The South African War

 

I’d like to take this space to thank Terence Co for his contributions to this document. His thought-provoking ideas and commentaries helped me to create this rather grim scenario. This characteristic, however, it’s entirely my fault.

 

The South African War permanently altered the course of history. It strained South African political and social life, and led to severe economic, political, social and ecological dislocations that ended with the existence of the country. Also this war holds the dubious distinction of being the first international conflict that saw the use of nuclear weapons. This war also served as the baptism of fire for the newly created League of Nations, who proved its viability as a collective security enforcing organism.

 

 

Origin of the conflict

 

Viewed from a historical perspective, the outbreak of hostilities in 1972 was, in part, just another phase of the old White-Black conflict that had been fuelled by the increasingly rebellious Black population and the resultant repression from the White-dominated central government. Many observers, however, believe that South Africa’s Prime Minister Pieter Vorster’s decision to invade the Portuguese colony of Mozambique was a personal miscalculation based on ambition and a sense of vulnerability. The White elite, despite having made significant strides in forging a South African nation-state, feared that the Black guerrillas’ secure havens in the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique would threaten South Africa's delicate Black/White balance and would exploit South Africa's geostrategic vulnerabilities –South Africa's long and hardly defensible borders, for example.

 

The South African War (also known as the League-South Africa War) was multifaceted and included racial schisms and political differences. Conflicts contributing to the outbreak of hostilities ranged from centuries-old Black-versus-White ethnic disputes, to the insecurity caused by the African National Congress and Inkhata Zulu guerrillas operating in South Africa’s northern neighbours, to the necessity to provoke an external incident to deviate South African public opinion from internal problems. Above all, South Africa launched the war in an effort to consolidate its rising power in southern Africa and gain the resources they needed to circumvent the crushing economic sanctions approved by the League of Nations’ Council and the United States.

 

South Africa’s position in the world stage change sharply after the Nationalist Party was elected in 1948 and not long after implemented "apartheid." By this policy, all the population groups classified by the new South African government as "non European" would be governed separately and would be treated as inferior in every way to the White population. This policy bring the condemnation of the British Commonwealth and most of the other nations; and after the 1955 Simonstown Conference, South Africa abandoned the British Commonwealth.

 

Although rebuffed by the Commonwealth, South Africa’s senior leadership were convinced their nation’s geostrategic position, wealth of critical materials, and staunch opposition to Black pro-independence groups would gain it favour—and military support—from the European Great Powers. The party leaders believed these attributes would also allow them to continue their domestic policy of apartheid and maintain a favourable balance of power in the region.

 

What they hadn’t counted on was the dual challenge of rising internal opposition by the black majority (led by the African National Congress or ANC) and international ostracism caused by its apartheid policy. As the ANC gained power and influence, the government increased the severity of its responses and lost international support. Incidents such as the March 1965 Sharpeville massacre of 109 unarmed protesters significantly increased international opposition to apartheid, and in July 1965, the League of Nations’ members approved a total embargo against South African exportations. At first, the South African government compensated the lost European and Asiatic markets with the sales to US markets, but when domestic opposition forced the US government to dictate restrictions to South African trade, the until then growing South African economy first stagnated, and then commenced a slightly but steady decline.

 

The 1960s added another challenge to the Nationalist Party: eroding regional stability. The formation of nationalist and Marxist-Leninist guerrillas in Portugal’s colonies in southern Africa, which were specially virulent in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, created a security threat along South Africa’s north-eastern border, where FRELIMO (Frente de Liberaçaõ do Moçambique) cooperated openly with the ANC and later with the Inkhata Zulu forces operating in South Africa.

 

The Mozambique experience highlighted what South Africa regarded as lukewarm German support for its battle against communism. South Africa had counted with the tacit support of the Reichkanzelei and the tangible support of German military training, war materiel and funding. However, Germany was forced to terminate this overt support when the League Council approved sanctions against South Africa. Even when Germany kept assisting South Africa through intermediates, providing weapons, funds, and covert trading, South Africa could not sustain its economy without enough foreign trade.

