SOUTH AFRICANS DIG IN TO WIN WAR IN NAMIBIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605300052-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 52
• Publication Date: December 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT _.
i' Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605300052-4
ARTY LE AYPt1-tt~~
ON PA6E.__1~.~-
South Africans
dig in to win
war in Namibia
By Robert J. Rosenthal
Inquirer StaJJ Writer
OSHAKATI, Namibia - The_ South
African arm intelli ence officer
had ints a is ne tne. Every-
thing seemed neat and tidy, too tidy
considering the brutality of the 19-
year war here between South Afri-
can forces and SWAPO, the black
guerrilla group that is seeking inde-
pendence for this country.
The officer stood straight, squash?
ing between thumb and forefinger in
an ashtray one of many cigarettes he
had chain-smoked, and held his
pointer like a club in his other hand.
Any questions? Just one. What hap-
pens when South Africa leaves Na-
mibia, which it has been occupying
illegally since 1966?
The officer laughed. When he
stopped laughing, he said, "Whoever
said anything about leaving?"
For almost two decades, white
South Africa has refused to end its
illegal occupation of Namibia -
known as South-West Africa to the
South Africans. For almost as long,
South African soldiers have led
tribesmen and Bushmen into battle
against the indigenous revolutionar-
ies of SWAPO, the South-West Africa
People's Organization.
How many thousands of civilians
have been killed and maimed, tor-
tured and displaced remains any-
one's guess.
Namibia, the last colony of Africa
still administered by a foreign
power, is South Africa's buffer
against what it sees as Soviet inroads
in southern Africa. The front line
where those concerns are played out
is here; on the northern border area
of the country.
On a recent seven-day, 700?mile trip
along the border that Namibia
shares with Angola and Zambia, it
became clear that the South African
Defense Force (SADF) is digging in,
making improvements and tighten-
ing security at military and air in-
stallations.
More importantly, the South Afri-
can army is going after the "hearts
and minds" of the civilian popula-
tion in a long-term counterinsur-
gency program it has code-named
Operation Backbone. The idea, army
officers made clear, is to take away
popular support from SWAPO, which
is recognized by the United Nations
as the legitimate representative of
Namibians.
So the South Africans are building
roads, clinics and schools. They're
also recruiting, training and arming
small ethnic armies of tribesmen
and Bushmen known as the South-
West Africa Territorial Force
(SWATF), an elite group among a
people with a long history of poverty
and illiteracy.
The territoriai force members are
paid astronomical salaries -about
$300 amonth -compared with the
money their fellow tribesmen earn
as farmers. And, what's more, they
get the same housing and clothing as
white officers. .
"We have won the war militarily
and we can continue to win militari-
~ly_ Now, we must win the war po ttt-
c`al y, al nd-toao at we must wtn t e
peop a an s ow t em we can ro-
tect t em, said the intelli en o --
cer at shakati, lust a few miles from
El;e northern border with Angola.
;The South Africans may be winning the
continuing border war, but they do not
control the border region. At nightfall, they
igtreat into their camps and sprawling bases
replete with suburban-style homes for offi-
cers, swimming pools and sports fields, leav-
iYtg the countryside and towns to SWAPO
guerrillas who cross the border from An-
gola, lay mines, blow up power and tele-
j~one lines and water towers, assassinate
political enemies and spread their propagan-
da just as the South Africans do in the
daytime.
_:By day, the army and territorial force
$~trol the towns and countryside by foot, on
motorcycles and horses, in armored anti?
idine vehicles and in heavy personnel carri-
es that are used to "Bundu bash," smash
their way through heavy bush.
~: - - .
'- It is a classic guerrtlla-war situation, with
tote Sout ru tng e a
glterrillas ruling the night through stealth,
cunning and intimidation. The two rarely
confront one another.
? The army uses its forward military and air
bases as launching pads for raids and strikes
pttto Angola, where SWAPO has its main
Vises and .training areas. Occasionally, as
tiappened in September, the army will attack
Angolan forces that have been fighting the
proSouth African rebels of UNITA.
.: UNITA, the Portuguese acronym for the
rational Union for the Total Independence
of Angola, has been fighting the Soviet-
~acked Marxist government of Angola for 10
,y,,ears. A key issue is the presence of an
+estimated 23,000 to 30,000 Cuban troops in
Angola.
o both the South African government and
llae U.S. government have singled out that
'sue as the main reason for not holding
elections in Namibia as called for by the U.N.
Security Council in 1978.
The Angolan government has acknowl-
edged that it needs the Cuban troops to fight
UNITA, that without the Cubans the Angolan
forces stand a good chance of losing the civil
war.
