Windhoek — "And they gathered them together to the place which in Hebrew is called Har-Magedon." (Revelation 16)

The Independence Day we celebrated on March 21, 2008 came at immeasurable cost and sacrifices made through heroic efforts of our fallen heroes and heroines. Appreciatively, it is therefore fitting to always remember them.

Equally, we ought to acknowledge different contributions made and solidarity expressed towards Namibia's independence by our international friends.

The month of March this year also marks the 20th anniversary of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, an event which brought about a turning point in the armed liberation struggle for Namibia and the demise of apartheid in South Africa.

Scripture in the book of Revelation about the great battle of Armageddon bears similarity to the decisive battle of Cuito Cuanavale where the forces of good triumphantly overwhelmed the forces of evil.

The story of Cuito Cuanavale is told in two versions.

One version represents the prevailing regional symmetry that emerged from that battlefield, while the other version represents imaginary accounts that have since vanished into the fog of illusions. How do we separate accurate records from imaginary and flawed records?

The standard measurement is the intentions of the armies that fought that battle, what they intended to achieve in terms of operational objectives as well as the political objectives. Von Clausewitz, in his book On war, states "no one starts a war or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so without being first clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it. The former is its political purpose, the latter its operational objective."

We need to examine the operational and political objectives of the armies that were involved in the fight of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale and try to establish if any of the fighting forces has achieved one or both objectives. The battle of Cuito Cuanavale by all intents and purposes was not a beauty contest to score points, but a decisive battle to chart the course of Southern Africa and indeed that of African history.

For apartheid South Africa, it was a battle to enhance the capability of UNITA as a fighting force and create a buffer zone and if possible cut off Southern Angola from the rest of the country. The success of that operational objective would have posed logistical and operational mobility problems to the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN).

If we are to apply the theory of Clausewitz as a standard to the battle of Cuito

Cuanavale and its ramification, then it becomes obvious that the apartheid army of South Africa lost the political purpose and the operational objective of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale.

What were the intentions of different participants in the battle of Cuito

Cuanavale? The intentions of the participants are better understood if viewed through the lens of historic events. Viewing the intentions and trying to analyse them through the prism of history will put the reader at a vantage point of separating facts from fiction about the victory at Cuito Cuanavale.

Therefore, operational objectives and political outcomes should serve as the measurement instrument for the success. Survivability beyond the battle and attainment of strategic goals are two main component of victory. Let us examine the military objectives of participants in this conflict and assess as to whether they had attained their strategic intent or not.

The intentions of the South Africans could be interpreted within the notion of the Total Strategy. This strategy was conceptualized and implemented in two-fold. The primary objective was political, economic, and psychological, while the second objective was the military power projection as a tool to achieve political purposes.

Horace Campbell argues in a paper published in the Monthly Review of April 1989 that after the first defeat in Angola, South Africans "formulated the 'Total Strategy,' a multidimensional preparation for war, involving a political strategy (the support of dissident groups to oppose liberation movements all over the region); an economic strategy (creating dependence on South African transport, communications, air traffic, rails, harbours, agriculture, mining equipment, in effect ensuring that the region remains open to South African capital); psychological warfare (promoting the idea that Africans cannot rule themselves, that Africans are inferior); and a military strategy".

Ironically, the South Africans launched their war of aggression in Angola under the pretext of securing the water installation at Calueque and it was at the same place Calueque, where their perceived military might vanished before their eyes on June 27, 1988.

Even the greatest revisionist of the historical events of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, Professor Chester Crocker, reluctantly admitted in his book, High Noon in Southern Africa, that "the events of June 26-27, 1988, marked a psychological watershed".

According to Crocker it was the last significant action by SADF and SWATF in

Angola prior to their official withdrawal in late August.

What transpired from their "Total Strategy" corroborated by the accounts of Chester Crocker and by their own actions, their involvement in Angola was not to secure the Calueque hydroelectric complex, but to prevent the MPLA from establishing a government and to help UNITA form or enter into coalition with FNLA to set up the first government of Angola.

Paradoxically, most harassments of workers at the Calueque complex were committed by UNITA.

Hilton Hamann recounted incidents of harassment of workers by UNITA that in August 1975 UNITA soldiers chased a Portuguese work crew from the area and two days before, 10 South African employees on their way home were held up by UNITA soldiers and had cigarettes and money robbed from them by UNITA.