 

As international pressure increased over its apartheid policies, the Nationalist Party put forth the concept that South Africa faced a “total onslaught.” The concept was based on four points: “the sense of an all-out threat to South Africa’s survival; a belief that its enemies are directed and supported by the League of Nations; a feeling of having been abandoned by everybody; and a fear of massive conventional attack.” From South Africa’s perspective it was alone, ill-equipped to meet regional security concerns, and being unfairly punished by the League for its domestic policies despite its staunch anti-Communist and anti-independency stand on the African continent.

 

 

The “Total National Strategy”

 

The South African response to the challenges of a “total onslaught” was the development of a “Total National Strategy.” It defined a roadmap for the use of political, military, diplomatic, and economic tools for a long-term effort to develop effective responses to internal and external national security threats. The strategy resulted in a doubling in the size of the SADF and the tripling of its defence budget over the latter half of the 1960s.

 

In January 1972, the white government's radio delivered a commentary on "the malignant presence" of "terrorism" in neighbouring states and said "there's only one answer now, and that's striking at terrorists wherever they exist." South Africa and Portugal had engaged in border clashes for many years, and the South Africans, especially the White leadership, perceived Portugal's inability to suppress their Black guerrillas as threatening to their well-being.

 

As the South African Defence Forces (SADF) planned their military campaign, they had every reason to be confident. Not only did the Portuguese lack cohesive leadership, but the Portuguese colonial forces, according to South African intelligence estimates, also lacked modern equipment and was trained to fight only against guerrillas. Pretoria, on the other hand, possessed fully equipped and trained forces. Morale was running high. Against Portugal's armed forces, the South Africans could muster twelve complete mechanized divisions, equipped with the latest German materiel. With the South African military build-up in the late 1960s, Pretoria had assembled an army of 290,000 men, augmented by 1,000 tanks and 450 aircraft.

 

In addition, the area across the Limpopo posed no major obstacles, particularly for an army equipped with German river-crossing equipment. South African commanders correctly assumed that crossing sites on the Limpopo river were lightly defended against their mechanized armour divisions; moreover, South African intelligence sources reported that Portuguese forces around Lourenço Márquez (Mozambique’s capitol), which had formerly included two divisions, now consisted of only a number of ill-equipped battalion-sized formations. In the years following the FRELIMO uprising, only a handful of company-sized tank units had been operative, and the rest of the armoured equipment had been poorly maintained. For South African planners, the only uncertainty was the fighting ability of the Portuguese air force, equipped with some of the most sophisticated French-made aircraft: they decided to launch a massive pre-emptive air strike on Portuguese air bases in an effort to gain air superiority in the first days of the war.

 

 

South African Offensives

 

In June 1972, border skirmishes erupted in the sector near Pongolo, with an exchange of artillery fire by both sides. A few weeks later, Pieter Vorster announced that the southern half of Mozambique was passing to South African sovereignty. Portugal rejected this action and hostilities escalated as the two sides exchanged bombing raids deep into each other's territory, beginning what was to be a brief but extremely costly war.

 

Pretoria originally planned a quick victory over Lisbon. The SADF expected the invasion of the southern Mozambican plain to result in a Portuguese surrender. On July 17, 1972, formations of South African He-25s and He-27s attacked Portugal's air bases near Lourenço Marquez, as well as Joaõ Belo, Nampula, and Beira. Their aim was to destroy the Portuguese air force on the ground. They succeeded in destroying runways and fuel and ammunition depots, but much of Portugal's aircraft inventory was left intact. Portuguese defences were caught by surprise, but the South African raids failed because Portuguese jets were protected in specially strengthened hangars and because bombs designed to destroy runways did not totally incapacitate Portugal's very large airfields. Within hours, Portuguese Mirage 4 took off from the same bases, successfully attacked strategically important targets close to the northern South African cities, and returned home with very few losses.

