South African aggression against Angola has continued since the signing of the Lusaka agreement on South African troop withdrawal on 16 February 1984, with the apparent aim of forcing the Angolan government to sign a non-aggression pact.
Continuing the well-established pattern, Pretoria has sought to exploit Angola's hard-pressed position in order to avoid direct ceasefire negotiations with SWAPO and the implementation of UN Resolution 435 for a Namibian settlement. The South African government appears to have viewed the Lusaka agreement as a step towards neutralising SWAPO's armed struggle and undermining Angolan support for Namibian freedom, without the need for any commitment on its own part to make progress towards Namibian independence.
Military and economic pressures have also been brought to bear on Angola to force it into negotiations with UNITA, South Africa's surrogate force in Angola. UNITA has continued to receive extensive logistical and propaganda support from South Africa, in clear defiance of the spirit of the Lusaka agreement.
More than three months after the expiry of the mutually agreed disengagement period of 1-31 March, South African troops continued to occupy parts of Southern Angola.
The Lusaka agreement provided for a stage-by-stage withdrawal process, supervised by a joint South African-Angolan monitoring force. In mid-June, the Angolan president José Eduardo do Santos said that 'one or two South African battalions' were still 40 km inside Angola, after moving back from their original positions 200 km inside the country. The president said that Pretoria had also failed to stop supporting UNITA forces. 'It is continuing to arm and train them and to send them into Moxico along the Zambian border, to see if they can reach Lunda, the diamond province' (ANGOP 16.6.84; DD/MS 18.6.84).
Over the weeks following the signing of the Lusaka agreement, a series of excuses was produced by Pretoria to justify the delay in withdrawing its forces. Chief among these was the claim that the Angolan authorities were failing to control SWAPO activities and that PLAN (People's Liberation Army of Namibia) combatants were regrouping and becoming increasingly active in the Cunene area. One of the sources cited by the South African Broadcasting Corporation for this information, however, was Jonas Savimbi, the UNITA leader, himself (BBC 28.6.84).
Savimbi was reported to have visited South Africa at the end of May for talks with the South African Foreign Minister and the US Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker (WA 25.6.84; BBC 28.6.84).
Rather than opening ceasefire negotiations with SWAPO as a prelude to the implementation of Resolution 435, South Africa has attempted to subvert the Namibia independence negotiations to suit its own conception of a regional settlement outside the framework of the United Nations.
In particular, Pretoria has sought to replace UNTAG, the UN force charged with supervising elections under Resolution 435, by transforming the joint monitoring commission (JMC) into a permanent peace-keeping force and thus absorbing the tasks of UNTAG's military component. In March, SWAPO warned that this could 'turn the disengagement process into an instrument for disarming SWAPO' (SWAPO' Information Bulletin, March 1984; IDAF Briefing Paper No. 12, July 1984).
The mandate of the JMC following its installation on the Angola-Namibia border on completion of South Africa's troop withdrawal was discussed at a meeting in Lusaka on 2 July between the South African foreign minister R.F. Botha and Lt. Col. Alexandre Rodrigues Kito, member of the MPLA Political Bureau and Angolan interior minister. It had previously been agreed by the parties to the Lusaka agreement that the JMC should be disbanded 30 days after South Africa's disengagement had been completed (BBC/FM 6.7.84).
It was reported after the 2 July meeting that Angola had agreed to the JMC's role being extended for an agreed period, on condition that South Africa guaranteed beforehand that Angola's borders would not again be violated 'by any forces whatsoever'; and that UN Resolution 435 would be implemented at the end of such an extension (ANGOP 4.7.84).
It was also reported that Angola and South Africa had 'insisted on the need for the closer involvement of SWAPO in the peace process' (FM 6.7.84). SWAPO has repeatedly stated its readiness to enter bilateral negotiations for a ceasefire agreement with South Africa and has been supported in this by the Angolan government.
The Angolan foreign minister reiterated in June that his government would never sign a military and economic cooperation agreement with South Africa of the kind concluded with Mozambique. The Angolans have pointed out that such a pact is inappropriate and unnecessary insofar as Angola and South Africa share no common border (MS 22.6.84; GN 4.7.84).
SWAPO itself has stated that it regards the Nkomati Accord with Mozambique as being 'fraudulent'. Addressing an international conference in Geneva in July, SWAPO's information and publicity secretary Hidipo Hamutenya traced the origin of Pretoria's current insistence on non-aggression pacts back to an 'untitled non-paper' (Sic) presented to SWAPO and the front line states by the Western Contact Group in October 1981.
The 'non-paper' contained proposals for 'the Nkomati-type of unequal and unjust treaties' and 'invited all the front line states and SWAPO to enter into a non-aggressive pact with South Africa', Hamutenya said. After its issue, 'the Western powers, especially the Reagan Administration, began to advocate the idea of a so-called overall regional security arrangement in Southern Africa' (Address by Hidipo Hamutenya to International Conference for the Independence of Namibia and the Eradication of Apartheid, Geneva, 2-5 July 1984).
The presence of African National Congress members in Angola was highlighted shortly before the Botha-Kito meeting through the murder of Jeannette SCHOON and her six-year-old daughter Katryn.
The two were killed instantly by a parcel bomb which exploded at their home in Lubango, southern Angola, on 28 June. Both Jeannette and her husband Marius Schoon had taken up teaching posts at the University of Lubango earlier in 1984, on transferral from Botswana where they had been working as English teachers for the International Voluntary Service. They had been warned by the British government while in Botswana that, well-known exiled supporters of the ANC, their lives were in danger. Parcel bombs have previously been sent to ANC activists in Botswana. Lesotho and Mozambique. The deaths of Jeannette and Katryn Schoon again bore all the hallmarks of South African security policy involvement (S Exp 1.7.84; RDM 30.6.84).
