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Two South Africans in the Portuguese Wars of Decolonization (1961-1975): It Could Have Been Better, It Could Have Been Worse

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Two South Africans in the Portuguese Wars of Decolonization (1961-1975): It Could Have Been Better, It Could Have Been Worse Two South Africans in the Portuguese Wars of Decolonization (1961-1975): it could have been better, it could have been worse. Bruno Cardoso Reis1 Abstract The two books reviewed in this article offer testimonies by two South Africans with direct experience of the Portuguese Wars of Decolonization. Al Venter is the only foreign war correspondent with direct experience in the field in all three theaters of operations of the Portuguese late colonial wars. Brigadier General van der Waals was the Vice-Consul and de facto military attaché in Luanda from 1970 to 1974. Both books show that South Africa was the foreign power most directly involved in these conflicts and with most vital interests at stake. It has, consequently, every reason to pay the closest possible attention to them. Both books also show that, despite the close cooperation in the field between South Africa and Portugal, especially after 1968, the mainstream South African view of these counter-insurgencies was often very critical of the Portuguese war effort. Keywords South Africa, Portugal, counter-insurgency, Angola, Mozambique Resumo Os dois livros analisados neste artigo oferecem testemunhos escritos por dois sul- africanos com experiência directa das guerras portuguesas de descolonização de 1961-1975. O texto de Al Venter representa o testemunho do único correspondente de guerra estrangeira com experiência directa no terreno dos três teatros de operações das guerras coloniais portuguesas. O outro é da autoria do general de brigada van der Waals, vice-cônsul e adido militar de facto da África do Sul em Luanda no período 1970-1974. Ambos os livros são reveladores do facto de que a África do Sul foi a potência estrangeira com a maior participação directa e mais interesses vitais em jogo nestes conflitos e tinha, consequentemente, todas as razões para lhes prestar a máxima atenção. Ambos os livros também mostram que, apesar da estreita cooperação no terreno entre África do Sul e Portugal, especialmente depois de 1968, o ponto de vista dominante entre os sul-africanos relativamente a estas guerras de contra-guerrilha foi muitas vezes muito crítico do esforço de guerra português. Palavras-chave África do Sul, Portugal, contra-insurreição, Angola, Moçambique 1 ICS - University of Lisbon. E-mail: [email protected] Reis Two South Africans Al J. Venter, Portugal e as Guerrilhas de África - As guerras portuguesas em Angola, Moçambique e Guiné Portuguesa, 1961-1974. Lisbon: Clube do Autor, 2015. Willem S. van der Waals, Guerra e Paz: Portugal/Angola, 1961-1974. Lisbon: Casa das Letras, 2015. The two books reviewed in this article offer testimonies by two South Africans with direct experience of the Portuguese Wars of Decolonization. Al J. Venter is a war correspondent, born in 1938, with decades of experience covering conflicts across Africa and beyond. Venter claims to be the only (foreign?) war correspondent with direct experience in the field of all three theaters of operations of the Portuguese late colonial wars: Angola (1961-1975), Guinea-Bissau (1963-1974) and Mozambique (1964-1974). He penned the almost six hundred-page-long Portugal e as Guerrilhas de África covering these three late colonial counter-insurgencies. Brigadier General Willem S. van der Waals is a military officer with decades of personal involvement with Angola both before and after independence. More specifically, van der Waals was Vice-Consul and de facto military attaché at the South African Consulate in Luanda from 1970 to 1974. Van der Waals’ book Guerra e Paz: Portugal/Angola, 1961-1974 is based on his official reports from Luanda and access to other documents in the South African military archives, even if unfortunately these are not quoted or properly referenced. Both authors are therefore part of a small group of South Africans with deep knowledge of the former Portuguese colonies who were influential in shaping the way these wars were perceived in South Africa. Not surprisingly both authors have known each other for decades, and, in fact Al Venter’s Ashanti Press published the first edition of van der Waals’ book in English in 1993 with the title Portugal's War in Angola 1961-1974. The authors also make references to, and use, each other’s material – namely photos – in their respective books, and therefore, not surprisingly, they provide a broadly similar picture of these wars, albeit with some differences in their approaches and writing styles. Regardless of the specificities, both books show that South Africa was the foreign power with the most direct involvement and the most vital interests at stake in these conflicts and had every reason to pay the closest possible attention to them. Both books also show, perhaps to the surprise of some, that, despite the close cooperation in the field between South Africa and