 

Simultaneously, six South African army divisions entered Mozambique on a border-long front in an successful surprise attack, where they drove as far as the Limpopo river and Lourenço Marquez. This thrust was divided on two axes, one which led to the siege and eventual occupation of Lourenço Marquez, and the second heading for Moamba, the major military base in southern Mozambique, as its objective. As a diversionary move on the Angolan front, an South African mechanized infantry division overwhelmed the border garrison, and occupied territory thirty kilometres northward. This area was strategically significant because the main Luanda-Cape Town highway traversed it.

 

South African armoured units easily crossed the Limpopo, and by mid-August, five armoured and mechanized divisions were advancing through the coastal plain headed for the Zambezi. Supported by heavy artillery fire, the troops made a rapid and significant advance--almost eighty kilometres in the first few days. Bu after the League’s approbation to use force to repel the invasion and the increased use of the French air force, the South African progress was somewhat curtailed. The last major South African territorial gain took place in early November 1972. On November 3, South African forces reached the Zambezi river but were repulsed by combined French-Portuguese units.

 

The French commenced operations in November 1, when the League approved the use of force to repel South African forces. The French forces were the first to arrive to the front, thanks to the actions taken by the French government before its formal entry in the war: two carriers and an entire air division were transported to Mauritius, Madagascar and Angola in the weeks between July and November. Other League members, principally Britain and Japan, provided invaluable logistical support for the transport of these and other international troops.

 

When the SADF was contained in the Zambezi front, League naval units (mostly French with some British, Indian and Brazilian elements) proceeded to attack the SADF Navy, in order to secure the sea lanes indispensable to continue the war effort. The League naval units (including the French aircraft carriers Béarn and Bellmount plus several escort carriers, heavy and light cruisers, destroyers, and submarines), quickly destroyed the small South African Navy, which consisted mostly in German-made submarines, cruisers, frigates and fast attack boats. Nonetheless, the SADF land based aviation and coastal batteries, armed with German anti-ship missiles, cost the League naval forces two destroyers and heavy damage to one of the carrier. Once the South African power-projection capability was eliminated, the League naval force limited itself to enforce the Maritime Exclusion Zone around South Africa, while using their carrier-borne aviation in bombing raids in the Mozambican front.

 

South Africa's blitz-like assaults against scattered and demoralized Portuguese forces led many observers to think that Pretoria would win the war within a matter of weeks. Indeed, South African troops did capture the southern bank of the Zambezi, but Portugal and the League forces may have prevented a quick South African victory by a rapid mobilization of volunteers (mostly Africans) and deployment of airborne forces to the front. Besides the massive use of aviation, the rapid mobilization of Indonesian, Taiwanese, French Union, Filipino, Nigerian, Jordanian, Kenyan, Ghanese, Brazilian, Belgian, Indian, British and Spanish forces (approximately 450,000 soldiers), allowed to stabilize the front by the end of November 1980. They were mostly regular soldiers, but some of them, mostly African, were ideologically committed troops that fought bravely despite initial inadequate armour support. For example, on November 7 commando units played a significant role, with the French navy and air force, in an assault on South African ports, with the hope to diminish South Africa's armour effectiveness by reducing its oil imports.

 

Soon after reaching the Zambezi, the South African troops lost their initiative and began to dig in along their line of advance. Portugal rejected a settlement offer and the League troops held the line against the locally superior South African forces. The League forces, under French leadership, and counting with far greater economical and technological resources, slowly began a series of counteroffensives in January 1973. Both the volunteers and the regular League forces were eager to fight, and the South African armed forces were hampered by their unwillingness to sustain a high casualty rate and therefore refused to reinitiate the offensive.

