Why South Africa invaded Angola
Socialist Organiser1984 1984-01-26Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 6 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 6
SOUTH Africa's latest offensive into Angola, probably the largest to date, has been described by its UN representative, Kurt von Schindling, as 'preventing the infiltration of SWAPO guerillas into Namibia'.
But in reality, South Africa aims to prevent the independence of Namibia, which would SWAPO to power, and to bring «ne o balo about the down fall of the Angolan government with the ultimate objective of replacing it with the proxy South African force, UNITA.
In the same Reuters report quoted above, Von Schindling went on to say that 'South Africa has no desire to control a single centimetre of Angolan territory ' In fact, South Africa has occupied parts of southern Angola since August 1981, using as its springboard its massive army presence in Namibia, which it occupies illegally. Time and again it has used force to terrorise the Namibian people and the people of southern Angola.
The present Reagan administration has given the South African regime confidence that its activities remain uncriticised either by the White House or by Downing Street. In Reaganspeak the US has 'constructive engagement with South Africa, which is backed by Britain and other major Western investors involved in the illegal plunder of Namibia's abundant natural resources.
The Reagan-Botha axis has given birth to the so-called 'linkage theory' - which makes the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola a precondition for South African readiness to implement UN Resolution 435, i.e. the Namibian independence process. On the basis of linkage' South Africa was able, on 15 December 1983, to propose in the UN a 'mutual force disengagement. on the Namibia/ Angola border as the first step in a peaceful independence settlement for Namibia.' The proposed truce' would begin on January 31 1984 and would last for 30 days or longer, in the words of South African Foreign Minister Botha, 'upon the resolution of the problem of Cuban forces in Angola' , a precondition he described as "irrevocable' (Reuters 16.12.83). He went on to say that South Africa had 'from time to time, conducted operations within Angola' When the UN Security Council passed a resolution on December 20 severely censuring South Africa's military occupation of Angola and endorsing Angola's right to reparations,