A South African national serviceman recounts becoming a soldier and an ensuing David-and-Goliath face-off against Angolan armed forces in 1987. The climactic death-throes of Soviet Communism during the 1980s included a last-gasp attempt at strategic franchise expansion in southern Africa. Channeled through Castro’s Cuba, oil-rich Angolan armed forces (FAPLA) received billions of dollars of advanced weaponry and thousands of armored vehicles. Their intent: to eradicate the US-backed Angolan opposition (UNITA), then push southwards into South Africa’s protectorate SWA/Namibia, ostensibly as liberators. 1985 saw the first large-scale mechanized offensive in southern African history. Russian Generals planned and oversaw the offensive but didn’t account for the tenacity of UNITA (supported by the South African Defense Forces, SADF) or the rainy season. The ‘85 offensive floundered in the mud, and FAPLA returned to their capital Luanda. The South Africans stood down, confident their “covert” support for UNITA had demonstrated the folly of prosecuting war so far from home against Africa’s military Superpower. However, they were mistaken. Fidel and FAPLA immediately redoubled their efforts, strengthening fifteen battalions with even more Soviet hardware while Russian and Cuban specialists oversaw troop training. As Cuban and Angolan fighter pilots honed their skills over the skies of Northern Angola, David Mannall, a normal seventeen-year-old kid completing high school, was preparing for two years of compulsory military service before beginning Tertiary education. Through a series of fateful twists, he found himself leading soldiers in several full-scale armored clashes, including the largest and most decisive battle on African soil since World War II. This is a David and Goliath story that has never been truthfully told. The author reveals how Charlie Squadron, comprising just twelve 90mm AFVs crewed by thirty-six national servicemen, as part of the elite sixty-one Mechanized Battalion, engaged and effectively annihilated the giant FAPLA 47th Armored Brigade in one day—3 October 1987. Their 90mm cannons were never designed as tank-killers, but any assurances that it would never be used against heavy armor were left in the classroom during the three-month operation and never more starkly than the decisive “Battle on The Lomba River.” The Communist-backed offensive died that day along with hundreds of opposition fighters. 47th Brigade survivors abandoned their remaining equipment, eventually joining the 59th Brigade in what became a full-scale retreat of over ten thousand soldiers to Cuito Cuanevale. The myth perpetuated by post-apartheid politicians goes something like this: “The SADF force that destroyed 47th Brigade on 3 October numbered 6,000 men and that all the hard yards were run by the long-suffering UNITA!” The inconvenient truth is that there were just 36 South African boys on the frontline that day, but it is also true to say they would never have achieved such a stunning victory without the support of many more. This is their story.

A dramatic recreation of the fighting that took place on the Lomba River in Southern Angola during Operation 'Moduler' in 1987.

The battle for the town of Cuito Cuanavale is a myth. The conduct of Operations Modular, Hooper, Packer and Displace by South African and UNITA forces in the 6th Military Region of southeastern Angola initially prevented FAPLA and its allies from occupying the UNITA town of Mavinga. The success achieved in this endeavor then led to the conduct of offensive military operations to force FAPLA and its allies to relinquish their bridgehead over the Cuito River and to redeploy to the western bank at Cuito Cuanavale. The FAPLA deployment and occupation of Cuito Cuanavale, on the western bank of the Cuito River, was never contested militarily by opposing forces during 1987 and 1988.

A “gripping” story of the Angolan Civil War and how it evolved into a Cold War struggle between superpowers (New York Journal of Books). Lasting over a quarter of a century, from 1975 to 2002, the Angolan Civil War began as a power struggle between two former liberation movements, the MPLA and UNITA—but became a Cold War struggle with involvement from the Soviet Union, Cuba, South Africa, and the United States. This book examines the height of the Cuban-South African fighting in Angola in 1987–88, when three thousand South African soldiers and about eight thousand UNITA guerrilla fighters fought in alliance against the Cubans and the armed forces of the Marxist MPLA government, a force of over fifty thousand men. Fred Bridgland pieced together the course of the war, fought in one of the world’s most remote and wild terrains, by interviewing the South Africans who fought it, and many of their stories are woven into the narrative. This classic account of a Cold War struggle and its momentous consequences for the participants and the continent now includes a new preface and epilogue. “Highlights just how much political and social considerations dictate the outcome of war . . . A highly detailed work of military history, The War for Africa can tell us a lot about the nature of counter-insurgency warfare and how small states can become contested battlegrounds between superpowers.” —New York Journal of Books

A fascinating chronicle of the Cold War battle where US and Soviet weapons, as well as Cuban and South African troops, took part in the Angolan Civil War. In the late 1980s, as America prepared to claim its victory in the Cold War over the Soviet Union, a bloody war still raged in Southern Africa, where proxy forces from both sides vied for control of Angola. The socialist Angolan government, stocked with Soviet weapons, had only to wipe out the resistance group UNITA, secretly supplied by the United States, in order to claim sovereignty. But as Angolan forces gained the upper hand, apartheid-era South Africa stepped in to protect its own interests. The white army crossing the border prompted the Angolans to call on their own foreign reinforcements—the army of Communist Cuba. Thus began the epic Battle of Cuito Cuanavale: an odd match-up of South African Boers against Castro’s armed forces. While South Africa was subject to an arms boycott since 1977, the Cuban and Angolan troops had the latest Soviet weapons. But UNITA had its secret US supply line, and the South Africans knew how to fight. As a case study of ferocious fighting between East and West, The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War unveils a remarkable episode in the endgame of the Cold War—one that is largely unknown to the American public.

'A shooting war is often followed by a second war. This war is not fought with bullets or artillery shells, not with tanks or bombers, but rather with words.' In 1987-1988 the dusty Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale was the backdrop for the final battles of the Border War. Ever since the war ended, the fighting around Cuito has been the subject of a fierce public debate over who actually won the war. While the leadership of the former South African Defence Force (SADF) claims it was never defeated, the supporters of the Angolan MPLA government, Cuba and SWAPO insist that the SADF was vanquished on the battlefield. They contend that the SADF wanted to overrun Cuito Cuanavale and use it as a springboard for an advance on Luanda. But was Cuito Cuanavale ever really an objective of the SADF? Leopold Scholtz tackles this question by examining recently declassified documents in the SANDF archives, exploring the strategic and tactical decisions that shaped the six main battles, from the SADF's stunning tactical success on the Lomba River to the grinding struggle for the Tumpo Triangle. His incisive analysis untangles what happens when war, politics and propaganda become entwined.