Appeal to Israeli Conscripts

Israeli Conscripts. You have a choice. I explain what I mean in this

Troops in the Townships ... (again)

Troops are back in the townships again. The poor and oppressed will turn on each other now as much as they did in the eighites. They are in pain and want to turn that pain into anger. In the eighties that anger was directed at the system and sellouts and now the anger is directed at foreigners and refugees. It is hust as sad and the poverty and oppression is just as real now as it was then. I wrote some thoughts the the other day about my time as a "troop in the township"

It was perhaps my time in Queenstown in July 1987 that had made me feel intensely that the injustice of apartheid cannot carry on. I was deployed as a detachment leader of a “Buffel” mine proof troop carrier to patrol the streets of Mlungisi Township outside Queenstown. It was cold and miserable. Conditions were terrible. Our unit of conscripts had set up a “strong point” in the centre of Mlungisi Township. The base consisted of a tarpaulin that had been stretched over the remains of a beer hall that had been burned down by an angry mob sometime before we arrived. But we could still smell the dark smell of smoke in the dim interior where we slept at night.
Raw sewerage flowed through the dirty streets of Mlungisi Township. Houses and shacks were overcrowded, poverty was extreme. Diseased children rummaged through piles of refuse at every street corner. I had known and heard of poverty and hardship. As a liberal PFP supporting white family, we had grown up to know that we did not support apartheid. I had seen the inside of Durbanville’s “Morningstar” coloured township where I would visit with Ben van Staaden, a friend and youth leader in the Anglican Church. But to see people living in such conditions in Queenstown; old women walking miles to work, treading through excrement and dog carcasses at 4:30 am with temperatures at -5 degrees….. I could for the first time come close to “feeling” the suffering.
On patrol on a Thursday night, deep in a dark shacky area, my Buffel’s wheel go stuck in a muddy open sewer. It was quarter to one in the morning. We had been on patrol since 7 am and were to have reported back to the strongpoint by 1 am to end our 18 hour long shift. It was very dark and very cold, we were half lost in hostile territory. MK operatives were armed in Mlungisi Township and now we were sitting ducks; our “Buffel” up to its axels in freezing sewer mud.
The exhausted troops set up guard, R4 rifles to the ready. We proceeded to try and dig the vehicle out. By 3 am I was lying front down in the mud scooping handfuls of icy excrement out of the hole that had become the trap for our “Buffel”. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that this is not what I wanted for my life. I knew that this was not what our country was meant to be like and I knew that radical change was inevitable.
It was perhaps “realizations” like this and others that made me sense very intensely that I had to in some way be part of a force for change against apartheid, against oppression and against an unsustainable political situation. So, back at the University of Port Elizabeth, I was a military veteran in support of the “End Conscription Campaign”, which was banned with other UDF structures in the beginning of 1989. I was receiving call-ups every varsity holidays. By law, I was still required to give another 24 months of my time to military camps as part of the “Citizen Force”. In 1989 or 1990, I joined a small group of potential conscripts who publicly refused to serve in the SADF at an evening press briefing at Rhodes University. We defied the law but were not arrested or jailed.

" Viva la Companeros; Viva la Revolution "

