF troops in Angola and Namibia
  • South West Africa:
c. 122,000 (1988)[13][14][15]
  • SWAPO:
    • 32,000 PLAN guerrillas
  • Cuba:
    • 40,000 FAR troops in southern Angola
  • Angola:
Casualties and losses
2,365[16]–2,500 dead[17]
Namibian civilians dead: 947–1,087[16]
Part of a series on the
History of Namibia
Coat of arms of Namibia

The South African Border War, also known as the Namibian War of Independence, and sometimes denoted in South Africa as the Angolan Bush War, was a largely asymmetric conflict that occurred in Namibia (then South West Africa), Zambia, and Angola from 26 August 1966 to 21 March 1990. It was fought between the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), an armed wing of the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO). The South African Border War was closely intertwined with the Angolan Civil War.

Following several years of unsuccessful petitioning through the United Nations and the International Court of Justice for Namibian independence from South Africa, SWAPO formed the PLAN in 1962 with material assistance from the Soviet Union, China, and sympathetic African states such as Tanzania, Ghana, and Algeria.[20] Fighting broke out between PLAN and the South African security forces in August 1966. Between 1975 and 1988 the SADF staged massive conventional raids into Angola and Zambia to eliminate PLAN's forward operating bases.[21] It also deployed specialist counter-insurgency units such as Koevoet and 32 Battalion, trained to carry out external reconnaissance and track guerrilla movements.[22]

South African tactics became increasingly aggressive as the conflict progressed.[21] The SADF's incursions produced Angolan casualties and occasionally resulted in severe collateral damage to economic installations regarded as vital to the Angolan economy.[23] Ostensibly to stop these raids, but also to disrupt the growing alliance between the SADF and the National Union for the Total Independence for Angola (UNITA), which the former was arming with captured PLAN equipment,[24] the Soviet Union backed the People's Armed Forces of Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) through a large contingent of military advisers,[25] along with up to four billion dollars' worth of modern defence technology in the 1980s.[26] Beginning in 1984, regular Angolan units under Soviet command were confident enough to confront the SADF.[26] Their positions were also bolstered by thousands of Cuban troops.[26] The state of war between South Africa and Angola briefly ended with the short-lived Lusaka Accords, but resumed in August 1985 as both PLAN and UNITA took advantage of the ceasefire to intensify their own guerrilla activity, leading to a renewed phase of FAPLA combat operations culminating in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale.[23] The South African Border War was virtually ended by the Tripartite Accord, mediated by the United States, which committed to a withdrawal of Cuban and South African military personnel from Angola and South West Africa, respectively.[27][28] PLAN launched its final guerrilla campaign in April 1989.[29] South West Africa received formal independence as the Republic of Namibia a year later, on 21 March 1990.[11]

Despite being largely fought in neighbouring states, the South African Border War had a significant cultural and political impact on South African society.[30] The country's apartheid government devoted considerable effort towards presenting the war as part of a containment programme against regional Soviet expansionism[31] and used it to stoke public anti-communist sentiment.[32] It remains an integral theme in contemporary South African literature at large and Afrikaans-language works in particular, having given rise to a unique genre known as grensliteratuur (directly translated "border literature").[23]

