INTERNATIONAL PRESS COVERAGE

The South Africans had managed to keep their invasion hidden from world view for quite some time. It even took the MPLA until 23 October 1976 to notice that not white mercenaries, but the SADF was advancing on Luanda. Yet it took another whole month for the world press to take notice: A day after the South African coastal advance was stopped, two correspondents from Reuters and British Independent Television News published news that South Africans were fighting in Angola. On 23 November 1975 a major Western newspaper, the Washington Post, announced that regular South African troops were fighting inside Angola. Although other papers were still slow to follow, e.g. the New York Times on 12 December, the fact eventually became internationally known. Even the South African population itself had been kept in the dark and it was only on 19 December that the people learnt more about what was called the "Border War", when papers published pictures of SADF soldiers captured by FAPLA and the Cubans.