On 18 December, the SA campaign suffered yet another severe blow, white troops were captured by the MPLA/ Cubans.
It wasn't long before they had been flown to Nigeria and later Addis-Ababa and paraded before eager television cameras and thereby the rest of the world.
There would be no more denying by the South Africans that they had troops actually conducting a war in Angola.
Nobody had swallowed that, in the first place, but now there was irrefutable evidence.
Even the mothers, of the SA conscripted teenagers, would now know that their sons were bleeding and shedding blood in Angola.
The US could not openly be seen backing South African, due to its unpopular apartheid policies. The CIA had lost their team they were backing and had just witnessed the fall of Saigon. The Cubans were escalating their involvement to add to the USA nervousness.
There was to be no more open support from that area.
The objectives of Operation Savannah were largely "made up on the way". Many reasons have been given, but its hard to know what the purpose was, or was the purpose never clear from start to finish.
Below is a list of some of the reasons given for the interventions on foreign soil.
- SA wanted to prevent a communist take over of Angola
- SA wanted to prevent a build up of SWAPO in Angola
- UNITA asked for help
- The FNLA and the CIA had asked for help
- SA wanted to win favor with a large power like the USA
- etc.
Their initial excuse had been to protect their interests at the hydro electric dam, there they encountered Cuban troops supposedly for the first time.
They had also been assisting UNITA with training because UNITA was assisting them against SWAPO.
When UNITA was under attack the advisers there saw that UNITA would not survive without help. It was then that armor and troops got more heavily involved deep in Angola and the objectives just snowballed from there.
Some of the plans had been to capture territory in the south for UNITA and let the FNLA, with its CIA backing, take the capital, Luanda.
SA had initially planned to be out of the country before independence in mid-November.
When Luanda could not be reached before independence day and the FNLA were defeated at Quifangondo, UNITA asked for SA to extend its stay, to help it consolidate its gains before the Organisation for African Unity decision on the future of Angola.
Initially, it had appeared that the allied FNLA/Unita forces, supported by SA forces, could have conquered the whole of Angola, but without the FNLA and with the Cubans, pouring in by their thousands, this was becoming less likely.
Dr. Savimbi of UNITA insisted that he was only interested in controlling his traditional area and was determined to reach a settlement with the MPLA. The anti-communist forces maintained an 800km defensive front, in anticipation of an OAU-inspired political solution.
However with the OAU inability to act, South Africa decided to withdraw by January 1976.
In fact that decision had already been taken before the battle of bridge 14. Orders had already been sent not to take the bridge but by the time they arrived at the front the battle had already commenced.
The bloody battles of mid-December, the bloodiest so far, in which many hundreds of lives were taken, we completely unnecessary.
SA had already decided to de-escalate its involvement, not wanting to be sucked into the increasing chaos that was busy enveloping Angola.
It was the start of one of Africa's bloodiest civil wars, which would rage for almost 30 years and cost over half a million lives.
Those bloody December battles clearly demonstrated that this was no longer going to be a walk in the park, as it had been pretty much, from an SA perspective, up till now.
Other posts in this series
The piece of the cold war nobody told you about - Africa's forgotten war
The Air Battles
The SA Fighter Aircraft
The SA Bomber Aircraft
The conflicts deep roots and start
Regional Tensions
Africa's forgotten cold war - Angolan War of Independence.
Africa's forgotten cold war - Mozambican War of Independence.
Africa's forgotten cold war - Rhodesian Bush War
Africa's forgotten cold war - The Angolan War of Independence transitions to the Angolan Civil War
The South African Border War - The start of Operation Savannah and Large scale South African involvement.
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - the wheels start coming off.
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - Battle of Quifangondo
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - Battle of Ebo
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - Battle of Bridge 14
The South African Border War - Operation Savannah - Battle of Luso