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Free Postage Within SA for Orders Over R900! Hardcover. . First edition. Several b/w photos. 191 pages. Previous owner's sticker and stamp, otherwise good condition. History / Europe / Political / Soviet Union. Additional photos on request. Please ask any questions before placing your order.  Many more books on sale, click here to browse!

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 SOFTCOVER BOOK - SOME CREASING ON COVERS OTHERWISE IN GOOD CONDITION, NEW ENGLISH 1985, 531 PAGES                                                    RUSSIAN ARMED FORCES 

As the Soviet Union teetered on the edge of collapse during the late 1980s, and America prepared to claim its victory, a bloody war still raged in Southern Africa, where proxy forces from both sides vied for control of Angola. The result was the largest battle on the dark continent since Al Alamein, with forces from both sides paying in blood what U.S.-Soviet diplomats were otherwise spending in diplomacy. The socialist government of Angola and its army, FAPLA, fully stocked with Soviet weapons, had only to wipe out a massive resistance group, UNITA, secretly supplied by the U.S, in order to claim full sovereignty over the country. A giant FAPLA offensive so threatened to succeed in overcoming UNITA that apartheid-era South Africa stepped in to protect its own interests. The white army crossing the border prompted the Angolan government to call on their own foreign reinforcementsthe army of Communist Cubas. Thus began the epic battle of Cuito Cuanavale, largely unknown in the U.S., but which raged for three months in the entirely odd match-up of South African Boers vs. Castros armed forces, which for the first time in the Cold War proved what it could achieve. And it turned out the Cubans were very good. The South Africans were no slouches at warfare themselves, but had suffered under a boycott of weapons since 1977. The Cubans and Angolan troops, instead, had the latest Soviet weapons, easily delivered. But UNITA had its secret U.S. supply line and the South Africans knew how to fight, mainly at a disadvantage in air power for lack of spare parts. Meantime the Cubans overcame their logistic difficulties with an impressive airlift of troops over the Atlantic, while the Boers simply needed to drive next door. As a case study of ferocious fighting between East and Westalbeit proxies for the great powers on all sidesthis book unveils a remarkable episode of the end-game of the Cold War largely unknown to the public. The Angolans on both sides suffered heavily, but it was the apartheid South Africans versus Castros armed forces that provides utter fascination in one of historys rare match-ups. Paperback / 232 pages 54 b/w photos Published December 2013  

This is a soldier's story about South African soldiers in southern Angola and Namibia and the enemies they fought. It tells of insurgency and counter-insurgency, guerrilla warfare and counter-guerrilla warfare, almost conventional warfare and conventional warfare. It tells of a conflict which the world saw as unpopular and unjust, in which South Africa was perceived as the aggressor. The South African soldiers who fought in it, however, saw it as a conflict fought to stop what is now Namibia falling into the hands of the Soviet and Cuban-backed SWAPO black nationalist political organisation. After Namibia South Africa would be next. They saw the whole conflict as an extension of the Cold War, but while it was on the frontiers in Europe, in Angola they were fighting a very hot war in Angola. Eventually, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the war was resolved by the democratic solution of UN supervised free and fair elections in Namibia. Since then, regrettably, there has been interference by the ruling party with the democratic constitution put in place in Namibia which has eroded much of that hard won democracy. 32 Battalion, of which Colonel Jan Breytenbach was the founding commander, became the most controversial unit in the South African Army because of the secrecy surrounding it. Its story is virtually the story of the Angolan/Namibian war, because its involvement in it was greater than any other South African unit. The regiment primarily consisted of black troops and NCOs originating from virtually every tribe in Angola. They were led by white South African officers and NCOs. Neither apartheid nor any form of racial discrimination was ever practiced in the unit. There was always a sprinkling of whites originating from countries like Great Britain, the old Rhodesia, Portugal and the USA amongst its leadership cadre, although in the latter stages of its existence this shrank to only a few. Such a presence undoubtedly led to stories circulating that the unit was a led by foreign white mercenaries. While it was true that the black Angolan element could have fallen with the mercenary definition, the whites involved were attested soldiers in the South African Army. In any case, they formed a minority and the vast majority of white officers and NCOs were born South Africans. The unit's aggressiveness and the successes it achieved in the field of battle, often against incredible odds, lay in its spirit and its  espirit de corps. In this respect and in many other ways it compared favourably with the French Foreign Legion. Its story parallels with and reminds one of the British and British Commonwealth Chindits of World War-2, operating behind the Japanese lines in Burma in large formations, out-guerrillaing those who only three years earlier had been regarded in awe as the unbeatable jungle warfare experts. Likewise, 32-Battalion consistently outfought both FAPLA, SWAPO and the Cubans in the Angola bush throughout the war years. It created a problem to which neither they nor their Soviet and East German mentors ever found a solution to. After the 1989 Namibian settlement the unit was with withdrawn to South Africa where they were deployed to effectively deal with MK infiltrations into the north of South Africa. From there, after the unbanning of the ANC in 1990, they were redeployed to deal with political troubles, principally between armed ANC self defense units and armed units of the IFP. The intrusion of black foreigners into the townships who were prepared to deal with troubles robustly and without fear or favour, did not suit either the ANC or the IFP, as they could not be subverted to support local causes because they held no local tribal allegiances. In the end it seems they became something of a bargaining chip at the CODESA negotiations, designed to find a new political dispensation for South Africa. Despite it having borne the brunt of South Africa' war in Angola with the blood of its troops, the National Party Government disgracefully ordered its arbitrary disbandment in March 1993 and the unit ceased to exist. Paperback, 360 pages with photos & maps  