The objective of invasion was contradictory, because the perpetrators of the crime that the South African troops had intended to police became their main allies. General Viljoen confessed that it was a handy way of explaining an operation that didn't have the intention of protecting Calueque and Ruacana.

The invasion was code-named Zulu and the main objective was to capture Luanda before November 11, 1975. Hence they penetrated deep into Angola covering more than 700 kilometers and were advancing on Luanda until they were stopped and defeated at the battle of Ebo on the bank of the Queve River.

The South African generals had by all accounts ignored or overlooked the tactics of the legendary Chinese warrior-philosopher that "good warriors take their stand on ground where they cannot lose, and do not overlook conditions that make an opponent prone to deaf.

The South African invasion was shrouded in secrecy and even the then Chief Army General Malan recounted of not having prior knowledge of the operation. "Things were kept so hush-hush and run by the [department of the ] Chief of Staff Intelligence, that even I, as Chief of the Army did not know about it," said General Malan.

According to Olimpio Nhuleipo, "the objective was to storm Luanda, disrupt the independence celebrations and perhaps destroy the entire MPLA leadership and install in power Jonas Savimbi as President and Holden Roberto as the Premier, just to save Angola from communist influence and to safe-guard western interests".

At the battle of Ebo, FAPLA was led by Commander Kassanje while and the Cuban Special Forces and instructors from CIR (Centro de Instrucción Revolucionaria) of Benguela were led by Díaz Argüelles.

By the account of Piero Gleijeses, Kassanje died on November 12, 1975, fighting the South Africans at Novo Redondo while Argüelles was killed on December 11, 1975. Iko Carreira explained it this way: "The battle of Ebo was a turning point for Angola, and the victory was due, above all, to Díaz Argüelles, who became a legend in modern Angolan history".

Faced with a security dilemma, MPLA President Antonio Agostinho Neto invited the Cuban government to help train the Forças Armadas Populares de Libertação de Angola (FAPLA) and to help them defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Angola, which was at that time threatened by the invasion of South Africa from the south in support of UNITA and by the CIA-backed Zairian troops in support of FNLA from the north.

In other words, the purpose of the Cuban presence in Angola was to help defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Angola.

Today, the US is in Iraq purportedly helping the Iraqis to strengthen democracy and defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Iraq, but it was opposed to the presence of Cuban troops who were doing the same in Angola.

At their meeting in Luanda on February 4th, 1982, Cuban Foreign Minister, Isidoro Malmierca and his Angolan counterpart, Paulo Jorge, issued a ten point statement affirming the purpose of the presence of Cuban troops in Angola by making it perfectly clear that the Cuban troops came to Angola at the request of the Angolan government.

The statement concluded that "when the governments of Angola and Cuba deem it appropriate, the withdrawal of the Cuban forces stationed in Angola will take place as a result of the sovereign decision of the government of the People's Republic of Angola, once there is no longer any possibility of attack or armed invasion".

If we are to examine the liberation strategy of SWAPO and the ANC, then the facts will in the end answer the question as to whether SWAPO and the ANC have achieved the objectives of their struggle respectively.

Both SWAPO and the ANC fought many military battles and at the same time engaged in political mobilization at home as well as international campaigns throughout the world.

The ANC was fighting to overthrow the system of apartheid and create a non-racial democratic government for all South Africans. Consequently, the armed liberation struggle by SWAPO and ANC was not an end, but a means to achieve political goals.

The sole aim of SWAPO was to bring about the total liberation of Namibia from apartheid colonialism. As a result, SWAPO's military objectives supplemented its larger strategic purpose of bringing about favourable conditions under which the war would be ended and terms on which Namibia will achieve genuine independence.

The Reagan administration through its policy of Constructive Engagement not only delayed the independence of Namibia by linking it to the departure of Cuban troops from Angola, but also tried to stop SWAPO from gaining power in Namibia.

In Crocker's view a Namibian settlement should not come at the expense of Savimbi. Again in High Noon in Southern Africa, Crocker revealed his prejudice towards SWAPO: "We agreed that a winner take-all SWAPO victory posed risks for the West".

Even before he was confirmed as Assistant Secretary for African Affairs at the US Department of State, Crocker was scornful of SWAPO and its Third World allies at the UN.

"The very nature of UN bloc politics and Third World diplomatic authoritarianism (e.g., the prejudgement toward SWAPO) would skew any UN supervised settlement to SWAPO's advantages, Crocker asserted.