Eldred Boonzaaier found this article. Cuito Cuanavale: A Tribute to Fidel Castro and the African Revolution by Horace Campbell In March 2008, the President of the African National Congress of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, led a high-level delegation of South African parliamentarians to the site of the victory of the forces of liberation at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola. This visit was linked to the numerous ceremonies in Angola to commemorate the victory of Angola, Cuba, and the forces of SWAPO and the ANC over the apartheid army. What was significant was that while the leader of the ANC took this much publicized visit to Angola, the present ANC government has not moved decisively to carry out far more public education on what happened at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988. Thousands of youths in Southern Africa do not know what happened at Cuito Cuanavale and the linkage between the decolonization of Southern Africa and this historic battle. Between October 1987 and June 1988, in one of the fiercest conventional battles fought on African soil, the troops of the South African Defence Forces (SADF) fought pitched tank and artillery battles with the Angolan army (FAPLA) and her Cuban supporters at Cuito Cuanavale. This small base located in Southeastern Angola (in the province of Cuando Cubango) became important in the military history of Africa, for the South African apartheid army, supposedly one of the better equipped armies in Africa, was trapped more than three hundred miles from its bases in Namibia, a territory which it was illegally occupying. Failing to take Cuito Cuanavale with over 9,000 soldiers even after announcing to the world that Cuito Cuanavale had fallen; losing its superiority in the air; and faced with mutinies from the black troops of the press-ganged battalions, the operational command of the SADF broke down and the president P.W. Botha had to fly to the war zone inside Angola. Botha, it was later revealed, had flown in to intervene in a dispute among the South African military high command on whether the apartheid army should use tactical nuclear weapons. Botha decided against the use of nuclear weapons because at that time apartheid South Africa was a pariah state. With Cuban reinforcements, the Angolan fighters withstood major assaults by the South African military on January 23, 1988, February 25, and finally on March 23. The South Africans were repulsed with heavy losses as the Angolan/Cuban forces seized the military initiative. The Angolan army, for the first time since Operation Protea (the code name for the conventional attack by the SADF) in 1981, was able to reoccupy the area of Southern Angola adjacent to the Namibian border. In the space of less than three months the engineering units and construction workers of the Angolan/Cuban forces were able to build two airstrips defended with anti-aircraft weapons to consolidate their recapture of the Southern province of Cunene. Bogged down with their conventional weapons by the terrain and rainy season, the South African army made one desperate attempt to break the encirclement on June 27, 1988. They were once again trounced, with the Angolan pilots in firm control of Angolan airspace. After the June battles, the South Africans asked for peace. Chester Crocker and the US government stepped in to save the face of the humiliated South African army. It was only after this military defeat that the apartheid forces agreed to the resolutions of the United Nations and acceded to the timetable for the independence of Namibia. Within a year the military and political edifice of apartheid crumbled. Nelson Mandela was released twenty months after the South African army retreated in disorder at Tchipa. Warfare and Militarism in the Era of Dying Apartheid It is important that the younger generation is reminded of the depth of the destructive machinations of the apartheid regime in the ten years prior to the battles at Cuito Cuanavale. This reconstruction of apartheid's history is important for a number of reasons. The first reason lies in the fact that South African military writers proclaim that the South Africans were not defeated at Cuito Cuanavale but withdrew in order to support peace and negotiations. Numerous textbooks used by teachers endorse this view. The second reason emanates from the fact that the USA and neo-conservative supporters of apartheid have sought to rewrite the history of military destabilization to argue that Constructive Engagement supported peace and sought to end apartheid. Chester Crocker, the Assistant Secretary of State during the period of Ronald Reagan, has rewritten this period to favor this view in High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood. Thirdly, the so-called security experts who were consultants for the apartheid military have now recast themselves as peace experts and are cheerleaders for the US War on Terror and the proposed Africa Command Center (Africom). It is for these reasons that it is urgent to spell out the varying forms of warfare that were used against the peoples of Africa struggling against apartheid as a crime against humanity. This is necessary so that younger persons can evaluate the new forms of struggle necessary for the present-day liberation struggles in Africa. There was a low-intensity war going on in Mozambique where the Mozambique National Resistance (MNR) -- also known as Renamo -- had been unleashed against the Mozambican society by the apartheid government. In this low-intensity war Renamo efforts were in concert with the economic war being waged by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank against the Mozambique government. The political war financed by the apartheid state sought to decapitate the leadership of FRELIMO. Eventually, this was to lead to the downing of the aircraft carrying Samora Machel in 1986. Joseph Hanlon has documented this period of destabilization in the book, Mozambique: Who Calls the Shots?. Space does not allow for the elaboration of the full extent of the destruction but one of the tasks of the South African parliament should be to declassify the files of apartheid South Africa's destructiveness across the region; military interventions in Lesotho and the Seychelles; attempted coups in Tanzania; and the support of armed elements in Zimbabwe. The South African army also carried out raids in the capitals of Maputo, Harare, and Gaborone and attacked refugees in Swaziland. The relevant Truth and Reconciliation Commission files should be opened. Desmond Tutu has in fact termed this aspect of the TRC as "unfinished business." Twenty years after the battles of Cuito Cuanavale the region of Southern Africa has not recovered from this period of massive social, economic, political, and military dislocations. Yet the foreign policy of the South African state is to promote the same capitalist companies that profited from destabilization. South African corporations now dominate Southern region, except in Angola. Angola in Southern Africa Angola is one of the most resource-rich countries in Africa. In fact Angola remained one of the leading oil producers in Africa throughout the war. It is a society with massive agricultural potential, fisheries resources, and a territory generally under-populated since the time of slavery. The atrocities the Portuguese committed in Angola were so extreme that they proved to be a model for the genocidal Belgian colonialists in neighboring Congo. By 1957 there were three principal liberation movements in Angola. 1. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) -- Linked to the intelligentsia, the educated mulattoes, and the mass of workers in the segregated ghettoes of Luanda. 2. UPA/FLNA -- The attempt by sections of the Kongolese aristocracy to link up with the rebelling masses working on the coffee plantations of the Northwestern regions adjacent to Zaire. Holden Roberto wanted to link the claims of Kongolese Kingdom to the struggle. At the All African Peoples Conference in Ghana in 1958 Holden Roberto was warned that an anti-colonial movement cannot be based on ethnic groups, so it changed its name and called itself Front for the Liberation of Angola (FLNA). 3. The Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) -- formed by Jonas Savimbi who had been the foreign minister of FLNA. In 1966, Savimbi accused the FLNA of 'tribalism' and broke away arguing that that the leader of FLNA was subservient to Mobutu and was financed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the USA. Twenty years after Cuito Cuanavale the origins and outlook of these movements remain confused in so far as mainstream intellectuals seek to place an ethnic label on the origins of these movements. This intellectual culture holds that the MPLA had their base among the Mbundu, the FLNA among the Kongo, and the UNITA among the Ovimbundu. John Marcum's work on the Angolan Revolution started this original falsehood and this distortion continues to surface in the literature on the decolonization of Angola. It is now an article of faith among some Angolan intellectuals that Jonas Savimbi represented the Ovimbundu, despite his clear alliance with the destructive apartheid army. The First Defeat of the Apartheid Army Once Portuguese fascism collapsed in April 1974, the forces of US imperialism and the army of apartheid had to come out in full force if they were to perpetuate external control over Angola. The apartheid South African army intervened militarily in 1975 to stop the MPLA from coming to power after the poor of Sambizanga routed the FLNA forces allied with the army of Mobutu. At this point, the Angolans invited the Cubans to help defeat the invading apartheid, the Zairian army regulars, and the mercenaries employed by the CIA. This history is well documented by John Stockwell's In Search of Enemies. More recently, in the USA, the scholar Pierro Gleijeses documented the history of Cuban involvement in the war of 1975-1976 in the book Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976. Militarily, the South African Army was defeated in the battlefield in 1975/76. Politically, the apartheid regime was further isolated in the international arena. Diplomatically, Nigeria mobilized the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to resist the pressure from the USA to support apartheid's proxy forces. In response, the President of Nigeria, Murtala Mohammed, was assassinated. Stages of the War: 1976-1980 The assassination of Murtala Mohammed and the alliance between the European countries, the USA, and the apartheid state ensured that the struggle against apartheid became continental if not global. After the Soweto uprisings in 1976 the racist South African leaders were on the defensive politically and diplomatically. This was the period of the massive military build up in Namibia. The character of the war against South West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) changed with the conscription of youths, the buildup of military bases, and raids against SWAPO. Angola had become a rear base for the Namibian struggle as thousands of youths fled to Angola from Namibia. One of the strange twists of the liberation in the region of Southern Africa is the fact that when UNITA had been formed in 1966, it was SWAPO that gave UNITA its first supply of weapons. And after UNITA became an ally of the apartheid state and the apartheid army, Jonas Savimbi and its forces were organized to fight SWAPO and to track down SWAPO leaders in Angola. These military exercises were coordinated with the South African Air Force. One of the most destructive attacks on the refugee camps of SWAPO took place at Kassinga in 1978. In the aftermath of this attack the UN Security Council passed Resolution 435 calling for the withdrawal of the apartheid regime from Namibia. Operation Protea: 1981-1984 From 1981-1988 the racist army occupied the Angolan provinces of Cunene and Cuando Cubango. FAPLA, the Angolan army, was not prepared for this massive invasion of over 11,000 SADF troops with the most sophisticated artillery pieces. The SADF was seeking to perfect a form of air-land battle where the air force carried out operations in conjunction with the army. The provincial capital of Cunene at Ngiva was sacked. Over 100,000 peasants fled their homes. The South African army stole cattle which it carried off to Namibia to feed its troops. They had not withdrawn their troops contrary to the UN Security Council Resolution calling for withdrawal. Within the international community the South African aggression was condemned; but the US government mobilized