The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was the battle that broke the back of apartheid in South Africa. It was a battle between the Cubans and Angolans vs. Apartheid South Africa with support from Israel and western countries, including the US and the UK.

The battle of Cuito Cuanavale
The battle of Cuito Cuanavale was a key moment in the smokescreen conflict of the Cold War played out in southern Africa. Gary Baines looks at the ways in which opposing sides are now remembering the event.



Winners invariably believe that they are entitled to rewrite the past from the vantage point of history’s vindication, but official histories are always challenged by the ‘losers’.

With the approach of the 25th anniversary of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, the controversy over who won this pivotal engagement in southern African history is being revisited. It is as if the battle has been rejoined as protagonists from both sides of the conflict press their claims as victors.

The so-called Border War began as a counter-insurgency campaign by apartheid South Africa against the South West Africa Peoples’ Organisation (SWAPO) in northern Namibia. From 1966 the South African Defence Force (SDAF) reinforced the South African Police counter-insurgency units in what was then Rhodesia and South-West Africa and from 1984 it assisted in suppressing insurrection in its own country’s black townships. South African security forces were also involved in the ‘destabilisation’ of the frontline states, which bore the brunt of the conflict, a strategy designed to contain the fighting beyond South Africa’s boundaries and minimise destruction in its own backyard.

From bases in occupied Namibia, the SADF supported its Angolan surrogate, UNITA (National Union of the Total Independence of Angola), and periodically occupied large swathes of southern Angola during the 1970s and 1980s. These deployments meant that the SADF regularly confronted the forces of the Angolan army or FAPLA (People’s Armed Forces for Liberation of Angola), as well as their Cuban allies. In late 1987 combined FAPLA-Cuban forces mounted an operation to crush UNITA once and for all. The SADF mobilised to counter the southward thrust of these forces and this resulted in an engagement of an unprecedented scale on Angolan soil.

The battle of Cuito Cuanavale lasted from September 1987 to July 1988, in three phases (for which the SADF employed the codenames Operation Modular, Hooper and Packer). The SADF won a tactical victory at the Lomba River, where the FAPLA advance was stopped in its tracks. But the repulse of its subsequent frontal attacks on well-fortified positions at Tumpo proved a decisive setback in the SADF’s bid to capture Cuito and its airstrip. The stalemate was broken by a Cuban force which outflanked the SADF and advanced on Namibia’s southern border. The loss of the South African Air Force’s superiority meant that the ground forces had to withdraw or face the prospect of incurring heavy losses during a disorderly dash south.

Some retired generals and military historians have insisted that the SADF mission was meant to ensure that UNITA would survive the FAPLA-Cuban offensive, continue to conduct guerrilla war and remain a thorn in the flesh of the MPLA government in Luanda. They argue that this objective was successfully achieved (although it only postponed UNITA’s demise). They have dismissed claims that they sought to capture Cuito. This is a post hoc rationalisation for the SADF withdrawal from the front. Many commentators have claimed that the Angolan war ended in a stalemate, though if the Cuban-FAPLA forces did not win the battle they certainly altered the balance of power in the region in their favour.

SADF apologists invariably cite statistics to ‘prove’ that its enemies at Cuito sustained far greater losses in personnel and materiel than it did. This was undoubtedly the case. But the outcome of a battle cannot be measured by such statistics. In any case these figures never mention the UNITA fatalities, which ensured that the losses sustained by SADF regular units, particularly among white conscripts, were kept to a minimum. The public reaction to the news of the loss of 12 national servicemen on June 27th, 1988, when Cuban-piloted MiGs bombed the Calueque dam on the River Kunene in southern Angola, confirmed that the cost of mounting casualties was becoming politically unsustainable for the apartheid government and that it was prudent to withdraw from Angola.

Still, when the SADF did so, it proclaimed itself ‘winner’. A photograph by John Liebenberg depicted a SADF convoy heading into Namibia on August 30th, 1988. The convoy passed under a banner with a message of congratulations for having prevailed against the FAPLA-Cuban forces. The inscription read: ‘Welcome Winners/Welkom Wenners’.