Part of a series on the
Military history of
South Africa
Conflicts
National Defence Force
Historical forces
Lists
  1. ^ Beckett, Ian; Pimlott, John (2011). Counter-insurgency: Lessons from History. Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Books. pp. 204–219. ISBN 978-1-84884-396-7.
  2. ^ Cann, John (2015). Flight Plan Africa: Portuguese Airpower in Counterinsurgency, 1961–1974. Solihull: Helion & Company. pp. 362–363. ISBN 978-1-909982-06-2.
  3. ^ a b Fryxell, Cole. To Be Born a Nation. p. 13.
  4. ^ a b Lulat, Y. G. M. (1992). United States Relations with South Africa: A Critical Overview from the Colonial Period to the Present. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Incorporated. pp. 143–146, 210. ISBN 978-0-8204-7907-1.
  5. ^ Dale, Richard (2014). The Namibian War of Independence, 1966–1989: Diplomatic, Economic and Military Campaigns. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers. pp. 74–77, 93–95. ISBN 978-0-7864-9659-4.
  6. ^ Thomas, Scott (1995). The Diplomacy of Liberation: The Foreign Relations of the ANC Since 1960. London: Tauris Academic Studies. pp. 202–210. ISBN 978-1-85043-993-6.
  7. ^ Larmer, Miles (2011). Rethinking African Politics: A History of Opposition in Zambia. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. pp. 209–217. ISBN 978-1-4094-8249-9.
  8. ^ Mott, William (2001). Soviet Military Assistance: An Empirical Perspective. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Security International. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-313-31022-5.
  9. ^ Stapleton, Timothy (2010). A Military History of South Africa: From the Dutch-Khoi Wars to the End of Apartheid. Santa Barbara: Praeger Security International. pp. 169–185. ISBN 978-0-313-36589-8.
  10. ^ Vanneman, Peter (1990). Soviet Strategy in Southern Africa: Gorbachev's Pragmatic Approach. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. pp. 41–57. ISBN 978-0-8179-8902-6.
  11. ^ a b Hampson, Fen Osler (1996). Nurturing Peace: Why Peace Settlements Succeed Or Fail. Stanford: United States Institute of Peace Press. pp. 53–70. ISBN 978-1-878379-57-3.
  12. ^ Tsokodayi, Cleophas Johannes. Namibia's Independence Struggle: The Role of the United Nations. pp. 1–305.
  13. ^ McMullin, Jaremey (2013). Ex-Combatants and the Post-Conflict State: Challenges of Reintegration. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 81–88. ISBN 978-1-349-33179-6.
  14. ^ George, Edward (2005). The Cuban intervention in Angola. New York: Frank Cass Publishers. pp. 236–246. ISBN 978-0-415-64710-6.
  15. ^ Gwyneth Williams & Brian Hackland (4 January 2016). The Dictionary of Contemporary Politics of Southern Africa (2016 ed.). Routledge Books. pp. 88–89. ISBN 978-1-138-19517-2.
  16. ^ a b Akawa, Martha; Silvester, Jeremy (March 2012). "Waking the dead: civilian casualties in the Namibian liberation struggle" (PDF). Journal for Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. 1 (1): 117–128. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 November 2016. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  17. ^ Reginald Herbold Green. "Namibia: The road to Namibia – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 15 January 2013.
  18. ^ Corum, James; Johnson, Wray (2003). Airpower in small wars: fighting insurgents and terrorists. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. p. 315. ISBN 978-0-7006-1240-6.
  19. ^ Polack, Peter (2013). The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (illustrated ed.). Oxford: Casemate Publishers. pp. 72, 92–108, 156–171. ISBN 978-1-61200-195-1.
  20. ^ Hooper, Jim (2013) [1988]. Koevoet! Experiencing South Africa's Deadly Bush War. Solihull: Helion and Company. pp. 86–93. ISBN 978-1-86812-167-0.
  21. ^ a b Clayton, Anthony (1999). Frontiersmen: Warfare in Africa since 1950. Philadelphia: UCL Press, Limited. pp. 119–124. ISBN 978-1-85728-525-3.
  22. ^ Stapleton, Timothy (2013). A Military History of Africa. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. pp. 251–257. ISBN 978-0-313-39570-3.
  23. ^ a b c Jacklyn Cock, Laurie Nathan (1989). War and Society: The Militarisation of South Africa. New Africa Books. pp. 124–276. ISBN 978-0-86486-115-3.
  24. ^ Weigert, Stephen (2011). Angola: A Modern Military History. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 71–72. ISBN 978-0-230-11777-8.
  25. ^ Shubin, Vladimir (18 May 2007). "Unsung Heroes: The Soviet Military and the Liberation of Southern Africa". Cold War History. 7 (2): 251–262. doi:10.1080/14682740701284157. S2CID 154318774. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  26. ^ a b c Blank, Stephen (1991). Responding to Low-Intensity Conflict Challenges. Montgomery: Air University Press. pp. 223–239. ISBN 978-0-16-029332-0.
  27. ^ Gleijeses, Piero (18 May 2007). "Cuba and the Independence of Namibia". Cold War History. 7 (2): 285–303. doi:10.1080/14682740701284215. S2CID 154738164. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  28. ^ Harris, Geoff (1999). Recovery from Armed Conflict in Developing Countries: An Economic and Political Analysis. Oxfordshire: Routledge Books. pp. 262–264. ISBN 978-0-415-19379-5.
  29. ^ Hearn, Roger (1999). UN Peacekeeping in Action: The Namibian Experience. Commack, New York: Nova Science Publishers. pp. 89–95. ISBN 978-1-56072-653-1.
  30. ^ Du Preez, Max (2011). Pale Native: Memories of a Renegade Reporter. Cape Town: Penguin Random House South Africa. pp. 88–90. ISBN 978-1-77022-060-7.
  31. ^ Mashiri, Mac; Shaw, Timothy (1989). Africa in World Politics: Into the 1990s. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 208–209. ISBN 978-0-333-42931-0.
  32. ^ Baines, Gary (2014). South Africa's 'Border War': Contested Narratives and Conflicting Memories. London: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 1–4, 138–140. ISBN 978-1-4725-0971-0.