a group of European states called the contact group (USA, Canada, West Germany, France, and the United Kingdom) to protect the apartheid government internationally. The next major South African invasion was at Cangamba in August 1983. Here UNITA had announced that Cangamba had fallen. But it was the SA air force that destroyed Cangamba and gave UNITA the rubble to showcase it as its victory to pro-western journalists flown in from Zambia and Johannesburg. By 1984 the peoples of the region of Southern Africa were suffering but were prepared to make sacrifices. That independence and sovereignty were linked to ending apartheid was clear, especially in Angola. Within Mozambique and the other frontline states ordinary men and women understood that the expansion of apartheid would have led to an erosion of independence. Reform and Peace-Making Linked to War After the reversals in 1984, the South Africans signed the Nkomati Accord with Mozambique and a peace Accord with Angola. But this peace was simply a ruse to get breathing space in order to seek for more weapons and financial support. In September 1985, FAPLA forces started their drive against Jamba. The South Africans intervened but with the uprisings of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in South Africa, the SADF could not carry the battle and called on the USA for help. It was at this time that the Pentagon supplied Stinger missiles to UNITA. Jonas Savimbi was greeted in the White House by Ronald Reagan and UNITA was granted financial assistance. Hollywood also made a film (Red Scorpion) about the brave struggles against communism in Africa. But UNITA did not have the administrative or military infrastructure for the assistance it was receiving. It was a cover for the assistance to the apartheid forces. In the second term of Ronald Reagan (1984-1988), and with help from the Thatcher government in Britain, support was stepped up for the SADF, UNITA, Mobutu, and the anti-communist forces in Southern Africa. It should be stated here that at this time all African freedom fighters had been deemed terrorists. Both Osama Bin Laden and Jonas Savimbi were at this time allies of the USA in the fight against communism. While Savimbi was called a freedom fighter, Nelson Mandela had been branded a terrorist by the USA and the South Africans. In order to fight terrorism, then, the USA reactivated a military base at Kamina in Zaire to build a northern front in the war against the Angola. The CIA dropped supplies for the South Africans via UNITA. This period is most important in so far as the forces in Washington that supported Jonas Savimbi and Osama Bin Laden are the very same political forces seeking to mobilize the world against today's so called war on terror. 1987 -- Operation Modular Hope The South Africans were emboldened by the financial assistance to UNITA by the Reagan administration. Moreover, the prospects for political change in South Africa seemed clearer with the formation with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the militancy of the United Democratic Front. The maturation of the popular democratic struggles in South Africa was making South Africa ungovernable and apartheid unworkable. It was in this context that the military and economic destabilization intensified. This struggle reinforced the point that military struggles had to be accompanied by popular democratic struggles by non-military forces. Operation Modular was launched with the objective of seizing Menongue (in Angola) to set up a UNITA provisional government so that there could be increased western support. The buildup for the Operation Modular went on for six months. Roads to transport heavy equipment for over 9,000 regular SADF forces were built. The Angolan army (FAPLA) launched a preemptive attack on Jamba and the battle at Lomba River was the preamble to the big battle at Cuito Cuanavale, SADF started the siege in November of 1987. When the apartheid army faced the stiff resistance from the Angolans, the SADF operational command broke down. It required the personal intervention of the President, P.W. Botha, referenced earlier, to go to the front and boost the morale of those fighting, as well as settle the question of whether nuclear tactical weapons could be used. Cuban Intervention Fidel Castro and the Cuban leadership had been following the battles from the start. The bulk of the Cuban forces in Angola had been withdrawn in 1981. Fidel Castro and the Cuban leadership had disagreed with the conventional military formations of the Angolan generals. Some of the Soviet generals who were advising the Angolan army could only think of frontal conventional battles. But Fidel Castro, the Cuban military, and the progressive men and women of Angola understood that defensive warfare was a more intelligent form of warfare than one that solely depended on advancing tanks and artillery. The Cuban leadership argued correctly that if the SADF broke the FAPLA defensive line, the Cuban position at Menongue would be threatened. The Cubans sent reinforcements composed of the best troops, the most sophisticated weapons, and anti-aircraft weapons. It was significant that the anti-aircraft weapons were under the control of women. It was the women who cleared the South African air force from the skies. The Siege of Cuito Cuanavale now involved the Angolans, the Cubans, Swapo, and the ANC all on one side defending African liberation and sovereignty against the SADF, the USA, and UNITA. The Angolan radar defensive positions broke the South African air superiority, Angolan and Cuban MIG 23 pilots proved equal and even superior to their counterparts in the South African Air Force. The SADF was reduced to shelling Cuito Cuanavale with over 20,000 projectiles per day. In major battles in January, February, and March the South Africans failed to take Cuito Cuanavale. By the time of the March attack the battle conditions had begun to turn against the SADF. In the first place, there was a mutiny by the conscripted troops of the South West African Territorial Force (SWATF). Secondly, the heavy equipment was bogged down on the Eastern bank of the Cuito River compounded by the rainy season. Thirdly, and more importantly, without air support the Angolans were equal to and could outgun the South Africans. By the end of March the siege was over and the South Africans were effectively trapped. This was when the South Africans started the talks that would eventually comprise the principal combatants, the Angolans, the Cubans, the South Africans, and the USA. So confident were the Cubans and the Angolans in their repulsing of the South Africans that in the space of two months they built two airfields to consolidate their control of the Southern Provinces. At this time the USA attempted to open a new front in the North with UNITA. The US military carried out exercises called Operation Flintlock to drop supplies for UNITA. Here UNITA clashed with ANC guerrillas. The fate of the South Africans was sealed at Tchipa on June 27, 1988. Here the SADF tried to open a new front to give relief to the troops who were trapped at Cuito Cuanavale. In this decisive battle the FAPLA forces confirmed their air superiority. When the news of the defeat at Calueque dam reached South Africans, more young whites protested the draft in South Africa. The End Conscription Campaign saw an increase in the number of white youths resisting the draft. A major South African newspaper called the battle of Tchipa "a crushing humiliation." The South Africans had two choices: begin talks or surrender. The Siege of Cuito Cuanavale ended after the SADF agreed to withdraw from Namibia. There was still dithering at the diplomatic level up to December 1988 but the Siege of Cuito Cuanavale was the turning point. Subsequent to the negotiations after the defeat of the South Africans, Namibia gained its independence in March 1990. One month earlier the struggles of the South African peoples led to the release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the liberation movements. Between 1990 and 1994 the peoples of South Africa continued the struggle to end white minority rule. Nelson Mandela became the first African President of South Africa in May 1994. The siege of Cuito Cuanavale changed the military balance in Southern Africa on the side of liberation. Lessons for the African Revolution Most school children would have heard the axiom that each generation rewrites its own history. But it does so not merely by giving different answers to old questions of exploitation but by posing entirely different questions. When one understands this, it becomes clear why South African parliamentarians would be traveling to Cuito Cuanavale without encouraging the writing of the texts that can explain to the youths the realities of the battles to end apartheid. The leaders are afraid of this history because they fear that the youths will gain the courage to find new forms of struggle against the new ruling classes across Southern Africa. The absence of the memory of the victories over colonialism and apartheid stems in part from the bankruptcy of the political leaders in most of Southern Africa. Today, African school children are no longer familiar with the stories of the struggles for independence. Instead, the Anglo American and other imperial media sources bombard our youths with stories that stimulate individualism, greed, insecurity, and a longing for the glitz and glamour of western countries. This psychological bombardment has reached such proportions that most of our youth dream of leaving Africa instead of fighting to transform the conditions of exploitation. In Angola the war continued until 2002 when Jonas Savimbi was killed. Since that time Angolans have found peace but the wealth of the country has not been used for the poor and exploited. There is reconstruction in Angola but reconstruction for the establishment of capitalism. All over this region, leaders who had been part of the liberation struggle have become leaders who flaunt their wealth while the majority of the people continue to live in conditions of intense exploitation. Yet, as the crisis of capitalism deepens and the banks fail in North America, the present neo-conservative forces in the US government view Africa as the basis for future exploitation. So the United States plans an Africa Command to fight terrorism. The US military planning and US military relations with Africa can be compared negatively to the role played by the Cubans at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola in 1988. Throughout these celebrations many will remember the words of Fidel Castro, "The history of Africa will be divided into before and after Cuito Cuanavale." Will the Real Revolutionaries Stand Up in Africa Today? It was during the same week that Jacob Zuma led a delegation to Angola that President Gaddafi of Libya noted that "revolutionaries" such as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda should hold on to power because "revolutionaries never retire." Is it possible that leaders such as Mugabe, Museveni, Meles Zenawi and Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma have cheapened the concepts of liberation? Can these leaders be compared to Fidel Castro? These named leaders have cheapened the ideas of African liberation and now stand in the path of the emancipation of the peoples. Within Southern Africa dictatorial practices by leaders such as Mugabe have only been surmounted by the promotion of xenophobia among the working people. Gaddafi supported militarists and masculinists who wreaked havoc all across West Africa in the name of some mythical liberation that enriched a few military entrepreneurs while the masses of the peoples were in constant danger. Similarly, the record of Jacob Zuma brings to the fore questions of patriarchy and masculinity in the African revolutionary process. The challenge in our analysis is to be able to simultaneously celebrate the victory of the Cubans and Angola at Cuito Cuanavale and at the same time break with traditional concepts of revolution, militarism, and masculinity. Leaders such as Jonas Savimbi, Charles Taylor, and Robert Mugabe have made it clear that African liberation must entail a break with militarism, patriarchy, and masculinity. At the same time, imperial domination, plunder, and militarism have asserted themselves as a force of modernization in the world. The challenges of this moment are to our ability of transitioning beyond militarism in Africa. For the battle for African revolution and transformation, in our celebration of the victory at Cuito Cuanavale we remember the sacrifices of our people.

