Southern Africa during 1960 - 1990 was a hotbed for civil wars and military operations between the various powers involved in the Cold War - between the supporters of the Superpowers of the USA and USSR. Among the participants of Southern Africa however, were mainly the Soviets and Cubans who conducted vast amounts of military operations to secure strength for the various communist or left-wing parties in a post-colonial Southern Africa, and opposing them were the Far-Right Capitalist nation states of the Union of South Africa, Namibia (then called South-West-Africa), and Rhodesia.

Both capitalist and communist factions spent large resources to train and equip factions which supported their worldview and ideologies, and the post-colonial Southern Africa would be the battlegrounds between these factions, in a myriad of proxy wars and civil wars.

Among these were the most infamous and fearful Theatre of conflicts for the National Party regime, the authority of white Apartheid South Africa, and the many white south africans residing in Namibia and SA, because they all were perpetually fearful of communist incursion and envelopment.

The Angolan Bush War.

FEAR OF THE RED MENACE:

Also known as the South African Border War, or the Namibian Bush War. Or the Namibian War of Independence. Or even the South African Vietnam.

The Angolan Bush War dwarfed all other conflicts and proxy wars in which the Union of South Africa was involved in and supported, including the Rhodesian Bush War, in scope, manpower and intensity. Even the Mozambique Civil War between RENAMO (the capitalists) and FRELIMO (the socialists), which the Union of SA was heavily involved in, didn't suck up the amount of military hardware and men, than that which the Angolan Bush War had.

White south africans, and the Nationale Party regime was full hardcore paranoid of the Red Menace. The fear of being consumed by communism led the regime and its people to support the most extreme and insane of measures, and similar to to the yank mccarthyism, communists were ruthlessly weeded out from both black and white populations.

But as the European colonies gradually gained their independences, the South Africans saw to their abject horror, that many of these african post-colonial states were strongly pivoting to communism/socialism or were receiving military support from the Soviets.

The fear of communism became such a paranoid phobia, that a common saying among both Apartheid-era politicians and everyday civilians were: that the Capitalists and Free-World would make their last stand on the only natural feature of south african capable of holding out against the Soviet Hordes - the Orange-River, the largest river in South Africa. If the communists busy engulfing Angola and winning the Angolan Civil War weren't stopped at the Namibian-Angolan border, they would soon swarm over to the Orange-River, because there were no mountains or strongpoints capable of stopping hordes of Soviet tanks streaming down to the Cape.

And yes, they called themselves the Free-World, the bastion against the totalitarianism of communism (the irony of which is not lost on me).

A LITTLE SUMMARY OF THE ANGOLAN BUSH WAR:

https://theafricancriminologyjournal.wordpress.com/2018/10/14/defenders-of-apartheid-the-story-of-covert-state-elimination-units-in-south-africa

The Angolan Bush War was an endless quagmire and a contest of brutality. Fought from 26 August 1966 to 21 March 1990, the Angolan Bush War was an asymmetrical war between the SADF (South African Defense Force) and SWAPO (South West Africa People's Organisation)

Strangest of all wars in Southern Africa at this period in time, was that the main benefactor for Communist/Socialist factions and forces, wasn't the Soviet Union, but Cubans!! Being the closest point in Southern Africa, with a vast coastline to smuggle themselves into, Cubans played a key role in training leftest forces in Angola, and were the most formidable foottroops present in Western Africa. The Soviets would have a far larger role in equipping and supplying Angola, but were mostly physically present with ground forces in eastern african warzones, like Mozambique Civil War.

Thus, Cuba, SWAPO and the SADF would become bitter enemies for this colossal 24 fricking year conflict which had endless drama, in terms of a battle line which changed constantly, and Namibian and Angolan civilians caught in the middle. But SWAPO and the SADF weren't the only belligerents present in the Angolan Bush War, it was a free-for-all, sometimes 3 front war between a myriad of fricktions!!

Colonial Portugal aided the Union of South Africa, similar to as how SA supported portugal in their attempts to hold onto Mozambique, their last imperial treasure, as the communists had effectively seized Angola away from them.

