South African Transnational Terrorism

excerpted from the book

The Real Terror Network

by Edward S. Herman

South End Press

South Africa, by itself, has very probably killed more people in the course of its "secret" warfare on its neighbors during the 1970s than the PLO, Red Brigades, Baader-Meinhof gang, Carlos, Cuba and Libya taken together. In a single raid on the Namibian refugee camp of Kassinga on May 4, 1978, South African forces killed over 600 people, a large proportion women and children. Many hundreds have been killed in Angola in search and destroy operations aimed at "the deliberate killing and terrorizing of Angolan civilians in any area where SWAPO might find support or help." The ruthlessness of these operations, with the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children, the burning down of all houses, the destruction of mission hospitals, staggers the imagination, although once again the Free Press has kept this largely under cover, preferring to concentrate on Soviet maneuvers on the Polish borders rather than actual invasions of African states by the apartheid regime.

Much of this destruction was carried out by hundreds of mercenaries, although regular South African forces have also been involved. According to one defector, who became "disgusted and tired of killing civilians."

"Our main job is to take an area and clear it. We sweep through it and we kill everything in front of us, cattle, goats, people, everything. We are out to stop SWAPO and so we stop them getting into the villages for food and water. But half the time the locals don't know what's going on. We're just fucking them up and it gets out of hand. Some of the guys get a bit carried away.

[He describes an operation in southern Angola during which two children appeared and started to run.] "... They'd taken their clothes off to show they weren't armed. We shot this young girl. She must have been about five. And we shot her father. We shot about nine in all.

I don't know how, but somehow this girl's mother and her sister didn't get shot. Well, we left them there and carried on with our patrol. She followed us: This mother and her little kid. She followed us all day, just walked along about 100 meters behind us. She didn't cry or say anything. This freaked me out."

Other defectors, some of them former white mercenaries from Rhodesia, have confirmed these accounts of merciless killing of civilians and scorched earth policies that have caused massive destruction in southern Angola. The Angolan government itself estimates that just during the 18 month period ending in December 1980, the South Africans mounted 13 major air and land assaults as well as numerous small-scale attacks.

Similar South African operations have been carried out on a hit-and-run basis in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Their purpose has been clear. South Africa intends to continue its wholly illegal occupation of Namibia, as a buffer and plunder state, and its murderous attacks on the black front-line states are partly to destroy SWAPO bases and sources of assistance, partly to injure and weaken countries on its border and on the border of Namibia that would be likely to aid Namibian independence. As is noted in a Wall Street Journal report,

South Africa waits, scuttling peace initiatives like the all-party conference in Geneva last winter and waging a generally low-level guerrilla war that costs it little- given Namibia's diamond, uranium and copper wealth- and gives its troops some counterinsurgency training in the bargain.

This Journal report also calls attention to the great "encourage meet" given South Africa's escalated violence against Angola by the new anti-terrorist Reagan administration-indirectly in its obvious toleration/sanction of the Israeli bombing raid on Iraq in the new anti-Libyan campaign, and more directly in Washington's warmth and understanding of the "context" that may be impelling the apartheid regime to occupy Namibia illegally and to kill black Africans without restraint.

The Reagan administration's role in the (recent) sharp escalation of South African terrorism can hardly be overstated. Only the Free Press and the most supine or reactionary leaders of the Free World could fail to see that code words like "realism," "understanding of the problems," "context," and "quiet diplomacy" mean that "we are behind you all the way; understand that any criticisms we make are strictly PR, to allow our allies to pretend that we object to your assaults on your neighbors (or your own black majority). " Even before Reagan, U.S. business had found South Africa profitable and therefore good, and our military-intelligence apparatus has long had the warmest relations with BOSS; but under liberal administrations, and even under Nixon and Ford, the loss of national prestige from open alliance with apartheid and Namibian aggression had a constraining effect. With the extreme right now exercising significant power in Washington (sharing it with the traditional conservative business interests), the bars are down-the formerly muted alliances with South African racism and Third World fascists have now become open and warm.

The mass media have played a strategic role in covering up the massive transnational violence of the apartheid regime. First and foremost, they have suppressed the facts. These are available and can be found in black African, radical, underground, and, to a lesser extent, liberal-left European publications. Extensive and horrifying details were given in the British Guardian series, cited above, based on on-the-spot reporting and interviews with a number of South African mercenary defectors. This series has not been reprinted in the United States, summaries have not been made available, and similar on-the-spot coverage in Angola is not provided. As in the case of East Timor following its invasion by our client state Indonesia, the Free Press does not go to the victims-government or refugees-it gets its information from the propaganda services of the invader. In connection with this open invasion of Angola, the New York Times has carried two front page and two second page articles based on South African handouts, describing "captured Soviet advisers," the view of the war as seen from South Africa, and a portrayal of the loot captured by the South Africans. Nothing from the end of the Angolan victims.

What makes the "Soviet adviser" gambit doubly dishonest is that the Cubans and Russians are in Angola mainly because South Africa's incursions and support of Savimbi pose a serious threat to the Angolan regime. The Wall Street Journal account cited earlier points out that

Both publicly and in private talks with western governments, Angola insists it would order the Cubans to withdraw if it were assured of an end to South African raids. Conversely, it warns that further attacks could force it to reach out even further to the Soviets, who seek political gain in the turbulence and instability of southern Africa.

This highlights once again the monumental hypocrisy of the west in its pretense at concern over terrorism, with its apologetics for preferred terror in terms of a Soviet presence! The preferred terror is also not only large scale and extremely ugly, it is in support of aggression in Namibia and protection of the cruel system of apartheid in South Africa itself.

Real Terror Network