Making sense of Cuito Cuanavale.
In short, I think much of the argument over whether the battle for Cuito was a legit ops stems from some of the following information. The battle for the town of Cuito started in Aug 1987 with a MPLA/FAPLA advance from this area towards the South Eastern UNITA strongholds around Mavinga/Jamba.
The SADF responded and in conjunction with UNITA forces launched Operation Modular. Once the Angolans were forced to retreat, they launched Operation Hooper (Jan-Feb '88) to inflict maximum casualties on the retreating SWAPO / MPLA / FAPLA forces.
The Angolan government asked for help from Cuba and Fidel Castro responded which influenced the birth of Operation Packer with the it's main aim of driving the Cuban/FAPLA/MPLA forces west of the Cuito river which ended in the stand-off artillery bombardment of Cuito Cuanavale.
The SADF never intended to take the town, what would they do with it? They had not only stopped the advance, but inflicted such serious casualties and materiel losses that both the Soviets and Cubans never again supported such aggression and soon after an agreement around Namibian independence was signed (one of the conditions being Cuban withdrawal from Angola) So in effect this was the turning point for the war.
The only way to salvage some pride or propaganda from this was to paint it as a battle for this one town when that was in fact only the very short final stage of a crushing blow to MPLA designs on South Eastern Angola.
One should remember that this was the Cold War and everyone feared Communist expansionism and in South Africa's case that fear was not unfounded. Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and others had all fallen to Communist backed regimes and they were clearly next sitting on vast mineral wealth and being able to control the strategic sea route rounding from Europe around Africa to the Far East.
As for Angola, the Cubans often wanted to portray SA as an imperialist force to hide their own intentions (what were they doing in Angola???). SA's only concern had been to keep control (though UNITA) over the southern areas of Angola bordering Namibia to deny SWAPO easy access from close bases. They never had any interest in invading or occupying Angola, they always had a small mobile force, not a large occupying forces. And occupation – besides being next to impossible and leaving SA vulnerable – would have given others (Soviet/Cuban) the pre-text for much large operations. Of course on several occasions when SA was drawn into large scale action, they were so effective and covered so much ground that observers could be forgiven for thinking they wanted to invade. I'm thinking of Operation Savannah ('75) when they advanced 3,000km in just over 30 days and perhaps Operations Protea in '81.
And as for weapons and tactics, the SADF had a history stretching back to WWI with training and equipment to match most modern western armies, while the MPLA had only been in existing for 5-10 years and FAPLA was an irregular force at best. SA didn't have air superiority, but they used the terrain (sand, trees) as a force multiplier, by hiding during the day and moving at night with their wheeled vehicles not being restricted only to the few main roads. Olifant tanks traveled on the perimeter of columns to protect vulnerable Ratel APCs. They also deployed a new ZT3 Ratel with ATGM (anti-tank guided missiles) and in addition to the Olifant and 90mm guns of some Ratels were effective enough against enemy armor on the few occasion that it was required.
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