TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 2

Subsection 7

60 A year later, in August 1981, the SADF launched Operation Protea, the largest mechanised operation undertaken by the South African military since World War II. Protea was launched in implementation of the decision made in March 1979 to install UNITA as the de facto government of southern Angola. In the initial eighteen-day phase of the operation, the SADF occupied 50 000 square kilometres of Cunene province. Thereafter, parts of the province remained under SADF occupation until 1989, essentially as a support for UNITA which, from January 1982, took effective administrative control of most of the province.

61 The information below is drawn from a variety of sources including files in the collection “Aanvullende Dokumente” (Supplementary Documents) OD 1968 no. 20 held by the military archives.

62 According to this collection, the immediate military objectives of Operation Protea were the destruction of PLAN headquarters at Xangongo and Ngiva and the capture of the extensive caches of equipment held at Ngiva. During the initial 1981 phase of Protea, several towns in Cunene province such as Cahama, Chibemba, Xangongo, Mongua and the provincial capital Ngiva were extensively damaged by bombing and artillery attacks which also caused civilian casualties.

63 After two weeks, all the towns mentioned above, indeed most of the province, had been evacuated. According to the BBC, an estimated 160 000 Angolan civilians were rendered homeless and were forced to flee to sanctuary further north in Lubango. British press reports of the operation spoke of the SADF’s use of heavy artillery for long-range bombardment of towns and villages in combination with SAAF carpet-bombing before ground troops moved in to take control. The result in Cahama was that only four out of forty to fifty buildings in the main street were left intact. Amongst the facilities reportedly destroyed were a hospital, a dispensary and a food distribution centre.²

64 According to press reports, more than 1 200 SWAPO and Angolan Army soldiers were killed in the operation, along with several Soviet advisers. One Russian warrant officer and seventy-nine Angolans were captured. The SADF files give a casualty toll of 746 Angolan Army and eighty-one SWAPO combatants, and four Soviet advisers. The number of civilian deaths is not known to the Commission, but, given the systematic and sustained targeting of civilian centres, it must have been large. The SADF suffered fourteen dead and sixty-four wounded.

65 In terms of civilian casualties, the mass displacement of civilians and the creation of an internal refugee population, as well as the wholesale destruction of towns and socio-economic infrastructure, Operation Protea probably caused more human suffering and physical damage than any other operation in the thirteen-year-long Angola war, resulting in violations of human rights on a vast scale.

66 Protea was followed by Operations Daisy in 1981, Super and Meebos (1982), Phoenix and Askari (1983), Boswilger (1985), Modulêr and Hooper (1987–88), Packer and Displace (1988). Each of these was a smaller-scale version of Sceptic and Protea and resulted in large numbers of casualties. According to the military historian, Colonel CJ Nothling, writing in the 1989 South African Defence Review, over 8 000 ‘terrorists’ (SWAPO and Angolan Army forces) were killed in these campaigns. No figures are cited for civilian deaths. The SADF acknowledged 136 fatalities (three each in Daisy and Super, twenty-nine in Meebos, twenty-seven in Phoenix, twenty-one in Askari and fifty-three in Hooper and Modulêr).

67 The December 1983 Operation Askari was aimed at disrupting PLAN’s logistical infrastructure and its command and control systems through ground and air attacks. In its advance towards SWAPO headquarters near Cuvelai, a major battle developed between South African forces and Angolan Army units aided by two Cuban battalions. According to the SADF, this was the biggest encounter between South African and Angolan Army forces of the entire war: 324 Angolan and Cuban troops and twenty-one South Africans were killed. Another casualty was the town of Cuvelai, which was almost totally destroyed. In 1984, when there was a temporary withdrawal, Angolan authorities re-entered the ruined town and reported that facilities and most buildings had been destroyed while livestock had either been killed or taken to South West Africa. There had been extensive civilian casualties.

68 During Operation Hooper, SADF and Angolan Army forces clashed in a number of large land battles near the town of Cuito Cuanavale. The town was shelled by SADF 155mm artillery for several weeks, and largely destroyed. The SADF failed, however, to capture the town and the stalemate led eventually to negotiations and the signing of the New York Accords in December 1988. These agreements produced an SADF withdrawal from Angola (Operation Displace), the implementation of UN Resolution 435 and the independence of Namibia in March 1990.

69 The above operations all targeted either SWAPO or Angolan Army facilities. In another SADF raid, the South African Air Force (SAAF) attacked an African National Congress (ANC) camp at Nova Catengue on 14 March 1979. Essentially a transit facility, the camp housed large numbers of recent exiles (the 1976 Soweto outflow). While the facility was severely damaged in the raid, casualties amounted to three dead (including one Cuban) and fourteen wounded. Casualties were comparatively low because advance intelligence had been received and the camp had been evacuated.