Any assessment of the outcome of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale should heed Clausewitz’s dictum that ‘war is a continuation of politics by other means’. The SADF subscribed to the formula that the war was 80 per cent political and 20 per cent military. They recognised that victory could not be won on the battlefield alone but necessitated an all-out offensive employing diplomacy, propaganda and psychological warfare. The SADF and its proxies might have won many engagements, though not the war, because Pretoria was compelled to accept a SWAPO government in Namibia, which it had fought so long to avert. Although the SADF insisted that it was never defeated, the political system of white power and privilege that it had defended for so long was dismantled.

Since becoming the ruling party in South Africa, African National Congress spokespersons have regularly declared that the triumph of the Angolan and Cuban forces at Cuito Cuanavale over the ‘apartheid army’ strengthened the ANC’s hand in negotiating a ceasefire in South Africa. From Nelson Mandela to Jacob Zuma, ANC presidents have feted the Cubans as heroes who sacrificed their lives out of solidarity with the liberation struggle. The names of Cubans killed in Angola have been added to the Wall of Names at Freedom Park, the ANC’s premier heritage site in Tshwane/ Pretoria. And in 2008 parliament sponsored a project to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Cuito Cuanavale. This was regarded by critics as a government effort to impose ANC orthodoxy on the country’s citizens.

These developments have led retired SADF apologists to challenge the ANC’s version. Books, letters, newspapers and blogs have been written in a bid to correct what are widely regarded as ‘biased’ and ‘mistaken’ interpretations of the events. In February this year Afriforum, the Afrikaner lobby group, used social media to request that people pledge support for a campaign to demand that the government cease its misrepresentation of (white) Afrikaner history. A video featuring some Afrikaner artists and celebrities was used to communicate this message to prospective supporters of the campaign. They were also asked to endorse General Jannie Geldenhuys’ recent book We Were There: Winning the War for Southern Africa, which purports to tell the ‘real’ history of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale. A representative group was to undertake to distribute a memorandum to President Jacob Zuma’s office in order to convey to powerful figures in the government that they were serious. But the campaign appears to have become a non-event.

SADF veterans have mobilised on a number of occasions in order to contest the ANC’s version of the history of the Border War in general. This would seem to suggest that they have invested their sense of collective self-worth in their own narrative of this conflict. For this history is part of who they are and goes some way to defining their identities in post-apartheid South Africa.

Gary Baines is the co-editor of Beyond the Border War: New Perspectives on Southern Africa’s Late- Cold War Conflicts (Unisa Press, 2008) and author of Redrawing the Battle Lines: Contesting the Meaning and Memory of South Africa’s Border War (forthcoming).

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Cuito Cuanavale - a turning point in the battle to end apartheid
In the year that marks the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, a violent and sustained period of fighting within the Angolan civil war, LSE alumnus Edward Crowther (BSc Economics 2002), location manager with the HALO Trust, talks to LSE Connect about a devastating legacy left behind by the significant battle that still affects the lives of local communities a quarter of a century later.

Cuito Cuanavale is a small town on the Cuito River in the Cuando Cubango province of Angola. From the outside it appears to have little strategic importance, but in late 1987 and early 1988 it became the focus of a fierce and prolonged battle, which ended on 23 March when the Angolan army, supported by Cuban forces, repelled the advances of the South African Defence Force-backed UNITA, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. Today, 23 March 1988 is a date that resonates with many for its perceived role in heralding the end of South African apartheid (see below).

During this battle – and all across Angola throughout the 27-year civil war – both sides laid thousands of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. The vast majority were placed in and around towns and villages that are still today recovering from years of fighting and attempting to develop economies that will enable their communities to cope with expanding populations. Despite the historical and political significance afforded to the town through its associated battle, the minefields around Cuito Cuanavale remain, making it one of the most heavily mined areas in Africa.

Edward works with the HALO Trust, an NGO operating in Angola and other landmine-afflicted countries. From 2011-13, he spent 18 months working with local field teams to remove mines from Cuito Cuanavale and communities in three other provinces in the country.