 

Despite South African success in causing major damage to exposed Portuguese ammunition and fuel dumps in the early days of the war, the combined Portuguese/French air force prevailed initially in the air war. One reason was that French airplanes could carry two or three times more bombs or rockets than their South African counterparts. Moreover, French pilots demonstrated considerable expertise. The attack on South Africa's oil import complex and air base at East London, the base for He-22 and Ar-28 bombers, was a well-coordinated assault. The targets were more than 1000 kilometres from France's closest air base in southern Madagascar, so the Mirage-4s had to refuel in midair for the mission. League's air forces relied mostly on Mirage 4s and Mirage-5s for assaults and a few Nakayima NK-50s for reconnaissance. However, the League forces used massively helicopters for close air support. Helicopters served not only as gunships and troop carriers but also as emergency supply transports. In the field, helicopters proved advantageous in finding and destroying targets and manoeuvring against antiaircraft guns or man-portable missiles. During the operation which culminated with the expulsion of South African forces to the southern bank of the Limpopo, the League forces reportedly engaged in large-scale helicopter-borne operations: “tank-busting” Serpent and smaller Dassault helicopters, such as the Da-325B, were escorted by Faucon choppers. These operations annihilated South African armoured forces, and left the SADF infantry to the merciless onslaught of League’s armoured forces.

 

 

The Days of the Ten Thousand Suns

 

In January 1973, the League launched its Operation Victoire Indéniable, which marked a major turning point, as the League penetrated South Africa's "impenetrable" lines, split South Africa's forces, and forced the South Africans to retreat. Its forces broke the South African line with a daring amphibious attack near Beira, separating South African units in northern and southern Mozambique. Within a week, they succeeded in destroying a large part of three South African divisions. This operation, was a turning point in the war because the strategic initiative shifted from South Africa to the League. In February 1973, League units finally regained Joaõ Belo, but with high casualties. After this victory, the League council alleviate the pressure on the remaining South African forces, and demanded a South African withdrawal to the international borders, in the belief that South Africa would agree to end the war, according to the League Council’s Resolution 99.

 

But on March 8, 1973, a South African Seeräuber bomber released its cargo over four combined Indonesian-Taiwanese tank battalions, which formed most of the League’s Fifth Brigade Tactical Group. Fused for airburst, it detonated, forming a boiling white-hot fireball, destroying four battalions of the Fifth Brigade Tactical Group and the motor rifle battalion behind them.

 

With over 100,000 League troops along the northern bank of the Limpopo river, and nearly 60,000 League troops ready to invade Namibia from Angolan bases, South Africa faced its worst nightmare: a total onslaught by forces the South African Defence Force (SADF) could not overcome. With the meance to its political and racial system, represented by the Resolution 99, Pretoria's military goal changed from controlling Portuguese territory to denying the League any major gain –territorial or political–inside South Africa. Apparently, the SADF General Staff calculated that targeting a non-European force would precipitate a League Council decision (imposed by the European members) to reach a favourable ceasefire for South Africa, rather that face the extremely unpleasant alternative.

 

After the understandable moment of surprise and shock, the French commander, the ageing French general Charles de Gaulle, without waiting orders from Paris, decide to launch a low-yield nuclear attack against the South African SAFARI-I reactor, the uranium enrichment plant at Valindaba, the Vastrap military base located within the Kalahari Desert (from where the bomber took off), the Pelindaba Nuclear Research Centre, located approximately 35 km west of Pretoria, and the Kentron Circle facility, located approximately 20 km west of Pretoria. The former two ground-burst explosions forced almost 30 percent of Pretoria's population to flee the city.

 

To avoid defeat, South Africa responded to the French nuclear attacks with the massive use of chemical weapons, including H-series blister and G-series nerve agents. South Africa built these agents into various offensive munitions including rockets, artillery shells, aerial bombs, and warheads: South Africa’s last fighter-attack aircraft dropped mustard-filled and tabun-filled 250 kilogram bombs and mustard-filled 500 kilogram bombs on League targets as forward defences, command posts, artillery positions, and logistical facilities.

 

The League forces, lacking the equipment necessary to counter this chemical attacks, and after nearly 10,000 fatalities caused by the chemical agents, resorted to new low-yield nuclear attacks against the South African chemical artillery batteries, and against the purportedly remaining nuclear facilities in South Africa. Unfortunately, these attacks didn’t eliminated the last two operational South African nuclear weapons, which were used against the British Commonwealth’s forces operating against the South African forces in Namibia.