A WAR BY ANY OTHER NAME

(Image Courtesey of Ben Carver: 6SAI - Grahamstown - 1985)

The word "reminisce" just does not see right for me. I dont know what the correct word would be for talking about this war.

What I do know is that, for me, there is an energy in these discussions. At this time, I am able to spend hours writing and talking about the war when I am otherwise exhausted and depleted. There are other things too in my life that attract a similary inner energy, or vibration. I am slowly learning to not be to worried about why these things give me energy when I allocate my time to them, but just to allocate my time to them.

I find I have a preference for reggae music, carpentry, pornographic movies, fishing and road running. All of these I have "energy" for. To be honest I don't know where these preferences have come from or why they come with "energy". They are just there, and I just go with them.

What I find perplexing though, is why so little is spoken of this war. We know more about the battle of Isandlwayo, Custer's Last Stand, the Falklands War, Yon Kippur, 9-11 and "Bloody Sunday", than we do about the Battle of Cuito Cuanavalle. How can this be?

I remember when I came back from Rundu toward the end of 1987. Coming back home was eary,... surreal. It was as if though to me the "real world" was happening back up there, north of here. This big war, this massive operation, day long convoys, body bags lined up on the tarmac, Migage F1's shot down, airforce scrambling 3 times a day, red alert, readiness state High!....guys back from frontline with new browns and the "thousand yard stare"

But when I got back home, to my family, nobody new anything of what was happening. I was simply swept away in the curent of petty, sub-urban realities. Straight into first year at Varsity. Classmates straight out of school. Nobody had heard of Rundu, Grootfontein, Oshakati, Cuito, Operation Modular (remember it was just refered to as the "operational area" it was illegal for the media or anyone to be more specific). I did not feel sorry for myself, or did I in any kind of pain, I was relieved not o have had it as bad as those who were in the thick of the fihting, I was elated to be finished with my time and have it all (almost all) behind me. And for these reasons, there was not really much talk about the war at that time (and I suppose ever since).

