's Cuando Cubango province In 1981
Chester Crocker, U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs for newly elected
United States President Ronald Reagan, had developed a
linkage policy. It tied
apartheid South Africa's agreement to relinquish control of
Namibia, in line with
United Nations Security Council Resolution 435, and to retreat from Angola, to Cuba's withdrawing its troops from Angola. On 10 September 1986 Cuban president
Fidel Castro accepted Crocker's proposal in principle. The South African government also accepted the principle of linkage; it proposed the concept at the UN 7th Plenary Meeting on 20 September 1986 (the Question of Namibia). The concept was strongly rejected by a Cuban-backed majority, with representatives strongly stating their opposition to the effect of, "... The UN.... Calls upon South Africa to desist from linking the independence of Namibia to irrelevant and extraneous issues such as the presence of Cuban troops in Angola as such linkage is incompatible with the relevant United Nations resolutions, particularly Security Council resolution 435 (1978);..." The Angolan and United States governments started bilateral talks in June 1987 while the civil war continued. There is disagreement amongst historians on how the various parties agreed to come to the table: • Cuba contends that its military successes against the South Africans in Angola drove the South Africans to the negotiating table. They claim their intervention in the
defence of Cuito Cuanavale stopped UNITA and South African offensives. They believe that UNITA and South Africa retreated after a 15-hour battle on 23 March, and moved for negotiations when the stakes became too high. While the negotiations started in June 1987, during the latter half of 1987 South African had numerous military successes. In addition, the major Cuban military surge did not take place until 1988, long after the negotiations had commenced. • South Africa places the events in the context of the end of the
Cold War, with an associated end to the threat of Communist expansion in the region. From an economic perspective, the effect of sanctions was beginning to be felt in South Africa, while Namibia was costing South Africa over 1 billion Rand annually. Also, the South African domestic political landscape was changing rapidly and the country was under considerable pressure at the
United Nations to grant independence to Namibia. Jorge Risquet, head of the Cuban delegation, rejected the South African demands, noting that "South Africa must face the fact that it will not obtain at the negotiating table what it could not achieve on the battlefield." According to the book
32 Battalion by Piet Nortje, during this campaign South Africa introduced its new secret weapons, the
G5 and
G6 howitzer guns. The cannons can fire a projectile over with a high degree of accuracy. The guns were used to halt the Cuban advance to the south and raised the specter of yet another unaffordable arms escalation between two medium-sized military powers. The South Africans assert that the new weapon raised Cuba's fear of more casualties in a war where Cuban fatalities had outnumbered South African fatalities by a factor 10. Conversely, the Cuban air force held
air superiority, as was demonstrated by the bombing of the strategic
Calueque complex, and the overflights in 1988 of Cuban
Mig-23s of Namibian airspace. According to
David Albright, South Africa believed that the discovery of preparations for a nuclear weapon test at the
Vastrap facility created an urgency amongst the superpowers to find a solution. While the hostilities in Angola continued, the parties met in June and August in
New York City and
Geneva. Finally, all approved an outline agreement of
Principles for a Peaceful Settlement in South Western Africa on 20 July. During the negotiations, the South Africans were asked to release imprisoned ANC activist
Nelson Mandela as a sign of goodwill, which was denied. The negotiations were finalised in New York with Angola, Cuba and South Africa signing the accord on 22 December 1988. It provided for the retreat of South African forces from Angola, which had already taken place by 30 August; the withdrawal of South Africa from Namibia; and Namibia's independence and the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola within 30 months. The agreement followed the American linkage proposal which had also been pushed by South Africa on numerous occasions in 1984 and in 1986 (the UN plenary meeting). Namibia was to gain independence on terms that South Africa had set out, including multi-party democracy, a capitalist free-market economy, and a transition period. The signing of the agreement was marred by the death of
Bernt Carlsson, the
United Nations Commissioner for Namibia, who had contributed to the agreement but was killed on
Pan Am Flight 103, on his way to the signing ceremony. ==Implementation==