Portugal, especially after 1968, the mainstream South African view of these counter-insurgencies was often very critical of the e-JPH, Vol. 14, number 2, December 2016 94 Reis Two South Africans Portuguese war effort. They also reveal significant gaps in their knowledge both about metropolitan Portugal and its colonial history. The two books are at their strongest when providing a record of their author’s direct experiences of the Portuguese counter-insurgency campaign in Angola, and also, in the case of al Venter, of the campaigns in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. Unfortunately, van der Waals, in particular, opted to include a very long introduction explaining the context of the conflicts. This might be justified in the original version of these books, given the limited knowledge of English-language readers about the context of these late colonial conflicts, as well as about Portuguese colonial history in Africa, but, in the Portuguese translations reviewed here, the introduction should have been significantly shortened. It takes van der Waals one hundred pages to reach the year 1961 when the first late colonial insurgency started in Angola. This means that those looking for a specific section on the role of South Africa in the war in Angola in van der Waal’s book will have to wade through many pages before they get even the first limited piece of information on this subject (van der Waals, pp. 237-238; pp. 342-354), when they are informed that intelligence cooperation in loco started in 1963, and that the broader cooperation only intensified, from 1966 onwards, after the first infiltration of SWAPO nationalist insurgents from Zambia into South African-controlled Namibia, via the South of Angola. Furthermore, the introductory pages about Portuguese colonial history are largely based upon outdated publications. This leads to a number of mistakes or, at the very least, rather questionable statements. For instance, and to start in a period of some relevance for these late colonial counter-insurgencies, van der Waals follows the old (and now largely discredited) official line that the MPLA was founded in 1956 (p. 107). Van der Waals also makes reference to Portugal becoming a member of NATO as a positive factor in the course of the campaigns, but, if this is not a mistranslation, then it is a mistake. Portugal was a founding member of NATO back in 1949, well before 1961. And, more to the point, NATO solidarity was limited and certainly did not extend to the continued provision of significant military equipment for these conflicts overseas, or, in NATO-parlance “out-of- area”. Van der Waals does, in fact, then point out that only France really provided vital equipment to Portugal without any caveats, not least helicopters, which are vital in a counterinsurgency campaign. But this is not because, as van der Waals (p. 241) puts it, “Portugal becoming a member of NATO made the guarantee of military support viable.” Instead, it happened in spite of this, and because of de Gaulle’s pursuit of a more autonomous foreign policy, which led him out of NATO military command structure and e-JPH, Vol. 14, number 2, December 2016 95 Reis Two South Africans led to a rapprochement with Portugal. But perhaps this misperception by van der Waals should be seen primarily as revealing of the extent to which apartheid South African elites felt isolated internationally, even relative to Portugal. Still, the real difficulty in obtaining supplies of vital equipment for Portuguese campaigns overseas from most of the country’s NATO allies, despite attempts to do so as far back as 1957, was in fact a major reason why South African support became increasingly indispensable, and impossible to resist, despite Salazar’s traditional reservations regarding Pretoria’s hegemonic intentions in Southern Africa. Regarding the official Portuguese counter-insurgency guidelines, van der Waals rightly points to the strong influence of French counter-insurgency doctrine. But this was not, as van der Waals claims (pp. 203-04), due to a very large number of Portuguese officers participating in French operations in Algeria – something that France would not allow and Portugal could not afford. Small missions of Portuguese officers were sent to Algeria (and to the École de Guerre in Paris) in the short period between 1959-1961 to learn, emulate, and adapt French counter-insurgency doctrine. The key point is that this was not simply a way for the many to carry out scattered in loco observations, but a deliberate doctrinal emulation and development on the part of a few, very influential, Portuguese officers. Al Venter’s book is more up-to-date in terms of these more generic or contextual references, but it is still not error-free in terms of the wider context of the war, or above resorting to Wikipedia as a reference (p. 95). It is difficult, for instance, to give credit to Venter’s claim (p. 96) that, because as he puts it black Africans fought alongside whites after the initial shock of the bloody 1961 Angolan uprising, this resulted in racial prejudice being rapidly put aside.
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