Words and images by Paul Morris
At first it is the red-tipped stakes I see rising about a metre from the white Angolan sand. A double row of them marks a narrow corridor of death snaking through the bush. Then I see the partially uncovered anti-tank mines that lie between the stakes. Twenty-eight years ago, I was a soldier on the frontline of battle. Now the frontline is still here and the mines fight on like a lost regiment, not knowing that the war is long over. It is the mine-clearing NGO, the HALO Trust, which forms today’s opposing army; one which painstakingly finds and destroys the mines, making the land safe for the people of Angola.
I’m in the Tumpo triangle near the Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale in Kuando Kubango Province, a place the Portuguese colonists called “The Land at the End of the Earth”. This was the scene of the biggest land battle in Africa since the Second World War, where the SADF took part in the final battles of South Africa’s involvement in the Angolan war. I am part of the backup crew for a group of former conscripts who are here in support of their friend Johan Booysen, who was here during the war. Johan had contacted me after reading my book (Back to Angola: A Journey from War to Peace) about my own trip, wanting advice on putting together an expedition to Angola. Then he’d invited me to join his group.