But also I think, so little is known of the Angolan Bush War for the reasons that Michalel Graaf points out. ...."History is written by the victors". And in this case neither the National Party or the ANC (the two major powers in SA since the eighties) can claim any stake in the victory. The National Party considered this as a defeat. This is evidenced by the fact that in spite of there massive propoganda machine, they made no attempt to popularise the "history" of the Angolan Bushwar.

What is more suprising though is that as the ANC became dominant, so liitle effort has been made to record and popularise this significant epsiode where conventional forces came head to head in Southern Angola in the late eighties, resulting in a bloody and crushing battle, which lead to a South African withdrawal from Angola, the acceptance of UN resolution 435 and the paving of the way for UNTAG to take control in Namibia. All this, a very significant blow to the forces of Apartheid, ....but no real contribution from MK and the ANC.....

Is it because the ANC cannot claim involvment in this defeat of the Aparthied System that we will pass slowly into the past without being acknowledged by "History"?

37000 feet

Lohatla

9 SANDF soldiers were killed in a training exercise in Lohatla this week. They were part of a 35mm Oerlikon Gun battery. I was a gun commander of a 35mm gun crew in Rundu in 1987. In those days there were also many accidents. The story in that the only "hit" anti aircraft has in many years was a SAAF chopper that was shot down by SADF anti aircraft at Oshakati. I dont know if anybody knows the detail of this story. .. Anyway I feel sorry for those soldiers at Lohatla.

Slegtroep on Tim's Stoep

Cuito Cuanavale Revisited

An interesting article by Piero Gleijeses was featured in the Mail and Gaurdian on 11 July 2007. The article was titled:

Cuito Cuanavale Revisited

The Famous Falklands War

When I was in Buenos Aires in 2003, I visited the Memorial to Argentinian conscripts and professional soldiers who lost their lives in the Falklands war . What interests me about this war, is the general media and public interest generated by the incident. (Or maybe more correctly, the media dis- interest in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale and the Angolan war.) In many ways the Falklands War was a much smaller (and less strategically significant) story than the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. 907 Soldiers died in the

Falklands_war

while at least 4000 troops died at the

Battle_of_Cuito_Cuanavale

At the time, the South African Military PR, tried to sell the battle as a success, history has shown however, that, in fact, this battle set in place a sequence of withdrawals and retreats for apartheid forces in Angola, Namibia and perhaps even South Africa!

This disinterest does not trouble me. I just find it curious!

Metro FM Music Awards and other small things.

Last night Hlubi and I attended the Metro FM music awards here in PE. It’s a glamorous event that awards such titles as, best Kwaito Album, best singer, best Hip-Hop Group etc. It is a celebrity showcase where everybody who wants to make it in the entertainment industry wants to be seen. The event is young and black and very trendy.

I attended the function this year and last year and was really impressed, confused and amazed by this craze and frenzy for celebrity and anything “famous”. There were of course various live music and dance acts and there was great excitement in the air. Fun really… but as I watched those around me being brought to tears and screams because, Ntando, or Kabelo or “Teargas” just stood up or sat down or sipped their Coca Cola, I could not help to realise how difficult it was for me to be caught up in the general mania. I was enjoying myself, but I did not scream, I did not leap out of my chair waving my arms and shouting “I love you Mzekezeke” … Why not…. I began to wonder? Why do I not get excited? Why do I not get emotional? Is it perhaps something that comes from my army days, when we were trained to continue forward while grenades and live ammunition crack about your head. Not to get exited, not to freak out. Made not to show your pain, but to carry on. Shown how to stare bankly forward carrying the dead on your shoulder. Or perhaps it was more than that, My father conscripted into service in South Africa and Namibia in the early sixties, My father’s father a combatant in World War one, where he survived the battle of Delville Wood, my mother’s father served in North Africa, fighting Rommel in World War two…. Perhaps all of these contributing to a sterness, a militarisation of family culture, a suppression of emotion, a recessiveness. A militarisation that is perhaps not noticed growing up in white middle classes because everyone is very similar. But last night at the Metro FM awards those around me were from homes different to the one that I grew up in and they have no difficulty getting excited in the trivia, the small things of life, ….I suppose the things that make life beautiful!

Cuito or bust!

PW Botha died in his bed in Wildernis last night. He lived to the age of ripe old age of 90 and never stopped wagging his finger at people when talking to them. In his day he was a tough man, I am sure, he was not afraid to take on the world or the armed forces of the ANC, Mozambique and Angola…..which brings me back to Rundu in 1987!

The Angolan border with Namibia was a war zone in the eighties, and (I suppose like any other war zone) information available to combatants is restricted to a “need to know” basis. You do “need to know” that you have to wake up at six in the morning and polish your boots, you don’t “need to know” that the South African Defence Force has just launched a major land and air offensive deep into Angola where they will be thoroughly beaten by Angolan and Cuban forces at the

Battle_of_Cuito_Cuanavale

You don’t “need to know” that for now Angolan and Cuban forces have no plan to chase South Africans all the way back to Rundu and bomb the shit out of your chopper tent!

Anyway, we (some of us) sensed that something was happening by virtue of the fact that huge military convoys (taking a full day to pass by) were crossing over into Angola, the runway was piled with body bags as the Puma helicopters came back over the river to base. Mirage F1’s, Impala’s and Pumas’were “scrambling” two or three times a day and coming back all shot up and buggered. We were on “readiness state high”, sitting on the anti aircraft guns, generators running and ammo bins full. Yet in the middle of all this we are all loaded onto troop careers and brought into base and piled into a hall/hanger where we are told to wait for a “surprise”. We had of course, with time, become suspicious of surprises, like the “surprise” of litres and litres of (normally scarce) fresh milk they dish out to drink before forcing you to “leopardcrawl” kilometres through the dust and till you puke all over you’re your overalls.

So, we are sitting in the hot, sweaty hanger and eventually after a long wait we are presented by the Officer Commanding with the President of the Republic, PW Botha. Then we really new there was big shit going on! He spoke to us of how grateful the nation was for the great sacrifice we were making, and how right would persevere over wrong. I can’t remember exactly what he said, but I remember that, without him giving any details, that we were caught up in the middle of something serious and we were all going to die.

