By late August SADF intelligence had formed a coherent picture of the Fapla/Soviet strategy and how well it had been planned. It reeled back in shock after gleaning information about the scale of the Soviet weaponry committed.
On 1 September 1987, 47 Brigade began moving around the source of the Lomba and prepared to move along the south bank of the river towards Mavinga, 80 km to the east. Probing elements of Fapla’s 21 Brigade were arriving on the north bank of the Lomba, some 55 km east of the Lomba source and within about 25 km of Mavinga. Fapla’s 59 Brigade was heading towards the Lomba between the Cuzizi and Cunzumbia tributaries. North of 21 Brigade was 16 Brigade, ferrying logistics over difficult countryside and apparently preparing to join 21 Brigade when the assault began on Mavinga. (See map, ch. 9).
Officers flown in from Chief of Staff Intelligence (CSI), the supreme SADF division overseeing all military intelligence units from Pretoria, were working round the clock with Captain Herman Mulder and other intelligence experts assessing Fapla/Cuban intentions. At this stage, information from intercepts of enemy radio communications and the SADF’s own reconnaissance teams’ ground observations provided the most solid material. Mulder was also receiving information from UNITA reconnaissance teams, but he had problems in assessing its objectivity: Savimbi’s intelligence officers tended to embroider information in attempts to cajole the SADF into more aggressive action.
The intelligence conclusion was that 47 Brigade would forge along the south bank of the Lomba to help 59 Brigade and 21 Brigade cross the river from the north for the main attack on Mavinga. The SADF and UNITA would need therefore to prevent the establishment of 59 Brigade and 21 Brigade bridgeheads and they would need also to stop 47 Brigade joining up with them. Mavinga would come under particularly serious threat if 21 Brigade got across to the south of the Lomba.
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Senior officers like Jan Hougaard were perplexed as to how the big and aggressive enemy brigades were to be stopped by a small SADF force with one arm tied behind its back by the generals and politicians: ‘We were pleading for more forces and we were complaining quite strongly about the restrictions imposed upon us – don’t lose any equipment, don’t take any casualties, and so on and so on.’
Not only were the SADF up against a big force, but they were facing an army which had learned many lessons from its defeat during its disastrous 1985–86 offensive towards Mavinga. Artillery co-ordination had improved, tactics on the ground were more aggressive, a wide range of radar and missile systems accompanied the brigades, the logistics were infinitely better and Fapla had tanks. Every day some eight to ten giant Ilyushin-76s flew into Menongue with weapons, ammunition, spares, fuel, food and other supplies. Every six days a logistics convoy of 400 vehicles, escorted by two brigades, moved from Menongue to Cuito Cuanavale.
‘We were already reckoning that it was costing the Russians millions and millions of dollars,’ said Hougaard. ‘The logistics they pumped in there were colossal. It took us by surprise. For example, we had been working on the assumption that they would again have lousy food supplies. But later we found the support vehicles we shot out were stacked with big tins of the best Japanese tuna. I dined on it, and, hell, it was very good tuna!’