The ANC, the same ANC of today in SA, was also present in limited numbers of guerillas!! South African blacks would smuggle themselves from SA to Angola in order to join the leftest factions in Namibia and Angola.

And lastly the most weirdest state involved in this long absurd war was Isreal! Being another global pariah state, the Union of SA was on of the very few global allies and trading partners they had, and Isreal had no stake in any of Southern Africa, but still sold weaponry and ammunition to SA.

The Angolan Bush War truly was the Vietnam of Africa, an endless multi-decade quagmire of war, where multiple Cold War factions involved themselves into to the civil wars of nation states, only for the proxy war to expand and expand into an international conflict.

PARRALLES TO THE VIETNAM WAR:

There is simply too much to talk about regarding the Angolan Bush War, so i'll keep the scope upon the subject of how South Africans to their horror, found out how the Angolans had captured white special forces, ad paraded them of live television for the world to see.

This was a dramatic watershed moment for white South Africans, to lose faith and trust in their government, who kept a strict and near absolute censorship of their military activities and operations from the civilian population.

The parallels of this moment and the yank war in Vietnam, was in the famous Tet Offensive. When the Viet Cong threw down an enormous multi-front attack with several armies against Yank GI forces. The yank government had lied continiously about the success of the Vietnam war to their civilian population, and dissent had grown due to the very long nature and casualties of the Vietnam war.

The Tet Offensive saw the live shattering of the lies the Amerikan government had told their population about the supposed false reality that America was winning, and that the Vie Cong was defeated, when on life television, a vast army was assaulting the cities they held. The incredible irony in hindsight of the Tet Offensive, was the yank GI forces won a near completely one-sided victory against the Viet Cong and successfully repelled them, and shattered their armies.

But the victory was irrelevant. Civilian faith in their government was forever lost, and would have direct political consequences in America evacuating from Vietnam.

CENSORSHIP AND DARKNESS:

Similarly, when in 1985 May, when Angola paraded a white South African captured men, it shattered faith and trust in the NP Regime.

In 1985, there was extreme censorship in Namibia and South Africa. The government controlled what television and films were allowed to be watched, INCLUDING for its white population. Both to curb the spread of cummunism, and to prevent SA blacks and coloureds from transferring ideas of independence and equal voting rights. The NP regime also wanted to curb the ANC's ability to communicate successes like succesful bombings of bridges or railtracks or whatever.

Many foreign films were banned from America, where blacks were depicted as having equal rights in America, and any media critical of the regime was banished into the shadowrealm SA had a rather poor selection of good films before Democratization in 1993.

Written letters were intercepted in the SA Post Office if it was suspected that banned material was being discussed.

But most significant of all, was that the ENTIRE Angolan Bush War was heavily censored. In Vietnam a great many reporters were allowed, usually under conditions, and also censored, by the USA militray, but in stark contrast to SA in the Angolan Bush War, there were never ever any reporters allowed, only the most flaccid pro militray stories was ever reported. The consequences, was the the gov lied through propaganda how the war in Angola was proceeding! Only after democratization in 1993, was civilians aware of the great sacrifice young white men had made in their name, always sworn to absolute secrecy.

Many south african white soldiers had to suffer in complete silence their PTSD-induced war horrors without ever being allowed to discuss their sufferings to friends or family. Only after 1993 when ALL of the NP regime secrecy was declassified, was documentaries about the Angolan Bush War allowed to surface, and a great renaissance of books were written about Angolan and white south african veterans whom had made peace after never really hating one another.

https://journal-veterans-studies.org/articles/10.21061/jvs.v6i1.147

Point being, that ordinary south africans were in such absolute darkness about the reality of the Angolan Bush War, that the parading of South African captured on foreign international press was a supreme humiliation and embarrassment for the Nationale Party regime, and would have direct political consequences upon the change of leadership in the following 7 years, and the eventual capitulation of the regime in 1992 to the ANC's demands for equal rights, and international coalition who sanctioned Apartheid South Africa.