Only after returning back to South Africa and the passing of three months until January 1988, did the news eventually hit the newspapers that there had been a major “operation” in southern Angola (

Operation_Modular

). History will remember operation Modular as the great turning point in the Angolan war. South Africans badly beaten at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, retreating and eventually causing the government to concede to the provisions of United Nations resolution 435, opening the way for the “UNTAG” international peacekeeping force and Namibia’s first democratic elections that followed.

Anyhow, that was the last time I was in the same room as PW Botha.

Are you on Drugs ek se?!

The response to this blog has been great. Thanks to everyone who is participating. I have seen that people are reading the blog from all parts of the world! So for those of you from Equador, or Egypt or Amsterdam or Austria, who are viewing "Sletroep" but may not be familiar with Afrikaans ( the de facto official language of the South African Defense Force in the 1980’s) the following translation may be useful:

The term “sleg troep” literally means “bad soldier”. Perhaps more rotten than bad because the inference was that one “sleg” soldier could contaminate an entire group. To be “sleg’ was more than just to be lacking in discipline; it was not conforming. It was not being part of the general group mentality that prevailed.

Behaviour that did not conform, or was not understood, would be attributed to that individual being either on drugs or a “voken Kommunis” or a “voken moffie”. By 1987 in the 10 Anti-Aircraft regiment, there didn’t seem to be much debate amoung the permanent force leadership (and their hangers on) that I was definitely a scary combination of all three these evils. The debate seemed more to revolve around which of my friends (by virtue of association with me) should be categorised as drug adicts, communists or gays .

I maybe brought it on myself by not integrating with those around me. I remember in Rundu, I was on a strange mission. For one, I had decided not to spend any money at all. I was there for three months and we would get a special “danger pay” for being on the border. Everyone used this money to go into the base ( about 10km drive though the bush) and buy beer and sweets and stuff. For me not spending was an exercise in discipline and stoicism.

I was studying two subjects through unisa at the time, so I spent a lot of time reading for my studies and reading other books I had brought along. I listened to reggae music and my mono speaker cassette recorder. I kept a journal and drew pictures in a notebook. This must have been very scary to those around me who were generally more interested in screaming at each other, slapping each other, stealing from each other and just generally being stupid.

I refused to eat meals with the rest of the people in the “section”. I should explain….As anti-aircraft artillery, our mission at Rundu was to defend the airbase from airborne assault. To do this a “battery” consisting of four “sections” was deployed in the bush around the runway. (One section at roughly each of the corners of the runway). Each “section” consisted of two 35 mm Oerlicon anti aircraft guns, connected by cable to a Radar. The radar would be at the centre of the section and the guns about 50 m away from it on each side. So the centre of the “section” was around the radar. This I where the section commander (normally a leutenant) had his tent. Each of the guns had a gun commander. I was a gun commander. An each gun commander would have a team of six or seven “gunners”. So to come back to the eating arrangements.. What would happen is that the section would converge for meals in a tent near the radar, metal trestle table were set out. Food would be driven in from the base in shiny steel warming canisters. ( there was a kitchen at the base) Eating this food would be a continuous shouting match, swearing and spiting and shoving. Completely crazy. I could not stand it!

I ate my food alone at my tent by the gun ramp.

The red star of the revolution is on Godwana’s door!

The red star of the revolution is on Godwana’s door. I don’t know who put it there or what they meant by it. But an eager jazz band plays there on the weekends. As I sat watching the crowd on Sunday, dancing, drinking, having fun and mixing freely I realised that this, in a way, was the society that I had dreamed of in the eighties.

Café Godwana is on the beachfront and Sunday evenings see a crowd of students, jazz lovers, black and white, young and old. Not self conscious or contrived but just comfortably enjoying the space and time together.

In Rundu (on the Angolan border in 1987) I knew that there was something wrong. I was intensely aware that we were in an abnormal situation, an abnormal and distorted society. I sensed clearly then that a new society would emerge, completely different and transformed. I remember thoughts like these playing through my mind,… but mostly then I remember being on a personal quest, brought about perhaps that I felt intensely different from those around me.

After arriving on the plane on that hot, bright white air strip, I came to find that we were in Rundu. We were driven on the back of a Samil 100 troop carrier away from the runway into the bush. Here we found our new home in the bush on the edge of the runway. Chopper tents, under camouflage nets around the 35mm Anti aircraft gun and radar system. Our mission… to protect the runway, the northern most airbase of the South African Defence force from Cuban Mig 23s and other Angolan military aircraft.

Intelligence reports had been received of “high level bombing” that would happen on the evening of the next full moon. Our defences were inadequate, so we spent the next week re-digging bunkers in the soft white sand. Repairing camouflage nets and building sandbag walls around our tents, around the guns around the radar. It was back breaking work, in hot weather, in a foreign country, in a war zone. But in this intense discomfort I came to one of the most significant realisations of my life. A truth that has come with me to this day. Walking up a steep “gun ramp” embankment with a sandbag on my back in the blazing sun; dirty with sand in my teeth, my ears, my hair…. I simply chose at that time not to be angry , frustrated or despondent. I chose at that moment and in that space to be happy. I knew on that day that I had stumbled on a great truth; the truth that happiness is a choice we make for ourselves, that happiness does not come out of circumstance, that happiness is not a product what we do or how we are treated, that happiness is a state of mind that we choose to claim for ourselves.

When the full moon evening came at the end of the week, the night was cool and clear. The "high level" bombers never came. We were not bombed… This too caused me great happiness!

Bad food on Robben Island

Hlubi and I attended a wedding of a over the weekend. The groom, a friend of ours, spent some time on Robben Island during the eighties after being convicted for offenses relating to his involvement in the then banned African National Congress. During the reception he an a number of speakers related their experiences of life on Robben Island. Things on the Island were difficult. Living arrangements, clothing "too big" or "to small", isolation from family and friends, bad food, forced labour, censored mail, sadistic handlers. Some spoke of the deep and lasting friendship that were formed. Freindships that have lasted to this day.

