Download or read book Battle for Cassinga written by Mike McWilliams and published by Africa@War. This book was released on 2019-09-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Battle for Cassinga is the first-hand account by a South African paratrooper who was involved in the 1978 assault on the Angolan headquarters of PLAN, SWAPO's armed wing. The battle, although a resounding success, suffered setbacks which could have proved disastrous to the South Africans had they not maintained the initiative. The improvisations made by Colonel Jan Breytenbach ensured that a flawed jump and inadequate intelligence did not adversely affect the outcome. The unforeseen Soviet-supplied SWAPO anti-aircraft guns used devastatingly in a ground role also threatened to derail the attack. A late appearance by a large Cuban/FAPLA (Angolan regulars) armored column, from the nearby town of Techamutete, threatened to engulf the lightly armed paratrooper force still on the ground. A fierce rearguard action, together with the almost suicidal actions of the South African Air Force pilots, ultimately saved the day. McWilliams examines why the South African government took the political risk in attacking 'Fortress Cassinga' in a cross-border operation that would clearly attract the ire of the world. He studies SWAPO claims that Cassinga was a refugee camp guarded by only a few PLAN soldiers, explaining why Sam Nujoma, the SWAPO leader, had no option but to perpetuate this falsehood. He looks dispassionately at all the players involved: SWAPO/PLAN and their commander Dimo Amaambo who fled the field of battle; the Cuban and FAPLA intervention; and the South African paratroopers, led by Breytenbach, who not only had to combat a determined enemy but also senior South African staff officers. Above all, it is a soldier's tale which pays homage in equal parts to the bravery of the paratroopers and the determination of the PLAN fighters who stood to their guns until annihilated.
Download or read book The Aftermath of the Cassinga Massacre written by Vilho Shigwedha and published by BASLER AFRIKA BIBLIOGRAPHIEN. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It took the former South African Defence Force (SADF) less than four hours to kill more than eight hundred Namibian refugees at Cassinga on May 4, 1978. Thousands of survivors were left with irreparable physical and emotional injuries. The unhealed trauma of Cassinga, a Namibian civilian camp in southern Angola before the massacre, is beyond the worst that the victims of the attack experienced on the ground. Unacceptable layers of pain and suffering continue to grow and multiply as the victims’ grievances and other issues arising out of the aftermath of the massacre have been ignored, particularly following Namibia’s political independence. In this book, the afterlife of the victims’ traumatic memories and their aspiration for justice vis-à-vis the perpetrators’ enjoyment of blanket impunity from prosecution, in spite of their ongoing denial of killing and maiming innocent civilians at Cassinga, are explored with the aim to create public awareness about the unfortunate circumstances of the Cassinga victims.
Download or read book Eagle Strike written by Colonel Jan Breytenbach and published by . This book was released on 2014-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of an audacious, airborne assault, on 4 May 1978, on a SWAPO fortified base containing its military headquarters, logistical support, reserves and training facilities. The assault was supported by a very strong air strike by bombers and fighters as well as by air transport to drop the paratroopers into battle in one of the major, post World War para drops, 250kms deep behind enemy lines, and thus, of a necessity, the deployment of a veritable swarm of helicopters to extract the paratroopers back to safety, this execution of the whole intricate operation through a joint HQ deployed in the field. Unfortunately the subsequent uproar in the international media, based on allegations that this assault was a brutal attack on a refugee camp, did much to detract from the incredible victory the SADF had claimed for the paratroopers and the air force. Was it refugee camp as claimed by the Third World and the communist block, a SWAPO HQ and strategic military establishment as claimed by the RSA government and the SADF, or a mixture of both as claimed by the truth and reconciliation commission were the casualties mostly combatants or were they innocent civilians. This is the only personal account ever written by somebody on the SADF side who 'was actually there' and who was the commander of the paratroopers. It also brings to light much more than this brief outline, especially the dangerous nature of the whole enterprise through personal experiences, by paratroopers and air crews, and how and why it nearly became the most disastrous undertaking of the whole 'bush war' era through uncalled for meddling by an outsider who should not have been there.
