>>11775246While CIA intel could certainly have been a factor, the action on the Lomba river was an operational and tactical success at least as much as anything else. With better aircraft, inadequate SA anti-air net, and closer operating bases for more time on target, there is no plausible reason for the total lack of impression angolan migs made, or the fact that dozens of T-55s couldn't cope with some armored cars. Angolan ineptitude is surely very crucial there.
The US is using elements integrated from South African IFVs and APCs decades later. That makes sense, since South Africa fought the most recent war against insurgents with IEDs and leads that relatively modest field. Their gussied up centurions and mirages are notably not a factor in American arms development now or ever because they were fossils, to say nothing of how few there ever were.
While I agree about the CIA being aware of the nuclear program, its far from clear there was no danger of invasion from neighbors. The militant wing of ANC was sheltered in all neighbors except botswana, and Southwest was routinely invaded from Angola, including Cuban troops in the closing days of the war. If Cuba was willing to invade Southwest, a South African mandate, it at least seems plausible that a war of liberation into South Africa proper could be in the cards after enough groundwork was laid against the minority regime from insurgents domestic and imported.
>>11775329Bantustans weren't great and they were villainously gerrymandered to cuck the black africans out of important resources, but even accounting for that south african black health outcomes were better than the regional average as was their purchasing power. Open air prisons is harder to comment on- they had some freedom with regards to local ordinances and demisovereignty. Not sustainable, and i'm not sure what the apartheid regime should have done differently to achieve their goals
