by Guy Arnold
Fighting in Angola was widespread. ‘By the early 1980s, UNITA forces were entrenched in rural areas across much of southern and central Angola, and were beginning to expand their operations into the north. By the mid-1980s, they had reached the Zaïrean frontier and begun to use Zaïre as a rear base for guerrilla activities in northern Angola… Following the repeal of the Clark Amendment in July 1985, the United States resumed covert assistance to UNITA, thereby once again establishing a de facto alliance with South Africa.’9 The MPLA government was undermined because it lacked popular participation, suffered from a dearth of qualified personnel and faced the spread of a US-backed UNITA insurgency and a growing debt burden. Both sides in this long war used increasingly brutal tactics and ‘Savimbi maintained an iron grip on power and brooked no criticism whatever’. On the other hand Forças Armadas Populares de Libertação de Angola (FAPLA) (the People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola) never posed a threat to the government of dos Santos. ‘The common threat posed by UNITA and South Africa may provide part of the explanation. The efficient security services, developed with East German assistance, were doubtless another dissuasive factor. Even more important, the presence of large numbers of Cuban troops in the country until 1991 provided a security shield, not just against UNITA and the South Africans, but against potential internal plotters as well.’10 Oil wealth not only sustained the MPLA government but also reduced the readiness of Western countries, eager for a share in prospecting for future fields, to criticize the government while also reducing its need to depend upon aid.
Oil, indeed, was crucial in setting the parameters of the Angola that would emerge in the 1990s. ‘The economic well-being of the sophisticated elite which ruled Angola after the end of the liberation wars of the 1970s was enhanced throughout the 1980s by the growing supply of crude petroleum. The oil revenue cushioning Luanda from the austerity which the collapse of the colonial economy had inflicted on the countryside was also the economic fuel which made the war particularly ferocious… It can, and perhaps should, be argued that it was oil which kept the severe Angolan civil wars running for 25 years.’11 At the same time, while Washington welcomed destabilizing activities in Angola, ‘corporate America remained keen to do business with Angola, selling aircraft, electronic equipment, computer and oil-drilling technology’. President Reagan prevented the United Nations from restraining South Africa’s frequent incursions into Angola and though these ostensibly were in pursuit of Namibian guerrillas, they were also aimed at Angolan army targets while the US worked through third parties to ensure a continuing supply of weapons reached Savimbi. South Africa, loudly proclaiming its role in resisting the Soviet ‘total onslaught’, was able to use Russian support for the MPLA government as a weapon to play upon US fears of the spread of Communism and so ensure continuing US support for the apartheid state.
By the mid-1980s, therefore, the wars in Angola had become inextricably intertwined with the worldwide confrontation of the Cold War so that, reversing its earlier policy, the US House of Representatives voted in 1986 to provide UNITA with US$15 million in aid. In November 1987 a growing battle developed around the strategic town of Cuito Cuanavale in south-east Angola to which South African forces in support of UNITA were laying siege. By January 1988 about 6,000 South African troops were deployed against 10,000 MPLA, supported by Cubans. The battle became one of the biggest set pieces in Africa since World War II. The South Africans lost air superiority to the Cubans and their force was in danger of being trapped. The battle marked a turning point for the region since it destroyed the myth of South African military invincibility and persuaded Pretoria that it could not dominate the region by military means. In April 1988 the USSR and Cuba agreed to the long-standing US insistence upon ‘linkage’ – that is, the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola as part of a package for Namibian independence. The two sides then held a number of meetings over the remainder of 1988 in London, Brazzaville, Cairo, Geneva and New York to produce an agreement that was signed in New York on 22 December 1988 between Angola, Cuba and South Africa. Under its terms the 50,000 Cuban troops (its numbers had been greatly increased in the last phase of the war) were to be withdrawn over 27 months to July 1991; South Africa was to implement UN Resolution 435 leading to Namibian independence in 1990; and South Africa was to withdraw all its forces from Angola while the ANC, with an estimated 10,000 freedom fighters in the country, was to do the same. This US-brokered agreement excluded any peace between the MPLA government and UNITA. However, an initiative to end the MPLA–UNITA war was mounted by President Mobutu of Zaïre who brought President dos Santos and Jonas Savimbi together on 22 June 1989 at his palace at Gbadolite. But the ‘Gbadolite handshake’ did not work and the war resumed. The US increased its aid to UNITA and by 1990 an estimated 100,000 Angolans had been killed in this war while 900,000 faced famine.