Download or read book The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale written by Leopold Scholtz and published by Africa@War. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The battle for the town of Cuito Cuanavale is a myth. The conduct of Operations Modular, Hooper, Packer and Displace by South African and UNITA forces in the 6th Military Region of southeastern Angola initially prevented FAPLA and its allies from occupying the UNITA town of Mavinga. The success achieved in this endeavor then led to the conduct of offensive military operations to force FAPLA and its allies to relinquish their bridgehead over the Cuito River and to redeploy to the western bank at Cuito Cuanavale. The FAPLA deployment and occupation of Cuito Cuanavale, on the western bank of the Cuito River, was never contested militarily by opposing forces during 1987 and 1988.
Download or read book Cold War in Southern Africa written by Sue Onslow and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume examines the complexities of the Cold War in Southern Africa and uses a range of archives to develop a more detailed understanding of the impact of the Cold War environment upon the processes of political change. In the aftermath of European decolonization, the struggle between white minority governments and black liberation movements encouraged both sides to appeal for external support from the two superpower blocs. Cold War in Southern Africa highlights the importance of the global ideological environment on the perceptions and consequent behaviour of the white minority regimes, the Black Nationalist movements, and the newly independent African nationalist governments. Together, they underline the variety of archival sources on the history of Southern Africa in the Cold War and its growing importance in Cold War Studies. This volume brings together a series of essays by leading scholars based on a wide range of sources in the United States, Russia, Cuba, Britain, Zambia and South Africa. By focussing on a range of independent actors, these essays highlight the complexity of the conflict in Southern Africa: a battle of power blocs, of systems and ideas, which intersected with notions and practices of race and class This book will appeal to students of cold war studies, US foreign policy, African politics and International History. Sue Onslow has taught at the London School of Economics since 1994. She is currently a Cold War Studies Fellow in the Cold War Studies Centre/IDEAS
Download or read book Theatres of Violence written by Philip G. Dwyer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Massacres and mass killings have always marked if not shaped the history of the world and as such are subjects of increasing interest among historians. The premise underlying this collection is that massacres were an integral, if not accepted part (until quite recently) of warfare, and that they were often fundamental to the colonizing process in the early modern and modern worlds. Making a deliberate distinction between 'massacre' and 'genocide', the editors call for an entirely separate and new subject under the rubric of 'Massacre Studies', dealing with mass killings that are not genocidal in intent. This volume offers a reflection on the nature of mass killings and extreme violence across regions and across centuries, and brings together a wide range of approaches and case studies.
Download or read book Saaf s Border War written by Peter Baxter and published by Helion. This book was released on 2020-01-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, the SAAF was South Africa's first line of defence against Soviet expansionism in southern Africa. In this account, Peter Baxter examines and brings to life the squadrons and aviators that fought in both counter-insurgency and conventional warfare.
Download or read book Bush War Rhodesia 1966 1980 written by Peter Baxter and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2014-07-19 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been over three decades since the Union Jack was lowered on the colony of Rhodesia, but the bitter and divisive civil war that preceded it has continued to endure as a textbook counterinsurgency campaign fought between a mobile, motivated and highly trained Rhodesian security establishment and two constituted liberations movements motivated, resourced and inspired by the ideals of communist revolution in the third world. A complicated historical process of occupation and colonization set the tone as early as the late 1890s for what would at some point be an inevitable struggle for domination of this small, landlocked nation set in the southern tropics of Africa. The story of the Rhodesian War, or the Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle, is not only an epic of superb military achievement, and revolutionary zeal and fervor, but is the tale of the incompatibility of the races in southern Africa, a clash of politics and ideals and, perhaps more importantly, the ongoing ramifications of the past upon the present, and the social and political scars that a war of such emotional underpinnings as the Rhodesian conflict has had on the modern psyche of Zimbabwe. The Rhodesian War was fought with finely tuned intelligence-gathering and -analysis techniques combined with a fluid and mobile armed response. The practitioners of both have justifiably been celebrated in countless histories, memoirs and campaign analyses, but what has never been attempted has been a concise, balanced and explanatory overview of the war, the military mechanisms and the social and political foundations that defined the crisis. This book does all of that. The Rhodesian War is explained in digestible detail and in a manner that will allow enthusiasts of the elements of that struggle - the iconic exploits of the Rhodesian Light Infantry, the SAS, the Selous Scouts, the Rhodesian African Rifles, the Rhodesia Regiment, among other well-known fighting units - to embrace the wider picture in order to place the various episodes in context
Download or read book National Liberation in Post Colonial Southern Africa written by Christian A. Williams and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Williams traces the South West Africa People's Organization of Namibia across three decades in exile in Tanzania, Zambia, and Angola.