Book and wrapper in great condition - Actually looks brand new and unread to me - 403 pages which includes and excellent index at the back -  Before Southern Africa's peac e there came the war. Between August 1987 and July 1988 Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, the South African Defence Force, Angolan government forces directed by Soviet officers and an Angolan opposition guerrilla army trained by Red China, France and the United States clashed in the biggest land battles in the history of black Africa. It was a fierce collision of ideologies and of modern warplanes, missiles and tanks across one of the world's most remote and undeveloped terrains known to Angola's former Portuguese colonial rulers as the Land at the End of the Earth. Thousands of men died and thousands more were terribly maimed. Weapons and ammunition worth billions of dollars were destroyed and expended. The Angolan economy was crippled. The budgets of Cuba, South Africa and the Soviet Union were subjected to terrible strains. It was a War for Africa's very soul. It culminated in a peace agreement, the New York Accords, signed on 22 December 1988,. The reader will learn what it is like to encounter an advanced Soviet MiG fighter in a French Mirage warplane 30,000 feet above the forests of Africa; what emotion grip a reconnaissance commando lying unseen inside Cuban lines within feet of enemy soldiers; how it feels in an armoured car to face a Soviet T-55 tank at just 30 feet in burning bush and swirling dust and smoke. This is, however, far more than just an account of men in battle. Woven through are details of the political background to the conflict and the diplomatic initiatives which governed the lives and deaths of young Cuban, South African and Angolan men at the front.    * Africana *  *N.B.*   If you buy more than one book from me you only pay R 6 postage on each additional book   – see what else I have to offer, it might be worth your while.

1990. Hard cover with dust cover. 403 pages. Very good condition. Tightly bound, neat and clean. Front endpapers have rubber stamps and marks where paper was attached. Under 1kg. Between August 1987 and July 1988 Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, the south African Defence Force, Angolan government forces directed by Soviet officers and an Angolan opposition guerrilla army trained by Red China, France and the United States clashed in the biggest land battles in the history of black Africa. It was a fierce collision of ideologies and of modern warplanes, missiles and tanks across one of the world's most remote and undeveloped terrains known to Angola's former Portuguese colonial rulers as the Land at the End of the Earth. Thousands of men died and thousands more were terribly maimed. Weapons and ammunition worth billions of collars were destroyed and expended. The Angolan economy was crippled. The budgets of Cuba, South Africa and the Soviet Union were subjected to terrible strains. It was a War for Africa's very soul. It culminated in a peace agreement, the New York Accords, signed on 22 December 1988,. The reader will learn what it is like to encounter an advanced Soviet MiG fighter in a French Mirage warplane 30,000 feet above the forests of Africa; what emotion grip a reconnaissance commando lying unseen inside Cuban lines within feet of enemy soldiers; how it feels in an armoured car to face a Soviet T-55 tank at just 30 feet in burning bush and swirling dust and smoke. This is, however, far more than just an account of men in battle. Woven through are details of the political background to the conflict and the diplomatic initiatives which governed the lives and deaths of young Cuban, South African and Angolan men at the front. It is, all in all, a story of African fighting on an unprecedented scale, the international intrigue spanning several continents, and the new opportunities it opened up for democracy to 100 million people in five countries.