The US approach to the problems of Southern Africa during these years was epitomized by Chester Crocker who had been named Under-Secretary of State for African Affairs in the new Reagan administration. He largely determined US policy in the region. In a speech of August 1981, he said: ‘We are concerned about the influence of the Soviet Union and its surrogates in Africa,’ and he then added that the US needed South Africa’s minerals.12 In November 1982 Crocker remarked that the major purpose of the US policy of ‘constructive engagement’ was ‘to reverse the decline in security and stability of southern Africa which has been under way now since the early and mid-1970s’. Crocker’s top priority was to stop Soviet encroachment in Africa and he spoke of the Soviet Union aiming to thwart goals of shared future prosperity through its surrogates in the region. In this regard he became almost mesmerized by the Cuban presence in Angola. It was Crocker who invented the concept of ‘linkage’ whereby Namibian independence would depend upon the withdrawal of the Cubans from Angola while his policy of ‘constructive engagement’ did not also include any contacts with the ANC or other anti-apartheid groups. However, despite eight years of constructive engagement Crocker was only able to broker the 1988 settlement as a result of two factors out of his control: the first, the military setback suffered by South Africa that convinced Pretoria it could not prevail militarily; and second, the decision of Mikhail Gorbachev to end confrontations with the United States and disengage from Angola.
NAMIBIA
The United Nations had been exerting pressure upon South Africa to quit Namibia ever since its foundation in 1945. Over the years 1978–81, using the Western contact group consisting of the US, Britain, France, West Germany and Canada, the United Nations carried out intense negotiations with South Africa on the basis of Resolution 435, which was passed on 29 September 1978 and called for internationally supervised elections in Namibia (the so-called Waldheim Plan). SWAPO, however, called for an end to the Western mediating role since it saw this as biased in favour of South Africa. In a Security Council debate of 30 April 1981 the Africa group brought to a vote four resolutions each imposing mandatory sanctions against South Africa under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, leading the US, Britain and France to use their vetoes a total of 12 times. Then President Reagan brushed aside the contact group mechanism and adopted the policy of linkage. Subsequently, ‘The Crocker mission was conducted with great skill and tenacity but the premise – linking a Namibian settlement to Cuban withdrawal from Angola – put the cart before the horse and thus inhibited progress until developments in Soviet policy prompted Cuban withdrawal.’13 Linkage of the Cubans to Resolution 435 by the US was of enormous value to South Africa, for up to that time it had not been a South African demand. It ran counter to the policy of the other four on the contact group and was also counter to majority opinion in the Security Council. Thereafter, the US made it the cornerstone of its policy towards Namibia. By the end of 1983 France and Canada had withdrawn from the contact group which then ceased to exist.
In 1984 Angola, South Africa and the US signed the Lusaka Agreement, which established a joint military commission to monito
r the Angola–Namibia border. In 1985, however, South African troops crossed into Angola, claiming to be in pursuit of SWAPO guerrillas. That year South Africa created a Transitional Government of National Unity (TGNU) in Namibia that was widely condemned by the international community, which refused to recognize its validity. In November 1985 the US and Britain vetoed a resolution for mandatory sanctions against South Africa because of its continued occupation of Namibia. By 1986 South Africa admitted to having 35,000 troops in Namibia (75 per cent locally recruited) although SWAPO claimed that South African forces were 100,000 strong. South Africa was mounting a so-called ‘hearts and minds’ campaign in Ovamboland where many atrocities were committed; the South African strategy was to drive a wedge between SWAPO, mainly recruited from the Ovambo, and other smaller ethnic groups. In 1987 the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) resumed attacks on white farms for the first time since 1983. On 20 December 1988, the Security Council established a small mission, UN Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM), to verify Cuban withdrawal from Angola. In January 1989 the Security Council adopted a number of resolutions enabling the process set out in Resolution 435 to be activated and approved a budget for the UN Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG), whose personnel began to arrive in Namibia. There was a brief and bloody setback in April 1989 when hundreds of SWAPO fighters infiltrated across the Angolan border to establish bases in Namibia during the transitional period. They suffered very heavy casualties at the hands of the South African forces and fighting continued into May before the South African forces returned to barracks. On 6 June 1989 President de Klerk of South Africa declared an end to apartheid in Namibia and an amnesty for guerrillas returning home from Angola. In November elections supervised by 1,695 UN-trained personnel were held and of 700,000 registered voters more than 90 per cent took part and SWAPO won a clear majority with 57.3 per cent of the votes cast. Constitutional talks were held early in 1990 and were completed in time for independence on 21 March 1990.