I came to wonder if the differences between their time on Robben Island and the uncomfortable time myself and others spent conscripted into the SADF were in fact all that great? We were “imprisoned”, kept behind four metre high fences with armed guards. We wore over sized overalls, ate bad food, carried out futile tasks......I only wondered about the similarities only for a short while and then realised that the Robben Island experience was of course much more severe. The torture and even death at the hands of the security police, years without ever being allowed to go home, even to bury a parent, lengthy sentences, no pass and no beer!

But it came to me that the in fact the significant difference between the experience of conscription and that of Robben Island, was that the Robben Island hardships can today be related openly as rivetting content of wedding reception speeches and stories. People speak with some pride of their hardships on Robben Island, audiences are spellbound, the stories are interesting, sad and funny (often all at the same time) Robben Islanders were imprisoned for their dedication to the ANC (or other liberation movements) they took selfless stand against the apartheid government, and for this they paid the price of imprisonment of Robben Island. When they speak of their experience, they speak from the moral high ground. They fought on the right side of history.

When last have you heard a white man in his thirties or forties speak publicly about his time in the army. It is almost a taboo. I for one have decided not to conceal my time in the SADF. I am sorry for it (for reasons I have explained before) but I have a story to tell and I insist on being heard. I, in my own way, was a victim of a brutal system. I did not suffer as much as those on Robben Island, I was on the wrong side of history, I know, but I am still pissed off about the whole thing. I am angry for those two years that were taken away from me, two years of wishing every day that it would all just end that I could go on with my life, two years of the most small minded, stupid, fascist, PF, dutchman, idiots in your face every day....two years....two years is a long time for a seventeen year old!

PS ..... I am illustrating these blogs with sketches I have found in letters and journals from 1986 and 1987 when I was in the SADF (mostly because I have very few photgraphs from that time)

Sometimes I dream of Rundu

I dreamt about the army again on Friday night. Though it has been twenty years since I went in I, still have dreams about that time. They are not usually truamatic or stressfull. In earlier years there were dreams of being chased by men with guns. But more recently the dream is set in the present day, I am in the army again, and I cant seem to get the message across to those in control that I have already spent my two years and that it is some mistake that I am in the army again, but in the dream I am caught up in the daily things of a conscript and have resigned myself to just waiting out the term....

I have these dreams without having experienced any major trauma or having comitted (personally) any violent acts, but what about those with blood on their hands, or those that saw thier friends die? What kind of dreams are they having at night?

I think it is important to say at this point that though I am apologising for my time in the army in 1986 and 1987, that I dont have any gory details to share, I never shot anyone, beat anyone, I never saw anyone get shot or anyone getting beaten. I was, though, part of a machine that did kill mame, bomb, poison and throw bodies out of aeroplanes! I was just fortunate not to be at the killing end of that machine. I wrote this piece below in 1993 some time after I came out, clearly some stuff still bugging me.

I killed no man

.....so why then these tears ?

Why do I regret that time ?

...why is it stained on my mind....ingrained ?

when I was not shot nor stabbed,

never starved nor overcome by cold,

nor felt bright Napalm burn my skin,

hot shrapnel rip through my throat;

or my blood brother's head burst beside me;

hair, bone, brain spill and splat on my face,

my rifle, my boots....

...And me crying, sobbing,

cowering, clasping, crawling

in that dust ?

I did come pretty close to the war at the end of 1987, when I spent three months on the Agolan border at a base near a Namibian town called Rundu. We were flown up to Rundu from Cape Town in a troup carrier. It was the first time I had flown in a plane. We boarded a c130 at Wingfield on a cold and rainy August day. We flew at altitiude. The c130 is not presurised, so it is noisy inside and very cold, you sit in straps that form a hammock of sorts that hangs from the wall of the plane, icicles form against the metal inside the plane. Eveyone is sitting huddled together, kit on the floor, some afraid, some confused, some throwing up into paper bags.

What is important to explain here is that none of us really new where we were going on that day. We had been told some weeks before to pack our kit and be ready to leave at short notice, and that we would be going into the "operational area" for an unspecified time. (I realise now that the secrecy had to do with intelligence protocols, but no one at the time explains) Then after weeks of rumours and expecting to leave at any momement, the trucks arrive and we are all tumbled off to the airfield.. even the mode of transport is kept secret... we could have gone by train or truck, they never told us that we would fly. The secrecy ofcourse breads a network of rumours, everybody has a brother or an uncle that has told them where we are going, how long we would be there for and what our mission would be.... these rumours are rife and conflicting, you choose to believe what you will, but normally you have a reasonable idea of what is going on.



Eventually we land, very bumby. We come to a standstill, it is dark inside the plane, we clutch our rifles in our hands, a whisper goes around the plane that we have landed in Rundu, (others say we are in Grootfontein) but we dont know if this is good or bad. We have heard the names of these bases in stories told to us... Rundu, Oshakati, Grootfontein, Kutimo Molilo. The rear rampdoor opens and a white searing heat enters the plane. As we scurry out of the plane, we dont know if we are about to be shot at or attacked we look around nervously, checking to see if we should take cover, run or shoot! Everything is scorched intensly white, incredible bright light out of the darkness of the plane, slowly we see that we are on a runway, in a large military base, fuel storage, bunkers tents, offices and streets. it all seems reasonably safe......

kwailawai*: Eat my call up

kwailawai*: Eat my call up

Hi Tim .

Hi Tim .
Thanks for the mail ; it is an interesting and courageous idea .
The T.R.C. Hearings were initially what got me thinking about my time in the S.A.D.F. , but at first my reaction to my own conscience was a self-imposed deniall . Excuses such as how young and naive I was , about whether I had a choice or not , the limit of my involvement , etc. all seemed fairly relevant at the time . Eventually ,
though , I had to admit to myself that I had been on the side of wrong ; I had played an active part in a terrible wrong-doing . By being in the army , I supported apartheid . This I regret , immensely .

James Cranke

Plucked from my mother's breast.

Thanks to all those who responded so positively to the idea of this email and the slegtroep website. It is very encouraging and it seems that the time is right to talk about this part of our History. My story will come in parts perhaps not Chronological but as I remember them.... I hope that this email and the website will not only be my story but the stories of others as well, but if it is only mine thats also OK. My story starts like this......

