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Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, Pretoria
Author: Piero Gleijeses
504pp; size 242 X 160mm; lavishly illustrated
with b/w pics and in-text illustrations
Hardback; ISBN 1-919-85410-X. Bar code 9781919854106
Conflicting Missions is a compelling and dramatic account of Cuban policy in Africa and of its escalating clash with US policy and later its direct military clashes with the South African Defence Force in Angola.
It is the other side of a conflict that South Africans have not been told about until now.
Gleijeses' narrative gallops from Cuba's first hesitant steps in rendering assistance to Algerian rebels fighting France in 1961, to the war in the Congo (later Zaire and now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1964-65, when 100 Cubans led by Che Guevara, acting in support of the Simba rebels, were confronted by white mercenaries from South Africa, Rhodesia, Britain and elsewhere - supported and controlled by America's Central Intelligence Agency.
Gleijeses writes about the dramatic despatch to Angola of Cuban troops to aid the communist-backed rebel MPLA movement in 1975. And how, being the rainy season, their destruction of the major river bridges in Angola's north contributed to halting the rapid and victorious advance of the seemingly unstoppable Battle Group Zulu of South Africa's SADF.
The blocking of Battle Group Zulu from reaching Luanda led to political decisions by the US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, to call off the CIA's IAFEATURE operations in support pf UNITA and the FNLA and to South African Prime Minister John Vorster withdrawing all South African forces from Angola. This left the MPLA and its Cuban and other communist allies in control.
This was undoubtedly the most significant domino that would soon lead to the fall of white Rhodesia and ultimately to the handover of Namibia to SWAPO and finally to black rule in the Republic South Africa.
Piero Gleijeses analysis is clear, rigorous and balanced; the archival research supporting it is unprecedented. Not only is he the first historian to have gained access to closed Cuban archives, he also worked extensively in the archives of the United States, Belgium, Great Britain and East and West Germany.
In addition he interviewed many of the protagonists in the United States, Cuba and Africa - from the head of the CIA station in Luanda to Che Guevara's second-in-command in the Congo - and analysed the American, European, South African and other African press. The result is a remarkably comprehensive document that sheds new light on the history of those times. It revolutionises our view of Cuba's international role, challenges conventional beliefs about the Soviet Union in directing Cuba's action in Africa and provides, for the first time, a look from the inside of Cuba's foreign policy during the Cold War.
Media reviews:
How SA, and CIA lost Angola - By Spencer Mogapi
"Conflicting Missions"- Havana, Washington, Pretoria- By Piero Gleijeses
We have just received in our shelves a new book - "Conflicting Missions"(Havana, Washington, Pretoria) by Piero Gleijeses-a professor of American Foreign Policy at John Hopkins University. Drawing on recently declassified security information pertaining to behind the scenes horse-trading deals that characterised most of the liberation wars in Southern Africa especially in the late seventies, Gleijeses' book is a comprehensive read for students of Contemporary History of Southern Africa, as well as those doing Strategic Studies at both undergraduate and post graduate levels.
With emphasis on Angola Gleijeses graphically narrates how the arrival of the Cuban army in that county to engage both the South Africans and the British mercenaries ended up in a wave of protracted and intricate policy clashes between the United States Central Intelligence Agency and Fidel Castro's Cuba.
In the end the scales tilted in favour of the Angolan MPLA, and their Cuban allies. From the deals between the warring parties, flowed liberation for a number of Southern African countries-Namibia and Zimbabwe included. Gleijeses uses this new information to unmask not only the deals cut during that time, but goes further to analyse personalities behind those deals. After years of mystery surrounding the murky relationship between Unita's Jonas Savimbi and the Pretoria government, Gleijeses states that one of the first formal contacts between the two took place in Gaborone on March 17, 1975 after Savimbi had approached the South Africans pleading for assistance (in money and weapons). The Portuguese settlers facilitated the meeting.
It was under the instructions of General Constand Viljoen that Pretoria approved 20 million Rand worth of weapons for Savimbi. In return for that assistance the South African military intelligence officers that represented Pretoria at the meeting demanded that Savimbi cut all ties with the Sam Nujoma led SWAPO (South West African Peoples Organisation) which was regarded too close to the communist MPLA. Savimbi obliged, and started "delineating with increasing zest, his vision of an Angola that would maintain friendly relations with South Africa based on the principle of non-interference and would join South Africa and other countries in the region in an anti-communist bloc."
Obsessed with desire to smash SWAPO, the South Africans embraced Savimbi, despite intelligence information that he could not be trusted in the long run.
The relationship was to be long-lived, making Savimbi a "new star in the sky" for the South Africans after meeting their two leading Generals (Viljoen and Van den Berg) in Kinshasa who got mesmerised, and fell under his spell.
"Viljoen and Van den Berg were dazzled by his [Savimbi's] personality, his grasp of military matters, his sympathetic and understanding of Pretoria's need to smash SWAPO, and his emphasis on an anti-communist bloc that would include South Africa, Angola, Zaire, and Zambia."
By that time the South African government had despatched its well-equipped and well-trained Battle Group Zulu column to take over Luanda, but shock awaited the South Africans. The arrival of the Cubans put paid the dream of capturing Angola.
Though at great cost in destruction of Angolan infrastructure the Cubans managed to stop the South Africans before reaching Luanda.
As the war turned into a stalemate, hard decisions, including the seemingly most unlikely compromises from sworn enemies were made. And it was through these decisions that a couple of Southern African Countries including Namibia and the present day Zimbabwe went on to gain their independence. To throw the towel first was the United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who ordered the call off of CIA operations in Angola that supported UNITA.