For the Crocker school of thought the previous approach, the Namibia-only, pro-Front Line State US policy of Jimmy Carter and Andrew Young had to change. That was a coded word for amendments to the UN Plan for Namibia.

During a public lecture at the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, Dr Theo-Ben Gurirab, a consummate diplomat who is the current Speaker of the National Assembly of Namibia, catalogued a series of diplomatic efforts carried out by SWAPO.

According to Dr Gurirab the regime in Pretoria had all along been refusing to talk directly to SWAPO. However, after Cuito Cuanavale he was approached by the facilitators of the Pretoria regime in New York and Washington D.C. for a kind of discreet encounters. The tide had turned and the South Africans found themselves literally naked without any cover of psychological resilience.

In the words of Dr Gurirab, it was the Angolan-Cuban-SWAPO and ANC forces that did the work to have changed the mind of the South Africans.

UNITA's military objectives were marked by rhetorical confusion and to a large extent they contradicted its political objectives. Publically, UNITA was fighting what was perceived to be a threat of approaching communist onslaught, but in private UNITA was fighting for Savimbi to become President of Angola.

Olimpio Nhuleipo's viewpoint published in New Era, Friday October 5, 2007, attests that Savimbi was made out to be an aspirant to the Angolan Presidency, lectured on a sure success due to the advantage he got over all other liberation movements in belonging to the majority ethnic group, the Ovimbundu - his political capital and theoretical support base.

For the South Africans, UNITA was simply a military tool in their efforts to extend the cordon sanitaire of apartheid strategic undertakings far beyond the Namibian northern boundaries.

In a classic description of Sun Tzu, Savimbi fitted in well as the individualist without strategy who took opponents lightly and inevitably became the captive of others.

With the financial and material support of the Reagan administration, Savimbi was convinced that the bravery of UNITA would defeat the Angolan government and UNITA would inevitably seize power.

On the surface Savimbi appeared to have had a strategy, but if he had one, then it got entangled in the illusory web of South African/American interests.

Consequently, the events narrated above and many more not mentioned were dominant road signs on the arduous road, which ended in Cuito Cuanavale.

Evidently, Angola suffered in terms material and human losses, but the country stood firm and refused to be beaten into submission by apartheid South Africa.

Around December 1985, a Soviet General Konstantin Shaganovitch was dispatched to Angola as military advisor to the Angolan government. A lot of literature credited Shaganovitch with the planning of operations to attack Mavinga in 1986.

This is disputed from the simple logic that Shaganovitch was a military advisor and therefore, could not have conceived that operation, but

The operation to attack Mavinga was planned in 1986, but was badly conceived in such a way that Cubans privately questioned the logic of such operation which lacked elements of a surprise attack.

According to Jorge Risquet, the Cuban military command warned FAPLA and the Soviet military advisors that they should anticipate the possibility of South African intervention in support of UNITA should they go ahead with such operation.

Other factors, such as the vast distance to be covered for logistical supply, the inhospitable setting, lack of adequate anti-air defence and air support would further undercut the success of the operation.

The Cuban also cited the huge cost that was likely to impact negatively on Angola's financial resources. Despite the warning by the Cubans, the operation got underway. As a result South Africans got a hint in advance of the offensive and launched a number of counter-attacks to delay the main offensive.

Initially the Cubans did not take part in the offensive of 1987, which they had earlier opposed, but later joined in to take over the responsibility of defending Cuito Cuanavale.

Prior to the operation, Cubans were maintaining the Lubango-Menogue defence line against the South African penetration deep into Angola.

On Sunday, November 15, 1987, a decision to reinforce the Cuban troops in Angola was taken at a meeting in El Laguito house number 24, which lasted for more than ten hours. The meeting was chaired by El Commandante -En-Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz and was prompted by the grave situation in the People's Republic of Angola as a result of South African aggression.

Around November 19, 1987, Jorge Risquest, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, met with President José Eduardo dos Santos and advised against the deployment in combat of the Cuban troops who were defending the Moçâmedes-Menongue line, since that would have overstretched them to the point where they would have had difficulties in taking part in the operation and at the same time maintain the defence line.

President dos Santos approved the proposal for combined forces of Cuba-Angola-SWAPO and he ANC to be deployed at Cuito Cuanavale.

General Leopoldo (Polito) Cintras Frias was placed in command of the operation and according to Risquet, it was his third mission in Angola with the Cuban internationalist forces.

