A LARGE swathe of southern Angola lies devastated in the wake of the invasion last week by two South African armoured columns.
Villages have
destroyed and cattle slaughtered. peasants have disappeared into the scrub bushland or sought out the new towns under government control.
regime's history of Angola.
The first South African motorised column met stiff resistance LOOOS quero, Angola on the main road north from the Namibian border. The second, which included more than vehicles and 32 tanks. was engaged in heavy fighting a little to the south on the same road, at Xangongo, site of a strategic bridge over the Cunene River.
The South Africans supported by their air-torce. which has unchallenged control of southern Angola's airspace. Last week, while around Catequero and Xangongo, South African planes were bombing tho Cahama (160 LOWIL miles north of the border) and Tchibemba (250 miles north).
According to Le Monde (28 August), South African jets also bombed Angolan defence positions Porto Alexandre, coastal city 250 miles north of the border.
By last Sunday, South African troops had fought their way into Ondjiva, the capital of the southern province of Cunene, after a three-day battle.
1 ne South Africans were reported to be occupying nine other towns in unene and fighting was raging at Cahama, despite South African claims that their forces were being withdrawn back across the Namibian border. Several civil airports in northern Namibia were closed during the operation.
Meanwhile, the Angolan Defence Ministry cancelled all military leave Angola's President José Eduardo dos Santos appealed to the United Nations to get the South African attacks ended. He hinted, Secretare General Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, that Angola might ask Cuban forces to join the frontMIne the South Africans. Strikes .. Last week's invasion, entitled Operation Pro. tea,' was without doubt been razed, bridges Terrified JIM ATKINSON reports on the apartheid aggression against The targets are often civilian the biggest South Atrican invasion in a ne the of the country's independence Portugal. Then, a 'flying column' penetrated more than miles InLO Cities like seizing major CRUC Lobito and Benguela, in a bid to prevent the Move ment for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) coming to power.
However, 1976, after 20,000 Cuban troops, the South Africans forced to admit failure and withdraw into Namibia. South Africa then resorted to a deries of cross-border strikes, which gradually grew in intensity until southern Angola was engulted in an almost permanent state of war.
Ostensibly the targets were guerrilla camps of the South West African Organisation (SWAPO), which fighting the Pretoria Namibia. But often the were civilian Namibian refugee camps, roads, railway lines, villages, wells and bridges. Raids The South African aim only to A 11 SWAPO directly but to force the Angolan government to curtail its support for the Namibian freedom fighters. So far, however, the MPLA has refused to be intimidated.
Earlier this year, President dos Santos said that South Africa had been responsible for the death of 2,000 people and worth several billion dollars during its BENGUELA Lubango raids the previous OVC. three years. He said that South African forces had flown bombing missIons staged 70 overland incursions and landings helicopter borne troops.
One of the most cruel attacks came in 1978, when South African force attacked a Namibian ANGOLA /Xangongo ¿Namibia SOUTH AFRICAN COLUMNS NAMIBIA , ZAMBIA Caprivi Stovango R. Strip BOTSWANA from the South Africans South Africa shows no sign of retreating from its belligerent stance. January deliberately Geneded theeks held iN Geneva vince auspices on the future of Namibia; and still Pretoria seems determined to hang colony there.
Noting the audacity of Operation Protea. the Guardian commented Botha's forward policy to contain forces African nationalism • The defence budget is raised by 30 per cent. African Na tional Congress offices abroad are mysteriously bombed. The fight against SWAPO is taken on to foreign soil. Independence talks for Namibia are stalled.
Covert The apartheid regime has been encouraged in all this thonald Reagan, like Carter before he to recognise government because of the presence of Cuban troops in Angola - though they clearly constitute an essential reserve force the face of the constant South African attacks.
Reagan, moreover. has urged Congress repeal the Clark Amendment, the legislation adopted in 1976 to halt the CIA's covert involvement in the war then against the MPLA. And, in • April, a senior State Department official, Lannon Walker UNITA's leader.
Jonas Savimbi, for talks ir Morocco During the same mon th As star erica Africa Chester Crocker, went to Luanda, the Angolan capital, MPLA that the US would the withhold recognition until brought the UNITA counter-revolutionaries into the government and evicted the Cuban troods
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the arrival of early
Mocamedes ~ Catequero Cahama Ngiva 200 Miles