Page 615 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

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ActA
classified as an oceanographic research ship, and in SAN service simply known by her
pennant number, namely A331. But, after serving in the SAN for less than two years, the
ship was decommissioned in 1980. 10

4. Crucial support to special forces
From their bases in the MPLA-controlled Angola, SWAPO continued their campaign
against the SADF in SWA with renewed vigour. In the light of South Africa’s deteriorat-
ing international position, the NP government was reluctant to invade Angola anew, but
when SWAPO started to infiltrate SWA with ever-larger growing groups of guerrillas,
the SADF received permission to launch a number of cross-border operations. Opera-
tion Reindeer (May 1978) was the first of these actions, and included the attack on the
SWAPO base at Cassinga – which led to much controversy. Several other cross-border
operations followed. 11
In due course the Namibian War of Independence became inseparable from the civil
war that raged in Angola from 1975 to 2002; i.e. the war between the MPLA (in par-
ticular its military wing, namely the Forças Armadas Populares de Libertação de An-
gola, FAPLA) and UNITA (and their respective allies; in particular Cuban and Soviet
Bloc advisors and others on the side of FAPLA). The war in Angola was characterised
by counter-insurgency operations, but was also semi-conventional in nature, albeit that
in due course it developed into a full-scale conventional struggle, with the SADF and
UNITA eventually fighting pitched battles against FAPLA, SWAPO’s military wing (the
People’s Liberation Army of Namibia, PLAN), Cuban and Soviet Bloc forces. In August
1981, the SADF launched Operation Protea – a large cross-border raid, in which SWAPO
and its allies suffered huge losses. After this operation, the SADF did not withdraw all
its forces from Angola – small units remained to disrupt SWAPO’s (and its allies’) in-
frastructure and military capabilities. The SADF also launched several other operations,
for example, Operation Daisy (October-November 1981), Operation Phoenix (Febru-
ary 1983) and Operation Askari (December 1983-January 1984). In mid-1987, PLAN
and its allies launched an all-out onslaught in the direction of UNITA’s headquarters at
Jamba. On its own, UNITA would probably not have been able to survive such an attack,
and consequently asked South Africa for assistance. The SADF once again crossed into
Angola in numbers, to fight a conventional war, as in Operation Savannah in 1975-1976.
In Operations Modular, Hooper and Packer, the SADF inflicted heavy casualties on the
forces lined up against UNITA. This included the controversial battles along the Lomba
River, including at Cuito Cuanavale – the outcome of which is still in dispute. 12
The SADF also embarked on clandestine operations “behind enemy lines”. For this
purpose, elite reconnaissance troops (colloquially referred to as “Recces”) and other
Special Forces were used. 1 Reconnaissance Commando (RC) was established in Dur-
ban, with its base on Salisbury Island – which also housed a Naval Base. In the course of
1978, some members of C Group 1RC, were moved to Langebaan in the Western Cape

10 Ibid., pp. 290-293.
11 Scholtz, pp. 33-157.
12 Ibid., pp. 119-398; Steenkamp, pp. 88-177.