The scale, frequency and geographical spread of South African attacks on neighbouring African countries have in recent years become so great that it is not possible to document them all in FOCUS. Most issues of the IDAF news bulletin have contained material on South African agression against Angola, the Front Line State most seriously affected by the operations of the South African armed forces, while for South Africa's other neighbours, particular events, such as the Matola raid into Mozambique have been reported without attempting any overall analysis.
A number of clear trends are nevertheless apparent over the southern African subcontinent as a whole, which illustrate the continuing development during 1981-82 of a systematic and regionally coordinated strategy of aggression and destabilisation on the part of the apartheid regime.
In this strategy military, economic and political means are all employed. During 1981 there was an increase in the frequency and scale of operations by South African forces or attributed to South African agents throughout the region. This included an increasing number of raids and attacks against vital transport links and major economic installations. In addition, dissident groups, such as Mozambique National Resistance (MNR), and UNITA in Angola, have featured much more prominently than in the past.
Below is a report on these developments as they have affected Mozambique.
The months following the raid on Matola by South African commandoes on 30 January 1981 saw an increasing number of border incursions, air space violations and other open attacks by the South African armed forces. The dissident Mozambique National Resistance (MNR) obtained growing coverage for its actions in the press and media while the evidence of its origins in, and dependence on, South Africa, although less-publicised, assumed comprehensive proportions. South Africa's strategy of economic destabilisation was manifested through a number of operations for some of which the MNR claimed responsibility, including attacks on the road and rail links, and the oil pipeline, between Zimbabwe and the Mozambique port of Beira.
In the days following the Matola raid, the South African armed forces began to concentrate large numbers of troops along the Mozambique-South Africa border in the zones of Moaba, Ressano and Garcia, while Mozambique's airspace was constantly violated. Speaking at a public rally in Maputo on 14 February 1981, President Samora Machel called on the Mozambican people to be vigilant and to prepare themselves for further attacks. A wide range of civil and military defence arrangements, including the building of air-raid shelters; training schemes for first-aid workers; educational programmes in schools and among the public at large in readiness for air-raids, fires, sabotage, poison gas attacks and other eventualities; and paramilitary training for young people.
The next open incursion by South African troops took place on 17 March, when two South African soldiers were killed by Mozambican security forces stationed at the coastal resort of Ponta do Ouro, in the southernmost part of the country. A force of about 50, predominantly black but white-led, South African soldiers crossed the border from Natal province and advanced across a hill-top just outside Ponta do Ouro town.
In a broadcast on 17 January 1982 the Mozambique armed forces announced through their radio programme Voz de Combate that there had been 11 recorded violations of Mozambican airspace by South African aircraft during the five-week period 1 December 1981 to 8 January 1982 alone. The violations occurred in a number of regions of the southern provinces of Maputo and Gaza and the central province of Manica. Their purpose, the broadcast said, was to fly in weapons, supplies and mercenary reinforcements to the 'destabilizing armed gangs' of the Mozambique National Resistance (MNR) movement, and to carry out aerial espionage and reconnaissance missions. The radio gave details of the various incidents.
During this same period, extensive evidence of South African backing for, and direction of the MNR was uncovered when the Mozambique armed forces (FPLM) occupied the MNR's central base in the southern part of Manica province. The base, which was captured on 7 December at the end of an eight day operation, was located at Garagua, in the remote mountainous and thinly populated district of Mossurize, and about 20 km from the Zimbabwe border.
When the FPLM entered the base, it had been evacuated by its residents, leaving behind large amounts of weaponry and equipment, together with documents making clear the close relationship between the MNR and the South African armed forces. According to the Mozambique Information Agency (AIM), 'the evidence discovered at Garagua overwhelmingly proves that the MNR is little more than an extension of the apartheid army'.
Among other buildings and installations, the base was found to contain a landing strip and quantities of fuel for South African-supplied helicopters and residences for specialist officers and mercenaries, also believed to come from South Africa and to be responsible for training MNR cadres.
The documents captured by the FPLM included the minutes, in Portuguese, of a meeting inside South Africa on 25 October 1980 between Afonso Dlacama, the MNR leader, and a South African intelligence officer named Colonel Van Niekerk. The purpose of the meeting had been to transmit orders from South Africa to the MNR regarding Pretoria's strategy of destabilisation in Mozambique. In return for carrying out a number of 'priority actions' (including ambushes of major roads in central Mozambique, sabotage of the Mozambique-Zimbabwe pipeline and attacks on the rail links between Zimbabwe and Mozambique ports), the MNR would receive logistical support from South Africa in the shape of weapons, ammunition and communications equipment.
Van Niekerk and Dlacama also discussed the possibility of MNR-inspired 'disturbances' in Maputo and Beira, and of supplying the MNR by sea, via the mouth of the Buzi river in Sofala province.
