page_title: South African Border War
section_title: Operation Protea
hierarchical_section_title: South African Border War / External South African operations, 1978–1984 / Botha's escalation / Operation Protea
caption_attribution_description: Description: Former Angolan T-34-85 at the South African National Museum of Military History, Johannesburg.
context_page_description: The South African Border War, also known as the Namibian War of Independence, and sometimes denoted in South Africa as the Angolan Bush War, was a largely asymmetric conflict that occurred in Namibia, Zambia, and Angola from 26 August 1966 to 21 March 1990. It was fought between the South African Defence Force and the People's Liberation Army of Namibia, an armed wing of the South West African People's Organisation. The South African Border War resulted in some of the largest battles on the African continent since World War II and was closely intertwined with the Angolan Civil War.
  Following several years of unsuccessful petitioning through the United Nations and the International Court of Justice for Namibian independence, SWAPO formed the PLAN in 1962 with material assistance from the Soviet Union, China, and sympathetic African states such as Tanzania, Ghana, and Algeria. Fighting broke out between PLAN and the South African authorities in August 1966. Between 1975 and 1988 the SADF staged massive conventional raids into Angola and Zambia to eliminate PLAN's forward operating bases.
context_section_description: Between 1979 and 1980 the pace of infiltration had accelerated so greatly that the SADF was forced to mobilise its reserves and deploy another 8,000 troops to South West Africa. The deeper South African raids struck into Angola, the more the war spread, and by mid-1980 the fighting had extended to a much larger geographic area than before. Operation Sceptic, then the largest combined arms offensive undertaken by South Africa since World War II, was launched in June against a PLAN base at Chifufua, over a hundred and eighty kilometres inside Angola. Chifufua, codenamed Objective Smokeshell, was divided into a dozen well fortified complexes ringed with trenches, defensive bunkers, and anti-aircraft positions. The SADF killed over 200 insurgents and captured several hundred tonnes of PLAN munitions and weaponry at the cost of 17 dead. Operation Protea was mounted on an even larger scale and inflicted heavier PLAN casualties; unlike Sceptic it was to involve significant FAPLA losses as well as the seizure of substantial amounts of Angolan military hardware and supplies. Protea was planned when the SADF first became aware of PLAN's evolving conventional capabilities in August 1981. Its targets were suspected PLAN bases sited outside major FAPLA installations at Ondjiva and Xangongo. Attacking either settlement was considered especially risky due to the presence of Soviet advisers and a comprehensive local FAPLA air defence network.
  Since the first formal cooperation treaties between Angola and the Soviet Union in 1976, the military sphere had constituted the pivot of Angolan-Soviet relations. The Soviet Navy benefited from its use of Angolan ports to stage exercises throughout the southern Atlantic and even negotiated with FAPLA for the construction of permanent bases. Luanda was named the regional headquarters for the 30th Operation Squadron of the Soviet Navy's Northern Fleet, which comprised eleven warships, three of which were in the port at any given time.  From January 1976 onward it also replaced Conakry as the primary base for Soviet Tupolev Tu-95 reconnaissance flights along Africa's western coast. Article 16 of the Angolan constitution banned the construction of foreign military bases, but exceptions could be made if base rights were considered essential to the country's national defence. The Soviet Union justified its continued air and naval presence as necessary measures to protect Angola from a South African invasion. One senior Soviet military official, General Valery Belyaev, remarked that the 30th Operational Squadron was, "by the very fact of its presence...restraining the South African aggression against Angola."
  In exchange for granting base rights, FAPLA became the beneficiary of more sophisticated Soviet arms. After Operation Sceptic the Soviet Union transferred over five hundred million dollars' worth of military equipment to FAPLA, the bulk of it apparently concentrated on air defence. This made South African raids costlier in terms of the need to provide heavier air cover and likely casualties. With the adoption of more advanced weaponry, the contribution by Soviet technical and advisory support to FAPLA's operational capabilities also became increasingly crucial. Totalling between 1,600 and 1,850 advisers by 1981, the Soviet military mission to Angola was deployed within all branches of the Angolan armed forces.
  A few weeks prior to Operation Protea, SADF General Charles Lloyd warned Botha that the introduction of early warning radar and 2K12 Kub "SA-6" missiles in southern Angola was making it difficult to provide air support to ground operations there. Lloyd mentioned that FAPLA's buildup of modern Soviet arms was making a conventional war more likely. The objectives of Operation Protea shifted accordingly: aside from the PLAN camps, the SADF was ordered to neutralise several Angolan radar and missile sites and command posts. Eight days of bloody fighting occurred before two South African armoured columns were able to overrun Ondjiva and Xangongo. The SADF destroyed all of FAPLA's 2K12 missile sites
caption: FAPLA T-34-85 tank captured by the SADF during Operation Protea.
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