Gen. Polito Cintras Frias headed the Cuban delegation to Namibia for the 18th Anniversary of the independence of Namibia and received the highest honour bestowed on El-Commandante-En-Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz, by President Hifikepunye Pohamba.

By the beginning of 1986, western intelligence sources estimated that there were 27 MI-24s, 23 MiG-23s, 70 MiG-21s and 10 SU-22s in Angola.

South Africa on its side decided to commit the large conventional formation known as 61 Mechanised Battalion as well as a battery of G5 guns, the pride of South Africa's artillery arsenal.

Then came further reinforcements in the form of 4 SA Infantry Battalion, a troop of G6 guns; and a squadron of Olifant tanks.

The size of the South African troops and types of armaments perhaps were not fully disclosed due the secrecy that clouded the invasion.

Nevertheless, the argument is about who won the battle of Cuito Cuanavale and how the victory of that battle impacted Angola and the Southern African region.

The most striking question that comes to mind is what was apartheid South African troops fighting for and had they achieved either military operational objectives or the grand political strategy?

Another revisionist R. Allport wrote: "The Cuban/Faplan offensive had failed."

He asserted that the Cubans tried to save face and boost their demoralized troops by claiming loudly that they had won the "Battle for Cuito Cuanavale", which they claimed to have successfully defended against all South African attacks!

He went on to say "throughout the campaign the South Africans, mindful of the fact that they were involved in an undeclared war and without allies in the west, refrained from making any public statements on the progress of the war".

According to him, this gave the Cubans and Angolans the advantage in the propaganda war. Apparently, the SADF could not reveal that it only had a small combat force of less than 3 000 lightly-armed troops in Angola, as this would have revealed their weaknesses to the enemy.

He also added "the superior training and tactics of the SADF had convinced the Cubans and Angolans that they were facing a large, heavily-armed force".

The impact of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale sharply contradicts the version of Allport. By invading Angola, the apartheid army is comparable to a foolish person who set the forest close to his house ablaze without knowing that the wind will in the course of the day change its direction and redirect the fire in the direction of the house.

The warning of Master Sun Tzu that when fire is set upwind, do not attack downwind has relevance in this story.

A just cause is a salt of the soul and unjust cause is a bitter acid of a troubled mind. Precisely, every cause needs a victory, but can the victorious army be burned out of existence like ash of charcoal?

The South Africans interpret the situation differently; to them the objectives of Operation Modular were not to occupy ground, but to stop the advance by FAPLA and to destroy its forces. Were the objectives of Modular achieved and if so, have they significantly turned the tide in favour of South Africa and its UNITA ally?

Horace Campbell disagrees that in the context of the war in Southern Africa, the South Africans confused their political objectives with their operational objectives and with what was actually possible given the limitations of the form of organization of South African society.

Chester Crocker in his book 'High Noon in Southern Africa' selectively tried to downplay the victory of Cuba at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale with a hypothetical assumption that Castro's gamble would have paid off quickly, or he could end up with the ugly choice of de-escalating with nothing or becoming stuck more deeply in the quagmire.

Crocker was writing after the battle had already taken place and his assumptions would not in any way change the history of that event. The argument is not to speculate about what should have taken place, but what actually took place.

What Crocker and others of his school of thought forgot to acknowledge is that in February 1988, the SADF launched two assaults on the FAPLA/Cuban brigades in the Tumpo Triangle, but was beaten back.

Again on March 23, 1988, the SADF launched what was to be its final attack on the Cuban/FAPLA positions in the Tumpo Triangle which again failed.

On June 27, South African troops attacked the Cuban and SWAPO forces at Tchipa-Calueque and again the South African troops were defeated.

In the words of Risquet, "a reconnaissance group from the Cuban special troop's battalion, lying in ambush 17 kilometers south of Tchipa, entered into combat with an enemy armored vehicle unit, which attacked their position with mortars".

According to Riquest, out of five South African combat vehicles, three were compeletly destroyed, a fourth was abandoned and only one managed to escape.

The South African column that came as reinforcement was bombed by MiG-23 which resulted in heavy casualties.

The Cuban military command had identified the strategic importance of Tchipa and by May 1988, and thereafter, a number of infantry, tanks and anti-aircraft weapons had to be deployed there.

El-Commandante-En-Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz put it this way: "Decisive battles should not be waged on the terrain chosen by the enemy; decisive battles must be waged on the terrain chosen by one's own forces, and the enemy must be hit in sensitive, truly strategic places."

