South African publisher, 30 Degrees South have acquired the paperback rights in South Africa for a book by Cayman Islands author Peter Polack.

The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War covers a key engagement in 1987-88 during the Angolan civil war that involved Cuban and South African forces published in December 2013 by Casemate publishers in hardback.

A September 2014 review by Ian David Stewart of The University of British Columbia described the book in these terms: Polack, a criminal lawyer, is an avid scholar of Cuba’s role in Africa’s Cold War-era conflicts. He has dedicated years of his life to the study of the war in Angola, a fact clearly evident in the depth and detail of his research. Polack has crafted a fluent and captivating narrative of a pivotal battle that will advance the sparse existing scholarship on the events that took place between late 1987 and early 1988.

Polack has also co-authored the Encyclopedia of Warfare published by Amber Books in September 2013.

His last article entitled Syria: The Evolution Revolution was published in Special Warfare magazine by the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center in June 2014.

He is presently researching another book project entitled The Grenada Gulag about the incarceration of political prisoners during the Grenada Revolution.

Commenting on this achievement Polack stated: The happiness I feel on this milestone is diminished due to the charges against renowned corruption fighter and journalist Rafael Marques in Angola. The international community should press for his release. The rule of law is not a rubber band to wrap the desires of petty and grand dictators with a thin veneer of respectability.

From 30º South Publishers

THE LAST HOT BATTLE OF THE COLD WAR

By Peter Polack

South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War

R265.00

ISBN: 978-1-612002-61-3
Paperback / 232 pages
54 b/w photos
Military History / African Studies

As the Soviet Union teetered on the edge of collapse during the late 1980s, and America prepared to claim its victory, a bloody war still raged in southern Africa, where proxy forces from both sides vied for control of Angola.

The result was the largest battle on the continent since El Alamein, with forces from both sides paying in blood what U.S.-Soviet diplomats were otherwise spending in diplomacy. The socialist government of Angola and its army, FAPLA, fully stocked with Soviet weapons, had only to wipe out a massive resistance group, UNITA, secretly supplied by the U.S, in order to claim full sovereignty over the country. A giant FAPLA offensive so threatened to succeed in overcoming UNITA that apartheid-era South Africa stepped in to protect its own interests. The white army crossing the border prompted the Angolan government to call on their own foreign reinforcements—the army of Communist Cuba’s.

Thus began the epic battle of Cuito Cuanavale, which raged for three months in the entirely odd match-up of South Africans vs. Castro’s armed forces, which for the first time in the Cold War proved what it could achieve. And it turned out the Cubans were very good. The South Africans were no slouches at warfare themselves, but had suffered under a boycott of weapons since 1977.

The Cuban and Angolan troops, instead, had the latest Soviet weapons, easily delivered. But UNITA had its secret U.S. supply line and the South Africans knew how to fight, mainly at a disadvantage in air power for lack of spare parts. Meantime the Cubans overcame their logistic difficulties with an impressive airlift of troops over the Atlantic, while the South Africans simply needed to drive next door.

As a case study of ferocious fighting between East and West—albeit proxies for the great powers on all sides—this book unveils a remarkable episode of the end-game of the Cold War largely unknown to the public. The Angolans on both sides suffered heavily, but it was the apartheid South Africans versus Castro’s armed forces that provides utter fascination in one of history’s rare match-ups.

For more: http://www.30degreessouth.co.za/the_last_hot_battle_of_the_cold_war.htm

See also: http://www.soc.mil/swcs/swmag/archive/SW2702/APR-JUN_2014.pdf