I received my call up in 1985 while I was in standard 10 at Fairmont High School in Durbanville. My call up was to 10 Anti Aircraft regiment, Youngsfield, Cape Town. At that stage I felt that my options were limited. My family was not in a position to send me to Varsity (delaying the onset of national service). Neither did I believe that I was able to leave the country. I did know at this stage that I was facing a moral dilemma. I knew that by reporting for duty on the specified date that I would be supporting a government and a system that I had come to know was wrong. I did however not have the courage or the conviction to become a conscientious objector and face the six years in prison. Here I must pause to that those that tried to caution me about what I was about to do:

Ben van Staaden
Jo Tyers
Barbara Rowe
Edna Fourie

I remember these voices, and their appeals to me; but, feeling trapped, I reported for duty.

It was a terribly sad day. My mother drove me to the camp. I had a lump in my throat and could hardly hold back the tears. I was left there that day with hundreds of others. I was seventeen years old, but there were some that were younger.

The first week was chaos, Medical examinations, queues for tests, forms to be filled in, kit to be received and then the haircut; down to bare bristles. We were allocated into bungalows. Our lives were controlled by bombardiers ( corporals) mainly conscripts themselves, and generally from the previous year's intake. The treatment received at the hands of our superiors was terrible. From the first moment. Those in control of us were driven by some perverse sadism. A desire to exact pain and suffering, and competing with each other to show who could cause the most suffering among the recruits under their control. The were not allowed to physically beat us and mostly kept to that rule. When the did beat us they new they were doing wrong. They inflicted pain through forced physical exercise, sleep deprivation and psychological abuse.
By the second week we had officially entered the three month period of "basic training". We wore brown overalls, boots and a plastic helmet inner called a "doibie". We went everywhere with our R4 rifles. We spent a month in the bush near cape point, we slept with our rifles in out sleeping bags. There we slept on the ground under our ground sheets; two to a "bivie". I shared a "Bivie" with a guy called Jason Dresser from Kwazulu-Natal.

The focus of our training was drill, physical training, musketry and fieldcraft, but the undercurrent was always one of fear, confusion. I excelled at most of the tasks and exercises, map reading, rifle assembly and target shooting. I was surrounded for the first time in my life with people who were not from my background. Many had not finished school. Most were afrikaans speaking, some farmers, some apprentice train drivers. Some criminals and drug addicts. I had opted as some form of protest not to collaborate with the system while within its belly. (too late!) I opted not to enrol on the Junior Leadership course. I was therefore doing my basics with very ordinary foot soldiers who lacked the ambition, fitness or the schooling to qualify for entering the Junior Leadership School that trained junior commissioned and non-commissioned officers. (standard 10 was one of the minimum requirements of the course) I spent my three months basic traing with this collection of fine individuals was known as the "Battery". The group of about two hundred was under the control of a major with white hair whose name I cant remember. But our day to day dealings were with a tubby Sergeant Major, black hair, black moustache, vicious, but lacking the severe sadism of some of his underlings.

Our platoon was fortunate to have Clinton Berry as a Bombardier. A lot more civilised than most in control. Bombardier berry was only a year older than me. Younger than some of the guys, but his power was absolute. If the bombardier said sit, you all sat immediately, if he said run you ran immediately. Insubordination was not tolerated at all. When the Bombardier spoke to you, you stood to attention looking straight forward, no expression on your face, arms clipped into your sides, chest out. Many who have not experienced Military training cannot understand how the power of over the trainees can be so absolute. It is absolute. If you are ordered to stand to attention in the blazing sum you will do so. You will rather loose consciousness than disobey the order. I remember a day on an asphalt parade ground. It was hot and we had been drilling for some time. (Marching and moving in formation). We were standing to attention, rigid, eyes forward, chest out. The troop to my left swaggers, sways and falls face down on the tarmac. I remember the cracking sound as his face hit the ground and I remember the view from the corner of my eye of the blood and teeth that lay on the ashphalt as the medics dragged him off...I don't remember his name. it didn't seem significant at the time....

Talk about it!

Some time earlier this year Archbishop Desmond Tutu made a statement about white south africans not having responded adequately to the generosity of black forgiveness for South Africa's apartheid past. He spoke of the fact that there was no mass apology from white south africans, no outpouring of remorse or regret.

I gave this some thought for a while. At first I thought to myself, "lets get over it" why is this man going on about this thing. Then later I thought that perhaps he is right. There is a need for an apology and an acknowledgment of wrong doing.... But how? Through what mechanism? Then I thought let me not bother about the great "mass" of white South Africans. Let me concern myself rather with my own experience and history. Let me make my "full disclosure"; but let me do it in such a way that others may join me if they see fit.

An so this little blog is born. Anyone can post a message here. You are free to "subscribe" so you can receive by email the contributions that may be made to this blog as and when they are made.

So here goes my story....
What troubles my conscience is the time I spent in the South Africa Defence Force from January 1986 to December 1987.
The country was going through great difficulty at that time and the South African Defence Force was a significant piece of state apparatus used to perpetuate and deepen apartheid rule. If the South Africa Defence Force did not exist; apartheid would not have survived as long as it did. South Africa would have been driven out of Angola and Namibia much earlier or would not have been able to establish a presence there in the first place. The ANC and other liberation groups would have organised with far greater freedom in Lesotha, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland. If the South African Defense force did not exist, the State's of emergencies declared in the eighties would not have restarded the mass mobilisation of ordinary people in the towns and cities to the extent that it did.

In short; the South African Defence Force prolonged and expanded the suffering of Millions of South Africans. If the SADF did not exist that suffering would have been less, and if people like me did not serve time in the SADF then it, in itself, would not have existed nor been in a position to cause the suffering it did. And therein lies my culpability. I served in the SADF. I gave of my time. I was trained and went into active service inside and outside the borders of the Republic of South Africa. For this I seek forgiveness.

I can of course not expect forgiveness from anyone if I don't supply the full details of the actions that I would like to see forgiven. I will set them out as best remember them in the blogs that follow. I encourage you to contribute your thoughts, memories, disclosures (and photos) they will be displayed immediatly for the world to see at www.slegtroep.blogspot.com.

Send this email to others who you know will find it intersting or useful.