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The Cassinga Raid THE CASSINGA RAID by EDWARD GEORGE MCGILL ALEXANDER submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the subject HISTORY at the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA SUPERVISOR : PROF G C CUTHBERTSON JOINT SUPERVISOR : DR F A MOUTON JULY 2003 1 STATEMENT I declare that The Cassinga Raid is my own work and that all the sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references. McGILL ALEXANDER Student Number: 0268-336-9 July 2003 2 SUMMARY: THE CASSINGA RAID In 1978 the SADF carried out an airborne assault on Cassinga in Southern Angola. The South Africans claimed that Cassinga was a key SWAPO military headquarters, training camp and logistic base. SWAPO claimed it was a refugee camp and that the approximately 600 people who died in the attack were innocent civilians. The SADF said it had dealt SWAPO a significant military blow; SWAPO said the SADF had carried out a brutal massacre of old people, women and children. This dissertation focuses on the military dimensions of the raid, examining first the military situation in southern Angola and northern Namibia at the time, then looking at Cassinga itself before reviewing the airborne capability of the SADF, considering the decision that was made to launch the attack, describing the planning and preparations, the actual assault, a Cuban counter-attack and the extraction of the South African paratroopers. It concludes with the propaganda claims of both sides before assessing the military significance of the action. Key Terms Cassinga; raids; airborne assault; vertical envelopment; paratroopers; parachute operations; refugees; civilian massacre; insurgency; guerrilla warfare; border war; Sun Tzu; Breytenbach, Jan; Hamaambo, Dimo;Viljoen,Constand; SADF; SWAPO; PLAN. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page Number Summary 2 1. Introduction and Historiography 4 AppendixA : List of Abbreviations 1A-1 2. The Military Situation in Southern Angola and Northern Namibia 24 AppendixA : Map of Southern Angola and Northern Namibia 2A-1 3. The Nature and Defensibility of Cassinga 40 AppendixA : Aerial Photographs of Cassinga 3A-1 B : Photographs inside Cassinga 3B-1 C : Map of MPLA/ Cuban Deployments in Southern Angola 3C-1 4. The SADF’s Airborne Capability 66 AppendixA : Photographs of SAAF Aircraft 4A-1 B : Photographs of SA Army Paratroopers 4B-1 C : SA Army Parachute Forces in April 1978 4C-1 D : SAAF Assets for Airborne Operations in 1978 4D-1 5. The Decision 78 AppendixA : Sketch Map of Cassinga 5A-1 6. Planning and Preparations 94 AppendixA : Army Forces 6A-1 B : Airborne Force 6B-1 C : Air Force Contingent 6C-1 D : Composite Parachute Battalion 6D-1 E : Allocation of Paratroops to Aircraft 6E-1 7. The Airborne Assault 113 Appendix A : Pre and Post-Strike Aerial Photographs 7A-1 B : Oblique Aerial Photographs 7B-1 C : Photographs inside Cassinga 7C-1 8. The Cuban Counter-Attack and Paratrooper Extraction 143 Appendix A : Photographs during Extraction 8A-1 9. The Politics of Propaganda 157 Appendix A : “The Thanksgiving of the Professional.” 9A-1 B : Photographs after the Raid 9B-1 10. Conclusion 180 Bibliography and Source List i 4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND HISTORIOGRAPHY Appendix A: List of Abbreviations IDENTIFICATION OF THE PROBLEM On 4 May 1978 (Ascension Day) the South African Defence Force (SADF) carried out raids on several objectives inside Angola. Most significant of these was a deep penetration airborne assault on the former mining town of Cassinga. The events of that military action have remained, even more than two decades later, embroiled in heated controversy. This controversy is epitomised by the nature and the meaning of opposing remembrance celebrations conducted annually to commemorate those who died at Cassinga. The South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), at the time a liberation movement fighting for Namibia’s independence from white South Africa, has remained unswerving in its propagation of the raid on Cassinga as a heinous atrocity on a refugee camp: a deliberate and brutal massacre of innocent women, children and old people by callous, racist thugs. With Namibian independence in 1989, SWAPO became the new government and 4 May was proclaimed Cassinga Day and declared a public holiday. Annually, this day commemorates the catastrophic loss of life of Namibians during the assault on the town,1 and has come to be a memorial to all Namibians who died in the liberation struggle.2 Other former liberation movements such as South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC) have been vociferous in their support of SWAPO’s commemoration of this day. Predictably, those who carried out the raid have put forward a very different version. Former SADF general officers, South African National Party government officials of the time and proponents of the apartheid regime contended equally vociferously that the raid was a legitimate military attack on a significant military target which was seen as posing a serious