Now, the U.S. Congress has repealed a law
prohibiting military aid to the rebels. It is
unlikely that in the face of U.S: funded reb-
els, the Angolan government would give up
the Cuban aid.
South African intelligence officers believe
that Namibia Angola and South Africa are
pawns in the big power game between the
SgvieLllnion and the United States Support-
in their theor is the disclosure last month
t at t o an t o .Defense Depart-
went are urging t e eagan a mtnistration
to approve at least $200 million in military
aid to the rebels.
tt out ou t, this pleases the South Afri-
cans, who believe the Soviets want to take
over the entire southern Africa region and
are using SWAPO as one of their tools.
.? "The Angolans and SWAPO are receiving
amore and more sophisticated weapons from
the Soviets," said an army brigadier in the
army intelligence headquarters in Pretoria,
the South African administrative capital.
"We don't see them as a threat to South
Africa itself, but in strategic terms, it means
the Soviets are being given bases in south-
ean Africa. The Angolans are building up a
d2pendence on the Soviets, and as far-
fetched as it may seem, it is in preparation
for an offensive role in the region."
The brigadier said the army did not expect
much help from any outside powers in its
war against SWAPO and what South Africa
terms Soviet expansionism. He said that the
army closely watches the situation in Angola
and that nothing could stop it from protect-
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 - Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605300052-4
~.
ing its interests.
"We hope SWAPO and the Angolans realize
that we will cross the border and strike
them hard whenever we think it is neces-
sary," the brigadier said.
South Africa's involvement in Namibia
goes back to 1920, when it was given a
mandate by the League of Nations to govern
the country, a former German colony. After
World War II, the South Africans refused the
United Nations' request to put the mineral-
rich area -slightly smaller than the com-
binedsize of Texas and Oklahoma -under a
trusteeship. In 1966, the United Nations re-
voked the mandate. The next year SWAPO
began its guerrilla war to free Namibia of
South African forces.
So far, the South Africans have rebuffed
all international ~ pressure to let Namibia
become independent. In the spring, South
African formed an interim government for
she country. No nation has recognized it as
legitimate.
The South Africans have applied their own
concept of time and commitment to Namibia,
which they believe is the key to winning a
revolutionary war. For example, they be-
lieve the United States lost the Vietnam War
because of the time pressures created by
politics in the United States.
"Time is a neutral factor. In the West, time
loses. But here in the African context, time
is meaningless. We can use it as well as the
revolutionary," said an army major as he
stood watching a purple and red sunset over
the Zambezi River in the Caprivi Strip at the
northeastern tip of Namibia.
"We don't have a proper date for independ-
ence in South-West. Both we and SWAPO
want to make the best use of time," the
major said. "The strategists have said that
time is on the side of the revolutionary. Now
we are saying time is on our side. The key is
who makes best use of time, and we are
organizing against the enemy on all fronts,
political; militarily and economically."
Army officers, all of whom are required to
study Marxist revolutionary theory, speak in
revolutionary terms, saying that Chinese
revolutionary leader Mao Tse-lung was right
when he said that power came from the"
barrel of the gun, but that the revolutionary
is powerless if there is no 'one to carry the
gun.
They also say that Mao was correct when
he said the revolutionary must "swim with
the fishes in the sea," but that this fails if the
sea is taken away:
These two concepts lie at the heart of the
SADF counterinsurgency program: winning
the people's trust so that SWAPO has no base
of support among the populace.
In the Caprivi Strip, where SWAPO began
its war against South Africa in 1967, the
army for the time being has won. It has
pacified the population and says there has
not been an incident of terrorism there in
six.years. The army has built ~foads, scliools
and clinics and has trained and armed a
Caprivian army:.
From the Mpacha air base in the Caprivi
Strip, South African jets can reach the capi-
tals. of Zaire, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Zam-
bia and fly over Angola. It gives them a
reach into the heart of black Africa. Because
of its strategic location, intelligence officers
say South Africa will never give it up. They
say SWAPO has already promised the Soviets
use of the Caprivi when they drive the South
Africans out. '
The Caprivi area has fewer than 100,000
people - a relatively uninhabited region in
a country of slightly ,more than a million
people and 11 major ethnic or tribal groups,
including the whites, who number 76,000.
In the other areas of Che border, especially
Ovamboland, home to 500,000 Ovambo, the
war is hot and nasty. The army calls Ovam-
boland "the operations area."
Here a war of terror and atrocities goes on
relentlessly, just as it has for 19 years. The .
army claims it has killed nearly 10,000
SWAPO guerrillas in that time; it says it has
Iost.568 South Africans soldiers.
As is the case in most wars, the civilians,
caught in the middle by unrelenting mili-
tary and political forces, suffer the most.
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605300052-4