Eagle, I don't want to form an alliance anymore.

But the spark had already become a prairie fire, and the flames had spread to other places.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The radical faction within the South African military was among the first to see through Griffin's true nature.

They didn't believe the security company's explanation. How could a company registered in Cyprus, with no apparent connection to Moscow, possibly inflict such a crushing defeat on South Africa in Namibia?

Why was its core group entirely Russian? Why did Black people immediately start revolting and demanding land redistribution as soon as it arrived?

This is no business; it's clearly a communist terrorist organization disguised as a company, a hand that Moscow has extended into Africa!

They're both running companies, but other countries have open doors for free trade, so how did Griffin become an exporter of revolution?

That's not how multinational corporations operate! You should first work with me on joint ventures and discuss mining rights, gradually improving my border security. Occasionally, send me cheap labor and a share of the diamond profits, then list on the Cape Town Stock Exchange and engage in some money-for-power transactions. Finally, in the mysterious event of the 'fully formed colonial empire,' you sign a 99-year lease with me, I agree to let you invest in De Beers, and then I'll show you that special CG image of 'gold, oil, and diamond mines connected'!

Capitalism doesn't teach like that! The British East Indies and the Dutch East Indies—weren't they all honestly plundering and colonizing? How can you come up to me with the idea of ​​exporting revolution and national liberation? I won't accept that!

The South African military knew that Griffin would not stop after withdrawing from Namibia; his next stop would definitely be Mozambique and Zimbabwe, continuing to wreak havoc on the entire southern continent for Moscow.

Rather than waiting for it to set fire to somewhere else, we should cut off its head while it's still in Angola!

Beheading requires money and manpower.

The South African military has money, but not convenient channels. The CIA in the United States has channels, but recently it has been so broke due to budget cuts that it is eager to generate its own revenue. How can there be such a coincidence in this world?

The two sides quickly reached an agreement. The South African military provided the funding, and the CIA provided personnel and intelligence. A special forces unit soon tracked down the route of a convoy in Griffin, Angola.

It was evening. In the open fields of eastern Angola, several off-road vehicles and trucks drove eastward in a line, kicking up dust, with infantry fighting vehicles at the front of the procession.

The convoy contained the Griffin trio, as confirmed by intelligence—Colonel Vyacheslav Barannikov, Colonel Anton Yudintsev, and Colonel Nikita Buyanov. The bandit leader Yevgeny Prigozin was also reportedly in the convoy.

"boom!"

The agents lay prone on the hillside, carrying anti-tank missiles and rocket launchers, and began firing at the convoy.

The first shell hit the middle of the convoy, the explosion overturning two vehicles and sending flames leaping into the twilight. Special forces then pressed forward, a short but fierce burst of fire turning the unsuspecting convoy into an inferno. The entire operation took less than ten minutes.

After the operation, the CIA tallied their gains, took photos, and then left.

A day later, the South African military announced a major news story:

Inside Angola, three key leaders of the communist terrorist organization—Colonel Barannikov, Colonel Yudintsev, and Colonel Buyanov—were killed, while the fate of the bandit leader Prigozin remains unknown.

The CIA somehow obtained photos of four men in Soviet military uniforms and put them on television. Four faces, four names, were repeatedly shown. They also printed these photos on leaflets and scattered them over the territories of surrounding resistance groups, and broadcast them over and over again from helicopters—"That Griffin you all respected and relied on, his leader has been killed, what are you still fighting for?"

This move was aimed at demoralizing the Black insurgents.

This approach actually worked in impoverished areas where information dissemination is underdeveloped.

News was already scarce in those remote areas; let alone television, some places didn't even have electricity. Many places that had heard of Griffin and considered it their hope were plunged into grief upon hearing that the three leaders were dead and the fate of the bandit chief was unknown.

In some villages, people actually held memorial services for these three liberators whom they had never met but only heard their names from.

Some tabloids in the Americas and Europe also published photos of the four faces, with headlines such as "Soviet mercenary leader in Africa beheaded."

Now only one question remains—

Those three people didn't die.

The three Cuban body doubles who died in that sea of ​​fire were the ones who died.

This story begins with Castro, who sent a loyal Cuban guard to Prigozin.

When it comes to dealing with CIA assassinations, no one in the world is more experienced than Fidel Castro! The CIA has tried countless methods to kill him over the years—poisoned cigars, diving suits soaked in poison, seashells containing explosives, bribed confidants... a wide variety of methods, hundreds of times in total.

They've made assassinating Castro a daily quest, they say.

In short, Castro has survived all these years without dying once, and he has long since figured out the art of "how not to be killed".

The use of a double is the most basic lesson in this field.

Castro knew that once Griffin and his three core members arrived in Africa, they would become prime targets for both South Africa and the CIA. He had already advised Prigozin to arrange for body doubles, having Cuban veterans of similar builds put on makeup and costumes, while the real targets would be protected via a different route.

