Episode 37 – A Cuban counter-attack causes chaos at the Cassinga LZ and Pretoria’s political strategy backfires

This is episode 37 and we’re dealing with a Cuban counter-attack targeting the South African paratroopers still being airlifted out of Cassinga. It was the afternoon of 4th May 1978 and more than half the paratroopers had still not been evacuated from the landing Zone to the east of the shattered town. Jan Breytenbach had requested urgent close air support and had also ordered the helicopters at Whisky Three which was the Helicopter Administration area 35km east of Cassinga to return and extract his trapped paratroopers. But the Cuban armour was almost on top of them and there was no sign of any aircraft. Breytenbach withdraw into the surrounding bush and try to get to an emergency LZ setup as you heard last episode. In the meantime some eyewitnesses claim that General Viljoen, concerned now about the very real possibility of being captured, removed his badges of rank and his beret and hid them under a stone. He’d flown in on one of the first evacuation choppers and decided to remain very much against Defence Force operating procedure. The commanding officer of the entire Army should not place himself directly in harms way – even if he was trying to show that he was a courageous as the rest. And yet the MPLA and SWAPO had actually won a major victory at Cassinga. Pretoria’s political strategy had failed miserably with SWAPO about to gain a vast amount of credibility. It so happened that the World Conference for the Eradication of Racism and Racial Descrimination was about to take place in Basle, Switzerland between 18 and 21st May. SWAPO Secretary for Information and Publicity Peter Katjavivi was a speaker there and he denied the presence of any military installations or PLAN combatants at Cassinga saying it was a refugee camp.