He explains: “Even now, years after the war ended, living within these communities can still be hazardous. Landmines have a devastating impact on people’s lives beyond the very obvious physical perils they pose. Basic everyday tasks such as collecting water, growing food and fetching firewood – staples of family life – can often demand travelling through a minefield. Mine-littered roads deny vehicular access too, cutting off communities from the outside world.”

According to HALO, anti-tank mines on roads pose a far greater problem in Angola than in any other mine-affected country in the world today. They hamper commerce by restricting the flow of goods and impede healthcare by preventing government and NGO-led initiatives such as vaccination and education awareness programmes from being able to reach certain communities.

Edward continues: “We have worked with communities unable to farm their own land – arable land they are desperate to use to create a sustainable livelihood that supports their families. People who are willing and able to provide for themselves are prevented from determining their own futures. It affects generation after generation.”

But, thanks to the work of HALO and its local field teams in Angola, there is better news on the horizon. Slowly yet surely, the landmines are being located and destroyed – enabling communities to resume everyday life.

While not perhaps envisaging the career path he ended up taking when he began his Economics degree in 1999, Edward is aware that his experiences at LSE contributed significantly to the choices he made. “When I arrived at LSE, I thought I was taking the first steps towards a career in banking. That was the plan but something changed for me. I began to think in different, broader terms, with a more questioning – maybe even political – focus. It wasn’t just the academic side of things; I shared meals with students who were refugees from places I’d never even heard of. It opened my mind,” he states.

After graduating from LSE, Edward volunteered with a small NGO in Cambodia which led him to pursue a master’s in Development Studies at SOAS. He then spent two years with Médecins Sans Frontières in Papua New Guinea and Pakistan, before joining the HALO Trust in 2011.

Edward Crowther has recently moved from Angola to Sri Lanka to assume the role of location manager with HALO’s teams tackling the landmine legacy of another lengthy civil war. You can learn more about the work of the HALO Trust at www.halotrust.org

From Castro to Mandela – a small town with a large footprint
Fidel Castro once made the assertion that “the history of Africa will be written as before and after Cuito Cuanavale”. If the writing of history is the preserve of the victor, as is often claimed, then he was making a very deliberate point about a separate, politically greater battle.

For all that the outcome of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1987-88 is still contested, it arguably helped to bring about the beginning of the end of apartheid – even though it formed just one part of Angola’s bloody 27-year-long civil war, which continued until 2002 and resulted in 500,000 deaths and over one million Angolans being internally displaced.

While the battle didn’t signal the end of the civil war, its broader ramifications were so significant that Nelson Mandela would later recognise it as a defining moment in African history, stating: “Cuito Cuanavale was the turning point for the liberation of our continent – and of my people – from the scourge of apartheid.”

On 23 March 1988, the majority of SADF troops, under orders from Pretoria, retreated after their tanks failed to breach a massive minefield laid on the banks of the Cuito River. South Africa’s regional agenda was revised to such an extent that it was forced back to the negotiating table; it was ultimately the beginning of the end of apartheid.

In a marked gesture in South Africa’s Freedom Park, outside Pretoria, the names of 2,070 Cubans who died in Angola join those of South Africans who died during the anti-apartheid struggle.

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Cuito Cuanavale 25 years on: celebrating revolutionary internationalism in the struggle against colonialism and apartheid



“The history of Africa will be written as before and after Cuito Cuanavale” – Fidel Castro

Twenty-five years ago, on 27 June 1988, the army of apartheid South Africa was forced to start withdrawing from Angola after 13 years’ intervention in that country’s civil war. The South Africans had been outmanoeuvred and outgunned by the Angolan defence forces (FAPLA – the People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola), in combination with thousands of Cuban soldiers, and units from both the MK (uMkhonto weSizwe – the armed wing of the ANC) and PLAN (People’s Liberation Army of Namibia – the armed wing of the South West African People’s Organisation). The four-month battle between the SADF and the Cuban-Angolan force at Cuito Cuanavale was, to use the words of Nelson Mandela, “the turning point for the liberation of Africa from the scourge of apartheid.”