MOZAMBIQUE
Mozambique did not possess mineral resources like Angola and at independence its economy was based upon agriculture and fisheries while it depended upon two external factors for a major part of its income: remittances from its workers in South Africa and Rhodesia; and its railways and ports, which served the landlocked countries of the interior. FRELIMO emerged as the only political party at independence and represented the will of the people in a way that the MPLA had never been able to do in Angola. RENAMO (the National Resistance Movement of Mozambique), which did much to devastate the country through the 1980s, was created by white Rhodesia with the sole purpose of destabilizing a potentially dangerous enemy. Even so, FRELIMO managed to maintain a remarkable sense of unity so that it weathered the trauma of Machel’s death in 1986.
At the beginning of the 1980s Mozambique appeared to be making reasonable economic progress although this was something of a delusion for outside the towns FRELIMO’s writ hardly ran as RENAMO became increasingly active. Originally, RENAMO had been the creation of Ken Flower, the head of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) of Rhodesia, who set it up in 1976, using disaffected members of FRELIMO. In 1980 South Africa undertook to finance and support RENAMO. Although at the time of Zimbabwe’s independence RENAMO had been reduced to little more than banditry, it became increasingly active in 1981 (as South Africa provided it with resources) and began to attack transport communications and especially the Beira Corridor which was vital to Zimbabwe. This renewed activity led FRELIMO to recall former commanders and to arm the people of Maputo as the threat posed by RENAMO grew. FRELIMO, though espousing Marxism, was always pragmatic rather than ideological and in 1982 Mozambique began to court the United States and exert pressure upon South Africa to stop supporting RENAMO. In 1983 the US State Department admitted openly that South Africa was providing the bulk of RENAMO’s finances and arms while Chester Crocker suggested that it might be possible to ‘pluck Mozambique from the Soviet orbit’.
President Machel continued the tentative shift to the West in April 1983 when he visited Portugal, France, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia to present his country’s case against South Africa. This softer line towards the West arose in part from necessity and in part as a result of Mozambique’s membership of SADCC whose second top-level meeting of November 1980 had been held in Maputo.
In the years 1980–84, although providing overt support for RENAMO, South Africa also made overtures to Mozambique but, ‘FRELIMO believed that to be truly independent Mozambique had to break away from its economic subjugation to South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal. This objective was supported by current thinking among other Third World countries and among the grouping of non-aligned states that at the time was particularly influential.’ Such an attitude had been encouraged by the precipitate withdrawal of most of the Portuguese in 1975.14 However, a combination of circumstances – drought, failed economic policies and the RENAMO war – forced Machel to agree the Nkomati Accord with South Africa on 16 March 1984. The two countries agreed ‘not to allow their respective territory, territorial waters or air space to be used as a base by another state’s government, foreign military forces, organizations or individuals which plan to prepare to commit acts of violence, terrorism or aggression’ against the other country. What this amounted to in fact was that Mozambique would withdraw its support from the ANC, and South Africa would cease providing support to RENAMO. Subsequently, however, while Mozambique stood by the terms of the Accord South Africa did not. Already in December 1984 Machel accused South Africa of dishonouring its side of the Accord and there was plenty of evidence that it continued to support RENAMO through 1985. In June 1985, at a meeting in Harare between Machel, Mugabe and Nyerere, Zimbabwe and Tanzania agreed to assist Mozambique fight RENAMO, a promise that subsequently led to the stationing of substantial numbers of Zimbabwean troops in Mozambique, especially along the Beira Corridor, and a more limited number of Tanzanians along the railway from Malawi to the Mozambique port of Nacala. The Nkomati Accord represented the high point of South Africa’s policy of destabilization against its neighbours and was seen in Pretoria as a major victory. The Sunday Times said the Accord was the result of ‘diplomacy backed by unchallengeable military superiority’.