RECCES:

The South African Special Forces Brigade, colloquially known as the Recces, was the Union of South Africa's principal special operations unit, and their equivalent to Delta Forces or the Navy Seals. They specialized in counter-insurgency operations, usually behind enemy lines. They had the highest level of prestige amongst all of the SADF branches, and their training was without peer in its ferocity. Only the absolute cream of the crop made the RECCES. Only about 8% of recruits who ATTEMPTED to undergo South African special forces training, passed the course.

Recces carried out a number of combat operations during the Rhodesian Bush War, the Mozambican Civil War, but most of their operations was during the Angolan Bush War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Special_Forces

In the Angolan Bush War, they basically covered themselves in glory by conducting many many successful clandestine operations, to shot down important planes behind enemy lines, going full Rambo in the african bush or Angola and Namibia. And they still exist today!

https://web.archive.org/web/20180220164358/http://www.recce.co.za/frontpage/recruitment

Anyways they were all super duper toughguys and were basically the armed branch of South African Catachans

OPERATION ARGON:

But this drama is about the Recces' most infamous failure. A repeat of an event which happened in 12 Jan 1976, when Angolan communist forces paraded white South African POWs in front of their media. There were regular armed SADF military forces, and the NP regime gov had promised never to conduct military operations like that again to its population. The men in the Youtube video were at least treated well and later traded.

Operation Argon was one of the many spearhead operations conducted behind enemy lines. A South African Daphné-class submarine carried a group of 9 Recce men undetected and underwater to the Angolan coast.

The Daphné-class submarines of SA was bought from France at that time. I don't know which sub took them, but I believe it was either the SAS Assegaai (zulu spear) or the SAS Emily Hobhouse. 3 such subs were built and bought from France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS_Umkhonto

The 9-man team of Recces left Saldanha Bay (in the sub) and travelled to a spot some way off the Angolan coast near its border with Zaire (the country North of Angola).

The team had to travel 12 kilometres by boat from the sub, then a further 21km hiked by foot. Because of the great distance needed to travel, they could not accomplish this venture in one day, and had to sleep one night inbetween launching from the submarine, and carrying out their objectives. Which is where the apocalyptic shitshow would start for these young men.

The Recces landed on the coast at night on 20 May following an advance scouting party sent to gather intelligence on the beach where the party would land. But they were obstructed by bad weather and waves, and the Recces had to launch their boats further from the shore than anticipated, thus they were already behind schedule in the start of their mission.

A further screwup occurred when the Recces in their tiny boats appraoched shore, and Captain Wynand Du Toit noticed a small fishing vessel in the area of the landing zone and that the occupants were on shore around a fire. This forced the team to wait offshore until the boat left the area, causing the team to be 3 hours behind schedule, and causing the danger of being detected growing.

Upon landing the boats were hidden and a rendezvous point set up. The men climbed a bank and followed a route that that detoured around a village, causing them to lose yet another hour of invaluable time.

As darkness and fatigue overcame the, the team sought a good hiding place for the night, and hid their sleep within dense growth of plants. The next morning, to their absolute horror, the Recces discovered that what had looked like a dense jungle in the darkness of night in which they had hidden, was in reality nothing an island of dense plant growth within a sea of flat grass and crops. Basically they were in a tussle of bushes in the open.

What is more, the dew from the night before had cause their boot tracks to be obscenely visible, running along their previous route all the way to their hiding spot. A few hours later, a small FAPLA patrol could be seen following the tracks in the dew that they had left earlier. The team watched as the patrol withdrew, and then came back with a larger patrol which passed the hide.

But the horrible bad luck didn't stop there: the aerial photograps provided to the Recces did not detect well hidden enemy bases just 900 meters away from the Recces' hiding spot!!! The enemy People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) bases was well hidden from the air, but the young men could clearly see the activity from SWAPO soldiers less than a kilometer away. The Recces spread out in a perimeter in their tiny island of vegetation, lying down in their camouflage, sweating blood in fear and hoping they could somehow make it to night without being spotted by an entire enemy base!

A young child saw the bootprints in the dew and went to to warn the FAPLA. By this time, the dew had evaporated somewhat, and the tracks made badly visible, but the FAPLA soldiers knew that enemies were present. Twice the enemy would pass within meters of their hiding spot, the Recces lying still like the grave. Hoping against hope they would not be spotted, as this operation had wen completely FUBAR.