When the news from South Africa reached Prigozin's ears, he was in a safe camp in Zimbabwe with three "dead men".

There was a radio in the camp. They gathered around it, listening to the broadcast announcing their own deaths, the announcer reading out their names and saying things like "killed" and "severely damaged the communist terrorist network."

Buyanov, that rough fellow, started drinking as he listened; Yudintsev stared at the radio for a long time without saying a word; Barannikov, the most composed of all, finished listening and said:

"Give those three Cuban revolutionary comrades a proper burial. I will provide them with more compensation. They sacrificed themselves for our cause."

"And to dedicate themselves to their cause." Prigozin made the sign of the cross, praying that the three would ascend to heaven.

They didn't even leave their names behind. The world remembers the deaths of three living men: Barannikov, Yudintsev, and Buyanov, while the three who were truly dead won't even have a tombstone with their names on it.

Prigozin turned off the radio.

“That old man Castro is really something.”

They didn't rush to deny the rumors. Letting the enemy think they had succeeded, letting the enemy think Griffin was headless, was itself a bargain! Once the enemy relaxed their guard, these "dead men" like Griffin would suddenly appear alive and well elsewhere.

“I have a feeling that we may die all over this continent.”

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Griffin began a full-scale transition.

In Namibia and Angola, Prigozin left behind several divisions totaling two thousand men. These two thousand men guarded the liberated areas, upholding the blood-soaked bond between Griffin and the local Black population. The rest broke camp and marched towards Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Mozambique.

These three places are still in the midst of war.

Zimbabwe. This country was originally called Rhodesia, and was under a white minority government. In 1980, a black government came to power, and Mugabe changed the name.

As a landlocked country with no access to the sea, its trade lifeline relies on the Beira Corridor in Mozambique. Since 1982, Zimbabwe has deployed troops to Mozambique to guard this corridor—because if the corridor were to be cut off, Zimbabwe's economy would be severely hampered.

South Africa did not directly attack Zimbabwe, but it indirectly strangled Zimbabwe by stirring up trouble in Mozambique.

Botswana is a country partially surrounded by South Africa. It has hosted many exiles from the South African apartheid movement. South African special forces frequently cross the border to raid its capital and commit murder.

And at the heart of all this is Mozambique.

Mozambique was Portugal's largest colony in eastern Africa, which it occupied for nearly five centuries. Like Angola, its independence came from Portugal's own revolution in 1974. On the day of independence, the country was practically a blank slate—95% of the population was illiterate, there were no decent schools or hospitals, the civil service system had always been run by the Portuguese, and when the Portuguese left, they took their capital and technology with them, causing the country's infrastructure to collapse rapidly.

The organization that led the independence movement was the Mozambican Liberation Front, which was allied with the Soviet Union under the banner of Marxism-Leninism.

Then a rebellion was created.

First, it was the white intelligence agency that withdrew from Zimbabwe, and later the military intelligence agency of South Africa, who single-handedly nurtured an organization called the "National Resistance Movement of Mozambique" from a few hundred people into an armed force of several thousand.

This rebel group is different from UNITA in Angola. At least UNITA had its own ethnic roots and its own political platform, while this rebel group was completely a tool created by external intelligence agencies!

Its strategy is not to seize power, occupy territory, or establish a base; its only strategy is destruction.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

When Prigozin led his team into Mozambique, he saw only devastation and death.

He had seen dead people in Afghanistan, too many to count. He had also fought and bled in Namibia, but Mozambique was a place utterly devoid of humanity.

The rebels here do one thing: make the country unable to function.

The rebels cut off railways and highways, blew up bridges, burned oil pipelines, oil storage tanks, schools, and clinics... By the end of the year, nearly half of Mozambique's rural clinics, totaling over nine hundred, had been destroyed. They laid landmines in rural areas and along roads, turning vast swathes of land into impassable death zones.

Prigozin's convoy passed through a village that had been looted by rebels.

The village was deserted. Most of the houses had burned down, leaving only charred walls. Half of the wall of a school had collapsed, but the blackboard in the classroom was still standing, with a line of words written on it in Portuguese, probably left by the teacher during the last class, but the words were no longer legible.

There were some things scattered on the ground under the blackboard, and Prigozin saw a very small shoe among them.

On a large rock at the entrance of the village, someone had drawn a skull in crooked red paint—it was a warning sign for landmines.

The rebels committed countless atrocities against civilians, much of which Prigozin later heard from locals and refugees: shooting, hacking, burning alive, starving to death, and indiscriminately shooting men, women, and children during village raids.

In Homoine, the rebels slaughtered more than 400 civilians with guns and machetes, not even sparing patients in hospital beds! This rebel army also conscripted large numbers of rural children into the army and forced civilians to do hard labor in the areas they controlled.