Background
Cuba’s assistance to post-colonial Angola started in 1975, just a few days after the independence celebrations on 11 November (Angola won its independence from Portugal in the aftermath of the Portuguese Revolution of 1974). At the time, three different Angolan political-military movements were struggling for supremacy: the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) and the FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola). The most radical, most popular and best organised of these groups was the MPLA, which had the support of most of the socialist countries. The FNLA was allied with the pro-imperialist Mobutu dictatorship in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), and UNITA was collaborating with the US, white-supremacist South Africa and the representatives of the old colonial order. As Fidel Castro noted at the time: “The Soviet Union and all the countries of Eastern Europe support the MPLA; the revolutionary movements of Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau support the MPLA; the majority of the nonaligned nations support the MPLA. In Angola, the MPLA represents the progressive cause of the world.” (Speech given in Havana to the first contingent of military instructors leaving for Angola, 12 September 1975)

South Africa, faced with the prospect of pro-socialist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, independent states in Angola and Mozambique (plus a rising independence movement in its colony of South West Africa – now Namibia), decided to intervene militarily in Angola on the side of UNITA. The SADF entered Angola from Namibia on 14 October 1975, and the MPLA’s army, FAPLA, was in no position to stop its advance. It was, writes Piero Gleijeses, “a poor man’s war. South of Luanda there were only weak FAPLA units, badly armed and poorly trained. They were strong enough to defeat UNITA, but were no match for the South Africans” (‘Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976′).

South Africa’s invasion, along with the continued threat and provocations by Mobutu’s Zaire, caused Fidel Castro and the leading commanders in Cuba to understand that Angola needed urgent help. In mid-November 1975, several hundred Cuban soldiers boarded two planes for Angola. Over the course of the next 13 years, nearly 400,000 Cubans volunteered in Angola, mostly as soldiers but also as doctors, nurses, teachers and advisers.

With Cuban assistance (and with the help of Soviet advisers and weaponry), the Angolans drove the SADF troops back across the border, and for the next decade or so South Africa focused its efforts in Angola around destabilisation, providing significant financial and logistical support for UNITA, thereby extending a brutal civil war that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Angolan civilians.

The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale
As long as Angola was embroiled in bitter civil war, it was not a major threat to apartheid control of South Africa or Namibia. But in mid-1987, FAPLA – with the help of Soviet and Cuban forces – launched a major offensive against UNITA. This offensive had the potential to finally bring an end to the civil war – an outcome that neither South Africa nor the US could accept. Therefore the SADF intervened again. “By early November”, writes Gleijeses, “the SADF had cornered elite Angolan units in Cuito Cuanavale and was poised to destroy them.”



Ronnie Kasrils notes that the situation “could not have been graver. Cuito could have been overrun then and there by the SADF, changing the strategic situation overnight. The interior of the country would have been opened up to domination by UNITA, with Angola being split in half. This was something Pretoria and [UNITA leader Jonas] Savimbi had been aiming at for years.”

The Cubans moved decisively in support of their African allies. Fidel decided that more Cuban troops must be sent immediately, boosting the total number in Angola to over 50,000.

Cuito Cuanavale was defended by 6,000 Cuban and Angolan troops, using sophisticated Soviet weaponry that had been rushed to the front. The SADF had been convinced that its 9,000 elite troops – in addition to several thousand UNITA fighters – would be able to conquer Cuito and thereby inflict a major defeat on MPLA, and indeed the progressive forces of the whole region. But Cuito held out over the course of four months, in what has been described as the biggest battle on African soil since World War II (Greg Mills and David Williams, Seven Battles that Shaped South Africa, 2006). Kasrils notes: “All the South African attempts to advance were pushed back. Their sophisticated long-range artillery kept bombing day and night. But it didn’t frighten the Angolan-Cuban forces and turned out to be ineffective.”