Download or read book Days of the Generals written by Hilton Hamann and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2001 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An explosive, behind-the-scenes story from the South African Generals themselves about covert operations, strategic alliances and full-scale war.
Download or read book Operation Dingo written by J. r. t. Wood and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Startling in its innovation and daringly suicidal, Operation Dingo was not only the Fireforce concept writ large but the prototype for all the major Rhodesian airborne attacks on the external bases of Rhodesian African nationalist insurgents in the neighbouring territories of Mozambique and Zambia until such operations ceased in late 1979.Fireforce as a military concept is a 'vertical envelopment' of the enemy (first practised by SAS paratroopers in Mozambique in 1973), with the 20mm cannon being the principle weapon of attack, mounted in an Alouette III K-Car ('Killer car'), flown by the air force commander, with the army commander on board directing his ground troops deployed from G-Cars (Alouette III troop-carrying gunships and latterly Bell 'Hueys' in 1979) and parachuted from DC-3 Dakotas. In support would be propeller-driven ground-attack aircraft and on call would be Canberra bombers, Hawker Hunter and Vampire jets.On 23 November 1977, the Rhodesian Air Force and 184 SAS and RLI paratroopers attacked 10,000 ZANLA cadres based at 'New Farm', Chimoio, 90 kilometres inside Mozambique. Two days later, the same force attacked 4,000 guerrillas at Tembué, another ZANLA base, over 200 kilometres inside Mozambique, north of Tete on the Zambezi River. Estimates of ZANLA losses vary wildly; however, a figure exceeding 6,000 casualties is realistic. The Rhodesians suffered two dead, eight wounded and lost one aircraft. It would produce the biggest SAS-led external battle of the Rhodesian bush war.
Download or read book Biafra written by Peter Baxter and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2015-01-19 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nigeria was a unique concept in the formation of modern Africa. It began life as a highly lucrative if climatically challenging holding of the Royal Niger Company, a British Chartered Company under the control of Victorian capitalist Sir George Taubman Goldie. It was handed over to indigenous rule in 1960 with the best of intentions and a profound hope on the part of the British Crown that it would become the poster child of successful political transition in Africa. It did not. One of the signature failures of imperial strategists at the turn of the 19th century was to take little if any account of the traditional demographics of the territories and societies that were subdivided, and often joined together, into spheres of foreign influence, later evolving into colonies, and finally into nation states. Many of the signature crises in postcolonial Africa have owed their origins to this very phenomenon: incompatible and mutually antagonistic tribal and ethnic groupings forced to cohabit within the indivisible precincts of political geography. Congo, Rwanda/Burundi, Sudan and many others have suffered ongoing attrition within their borders as historic enmities surge and boil in restless and ongoing violence. Such was the case with Nigeria in the post-independence period. The traditions and practices of the Islamic north and the Christian/Animist south, and even within the multiplicity of ethnic division in the south itself, proved to be impossible to reconcile. The result was an immediate centrifuge away from the center, complicated by the vast infusion of oil revenues and the inevitable explosion of corruption that followed. All of this created the alchemy of civil war and genocide, which erupted into violence in 1967 as the eastern region of Nigeria attempted to secede. The war that followed shocked the conscience of the world, and revealed for the first time the true depth of incompatibility of the four partners in the Nigerian federation. This book traces the early history of Nigeria from inception to civil war, and the complex events that defined the conflict in Biafra, revealing how and why this awful event played out, and the scars that it has since left on the psyche of the disunited federation that has continued to exist in the aftermath.