The War for Africa: Twelve Months That Transformed a Continent - Fred Bridgland - Ashanti -1990- Hard cover -No dust cover - Book in very good condition. Before southern Africa's peace there came the war. Between August 1987 and July 1988 Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, the south African Defence Force, Angolan government forces directed by Soviet officers and an Angolan opposition guerrilla army trained by Red China, France and the United States clashed in the biggest land battles in the history of black Africa. It was a fierce collision of ideologies and of modern warplanes, missiles and tanks across one of the world's most remote and undeveloped terrains known to Angola's former Portuguese colonial rulers as the Land at the End of the Earth. Thousands of men died and thousands more were terribly maimed. Weapons and ammunition worth billions of collars were destroyed and expended. The Angolan economy was crippled. The budgets of Cuba, South Africa and the Soviet Union were subjected to terrible strains. It was a War for Africa's very soul. It culminated in a peace agreement, the New York Accords, signed on 22 December 1988,. The reader will learn what it is like to encounter an advanced Soviet MiG fighter in a French Mirage warplane 30,000 feet above the forests of Africa; what emotion grip a reconnaissance commando lying unseen inside Cuban lines within feet of enemy soldiers; how it feels in an armoured car to face a Soviet T-55 tank at just 30 feet in burning bush and swirling dust and smoke. This is, however, far more than just an account of men in battle.   

The climactic death-throes of Soviet Communism during the 1980's included a last-gasp attempt at strategic franchise expansion in Southern Africa. Channelled through Castro's Cuba, oil-rich Angolan armed forces (FAPLA) received billions of dollars of advanced weaponry including MiG 23 and Sukhoi fighter jets, SAM 8 missile systems and thousands of armoured vehicles. Their   intent - to eradicate the US-backed Angolan opposition (UNITA), then push southwards into South Africa's protectorate SWA/Namibia, ostensibly as liberators. 1985 saw the first large-scale mechanized offensive in Southern African history. Russian Generals planned and oversaw the offensive but without properly accounting for the tenacity of UNITA (supported by the South African Defence Forces - SADF) or the treacherous terrain typical in the rainy season. The '85 offensive floundered in the mud and FAPLA returned to their capital Luanda. The South Africans stood down, confident their 'covert' support for UNITA had demonstrated the folly of prosecuting war so far from home against Africa's military Superpower. The South Africans were mistaken. Fidel and FAPLA immediately redoubled their efforts, strengthening fifteen battalions with even more Soviet hardware while Russian and Cuban specialists oversaw troop training. As Cuban and Angola fighter pilots honed their skills over the skies of Northern Angola, David Mannall, a normal 17-year old kid completing High School, was preparing for two years of compulsory military service before beginning Tertiary education. Through a series of fateful twists he found himself leading soldiers in a number of full-scale armoured clashes including the largest and most decisive battle on African soil since World War II. This is the David and Goliath story that, due to seismic political changes in the region, has never been truthfully told. The author lifts the hatch on his story of how Charlie Squadron, comprising just twelve 90mm AFVs crewed by 36 national servicemen, as part of the elite 61 Mechanised Battalion, engaged and effectively annihilated the giant FAPLA 47th Armoured Brigade in one day - 3 October 1987. Their 90mm cannons were never designed as tank-killers but any assurances that it would never be used against heavy armour were left in the classroom during the three-month operation and never more starkly than the decisive 'Battle on The Lomba River'. The Communist-backed offensive died that day along with hundreds of opposition fighters. 47th Brigade survivors abandoned their remaining equipment, fleeing north across the Lomba, eventually joining the 59th Brigade in what became a full-scale retreat of over ten thousand soldiers to Cuito Cuanavale. The myth perpetuated by post-apartheid politicians goes something like this "The SADF force that destroyed 47th Brigade on 3 October numbered 6,000 men and that all the hard yards were run by the long suffering UNITA!" The inconvenient truth is that there were just 36 South African boys on the front-line that day, but it is also true to say they would never have achieved such a stunning victory without the support of many more. This is their story. Paperback, 192 pages First Published October 2014, Second Revised Edition May 2015        

