Modern African Wars (3) : South-West Africa (Men-At-Arms Series, 242) (Men-at-Arms, 242)

Short but concise overview of military and political antecedents to the conflict, landscape, and military units. Usual Osprey over-obsession with button placement and pocket designs, but nice addition to African series.

Great references for uniforms, structure, major events specially in Numidia, Southern Angola were most of the major action occurred. Highlighting SA forces. I only wished they could have expanded more on the UNITA, MPLA, and FPLA forces. And maybe the Cuban and Russian elements. .

In the third volume of the Modern African Wars series we have a new author: Helmoed-Römer Heitman. He is a South African defence analyst that has lectured about the subject many times and also helped in the development of South Africa's White Paper on Defence. His style clearly shows his military background and he did a great job in explaining the military operations. On the military forces involved, however, not so much. His writing is too focused on South African Forces, and he mostly neglects the Communist forces. Although he does mention the Cuban presence, he neglects the Cubans in the "Opposing Forces" sections. Only mentioning that the Cubans used MiG-21 planes and that some Soviets pilots also took part in the fighting. The Cubans sent around 45,000 men to Angola and sizeble Cuban formations took part in the conflict, mainly as helicopter pilots, tankers and artillery units. Not a single picture of Cuban forces is present in this book, even though they would not be hard to obtain.The plates are expertly drawn, but are the most unbalanced set of plates in the series, with only three plates showing combatants not from South Africa, with many redundant and overlapping plates. There is very little difference between the four SADF soldiers depicted in plate section A, and plates A1 and A3 could easily be replaced by other more diverse representations, with plates A2 and A2 explaining the minimum differences in their texts. Plates B3, C3, E3, G3 (and maybe G1 and G2) could be easily omitted in favor of more relevant ones. Plate F3 also should not be in this book, as there is no difference in the Dog Handler's uniform and equipment from the other SADF and SWA personnel already covered with such an overlapping insistence. There is only one section of plates not covering the South Africans (plate section H). It is like the South Africans were the only fighting force on the conflict! Instead of wasting one whole plate just to show a medic with THE EXACT SAME UNIFORM AS EVERYBODY ELSE - as stated by the text itself - just to show a lousy piece of cloth that is not even a badge (and that could be easily depicted as an inset), the author should have shown at least one, ONE, Cuban.The only non-South African plates are H1 UNITA Captain, H2 SWAPO 'Detachment' (which is carrying an RPG-2, not an RPG-7) and H3 FAPLA Colonel. The South Africans were fighting in support of UNITA, but the plates give a perspective that the South Africans were fighting the war alone. UNITA had many different units inside its organization, and their only representation is a barely equipped Captain, that looks less equiped in 1988 than the UNITA officer from plate G3 of the second volume in 1974; even though UNITA was lavishly equipped by South Africa in 1988, while UNITA was barely holding it together in 1974. There is no representation whatsoever of the FNLA. The FAPLA Colonel is the only representation of the major combatant of the Communist war effort, and he is depicted with the JMMC brassard of the cease-fire. With sizeable armored engagements, it would be obvious to the author the necessity of including FAPLA or Cuban tankers in this book; the variety of Cuban uniforms and their visual appeal in contrast to SADFs plain uniforms should be an obvious hint towards the plates. As the text mentions the SADF killing several Soviet advisors in external operations, at leat one should be depicted in the plates. As the author decided to include a SADF pilot, a Cuban pilot should also be included instead of the Ops. Medic for all the reasons I stated above. Another unit neglected was the SADF frogmen that sunk Cuban and Soviet ships; they would make an excellent plate, and French SOF analyst Éric Denécé said that Soviet frogmen were sent to Angola in order to counter SADF divers.Probably to gloss over this starking imbalance, the author chose to use the three plates from the H section as the book cover; not only this is away from Osprey practice, it made for an ugly cover. Visual stimulus is one of the strong points of Osprey books, and a not-so-appealing cover is a shot in the foot. The plates should also have more unit badges as insetes, especially the Recce Commandos, 32 Bn and Paratroopers' badges.This book has a good text, very technical approach, good maps but is let down by unbalanced pictures, with the plates showing soldiers with the same featureless uniforms over and over again, while neglecting all the other forces involved in the conflict. For the text, 5 stars, for the plates, 3 stars. Not a solid one, but a good 4 stars.