With the South African stranglehold at Cuito Cuanavale broken by the end of March 1988, the Cuban-Angolan forces launched a major offensive in the south-west of the country. This offensive is what Castro had intended from the start: to tie South Africa down with pitched battles at Cuito (several hundred kilometres from its nearest bases in occupied Namibia) and then launch a ferocious, dynamic attack to drive South Africa out of Angola once and for all, “like a boxer who with his left hand blocks the blow and with his right – strikes“. Castro noted: “While in Cuito Cuanavale the South African troops were bled, to the south-west 40,000 Cuban and 30,000 Angolan troops, supported by some 600 tanks, hundreds of pieces of artillery, a thousand anti-aircraft weapons and the daring MiG-23 units that secured air supremacy advanced towards the Namibian border, ready literally to sweep up the South African forces deployed along that main route.” (Cited in Vladimir Shubin ‘The Hot “Cold War”‘)

Kasrils writes: “The end for the SADF was signaled on June 27 1988. A squadron of MiGs bombed the Ruacana and Calueque installations, cutting the water supply to Ovamboland and its military bases and killing 11 young South African conscripts. A MiG-23 executed a neat victory roll over the Ruacana dam. The war was effectively over.”

The supposedly invincible South African Defence Force had been forced out of Angola. The apartheid regime was left with no choice but to sue for peace.

Turning point for southern Africa
Fidel stated that “the history of Africa will be written as before and after Cuito Cuanavale”. Nelson Mandela is on record as saying that Cuito Cuanavale was “the turning point for the liberation of Africa from the scourge of apartheid”. What made a battle in the Angolan war the major turning point for the wider southern African region?

Isaac Saney explains in his excellent book ‘Cuba: A Revolution in Motion': “The defeat shattered the confidence of the South African military, and with the approach of Cuban forces toward Namibia, Pretoria sought a means by which to extricate their troops ‘without humiliation and alive’. Thus, the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was instrumental in paving the path to negotiations. In December 1988, an agreement was reached between Cuba and Angola on one side and South Africa on the other, which provided for the gradual withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola and the establishment of an independent Namibia”.

So, as part of the negotiation process resulting from the Cuban-Angolan victory, South Africa was forced to set a timetable for withdrawal from Namibia. Namibia became an independent state in March 1990. The victory in Angola also provided important impetus for the anti-apartheid forces within South Africa. In early 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison after 27 long years, the ANC and other liberation organisations were unbanned, and the negotiations towards a free South Africa were begun in earnest. UNITA suffered a series of major military reverses and Angola was able to start pursuing a course of peaceful progress. These were all extraordinary developments that nobody could have predicted a few years’ earlier.

“Cuito Cuanavale changed the military balance in Southern Africa on the side of liberation” (Kasrils).

Not a proxy cold war but an epic battle between the forces of imperialism and the forces of progress

It has been suggested by several western historians that the war in Angola was, at heart, an extension of the so-called Cold War between the two superpowers of the day (the USA and the USSR) with South Africa acting on behalf of the USA and Cuba acting on behalf of the USSR. Such an analysis is wholly refuted by the facts; its only purpose is to place a moral equivalency between imperialism and socialism.

For one thing, Cuba has tended to maintain a high degree of political independence in spite of close relations with the Soviet Union. In Angola, it is well documented that the Soviets were surprised by the sudden arrival – in both 1975 and 1987 – of large numbers of Cuban soldiers. Kasrils writes that the US security services were “surprised to discover that the Soviet Union’s so-called proxy had not even consulted Moscow over Havana’s massive intervention. They were even more taken aback when sophisticated Soviet military equipment was rushed to Angola to supply the Cuban reinforcements.”

Even the arch-reactionary Henry Kissinger, who was among the leading ‘hawks’ in relation to US Angola policy at the time, admitted: “At the time, we thought Castro was operating as a Soviet surrogate. We could not imagine that he would act so provocatively so far from home unless he was pressured by Moscow to repay the Soviet Union for its military and economic support. Evidence now available suggests that the opposite was the case.” (Cited in ‘Conflicting Missions’)

The Soviet Union did provide significant support for the MPLA, sending weapons, funding, training and military advisers to Angola (as documented in detail in Vladimir Shubin’s book ‘The Hot “Cold War”‘). Furthermore, they provided much of the weaponry and planes used by the Cubans. Was this done in the pursuit of cynical geostrategic interests, for the sake of ‘cold war’ one-upmanship? Such a suggestion represents a vicious attack on the history of socialist internationalism. Shubin, former head of the Africa Section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s international department, writes:

“The Soviets did not assist liberation movements and African frontline states only because of the ‘Cold War’. To put it in the language of the day: such actions were regarded as part of the world ‘anti-imperialist struggle’, which was waged by the ‘socialist community’, ‘the national liberation movements’, and the ‘working class of the capitalist countries’… In reality the ‘Cold War’ was not part of our political vocabulary; in fact the term was used in a strictly negative sense. It was considered to be the creation of the ‘warmongers’ and ‘imperialist propaganda’. For us the global struggle was not a battle between the two ‘superpowers’ assisted by their ‘satellites’ and ‘proxies’, but a united fight of the world’s progressive forces against imperialism.”

One need only look at the succession of devastating, predatory wars of imperialist domination since the collapse of the Soviet Union – Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya – to see that, in spite of a period of intense confusion and political degeneration, the USSR played a fundamentally positive role in opposing imperialism and standing with the oppressed nations.

The continuing relevance and necessity of revolutionary internationalism
Why is it important to remember Cuito Cuanavale? Because it represents a pinnacle of revolutionary internationalism, of solidarity between peoples struggling for freedom. As Nelson Mandela said, speaking at a huge rally in Havana in July 1991:

“The Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence, freedom and justice unparalleled for its principled and selfless character… We in Africa are used to being victims of countries wanting to carve up our territory or subvert our sovereignty. It is unparalleled in African history to have another people rise to the defence of one of us.”

Cuba’s actions in Angola were driven by a deep sense of social justice and revolutionary duty. One of the historical forces driving its actions was the depth of African roots in Cuban society. Fidel, speaking shortly after the departure of the first few hundred troops to Angola, explained: “African blood flows freely through our veins. Many of our ancestors came as slaves from Africa to this land. As slaves they struggled a great deal. They fought as members of the Liberating Army of Cuba. We’re brothers and sisters of the people of Africa and we’re ready to fight on their behalf!” This dynamic is reflected in the name that was given to the operation: ‘Carlota’ – in honour of the heroic Afro-Cuban female slave who led an uprising near Matanzas in 1843 and who, upon her capture, was drawn and quartered by Spanish colonial troops.

Raúl Castro pointed out that Cuba had itself benefitted massively from revolutionary international solidarity and thus felt morally compelled to extend the same type of solidarity to others. “We must not forget another deep motivation. Cuba itself had already lived through the beautiful experience of the solidarity of other peoples, especially the people of the Soviet Union, who extended a friendly hand at crucial moments for the survival of the Cuban Revolution. The solidarity, support, and fraternal collaboration that the consistent practice of internationalism brought us at decisive moments created a sincere feeling, a consciousness of our debt to other peoples who might find themselves in similar circumstances.” Fidel emphasises this point: “As we have said before, being internationalists is paying our debt to humanity. Those who are incapable of fighting for others will never be capable of fighting for themselves. And the heroism shown by our forces, by our people in other lands, faraway lands, must also serve to let the imperialists know what awaits them if one day they force us to fight on this land here.”

This type of solidarity, sacrifice, sense of duty and revolutionary morality is a model, a benchmark. This level of unity of the oppressed is exactly what we need in an era when imperialism – desperate to slow its historic decline and to cut down all potential challenges to its hegemony – is projecting its military power around the world, ably assisted by its media dominance.

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Cuba, under relentless attack from an unrivaled hegemon and racist juggernauts backed by the world leading imperial powers, projected great courage and sincerity of purpose, ably assisted by the Soviet Union, fought for the liberation of Africans who have suffered for centuries under colonialism and racial subjugation.

Just a couple of decades ago while Africans were treated like dirt and discriminated against viciously in Africa, denied of franchise or any hint of equality, the Western capitals looked on with snide commentaries and cold laughter in their hearts while they fete on profits of imperialism.

Africa should never forget the role of Cuba and Fidel Castro in the defeat of apartheid and the liberation of Negroes in Southern Africa,the annihilation of Western forces through the defeat of their proxies in Angola, Ethiopia and the actualization of the independence of Namibia.

Tens of thousands of Cubans lost their lives so that Africa should be free. That is depressing.