Meanwhile, a second patrol approached the hide from the other direction, and opened up heavy fire on the hidden position., out of suspicion. As RPGs struck their position, Captain Du Toit ordered the withdrawal of his troops. They had no choice but to double back on the trail that brought them to this position the previous night. Two of the men were wounded as they exited the trees.

The team turned north, pursued by FAPLA soldiers. Another group of Angolan soldiers advanced from the west, flanking the Recces so that they could only go east now. They could see a group of trees, but needed to cross 40 yards (37 m) of waist-high grass to get to this cover. Du Toit took two men and made his way through the grass as the rest of the team hid in the thicket. The small team drew fire as over 30 troops moved onto the exposed position. Two South Africans (Corporal Rowland Liebenberg and Sergeant Louis van Breda) were killed and Du Toit was wounded and later captured.

https://x.com/ModernConflict/status/1395743225193848833

POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC CONSEQUENCES:

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00965R000706340003-2.pdf

News grew with momentum like a snowball rolling down hill. Outside of the cataclysmic drama home in South Africa, with citizens clamouring for their gov to explain WTF south african men were doing so far into Angola, there was also diplomatic trouble with SA, Angola and Zaire.

The Angolans believed that Zaire was in a secret pact with SA because the Zaire were not as ardently communist. Here is a document from Burgerland CIA discussing the event

Zaire (modern Congo) was believed by the Angolans to operate with Pretoria South Africa, to do a double clandestine operation to destroy and capture oil-refinery systems at Cabinda, the place which was the target for the Recce commandos. Zaire had previous land claims to the oil-rich Cabinda enclave.

This caused tension between South Africa and Zaire, who were mad that the South Africans had inadvertently dragged the Congolese into their war with Angola, basically a diplomatic nuclear event. Zaire had previously been neutral to the pariah state of Apartheid South Africa, and this unintended event basically fricked their relationship hence.

WOUNDED:

While Du Toit, the Recce commando still wounded and alive ,lay on his stomach, he was appraoched by APLA soldiers And, thinking he was also dead, stripped his equipment – only then did they realise he was alive and shot him again through the neck. He remained awake with wounds in his neck, shoulder and arm as the FAPLA soldiers began to savagely beat him. After being severely roughed up, he was finally taken to Cabinda for medical treatment then to a Luanda hospital.

The remaining six Recce soldiers carefully made their way north, where they regrouped and were eventually picked up, to be returned safely to South Africa. Their escape was due in part to being ignored after the Angolans captured Du Toit.

Back in South Africa, there was great political pressure against the NP regime to get Du Toit back to SA. But when the Union of South Africa requested a prisoner exchange for Du Toit, and the retrieval of the 2 bodies of the shot Recce commandos, the Angolans responded with outrage and communication would be very little.

Du Toit would endure great hardship as a prisoner of war. The Red Cross facilitated Du Toit's wife visiting him in prison on three separate occasions. du Toit was finally to be released on 7 September 1987 after some 837 days of solitary confinement in an Angolan prison in a complicated prisoner exchange arrangement brokered by Jean-Yves Ollivier. The exchange took place in Maputo, Mozambique where Du Toit was swapped for two ANC members and 133 Angolan soldiers.

AFTERMATH:

I can only offer anecdotal evidence for here. My parent's generation was shocked to the core by the news, and the humiliation of Du Toit being paraded on the 1980s version of HD TV news. Many women my mother's age made letters to their leaders and politicans to trade him back, because apparently he was a handsome young man at that time, and afrikaner women were horrified by the display.

Trust in the government was very low, as an extreme counter event to SA propaganda had occurred proving the 20 year war was nothing but a quagmire.

South Africa always acted with what they believed was the USA's blessing as their silent ally, but when this drama came out, the USA was absolutely silent, and made no attempts to help pressure the Angolans to release Du Toit. This event demonstrated that USA was drifting away from having Apartheid SA as an ally, which was becoming increasingly unpopular within Burgerland itself.

Here is a 90-minute documentary interview with Du Toit about his experiences in Operation Argon if any of you Dramatards give a shit.