I spent almost all of my professional career concerned with the mapping of Africa. And in the course of mapping one scans and extracts a lot of information from various open sources. In the course of this study I became familiar with the social, economic, and military happenings in Southern Africa.I can say that except for the works of Al J. Venter, a reporter from South Africa, there are very few books with detail on the bush wars conducted by black nationalists in opposition to the minority white rule resulting from colonialism. And often the insurgents had clashed among themselves for ethnic reasons and some blacks remained loyal to the minority governments.In other cases, when the white rulers gave up and went home as did the Portuguese in Angola and Moçambique the remaining contenders began civil wars backed by the west and by the Communists respectively. In 1976, the Portuguese Army had revolted in protest to the endless bush wars in Africa and overthrew the government. The army had been especially disgusted with the conflict in defense of Portuguese Guinea-(now Guinea-Bissau) located on the shoulder of West Africa, a hot and worthless swamp land which had no economic value and a land where there were few white settlers.In contrast, the Portuguese ruled lands in Southern Africa had a large settler class, intermarriage was common,for there was no color line there, as there was in English speaking colonies. But still the post independence unrest was such that most of the settlers migrated back to Portugal and some to Brazil. A civil war ensued which is still going on.Immediately to the south of Angola lies the land of SW Africa, now Namibia, whose international status was not that of a colony but that of a UN mandate gone bad. After WW I the League of Nations had assigned the governing of the former German colony of South West Africa to the Union of South Africa recently formed from the former British colonies of Cape Province and Natal and the two former Boer Republics, conquered in the Boer War at the turn of the century. At that time world opinion backed the poor pitiful (sic) Boers against the big bad British Empire. The black inhabitants of the area had had no say in the matter. They were just there.The unique thing about the Boers or Afrikaaners, as we now call them is that, first, they had been settled originally some 400 years ago. The cape was a natural stopping point for ships sailing to India before the Suez Canal was buit and the magnificent harbor of Capetown was a busy place. So busy that the English started to settle there, finally took over and the Boers moved inland to get away and enjoy self rule.This is part of the national legend of the Voortrekkers. Oxcarts across the prairies to the promised land. Does this sound like our western movement in the US? Especially that of the Mormons. The anology certainly rang a bell with American public opinion in the days of the Boer War.The Boers were a hard people in a hard land. When they moved northeast in their great migration, they ran into another great migration coming southwest from the area of present day Zimbabwe. These were the ancestors of the Zulus who were quite a contrast to the meek Bushmen that the Afrikaners had first encountered. Another hard people. Well the Boers won the first round and subjugated the African tribes. The African majority finally achieved political freedom under the leadership of Nelson Mandela after fifty years of struggle. Now we can hope they get it all sorted out and enforce the social peace which is lacking and spread the economic bounty to a wider participation. The majority is composed of pure blooded Africans.Now we know why the Afrikaners were so stubborn in clinging to their rule. Even though they were descended from Dutch settlers, so many years ago, their language is now a distinct one. Afrikaans is even the mother tongue of the Colored peoples, the term used for people of mixed white and black ancestry. What this means is that, contrasted to the British descended South African whites and those from India, the fourth major racial group in SA, they are a tribe and think of themselves as such. They are not transplanted Englishmen who, if displaced, could fly back to Blighty; the Afrikaaners cannot go back, they are home. Thus their stubborn efforts to resist assimilation for all the 200 years since the British came to Cape Colony.For many years the Afrikaaners saw the tides of black nationalism and liberation wash up far away from their borders; so long as Portugal held out in southern Africa and the white Rhodesian regime remained in power there was precious little that armed opposition could do. International sanctions imposed by the UN in response to the refusal to give Namibia its freedom, meant little with such a huge barrier area. Although Namibia had been long ruled as the "Fifth Province", its economic system integrated into that of SA, it is still rich enough in resources and has a population that can go it alone.Finally, the South African forces which had operated in Namibia and in southern Angola after its independence came home.

good with very brief but succinct details.