Download or read book A Far Away War written by Ian Liebenberg and published by AFRICAN SUN MeDIA. This book was released on 2016-01-31 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa?s armed forces invaded Angola in 1975, setting off a war that had consequences for the whole region that are still felt today. A Far-Away War contributes to a wider understanding of this war in Angola and Namibia. The book does not only look at the war from an ?old? South African (Defence Force) perspective, but also gives a voice to participants ?on the other side? ? emphasising the role of the Cubans and Russians. This focus is supplemented by the inclusion of many never-before-published photographs from Cuban and Russian archives, and a comprehensive bibliography.
Download or read book Wings over Ogaden written by Tom Cooper and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2015-04-19 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Ethiopia in disarray following a period of severe internal unrest and the spread of insurgencies in Eritrea and Tigray, Ethiopia and its armed forces should have offered little opposition to well-equipped Somali armed forces which were unleashed to capture Ogaden, in July 1977. However, excellently trained pilots of the Ethiopian Air Force took full advantage of their US-made equipment, primarily their few brand-new Northrop F-5E Tiger II fighter-bombers, to take the fight to their opponents, win air superiority over the battlefield, and thus have their hands free to interdict the Somali supply links to stop the invasion cold. This air victory practically sealed the fate of the Somali juggernaut in Ogaden, especially so once Ethiopia convinced Cuba and the Soviet Bloc to support her instead of Somalia. In a fit of pique, Somalia forced all Soviet advisers to leave the country. Already bitter over similar experiences in Egypt in 1972, Moscow's revenge was designed as a clear message: nobody was to treat her in such fashion again. The USSR subsequently launched an air bridge to Ethiopia, unique and unprecedented in its extension and importance, delivering huge quantities of armament and equipment necessary for the Ethiopians to reconquer Ogaden, and beyond. In turn Somalia asked the USA for help and thus occurred an unprecedented switch of Cold War alliances. This volume details the history and training of both Ethiopian and Somali air forces, their equipment and training, tactics used and kills claimed, against the backdrop of the flow of the Ogaden war. It explains in detail, supported by over 100 contemporary and exclusive photographs, maps and color profiles, how the Ethiopian Air Force won the decisive victory in the air by expertly deploying the F-5Es - unequaled in maneuverability, small size and powerful armament - to practically destroy the Somali Air Force and its MiG-17s and MiG-21s.
Download or read book Fugitive Modernities written by Jessica A. Krug and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the early seventeenth century, Kisama emerged in West Central Africa (present-day Angola) as communities and an identity for those fleeing expanding states and the violence of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The fugitives mounted effective resistance to European colonialism despite—or because of—the absence of centralized authority or a common language. In Fugitive Modernities Jessica A. Krug offers a continent- and century-spanning narrative exploring Kisama's intellectual, political, and social histories. Those who became Kisama forged a transnational reputation for resistance, and by refusing to organize their society around warrior identities, they created viable social and political lives beyond the bounds of states and the ruthless market economy of slavery. Krug follows the idea of Kisama to the Americas, where fugitives in the New Kingdom of Grenada (present-day Colombia) and Brazil used it as a means of articulating politics in fugitive slave communities. By tracing the movement of African ideas, rather than African bodies, Krug models new methods for grappling with politics and the past, while showing how the history of Kisama and its legacy as a global symbol of resistance that has evaded state capture offers essential lessons for those working to build new and just societies.
Download or read book The Cassinga Event written by Annemarie Heywood and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Visions of Freedom written by Piero Gleijeses and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991
