The SADF in the Border War. Leopold Scholtz
meant that they could intimidate the local population by assassinating local pro-South African headmen and officials almost at will. One of the first victims was the “chief minister” of Ovamboland, Filemon Elifas.[131] “Operating in teams of two,” Eugene de Kock remembered, “they killed members of the Home Guard and Defence Force and local chiefs”.[132] Selective terrorism can be a strong incentive for the locals to support an insurgent force.
The truth is that, by the end of 1977, as Recce member Jack Greeff experienced, “the SADF was losing the war” in SWA.[133] Although the SADF had in excess of 7 000 troops in Ovamboland, against never more than a few hundred SWAPO fighters at any given time,[134] the SADF’s “kill ratio” was not impressive. In the period 1966 to 1977, 363 SWAPO guerrillas were killed in action, compared with 88 security force members[135] – a “kill ratio” of only 4,1 to 1, and hopelessly inadequate in a guerrilla conflict. With an estimated 2 000 to 3 000 South West African exiles being trained by SWAPO in Angola, things were not going to get better either.[136]
A rather humorous story told by Breytenbach illustrates the quandary the South Africans found themselves in by early 1978. A major was giving a briefing to some politicians and generals about the situation in the operational area:
So the major picked up his six-foot pointer, walked to the almost blank wall map which was meant to depict the “enemy situation”. It covered the whole of Cunene province, in Angola, and all of Ovamboland south of the cutline.
Tentatively he pointed to an insignificant little spot in western Ovambo. “Generals, gentlemen,” he said. “This is Ongulumbashe, a former ‘terr’ base that was discovered in 1966, about twelve years ago. Police and paratroopers attacked the place. They shot the hell out of SWAPO and the survivors scattered all over the place.” He swept his pointer over all of the Cunene province and Ovamboland.
“And now we don’t know where the f*ck they are!” He stood his pointer in the corner against the wall and sat down.[137]
Beyond that, South African capabilities were eroded because of an internecine power struggle between the SADF and the SAP for control of the war and the gathering of intelligence. The matter was only rectified when PW Botha succeeded the police-inclined John Vorster as prime minister and had – as Magnus Malan related – “one of the biggest fights I’ve ever had in my life” with the police generals.[138]
However, all of this was about to change. In July 1977, Major General Jannie Geldenhuys was appointed GOC South West Africa Command. His orders were “to keep the insurgency at least on such a level that the constitutional development could take place in an atmosphere of stability and peace”.[139] This would prove to be a tall order indeed, given the rampant SWAPO insurgency and the way in which the Savannah campaign had laid bare fundamental weaknesses in the SADF’s strategy, doctrine, structure and equipment. Nevertheless, if anyone could do it, this “direct and unpretentious” man – “a soldier’s soldier”, as Chester Crocker called him[140] – would be it.
3
The failure of Operation Savannah, together with its political fallout, gave rise to a fundamental rethink within the SADF. The campaign exposed a number of organisational, doctrinal, equipment and strategic deficiencies, which had to be addressed rapidly. In fact, the development of a new operational and tactical doctrine was already well under way, as we will see, but Savannah meant that everything had to be accelerated.
Traditionally since 1910, successive South African governments had sought their country’s security within the bosom of the British Empire, and later the Commonwealth. Thus, in 1914 Prime Minister General Louis Botha entered the First World War on Britain’s side. In the 1930s, Prime Minister General JBM Hertzog fiercely opposed Italy’s occupation of Somalia and Ethiopia, and his successor, General Jan Smuts, entered the Second World War on the side of Britain.
By the late 1950s, however, the international situation had started to change. The colonial powers, especially Britain and France, were withdrawing from Africa, and in 1957 Ghana became the first European colony on the continent to gain independence. Not only was the Commonwealth changing from a mainly white club to one dominated by Third World member states, but South Africa’s apartheid policy elicited so much international opposition that the country became ever more isolated. Internally, the Sharpeville and Langa shootings of 1960 led to widespread riots. For the first time, whites in South Africa had to face the possibility of a black revolt.
This background naturally gave rise to new thinking in the Defence Force too. And so, in 1960, the General Staff for the first time prepared an analysis of South Africa’s altered security situation. The paper identified three threat factors, namely, the ideology of racial equality, the growth of black nationalism and the Soviet Union’s plans for world domination.[1] This was the first time that the USSR and communism were identified as threats to South Africa’s security.
A new security strategy
The SADF accordingly readied itself for both conventional and counterinsurgency warfare. As the 1969 Defence White Paper explained: “Although an unconventional threat already exists in the form of terrorism, the possibility of a conventional attack is not excluded.”[2] This approach was based on a new threat analysis developed by the SADF the previous year. The conventional threats foreseen involved a communist invasion or an invasion under the banner of the UN or the OAU – similar to the Korean War – to wrest SWA from South African control. It was also thought that the Rhodesian question could generate a conventional invasion of the Republic. In the eyes of the SADF strategists, the threat of unconventional war would become acute if the Portuguese colonies and Rhodesia fell.[3] They feared that, if SWA were conquered, the possibility existed that the victors could see such an operation as “just one phase in a campaign to ‘liberate’ the other white areas as well”.[4] The collapse of Portuguese rule in Angola and Mozambique and the failure of Operation Savannah brought the threat much closer to home. It was against this background that South African strategists took a good look at the ideas of the French general André Beaufre (1902–1975).
Beaufre served in Algeria during that territory’s war of independence (1954–1962), and based his ideas on counterrevolutionary strategy on the insights he gained there. Although the French won virtually every tactical encounter with the rebels, Beaufre ascribed their defeat to the fact that they could not win over the hearts and minds of the Algerian people. They could not offer the vision of a better future under French rule than an independent Algeria under the rebels. Therefore, he reasoned, the state’s strategic objective in a counterinsurgency war should be
[t]o deprive the enemy of his trump cards. There are two facets to this; we must first maintain and increase our prestige, not merely by showing we have adequate force available but also by showing the future we hold out has possibilities; secondly by thoroughgoing reforms we must cut the ground from under the feet of the malcontents.[5]
The answer, according to Beaufre, was a “total strategy”, of which the “use of military force is only part of the action. The action is total and it must prepare, assist and exploit the results expected from military operations by suitable operations in the psychological, political, economic and diplomatic fields.”[6]
Beaufre also coined the term “total onslaught”, which was later often misunderstood. He did not mean that the onslaught was total in its intensity, but in its breadth. It was total in the sense that it was waged in all fields of life – military, political, diplomatic, economic, religious, cultural, sporting and so on – which was why a “total onslaught” could be countered only by a “total strategy”. The answering total strategy is also not total in its intensity, but rather refers to an overarching vision and programme, to which all aspects of government policy (including military action) have to be tailored.
Another point, which became relevant in the Border War context, was Beaufre’s discussion of the offensive and defensive approach, where he refined ideas developed by Von Clausewitz.[7] The defensive, Beaufre reasoned, “consists of accepting the enemy initiative and rejecting the