threat at that time.3 Every year after the raid the paratroopers of the SADF held a memorial service or parade to commemorate “Cassinga Day” and to honour those paratroopers who fell during the raid. In time, Cassinga Day came to commemorate all fallen SADF paratroopers, even those who had died on other occasions.4 With the formation of the new South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in 1994, the paratroopers continued to celebrate Cassinga Day with a memorial parade every year until this made headlines in 1996 and the Chief of the SANDF was called on to explain such an action while the Minister of 1 Annemarie Heywood, The Cassinga Event, p.5. On the 20th anniversary of the Cassinga raid, Namibia held an official commemoration ceremony in Windhoek at which the Deputy Prime Minister, Hendrik Witbooi, was reported as describing the attack as “brutal, inhuman and uncivilized”, vide “Namibia remembers horror of Cassinga”, Pretoria News, 6 May 1998. 2. Heike Becker, “Remembering Cassinga”, Sister Namibia, Vol 10, No 3, 1998, p. 7. 3 Message sent by the South African government to the United Nations, the text of which was released to the media by the South African Department of Foreign Affairs and was published by numerous South African newspapers on 5 and 6 May 1978. These included the Rand Daily Mail, The Star, The Citizen and the Natal Mercury. 4 The Significance of Cassinga Day, explanatory summary contained in programme for Cassinga Day Parade held by 44 Parachute Brigade: undated, but probably about 1990. The same summary, dated 4 November 1991, is contained in an Information Brochure on 44 Parachute Brigade. 5 Defence apologised to the government and the people of Namibia.5 Still, the paratroopers quietly went on holding their annual low-key commemorations of the event until this was discovered and thwarted by the then Minister of Defence, Joe Modise, in 1998.6 His Deputy, Ronnie Kasrils, was very outspoken in his condemnation of the paratrooper custom.7 However, the Legion of Associated Airborne of the Republic of South Africa (LAARSA), a private association of old paratroopers, stubbornly continued in subsequent years to commemorate Cassinga Day in honour of their fallen comrades.8 The controversy simmered on. Even the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, in its Report, stated that “in human rights terms, the SADF raid on Cassinga, which killed over 600 people, is possibly the single most controversial external operation of the Commission’s mandate period.” 9 In view of the fact that the old SADF is now no more than an historical curiosity and that the paratroopers to whom Cassinga remains significant are a small and dwindling group, the polemic surrounding the raid could be seen as merely academic. The victors of the liberation struggle, whose refrain is now the official voice, appear to have triumphed in their version of the events. Those who espouse the SADF version are largely seen as discredited adherents of a regime based on lies. Further contention could therefore be brushed aside as being irrelevant. And yet, even a quarter of a century after the raid, the subject still cannot be broached without eliciting strong opposing emotions. Seen from the military perspective, it certainly cries out to be broached because the raid holds an undeniable fascination. It is distinctive in several respects in the annals of airborne operations. The size and composition of the force used, the distance and terrain over which the operation was conducted, the location of the objective, the risk involved, the manner in which air support was employed, the Cuban counter-attack, the airborne extraction of the force and the preponderance of citizen soldiers employed all create considerable interest in the raid when studied as a military action. More significantly, the utilisation of paratroops in an essentially strategic and independent role marks the raid as a truly classic airborne operation which reveals a grasp of the potential of the vertical envelopment concept comprehended by only a few military commanders. Similarly, the successful application of the principles of surprise and maximum firepower over such a strategic distance by a force of the size that was used compels the serious student of military strategy to examine the planning and execution of the operation in detail. 5 “Meiring to clarify ‘celebration’ of SADF raid”, The Star, 4 June 1996, and “SA to say sorry celebrating defence force raid”, The Star, 6 June 1996. 6 “Modise squares up to elite army unit”, Pretoria News, 27 May 1998. 7 Address delivered by Ronnie Kasrils at an SA Army Seminar held at the NG Church Synod Centre in Pretoria on Thursday 11 June 1998, during which he referred to the “appalling atrocities” committed by the paratroopers at Cassinga, condemned the commemoration which had been planned by 44 Parachute Brigade for Sunday 3 May that year (but cancelled at the last minute because of his intervention) and threatened dire consequences if such a commemoration was ever planned again.
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