Rubbing salt into Mozambique’s wounds the South Africans suggested that their businessmen could revitalize the broken Mozambican economy to prove the advantages of white capitalism over socialism and destroy SADCC in the process. South Africa expected to act as the conduit for any foreign capital destined for Mozambique because it was the ‘natural’ economic centre of the region. This view had already been put to Machel by Margaret Thatcher on his visit to London in October 1983 when she said any British capital investment would be routed through South Africa. The United States and West Germany made the same point.15 It is not clear exactly why South Africa entered into the Nkomati Accord since it did not keep it. Partly, perhaps, through arrogance for it had forced Machel to do what he must have hated doing. And partly, perhaps, it reflected a split in the South African cabinet between the hard-liners who only wished to destabilize the country’s neighbours and the moderates or liberals who harked back to the earlier idea of a constellation of states controlled by Pretoria. Pik Botha called on Western countries to ‘help Mozambique’ with investment routed through South Africa. When the Mozambican Chamber of Commerce sent a delegation to the United States, it found that the Americans would try anything to ensure that their initial investments should go through South Africa and Portugal.16
One result of these complicated relationships was that in 1985 Machel was able to ask Britain’s Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, for military assistance and she felt obliged to comply for several reasons: because Machel had pressured Mugabe into accepting the Lancaster House agreement of 1979; because he had signed the Nkomati Accord; and because on the eve of his visit to Downing Street in September 1985 documents had just been captured by FRELIMO forces when they attacked the RENAMO base at Gorong
osa that proved South Africa had not kept its side of the bargain. As a result a BMATT (British Military Assistance Training Team) was sent to Mozambique in 1986 to help train FRELIMO troops for the war against RENAMO. It was one of the many ironies in the whole Southern African scenario that the Thatcher government should provide military training for the FRELIMO army fighting RENAMO which was supported by apartheid South Africa that Thatcher did all she could to protect. At one level it could be seen as a British attempt to store up credits against the day when apartheid finally collapsed. Britain would have done better to pressure South Africa into abandoning its support for RENAMO.
Following a summit in Malawi between the leaders of Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe in October 1986 that led to the expulsion of RENAMO bases in Malawi, the plane carrying Machel back to Maputo crashed in circumstances that have never been adequately explained and Machel was killed. However, his death did not cause the disintegration of FRELIMO as it might have done and Joaquim Chissano, then Prime Minister, succeeded to the presidency.
The civil war escalated steadily for the rest of the decade and by 1988 one million Mozambicans had fled to become refugees in Malawi (650,000), Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Swaziland. At the same time a further four million people had become displaced inside the country and large districts had become ‘no go’ areas outside government control. The Beira Corridor was always an essential highway for Zimbabwe although it had been partly closed for a time in the early 1980s, though trains could use the line provided they had heavy military escorts. Zimbabwe then committed 3,500 troops to assist the Mozambique government keep the corridor open. South Africa’s strategy was to use RENAMO to close the corridor so as to force Zimbabwe to use transport links to the sea through South Africa. In the mid-1980s massive financial and technical aid for the rehabilitation of the railways (the Beira line from Mutare in Zimbabwe to Beira on the Indian Ocean, and the Limpopo line from Chicualacuala on the Zimbabwe–Mozambique border to Maputo) was provided by Western aid donors through SADCC. At the same time Zimbabwe increased the number of its troops in Mozambique to approximately 10,000 (a fifth of its army) to assist the Mozambique government in guarding the Beira Corridor, the Tete Corridor (linking Malawi through the Tete province of Mozambique to Zimbabwe) and the Limpopo railway in the south. By 1989 the FRELIMO government had entered into peace negotiations with RENAMO, a process that was given a boost when de Klerk delivered his speech of 2 February 1990. At the 1989 FRELIMO party congress Chissano announced the abandonment of Marxism-Leninism so that early in 1990 the US officially recognized that Mozambique was no longer a Marxist state, a precondition for receiving US aid.