The climactic death-throes of Soviet Communism during the 1980's included a last-gasp attempt at strategic franchise expansion in Southern Africa. Channelled through Castro's Cuba, oil-rich Angolan armed forces (FAPLA) received billions of dollars of advanced weaponry including MiG 23 and Sukhoi fighter jets, SAM 8 missile systems and thousands of armoured vehicles. Their   intent - to eradicate the US-backed Angolan opposition (UNITA), then push southwards into South Africa's protectorate SWA/Namibia, ostensibly as liberators. 1985 saw the first large-scale mechanized offensive in Southern African history. Russian Generals planned and oversaw the offensive but without properly accounting for the tenacity of UNITA (supported by the South African Defence Forces - SADF) or the treacherous terrain typical in the rainy season. The '85 offensive floundered in the mud and FAPLA returned to their capital Luanda. The South Africans stood down, confident their 'covert' support for UNITA had demonstrated the folly of prosecuting war so far from home against Africa's military Superpower. The South Africans were mistaken. Fidel and FAPLA immediately redoubled their efforts, strengthening fifteen battalions with even more Soviet hardware while Russian and Cuban specialists oversaw troop training. As Cuban and Angola fighter pilots honed their skills over the skies of Northern Angola, David Mannall, a normal 17-year old kid completing High School, was preparing for two years of compulsory military service before beginning Tertiary education. Through a series of fateful twists he found himself leading soldiers in a number of full-scale armoured clashes including the largest and most decisive battle on African soil since World War II. This is the David and Goliath story that, due to seismic political changes in the region, has never been truthfully told. The author lifts the hatch on his story of how Charlie Squadron, comprising just twelve 90mm AFVs crewed by 36 national servicemen, as part of the elite 61 Mechanised Battalion, engaged and effectively annihilated the giant FAPLA 47th Armoured Brigade in one day - 3 October 1987. Their 90mm cannons were never designed as tank-killers but any assurances that it would never be used against heavy armour were left in the classroom during the three-month operation and never more starkly than the decisive 'Battle on The Lomba River'. The Communist-backed offensive died that day along with hundreds of opposition fighters. 47th Brigade survivors abandoned their remaining equipment, fleeing north across the Lomba, eventually joining the 59th Brigade in what became a full-scale retreat of over ten thousand soldiers to Cuito Cuanavale. The myth perpetuated by post-apartheid politicians goes something like this "The SADF force that destroyed 47th Brigade on 3 October numbered 6,000 men and that all the hard yards were run by the long suffering UNITA!" The inconvenient truth is that there were just 36 South African boys on the front-line that day, but it is also true to say they would never have achieved such a stunning victory without the support of many more. This is their story. Paperback, 284 pages First Published October 2014, Second Revised Edition May 2015   

AFRICA@WAR SERIES: VOLUME 26 The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale: Cold War Angolan Finale, 1987-1988 In the broad history of the Cold War, the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was the climax of a far-off, but nonetheless important African war. It was waged between the apartheid South African Defence Force (SADF) and the armed forces of the communist MPLA government in Angola and the Peoples Republic of Cuba. Led by Soviet generals, the MPLA embarked on a grand offensive in order to knock out the pro-Western rebel movement UNITA in southeastern Angola. As UNITAs survival was crucial to South Africas military strategy in fighting its own counter-insurgency war against the South West African rebel movement SWAPO, the SADF stepped in with a single mechanised brigade and broke the back of the overwhelming MPLA offensive. The MPLA forces were subsequently driven back over a hundred kilometres, before the SADF advance was finally stopped just short of the town of Cuito Cuanavale. Since then, a hot war of words have been waged about who actually won. In this book, a South African military historian and retired journalist examines the campaign, the adversaries, and their achievements on the basis of his research in SADF archives. His scrupulous attempt at objectivity results in interesting conclusions. While the MPLA lost hands down, he posits a draw between the Cubans and the SADF. Although having been a South African reservist officer himself, he has critical words for the SADF leadership. Many misunderstandings, some of which were purposefully created by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, are put to rest. While not sharing Castros political beliefs, he acknowledges Castros military acumen and political savvy in extricating his country from an unwinnable war while smelling of roses. The analysis contains many lessons about mechanised warfare in the African context from which both laymen and military professionals alike may learb. Paperback, 64 pages.  This title is imported on demand and dispatched within 15 working days depending on supplier.

1990 first edition hardcover with dust jacket and 403 pages in very good condition. R50 postage in SA. Before southern Africa's peace there came war. Between August 1987 and July 1988 Fidel Castro 's Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, the SADF, Angolan government forces directed by Soviet officers, and an Angolan opposition guerilla army trained by Red China, France and the United States, clashed in the biggest land battles in the history of black Africa. It was a war for Africa's very soul. It culminated in a peace agreement, the New York Accords, signed on 22 December 1988, which have already proved as momentously important for Africa as the 1945 Yalta Agreement between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill was for post-war Europe.

