Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

The Cassinga controversy continues. As a historian, allow me to make a few observations about the exchange in your columns about how the events of May 4 1978 are still being contested. I will confine my response to certain of Colonel Jan Breytenbach’s comments published in The Sunday Independent on February 3.

Breytenbach suggests that Randolph Vigne should approach Willem Steenkamp, implying that the retired Cape Times military correspondent is a reliable source of information about Cassinga. But Steenkamp is by no means impartial; indeed, this sometime national serviceman and citizen force reservist wrote what amounted to a South African Defence Force-sanctioned version of Operation Reindeer in his book Borderstrike! (1983).

And if Cassinga “has come to assume a unique place in the annals of the SADF”, this is in no small measure due to Steenkamp’s own special pleading. Steenkamp’s version of events has become a virtual template for all subsequent SADF apologist accounts.

Notwithstanding his disclaimer that his narrative “is not a glowing chronicle of shining invincible heroes and dastardly but bungling villains” [but]… “of ordinary (and a couple of extraordinary) men…”, Steenkamp is effusive in his praise for the conduct of the men who carried out the air-borne assault, especially of their ability to adapt to the setbacks caused by the landing that went awry and in fending off a Cuban counterattack from Techamutete.

Steenkamp undoubtedly relished telling the story of the exploits of the SADF paratroopers and their South African Air Force support crews.

Steenkamp accepts at face value the Vorster government’s insistence that Cassinga was a Swapo military training base rather than a centre for civilian refugees and that the raid 250km into Angolan territory was justified as a pre-emptive strike to prevent PLAN soldiers from infiltrating Namibia. It is simply assumed that such actions are necessary in conflict situations.

Similarly, Breytenbach has expressed the view that he has no regrets for what he did on behalf of his country; he was a professional soldier who followed orders – a rather amoral defence for a man who while in SADF uniform apparently displayed considerable independence of mind. Although the politicians should have been held primarily accountable for actions in the name of the apartheid state, the SADF was complicit in the destabilisation of the region. And the truth and reconciliation commission certainly did not condone Cassinga.

Breytenbach dismisses claims that “his” paratroopers killed innocent civilians in Cassinga. He assures Vigne that those who dropped into the camp were not armed with bayonets for they were no longer standard SADF infantry issue by 1978.

At least one participant source contradicts this. Steenkamp cites Breytenbach’s 2IC Commandant Lewis Brand who recalls that: “The lads went in [the engineer complex] with grenades and bayonets and killed the terrs inside.” Is he mistaken? Or was Brand inclined to embellish his story for greater effect?

The statement was presumably recorded in Brand’s diary but it is difficult to know because Steenkamp is not in the habit of referencing his sources. On at least two other occasions, Steenkamp cites and then “corrects” statements attributed to Brand. Why did the veteran professional journalist miss this opportunity of correcting Brand if he had again got it wrong?

The master’s thesis on the Cassinga Raid to which Breytenbach alludes is the work of a former paratrooper in the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), McCall Alexander. His failure to acknowledge the author of what is arguably the most comprehensive examination of Operation Reindeer to date seems to be because Breytenbach regards him as having betrayed his fellow paratroopers by casting aspersions on their integrity. He takes issue with McCall Alexander for insisting that women and children refugees were killed in the bombing raids and ensuing firefight; for likening the SADF’s conduct of war to that of the United States in Vietnam and Iraq.

Why take umbrage at what is clearly a feature of all modern wars: civilian casualties? Even Magnus Malan, then chief of the SADF, has since admitted that “there may possibly have been civilian adults and children” at Cassinga, in his book, My Life with the SA Defence Force.

Breytenbach accuses Heywood of bias in The Cassinga Event. There is little doubt that her account verifies Swapo’s own version of events. But her work was not officially endorsed by Namibia’s ruling party.

What Heywood’s work really lacks, though, is an appreciation of what Cassinga has come to mean for Namibia’s narrative of nationhood. Cassinga’s symbolic value far outweighs the importance of the historical project committed to the quest for the “full and sober truth”.

The liberation movement is seeking to establish its legitimacy as the government of post-colonial Namibia. Having been accorded recognition as the “sole and authentic representative of the Namibian people” by the United Nations general assembly during the war of national liberation, Swapo now has to justify its right to rule by appealing to its struggle record. This includes an image of itself as having fought on behalf of the victims of Cassinga.

If Swapo remembers Cassinga as an atrocity on a par with My Lai, former SADF paratroopers recall it as a military engagement or battle. There have been no outright admissions of culpability in the wanton killing of women and children by participants. There has been only one isolated media report in which an SADF soldier has confessed to having to carry out orders to summarily execute wounded survivors of the operation.

At the TRC hearings, a witness confessed to being haunted by the memories of what happened at Cassinga. Athough he declined to elaborate on what he had witnessed or participated in on the fateful day, his statement hints at the unwillingness of the SADF to treat captured cadres and non-combatants as POWs.

These two instances might represent the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Former SADF generals insist, however, that they observed the rules of engagement although not officially being at war with Swapo and that their code of conduct was strictly enforced. But the same cannot be said for the SADF’s collaborators.

While no accusations or reports of atrocities by the SADF at Cassinga itself have been substantiated, there is the possibility that a code of silence prevails among these former comrades in arms. Or are they more than willing to talk to “outsiders” as Breytenbach claims?

I, for one, would welcome an invite into their ranks to hear their stories.

l Gary Baines is an associate professor in Rhodes University’s history department. He is co-editor of a forthcoming book “Beyond the Border War: New Perspectives on Southern Africa’s Late-Cold War Conflicts” (Unisa Press) and the author of the article, “The Battle for Cassinga: Conflicting Narratives and Contested Meanings”