 

 

War Termination

 

The League-South Africa war lasted nearly fourteen months, from July of 1972 until September of 1973. It ended when the South African government was overthrew by a coalition of Black and White moderates and surviving military cadres, who took control amid the internal chaos originated by the panic provoked by the nuclear bombardments and the sheer impossibility to continue the war and keep domestic order simultaneously. The new government accepted a revised version of the League of Nations Council Resolution 99, leading to a 5 September 1973 cease-fire.

 

South Africa accepted all the League demands: withdrawal of the SADF from all occupied territory, the supervised destruction of all their remaining nuclear devices, the prohibition of any nuclear-related R&D or acquisition of nuclear weaponry, payment of reparations to Portugal and the entire cost of the war to League members, destruction of any naval unit except for coastal defence, and the scale-down of its army and air force to a bare self-defence capability, and the extradition to France of the military commanders responsible for the use of nuclear and chemical weapons against League forces. The peace treaty didn’t included any clause about the South African political regimen due to dissension within the League.

 

Casualty figures are highly uncertain, though estimates suggest more than a half million war and war-related casualties –perhaps as many as 300,000 people died, many more were wounded, and nearly a million were made refugees. The League-sanctioned cease-fire merely put an end to the fighting, leaving the isolated South Africa to try to regain its national balance. The South African military machine –numbering more than half a million men by December 1972, disappeared, and with it the last hope to maintain the South African unity. The National Assembly—an elected executive-legislative body with extraordinary powers—decided to divide the country into several small provinces, mirroring the ethnic distribution of the population, in an unsuccessful intent to please the Black majority while keeping the White minority with some local control.

 

The steady declining of the real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and real per capita GDP, the continual racial strife (often degenerating in atrocities committed by extremist), the resentment generated by extreme inequality in the per capita income levels, the always negative growth rates, the inability to pay the reparations demanded by Portugal (and later by the independent Mozambique), the polemic trials on the people responsible for the enforcement of Apartheid, the League refusal to condone South Africa’s debts with its members; meant the end of the viability of South Africa as a nation: in June 8, 1982, the Boer-populated Transvaal and Orange Free State proclaimed their independence from South Africa, and formed the Afrikaaner Republiek.

 

Immediately, the Bophuthatswana territories in northern Transvaal proclaimed their independence, and asked its annexation to Botswana. Two years after the Boer independency proclamation, and following an often bloody period of adjustment (which included several massacres and overt “ethnic cleansing”), the National Assembly declared its self-dissolution, and with it, the separation of South Africa in six independent countries: besides the Afrikaaner Republiek (commonly known as the Boer Republic), the Cape Republic, KwaZulu, Limpopo, Bophuthatswana and Kei. Namibia constituted a special case: after the cease-fire, League troops, mostly British and Angolan, occupied without opposition the territory, and set up a provisional government. Until 1980, Namibia constituted a sort of League protectorate, but in that year was elected the first Namibian independent government.

 

These successor states had suffered diverse calamities, including military dictatorship, famine and obscure, undeclared wars among themselves. All of them also had looked for the protection of the Great Powers: the Cape Republic asked for admission into the British Commonwealth as a Dominion replacing the former South Africa place, petition that was accepted in 1985; the Boer Republic keep a very close relation with Germany, while Limpopo outstands as the only member of the French Union that wasn’t a French colonial possession; and Bophuthatswana has formed a sort of confederation with Botswana. Since 1990, the British Commonwealth has sponsored the Federation of Azania, a loose federation formed by Kei, KwaZulu, Lesotho and Swaziland: the members keep their independence, but had adopted a common currency, pooled resources to improve their infrastructure and create investment opportunities for the richer Commonwealth members. Other countries, as Botswana and Zimbabwe, has expressed their interest in the idea, since Azania has served as a stabilization force in the balkanised South Africa, and some local leaders think that Azania could be the key for a future democratic Union of South Africa.