AFRICA@WAR SERIES: VOLUME 9 SOMALIA: US INTERVENTION 1992-1994 The end of the Cold War introduced an altered global dynamic. The old bond of East/West patronage in Africa was broken, weakening the first crop of independent revolutionary leadership on the continent who no longer had the support of one or other of the superpowers. With collapse of the Soviet Union, all this changed. The question of global/strategic security devolved into regional peacekeeping and peace enforcement, characterized primarily by the Balkans War, but also many other minor regional squabbles across the developing world that erupted as old regimes fell and nations sought to build unity out of the ashes. In Africa the situation was exacerbated by an inherent tribalism and factionalism that had tended to be artificially suppressed by powerful, often military, dictatorships, generally unconcerned with the needs and requirements of an oppressed population. No more striking example of this can be found than Somalia. One of the only effective armed resistance movements mounted against European colonisation in Africa took place in Somalia, which was suppressed only after enormous military expenditure. The crisis in Somalia that began to take shape with the ouster of military leader Mohammed Siad Barre during the early years of the 1990s forced both the United States and the United Nations to adapt their collective military policy toward the challenges of peacekeeping, and peace enforcement, in a human environment only dimly understood, extremely austere in terms of local infrastructure and with a warring clan leadership. This book tells the story of the international intervention that took place in Somalia, the successes, failures and lessons learned. Many broad assumptions were made based on an unclear understanding of the dynamics of a regional conflict, coupled with the necessity for the first time in modern military history to balance political necessities with military. The crisis in Somalia set the tone for military intervention in a post-Cold War world, and although the same mistakes have been depressingly often repeated, the complexion of global military organization changed dramatically as a consequence of this episode. Paperback,  72 pages. 130 colour & b/w photos, maps  

Paperback English. PLUTO PRESS. 2008. ISBN: 9780745324722. 320pp. Good condition in softcover. This book analyses the causes of armed conflicts in Southern Africa during the Cold War. It examines the influence of the various external forces in the region during this period and their relationship to local movements and governments. The book focuses on states experiencing violent internal conflict and foreign intervention, that is Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The author provides an unique history of the key part that the Soviet Union played in these developments. Spanning 30 years, the book explores how each country struggled for genuine independence against colonialism and apartheid and their place in the wider conflicts encompassed by the Cold War. Book No: 2500588

1990 first edition hardcover with dust jacket and 403 pages in very good condition. R55 postage in SA. Before southern Africa's peace there came war. Between August 1987 and July 1988 Fidel Castro 's Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, the SADF, Angolan government forces directed by Soviet officers, and an Angolan opposition guerilla army trained by Red China, France and the United States, clashed in the biggest land battles in the history of black Africa. It was a war for Africa's very soul. It culminated in a peace agreement, the New York Accords, signed on 22 December 1988, which have already proved as momentously important for Africa as the 1945 Yalta Agreement between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill was for post-war Europe.

AFRICA@WAR SERIES: VOLUME 34 War of Intervention in Angola - Volume 2: Angolan and Cuban Forces at War, 1976-1983  - Adrien Fontanellaz  As of mid-1976, the civil war in Angola was seemingly decided: supported by a large contingent of Cuban forces, the MPLA established itself in power in Luanda. Its native competitors, the US-French-Zaire-supported FNLA, and UNITA, supported by China and South Africa, were in tatters. The French and Zaire-supported FLEC an armed movement for the independence of the oil-rich Cabinda enclave was in disarray. The last few of their surviving units were either driven out of the country, or forced into hiding in isolated corners of northern and south-eastern Angola. Nevertheless, the war went on. The MPLAs government failed to decisively defeat UNITA, in southern Angola, and then found itself facing a coup attempt from within in May 1977. Crushed in blood, this resulted in thousands being jailed and tortured: many more escaped abroad, where they reinforced the ranks of the battered opposition. The coup prompted the Soviets to attempt increasing their influence with the aim of establishing permanent military bases in the country. While all such overtures were turned down, Angolan operations along the border to what was then the South-West Africa (subsequently Namibia) in October 1980, combined with the increased activity of SWAPO an insurgency against the South African control of that territory - subsequently Namibia prompted South Africa to launch another military intervention and resume supporting UNITA. In turn, this prompted not only the Cubans to further increase their military presence, but also the Soviet Union into delivering massive amounts of military aid to the government in Luanda. Angola not only assumed the role of one of the major hot battlefields in the Cold War: its civil war saw a number of major showdowns between diverse belligerents, culminating in the Battle of Cangamba in 1983. Based on extensive research, with help of Angolan and Cuban sources, the War of Intervention in Angola, Volume 2, traces the military build-up of the Cuban and Soviet-supported Angolan military, the FAPLA and its combat operations, and those of the Cuban military in Angola, in the period 1976-1983, their capabilities and intentions, and their battlefield performances. The volume is illustrated with over 100 rare photographs, half a dozen maps and 18 colour profiles. Paperback, 80 pages.