In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

(232) IN SEARC H OF ENEMIES
their numbers at least to 12,000. They moved as modern, regular
army units, with trucks, helicopters, tanks, armored cars, artillery
support, and eventually MIG-21 jet fighter aircraft. In February, the
Soviets' Angola program was estimated by the CIA to have reached
S400 million.
By mid-January of 1976 it had become clear to the South Africans
that they would receive no public support for their Angolan effort,
not even from Savimbi, who owed them so much. Realizing that the
United States government would itself soon be forced to abandon its
Angolan program, and facing a Cuban/MPLA force which was no
longer a pushover, they gave up in disgust and retired back across
the border as efficiently and quietly as they had come.
Vorster's plan-putting in a small, covert force-had violated the
cardinal rule of military strategy-the clear definition and pursuit of
a desired objective. Emphatically, South Africa had been taught a
hard lesson: certain black African countries would accept its covert
aid, but few sincerely bought its thesis of an African brotherhood
which transcended racial issues. Despite the CIA's camaraderie, and
despite whatever reassurances the South Africans felt they had received
from the Ford administration,* the United States had rejected
their bid for overt support. Three months later the United States
joined in a critical vote against them in the United Nations Security
Council. The South African military was bitter, feeling that it was
discredited in the eyes of the world. The campaign had been expensive,
costing the South African government s133 million. The damage
to its white population's morale, the bitterness over the deaths
of its soldiers in a secret, ill-conceived campaign in Angola, the
humiliation of having two soldiers paraded before the Organization
of African Unity in Addis Ababa, were all impossible to measure.
Two months later, in March 1976, the South Africans were obliged
to turn the Cunene hydroelectric project over to the victorious
MPLA.**
*A U.S. embassy cable from Capetown on February 5, 1976, reported that United
party leader Sir De Villiers Graaf and foreign affairs spokesman Japie Basson both
noted to the visiting Bartlett congressional delegation " ... the general belief that
South Africa had gone into Angola with some understanding that the United States
intended to put up strong resistance to Soviet and Cuban intervention.''
••see " South Africa: Up against the World," by John de St. Jorre, Foreign Policy
No. 28 (Fall 1977).