He was followed in kind by a March 27 1976 call by South African Prime Minister John Vorster ordering the withdrawal of all South African forces inside Angola. For South Africa it was not a happy withdrawal, especially as they were on the brink of capturing Luanda. South Africa felt not only let down by an erstwhile partner - the United States, but also betrayed.
Years later, the then Minister of Defence PW Botha, who was to become SA President, lamented; "We went into Angola with the knowledge and approval of the Americans. They encouraged us to act, and when we had nearly reached the climax, we were ruthlessly left in the lurch."
A South African General was later to call Angola "the South African Bay of Pigs." No doubt South Africa was in a particularly bruised mood, deeply discredited. The result of the two withdrawals was that MPLA, supported by Cuba and some other international communist elements remained in total control of Angola. This was humiliating to both the United States and South Africa.
The withdrawal of the South Africans from Southern Angola also meant that SWAPO had the entire region to themselves and were enabled to better infiltrate and invade Northern Namibia. The region was now a safe haven for SWAPO, and their insurgency into Namibia was launched in full force. But the Cuban Victory in Angola, besides raising Africa's profile in the United States foreign policy also set in a string of events that led to the liberation of the Sub-Continent. Emerging from the US foreign policy backwaters, Africa assumed a much higher profile, and importance in the eyes of Kissinger, despite shrill resistance he encountered from powerful interests in the Congress.
After the CIA and their South African friends lost Angola, the Secretary of State took a Damascene turn in his dealings with Africa, developing and cultivating unprecedented interest in the continent - even undertaking a working trip to Africa.
He changed his policy especially with regard to Zimbabwe. True to his word he started to identify with African aspirations, most especially their drive towards self-determination. "I have a basic sympathy with the white Rhodesians but black Africa is absolutely united on this issue," he told the National Security Council on his return from Africa, "and if we do not grab the initiative we will be faced with the Soviets, and the Cuban troops," he said.
It was a painful about turn for Kissinger who had for so long believed in his arms length policy when it came to Africa. While maintaining that he believed in self-determination for black Africa, he had never risked rocking the boat by formulating a clear policy in that regard.
In the end Cuba's victory in Angola widened victories for most of Southern African countries, ushering in independence.
Note: The article above appeared on The Botswana Gazette of March 17 2004
When the United States decided to launch the covert intervention in June and July 1975, not only were there no Cubans in Angola, but the US government and the CIA were not even thinking about a Cuban presence there. Cuba eventually poured 50,000 troops into Angola in support of the Marxist independence group, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).
Gleijeses' research documents significant coordination between the United States and South Africa, from joint training missions to airlifts, and bluntly contradicts the Congressional testimony of the era and the memoirs of Henry A Kissinger, the former secretary of state.
The work draws heavily on White House, State Department memorandums, as well as extensive interviews and archival research in Cuba, Angola, Germany and elsewhere.
The New York Times
In Conflicting Missions Piero Gleijeses brilliantly describes deceits and disguises, with all their accompanying blood and guts and glory, of Cuba's intervention in Africa. Over the 10 years it took him to research this book, Gleijeses seemingly tracked down every lead, every participant, every document on all sides of the conflicts.
Los Angeles Times
According to Gleijeses, who obtained some access to Cuban archives and interviewed several participants in Cuba's African adventures, Fidel and Raul Castro and their legendary comrade Che never took orders from the Soviet Union, despite Cuba's economic dependence on Moscow, and often pursued policies that conflicted with those of the Soviets. The author's view, well supported by the books massive documentation, is that the Cubans intervened in Angola, Zaire, Congo and Guinea-Bissau and other conflicts of post-colonial Africa for two reasons: The sincerely believed in revolution and post-colonial solidarity, and they were getting nowhere in their arena of choice C Latin America.
The Washington Post
Gleijeses argues that contrary to popular belief, Cuba did not merely act as a Soviet pawn in Africa, but pursued its own interests. Castro viewed Africa as an important battleground to combat 'capitalist imperialism', usually contrary to Soviet policies. Geijeses conducted extensive research in writing this book, including gaining unprecedented access to Cuban archive material and oral histories. Little material is available on Cuban-African relations, and nothing this comprehensive.
Library Journal, Dallas, Texas
The Cold War scarred Africa; nowhere more so than Angola. The civil war lasted for four decades and left the country a huddle of refugees dependant on food aid because their fields are sewn with mines and haunted by bandits. Yet it was not, as Piero Gleijeses' new book shows, a straightforward tussle between the superpowers. To begin with the Soviets were hardly involved, although the Americans thought they were. The real players were Cuba and South Africa. As Portugal, the colonial power, withdrew in a hurry in the mid 1970s, it became clear that the MPLA, a revolutionary Marxist group, was going to win power. The South African army invaded to stop this happening and came within a few miles of taking the capital.
The Economist
Cuba's involvement in Africa has often been explained as a consequence of the manipulation of the Soviet Union. However, Gleijeses convincingly argues that Cuban operations were not guided or dictated by the interests of the Soviet Union. Cuba's actions were motivated by the ideal of spreading the Cuban revolution to other corners of the Third World, and by the very pragmatic need to raise its stature among non-aligned nations.
H-net Review
Readers' Comments:
With the publication of Conflicting Missions, Piero Gleijeses establishes his reputation as the most impressive historian of the Cold War in the Third World. Drawing on previously unavailable Cuban, African and American sources, he tells a story that's full of fresh and surprising information. And best of all, he does it with a remarkable sensitivity to the perspectives of the protagonists. The book will become an instant classic.
John Lewis Gaddis, author of We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History
NB: The Price includes shipping costs inside South Africa.
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R280.00 |
