1 Recce, volume 2. Alexander Strachan
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group took over our parachutes, and we set off. We had only our backpacks because our parachutes were being carried for us.’ They walked out of the shona in a northerly direction, into the bush. About two hours later, between 02:00 and 03:00, they reached the Unita base where they were given a place to sleep and unpacked their backpacks and equipment.
At that stage of the war Unita did not know where their leader, Dr Jonas Savimbi, was. The three Recces had been instructed to conduct a search-and-rescue mission under extremely risky conditions and track down Savimbi. This was the second attempt to find him after the first one had been called off because intelligence indicated that Savimbi was not in the Cuando Cubango province.
The next day they met the base commander, Gen. Samuel Chiwale, the then chief of Unita’s armed forces. Chiwale was a tall, imposing man, very muscular, and a pleasant person. He made a good impression on them and could speak some English, enough for them to understand him.
‘He told us that they still didn’t know exactly where Savimbi was, but he was on his way to them from the north. So we just hung around in the base, did some washing and so on. The last few days things had happened very quickly. On the Sunday we were still in Durban, on Monday evening we jumped in, and on Tuesday morning we woke up in a Unita base.
‘That evening Chiwale invited us to dinner in a beautiful place they had prepared in a large hut. And the strangest thing of all was the two electric bands there in the jungle, in the middle of nowhere. They took turns to play. There were women too, all dressed up, and they let rip with gusto on the dance floor. I couldn’t believe all of this was happening right here in the bush.
‘After dinner we sat down again, but they said: “Oh no, now you guys have to dance!” That was quite a story. And the Boere danced and I said to Gert: “If our forefathers had to see us now, they would be spinning in their graves!”’
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After Operation Savannah2 the last South African forces were withdrawn from Angola by 27 March 1976, with the result that the governing MPLA and its defence force, Fapla, drove the resistance movement Unita out of all the towns and areas that had been under their control.
The South African Defence Force (SADF) had also lost all contact with Savimbi. Even Maj. Isaías Samakuva, Unita’s liaison officer at Rundu in the then South West Africa (now Namibia), had no idea where his leader was. He asked the SADF at Rundu to urgently help find Savimbi and get him out of Angola for his own safety.
In the wake of Operation Savannah the South African government was totally on its own in the SWA-Angola conflict, says Maj. Gen. Chris Thirion, the then Deputy Chief of Staff Military Intelligence (MI) in the SADF. Nothing came of the expected American support. There was only international condemnation of all military action in Angolan territory.
South Africa was therefore urgently in search of military allies. With Portugal’s withdrawal from its African provinces in the mid-1970s and Angola and Mozambique having gained their independence, the situation in southern Africa had changed radically. Angola’s neighbouring states (with the exception of South Africa) recognised the MPLA as the country’s new legitimate government. It meant that the two Angolan resistance movements, the FNLA and Unita, were soon left isolated. The MPLA immediately announced its continued support of the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) and its military wing, Plan.
The neighbouring states’ support of the MPLA government cut Unita off from its resources. With the Russian and Cuban-supported MPLA as a common enemy, South Africa and Unita therefore had shared interests, says Thirion. ‘The conclusion of a military treaty was a logical consequence of this – “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”.’
Only a few months earlier South Africa had still supported the Portuguese in Angola, and Unita had been the enemy. ‘But in the world of international politics and conflicts there are no permanent enemies or permanent friends – there are only own interests. It suited South Africa that Unita controlled the vast and remote Cuando Cubango province north of the SWA-Angola border.’
According to Thirion, a ‘strategic type of military cooperation agreement’ was then mooted. The problem, however, was that Savimbi could not be located. He was fighting a battle for survival somewhere in eastern Angola, and not even his own people had contact with him. This led to Maj. Samakuva’s request that the SADF help find their leader and rescue him.
‘The search-and-rescue operation, conducted under extremely risky conditions by a small group of Special Forces operators from 1 Recce, was a significant event,’ says Thirion. ‘It was the first step in the formation of a military treaty that would offer the SADF essential tactical elbow room that was to last for more than a decade.’
* * *
Specific procedures were followed before the instruction would be given to conduct such a rescue operation outside South Africa.
Special Forces was under the direct control of the Chief of the SADF and not the Chief of the Army. The Chief of Staff Military Intelligence (MI) had to submit requests to the general officer commanding (GOC) Special Forces, who would then decide whether it was a job for Special Forces and whether it was doable. If so, he would make recommendations about how it could be executed. These were then submitted to the Chief of the Defence Force for comment and final approval.
Only after this process had been concluded could the joint planning between Special Forces and the client proceed, after which Special Forces would carry out the operation. The client in this case was MI, which controlled the SADF’s and, in effect, South Africa’s support to Unita.
In the Savimbi case, 1 Recce’s commander, Cmdt. Jakes Swart, received instructions from the Special Forces HQ to activate a small team. The team members were Maj. Hennie Blaauw and two Angolans, SSgt. Mourão da Costa and Sgt. Amilcar Queiroz. All three were stationed in Durban.
They immediately departed for Pretoria. At the Special Forces HQ they were briefed to fly to Rundu. There they had to join the MI liaison officer who cooperated with Unita’s liaison officer. The team would then receive further instructions and proceed with the planning of and deployment for the operation.
But the stumbling block was that Unita had no idea of Savimbi’s whereabouts. The Unita liaison officer suggested that they start searching for him in the east of Angola, in the Cuando Cubango province, which borders on Zambia. Unita’s secretary-general, Maj. Nzau Puna, was also at Rundu at that point.
They drove to Bagani where they crossed the Okavango River via the bridge, and then went deeper and deeper into Angola on an old Portuguese bush road.
Amilcar Queiroz had an interesting history. An active Unita member in an early stage of Operation Savannah, he had left Unita later in the conflict and joined the South African Special Forces. He was an exceptionally valuable member for, besides his other qualities, he could also speak Portuguese and French.
In his early war days he had walked on the same bush road the small group now followed in their search for Savimbi. During Operation Savannah, Fapla and the Cubans had laid an ambush on that road. He survived the attack, but one of his comrades, Little Robbie Ribeiro, died there.3 After the attack Queiroz had walked southward along the river to the village of Dirico, and from there to the SWA border where he rejoined the South Africans. When the Recces now reached the site of the ambush, Queiroz pointed out the remains of the trenches to Blaauw.
Hunters and woodcutters had previously used the road to go north to Coutado do Mucusso in the Cuando Cubango province. ‘It was a sandy two-track road that was almost overgrown and reminded one of the cutline,’4 Blaauw recalls.
The three Recce operators were accompanied by a small Unita escort on two Unimogs that MI had made available. The escort also served as a bodyguard of sorts for Puna, who had come along.
It took them the whole day to cover the distance of about 120 km to Coutado do Mucusso – a tiny Portuguese settlement on the Luiana River – which they reached by late afternoon. ‘There was a small Unita element that didn’t