Despite the moves towards regional peace over the past year and the South African withdrawal from Angola, South Africa has continued its campaign of destabilisation against neighbouring countries.
A study commissioned by the Commonwealth Special Committee on Southern Africa, and released in Harare in February this year, calculated that over the last eight years South African destabilisation had led to the deaths of 1.1 million people and cost the independent Southern African states US$35 billion. A report published by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in April showed that infant mortality rates in Mozambique and Angola were the highest in the world, with 25 children dying every hour, largely as a result of South African-sponsored destabilisation. The UN Secretary-General, Perez de Cuellar, revealed in August last year that about five million Angolans and Mozambicans had been displaced by the wars and another million had become refugees.
While South African attacks on Angola came to an end this year, Angola continued to be ravaged by South African-backed UNITA forces. Despite the withdrawal from Namibia, there were reports of continued South African support for UNITA, and US supplies were flown in from Zaire. Attempts to bring about a settlement to the conflict through an agreement reached in Zaire in June this year quickly broke down when UNITA reneged on the terms, and heavy fighting ensued.
In Mozambique, meetings between South African and Mozambican authorities and attempts by the government to establish a ceasefire with the MNR failed to lead to a reduction in MNR activity, which followed the established pattern of attacks on villages, schools, transport networks and health facilities and the massacre of civilians. There was continuing evidence of South African support for the MNR, despite official denials. Defectors from the MNR consistently reported the presence of South African military instructors at MNR bases and the provision of South African supplies. In August and September, the Mozambique news agency AIM published several interviews with ex-MNR members detailing these South African links. In March 1989 the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa disclosed that the US was aware of MNR bases near the South African border which were being supplied by the SADF and private sources in South Africa.
South Africa also carried out a spate of bombing attacks in Zambia, mainly aimed at ANC personnel there, and the attacks continued even while preparations were being laid for a meeting between the South African President-elect FW de Klerk and Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda. In June 1989 four bombs, all aimed at the ANC in Lusaka, exploded in a four-day period, and during 1988 there were at least 25 bomb explosions in Zambia, which injured 43 people mainly in Lusaka and Livingstone in the Southwest. There were also cases of assassination and poisoning of ANC officials and the planting of landmines near ANC houses.
Repeated threats were made against Botswana, which was accused of being a transit point for ANC guerrillas, and there were a number of attacks. On 12 December last year South African troops raided Ditlharapeng village in the Borolong area, killing a boy and a man and burning homes. In August 1988 the South African authorities announced that they would build a 24-kilometre security fence along part of the border with the north-western Transvaal, and this year the SADF's notorious 32 Battalion was moved from its base in northern Namibia to a new base at Pomfret on the Botswana border.
The construction of a fence along a 75-kilometre stretch of the Lesotho border was announced in September last year, while the border with Swaziland was repeatedly violated by South African forces during 1988, when at least five people were shot in border incidents. On 12 February 1989 three South African youth activists were found murdered in a car in Swaziland.
In Zimbabwe, the trials of several people involved in bombing campaigns shed some light on the nature of South African destabilisation operations. Three Zimbabweans were sentenced to death in November last year for a car-bomb attack on an ANC residence in Harare, in which one person was killed. They revealed extensive contacts with South African intelligence agents and the supply of equipment by night-time parachute drops. Two of the men were subsequently convicted along with another Zimbabwean of assisting South African commandos in an attack on ANC offices in Harare in May 1986. During the trials of the three men, a South African commando squad attempted to rescue them, but one of the squad was captured in Botswana en route. He was also subsequently put on trial in Zimbabwe. Later another Zimbabwean working for South African intelligence was put on trial for a car-bomb attack in October 1987.
