Namibia. You will have every resource you need.”
Vega nodded, somewhat reassured. Havana wasn’t ignoring the real world.
Good.
The treaty-mandated withdrawal from Angola had seemed likely to end
Castro’s influence on the continent. One more communist retrenchment in an era already filled with surrender. Leaving Luanda would also have meant abandoning a valuable source of hard currency for Cuba’s hardpressed economy.
His own reasons for intervening in Namibia were less complicated. Vega wanted to hurt South Africa, to wreck its plans. He and his troops had fought Pretoria’s expeditionary forces and Angola-based Unita stooges for years. Each encounter had carried its own grisly price tag in dead and wounded comrades, and none had been decisive. The war in Angola had been a series of pointless battles with no final objective.
Worn-out by years of fruitless skirmishing, Vega had been ready to return home-home to bask in Cuba’s warm Caribbean sun. South Africa’s invasion of
Namibia offered him a chance for a decisive, stand-up fight.
He was ready. Cuba had been fighting in Angola since 1975, so he had a pool of experienced officers, combat veterans who knew how to fight and who knew the conditions in southern Africa.
Vega also knew the risks the South Africans were taking in their drive to seize Namibia quickly. Risks Pretoria’s commanders were willing to take because they didn’t expect to meet competent military opposition. Risks he intended to make them regret.
UMKHONTC) WE SIZWE HEADQUARTERS, LUSAKA,
ZAMBIA
Col. Sese Luthuli fielded yet another frantic phone call. A panicked voice in the receiver said, “This is Jonas. ” At least he had enough sense to use his code name, Luthuli thought.
“I’ve gotten reports from all of my cells. The South Africans are moving in numbers, Colonel! The Gajab River camp has been overrun!”
Luthuli fought the urge to lash out at this man. He knew “Jonas,” an
Ovimbundu tribesman in his thirties with a good record in the struggle.
He had no sense, though, and could not be trusted in combat. This had relegated him to administrative duties, which had now probably saved his life.
The man’s information was hours old. Luthuli had to give him the bad news without panicking him entirely, and quickly. Nobody knew how fast the
Boers were moving.
“Jonas, listen. Find everyone you can and get out of Namibia any way you can. South Africa’s armies are on the move, and we have to abandon all our camps.”
“But comrade, without them our organization will fall apart! Our supplies, our communications-“
“Will have to be rebuilt,” Luthuli interrupted.
“We must save what we can and start over. Headquarters does not think the South Africans will go beyond Namibia’s borders. If you can make it to Angola, or Botswana, you should be safe.”
“But we will lose so much! Shouldn’t we strike at the enemy?”
Inwardly, Luthuli smiled. So there was a little fire in him after all.
“We are, comrade, but that is not your task. You must organize the evacuation, and quickly. We must live to fight on. I must go now. Good luck.”
As he hung up, the colonel heard the voice protesting, asking for instructions. He shrugged. How much direction did a man need to run?
He hoped there would be friendly faces for his men in Botswana and
Angola. Ever since Broken Covenant, foreign support for the ANC had dried up. Money from America and Europe, even weapons from socialist supporters, had stopped
completely. The Namibian training camps had become mere holding pens as they searched for resources. You can indoctrinate a man with words, but they needed more than that to fight the South Africans.
Luthuli felt bad about lying to him, as well. There had been no attempt to strike back at the advancing Boer armies. Umkhonto we Sizwe was a political army, a resistance group. The typical guerrilla cell was armed with a few pistols and rifles and usually had no more than five men. Heavy weapons, such as machine guns and rocket launchers, had limited ammunition and were saved for important targets. When his men moved, they used borrowed civilian transport, or they walked.
Scattered in small groups all over South Africa, the guerrilla cells spent more time dodging Vorster’s security forces than they did planning and executing guerrilla attacks. And those attacks were always carefully scouted, with planning and practicing that normally took days. Umkhonto could no more hurt the massive South African war machine than a small child could fight with a heavyweight boxer. All of his guerrillas, scattered across the country, probably had no more combined fighting power than a battalion of South African troops.
Luthuli looked at the map in his office, at the documents on his desk. The only men he had left were the survivors of the crackdown that had followed
Vorster’s takeover, the result of Broken Covenant. The “reforms” under
Haymans had proceeded just far enough for the ANC to move into the light, for its members to expose themselves. He had argued against it, fought tooth and nail to keep Umkhonto secret and powerful. Now it lay in shards, most of their leaders and half of their fighters rotting in prison.
Luthuli had not given up. He was a realist, though. Umkhonto’s violence was always aimed at political targets, designed to influence leaders at home and world opinion abroad. Mortaring a military base, bombing a railway station, even a careful assassination, were all designed to show the willingness of the African people to struggle, to answer the Boer’s violence with their own.
None of this mattered in wartime. Five people killed by a bomb on a bus could not compare to the casualty lists coming from the front. Any attack his people made now would simply cause them to be lumped in with the other military enemies. The ANC had been overtaken by events.
Even before the Namibian invasion, Luthuli had faced rebuilding a shattered organization, lacking the money or weapons to even maintain it.
He also lacked political support, since the ANC was viewed by many states as the cause of all the troubles. And even if he could rebuild his forces, they would have to be trained and equipped to fight a much more conventional war. Now he had lost the base camps.
It was time to ask for help, to appeal for more than just supplies and cash. He knew that there would be a price to pay, but if Umkhonto did not receive massive assistance soon, it would cease to exist, and the struggle would die with it.
There was only one country he could turn to for support. They had stayed true to their Marxist beginnings. Even though they weren’t as rich as the
Russians, the fires of revolution still burned in Havana.
He picked up the phone.
AUGUST 19-20TH CAPE RIFLES, ON MOTOR ROUTE 1, FIFTY KILOMETERS SOUTH
OF
KEETMANSHOOP
Smoke from the burning village eddied over the highway, adding an acrid tang to air already stained by diesel fumes and the sickly sweet smell of high explosives. Bodies and pieces of bodies were scattered haphazardly through a tangle of collapsed houses and fire-blackened huts. Some of the corpses were in Namibian uniforms but most were not. A few dazed survivors squatted beside the village well, their faces set in rigid masks of mingled horror and grief.
A futile show of resistance by Namibian police had given Maj. Daan
Visser’s armored fighting vehicles and scout cars the only excuse they needed. Just five minutes of machinegun fire and several HE rounds from 76mm cannon had turned the little Namibian settlement into a charnel house. Then
Visser’s men had roared off northward into the late-mo ming light, leaving the battalion’s main column to clear up the mess and secure any prisoners.
Commandant Henrik Kruger shook his head wearily and turned away, trying to concentrate on the developing