He further added: "The essential idea was to halt them in Cuito Cuanavale and hit them in the southwest." This is a classic strategy advocated by General Sun Tzu that those skilled in war bring the enemy to the field of battle and are not brought there by him.

However, despite the overwhelming body of evidence, Professor Crocker saw the event differently and described it in his own way.

Crocker also confimed that the Cuban air force MiGs bombed the dam and brigde at Calueque just north of the border. He went on to say eleven SADF men were killed in the attack, which damaged the major pumping station and water facilities serving northern Namibia.

To demonstrate that Crocker tries to rewrite history, he simply put it that SADF armour and artillery units pulled back across the border.

Throughout his book he selectively plays with words to suit his version of the story.

So to him the South Africans were not beaten, but pulled back. The reason for pulling back was not clearly explained by Professor Crocker.

Conversely, the overwhelming body of evidence indicated that South African troops were encircled and trapped at Cuito Cuanavale with no likelihood of being extricated because they lost air superiority; hence they hurriedly agreed to the negotiations in order to find a face-serving exit from that military quagmire.

Perhaps that is what Crocker referred to as "their official withdrawal in late August".

Given the elusive nature of the military objective of South Africa and incompatible of their political objectives, supported by facts that neither apartheid government survived the aftermaths of Cuito Cuanavale nor was UNITA able to attain any of its intended military and political objectives, the conclusion to be drawn from the lesson of Cuito Cuanavale is that both South

Africa and UNITA lost the battle and momentum. No victory without survival.

If survivability is to be used as the standard, then one can rightly conclude that the Angolan government of President José Eduardo dos Santos survived the total onslaught by the apartheid South Africa and is still in power today.

UNITA which was pretending to fight for democracy lost a democratic election in 1992 and went back to war.

When Clinton assumed the US Presidency he tried to revive the peace process, but Savimbi was too captivated with obsession to become President of Angola by any available means. Savimbia died on February 22, 2002, and by that time his army had shrunk to a few diehards.

Unfortonately for Savimbi and Crocker by extension, he died without having achieved his main objective. As for the sainthood Crocker tried to bestow on Savimbi, history is probably laughing at him and he must accept that verdict.

The humiliating defeat at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale and the final round at Tchipa-Calueque on 27 June 1988 appeared to push down the last sporting pillar of the Apartheid regime. It was like a wounded lion fighting for its life.

On January 18, 1989 perhaps as a result of the shock brought to bear by the defeat of his troops at Cuito Cuanavale, Pieter Willem Botha (Die Groot Krokodil), the State President of South Africa suffered a mild stroke while preparing for the opening of the South African Parliament, thereby throwing the country into an already deepened constitutional crisis.

What happened after that was an upheaval in the corridors of power that brought Frederik (F.W.) Willem de Klerk to power. Subsequently, apartheid collapsed like a house of cards as soon as cracks started to appear following the defeat at Cuito Cuanavale.

SWAPO was able to bring about favourable conditions under which the war was ended and terms on which Namibia achieved genuine independence. This year marks the 18th anniversary of the independence of Namibia.

The ANC too was able to bring about the creation of a non-racial and democratic South Africa.

The Cubans left Angola after having assisted Angola to defend its territorial integrity and sovereignty.

They left behind a grateful and stable region asserting its own determination, without any fear of cross-border raids and insecurity, which were dominant incidences during the apartheid regime.

At the battle of Cuito Cuanavale like the biblical battle of Armageddon, the force of freedom triumphed over the forces of apartheid and colonialism. Self-evidently the negative forces have all vanished from the face of the earth and never to return.

In conclusion, the battle of Cuito Cuanavale would go down in history as the place where apartheid forces met a crushing and humiliating defeat and thereafter they melted away.

Occasionally, the victors always write history, but the greatest irony in our case is that with the exception of a few, we depend very much on history written by revisionists. Therefore, a challenge is to the participants of that historic battle to help in the writing of history from the perspective of eyewitness accounts and experience.

- Jéroboam Shaanika holds a Doctoral Degree in International Relations and Diplomacy from Ecole des Haute Etudes Internationale-Paris France, M.A and Diploma in Diplomatic Studies from the University of Westminster - London UK, Certificate in International Studies from London School of Political Science. He is a Namibian civil servant and views expressed are solely his own.