Page 309 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo II

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Solution to conflicts or incitement to guerrilla Warfare?
East German military support in Southern Africa and
civilian victims.
The case of Mozambique

KLAUS STorKMANN

This paper which mainly focuses on Mozambique is a small excerpt of this research. It is
more of a report on my current research findings. Nevertheless, I thought it would be useful
to provide a snapshot of the research on the military assistance the East German army pro-
vided for their partners in Southern Africa.
The Southern African nations have seen more than 30 years of belligerent turmoil and
civil war.
Between 1975 and 1992 the civil war in Mozambique alone claimed 900,000 lives and
left 1.3 million refugees and displaced persons behind. These are statistics. But here is the
downside of bare figures: “100 dead people make a tragedy in the news, 100,000 dead people
are mere statistics” as a media critic said. This has always made and still makes it difficult to
draw the attention to wars in Africa and the suffering of the people there.
But what were the actual consequences for the civilian population?
Peasants were driven away, villages were devastated and, thus, entire countries were de-
prived of their livelihood. The World public was hardly paying any attention to rampant
famines.
Anti-personnel mines claim victims among the population up to the present day, thus
preventing the peasants from cultivating large parts of their fields.
20 to 30 years of war have left their mark on the collective mind because of the everyday
occurrence of violence in human relations.
What had the GDR and its army to do with that? Judging from western press reports of
the 1970s and 1980s: a lot.
In April 1980, the cover of the Hamburg weekly “Der Spiegel“ depicted a close-up of four
soldiers of the National People’s Army (NVA) titled “Honecker’s Africa Corps” written in
the style of a Wehrmacht armband. In its cover story behind this eye-catching headline, the
weekly described the military activities of the East German armed forces in the Third World,
in particular on the black continent. Specifically mentioned were the training of Angolans in
the GDR and the training provided by NVA officers in Zambia and Mozambique. According
to the Spiegel in 1980, the NVA also provided training for the ANC, SWAPO and the Patri-
otic Front of Zimbabwe. The NVA instructors made sure that the lower ranks were given the
“correct and full drill […], including ideological indoctrination”. According to the Spiegel,
1,000 NVA advisors were said to be working in Angola and 600 in Mozambique alone .
1
The list of alleged NVA missions in Southern Africa as reported in the West was long.

1 „Wir haben euch Waffen und Brot geschickt“, in: Der Spiegel, 10, 1980, S. 42-61 and title „Honeckers