This is the Homoyne massacre that shocked the world.

Prigozin gazed at the ruins, a scene of utter desolation where birds had vanished and human traces had disappeared, and remained silent for a long time.

This is different from Namibia.

The prerequisite for calling on the grassroots people to resist foreign invasion is that you must first have a grassroots organization. In the bloody and brutal Mozambican civil war, it was difficult to see any grassroots organizations.

The rebels had no program, no ideology; they were purely destructive. And what about the government Prigozin was supposed to help? That Mozambican government, waving the banner of Marxism-Leninism, also had its problems—because it wanted to copy the Soviet model, it forcibly promoted collective villages regardless of local conditions, brutally confining scattered farmers and tribes to one place;

There are still many tribes in Mozambique. The government's approach is to suppress them and force them to collectivize. If the benefits of collectivization outweigh the drawbacks, then there's nothing wrong with it. But the key issue is that Mozambique's bureaucracy is corrupt and its economy is a complete mess!

Thus, the government offended and distanced itself from many rural areas. Ironically, this purely destructive rebel army actually managed to gain a tiny bit of support from the local people in some villages—provided that the rebels didn't kill or rob the people.

This requirement is a bit too harsh for the rebels.

Faced with this situation, Prigozin quickly realized one thing—he didn't need to fight a direct battle with the rebels here, nor did he need to clear them out village by village.

Because this rebel army has a fatal weakness.

It's different from UNITA. UNITA has its own ethnic roots and access to diamonds in eastern Angola, giving it a certain degree of independence. But this Mozambican rebel group is over 90% captured or forced into service; it has no economic resources of its own, and its guns and ammunition are almost entirely supplied from outside!

It was South Africa that sent them the gifts.

If the supply lines that South Africa is providing to this rebel group are cut off—those supplies brought in by sea, those land routes that infiltrate from the border—this rebel group will shrink rapidly, like a tumor whose blood vessels have been severed!

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Cutting off supply lines requires Moscow's cooperation.

Because Zimbabwe is also helping Mozambique clear rebel supply lines on land, South Africa usually chooses sea transport.

However, the sea route passed through Madagascar—which had always been within the Soviet sphere of influence. Therefore, Madagascar began harassing South African convoys transporting supplies to the coast of Mozambique.

After more than two months, the rebels' situation became increasingly difficult. They ran out of guns and had nowhere to replenish them, and South Africa itself was also on the verge of collapse.

It's on fire from both ends. It was just forced to sign a ceasefire in Angola, Namibia has already fallen, and riots are still raging in its black segregation zones. Now, its proxy front in Mozambique, which it has cultivated for many years, is being strangled.

The economic blockade imposed on it by Europe and the Soviet Union was getting tighter day by day. Its white soldiers were all killed and it dared not use black soldiers to replace them. The anti-war sentiment among its white elites could no longer be suppressed.

This reactionary regime was gradually pushed to its limit by pressure from all sides.

South Africa then secretly sent a mission to the Soviet Union, requesting peace.

The Soviet Union offered three conditions: end apartheid, release Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress, and organize elections; and conduct nuclear disarmament.

South Africa possessed nuclear weapons. In 1988, it was known to have seven nuclear devices. After the fall of the apartheid regime and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new government dismantled all nuclear weapons. Some believe this was because the white government did not want to hand over nuclear weapons to black people.

The Soviet Union demanded that South Africa agree to these conditions in exchange for the Warsaw Pact and Europe ending their economic blockade of South Africa.

The Soviet Union made its position very clear: "If South Africa does not agree, the Soviet Union will continue to support the armed forces of the African National Congress! We will continue to support them until this apartheid regime is completely overthrown by revolution!"

The South African civilian government said they needed to reconsider the terms after receiving them.

They offered a counter-suggestion: "If the Soviet Union could negotiate a peace plan with the African National Congress (ANC) that would allow the ANC to abandon armed struggle, then South Africa would accept it—accept new elections, and even allow Nelson Mandela to become the national leader!"

This counter-suggestion was placed on Slava's table.

Slava did not agree immediately because he knew clearly the nature of this reactionary regime.

South Africa's political system is not monolithic. A deep divide exists between its civilian government and its military. The Nkomati Agreement from a few years ago is a prime example.

That year, South Africa's foreign minister genuinely felt he had struck a good deal and signed an agreement to stop supporting Mozambican rebels; however, the South African military had no intention of honoring this agreement and continued to provide aid to the rebels without government authorization until the scheme was exposed. The commander-in-chief of the South African National Defence Force later admitted to this on television.

But the South African civilian government still couldn't do anything to him, which is enough to demonstrate the independence of the South African military.

So even if the South African civilian government agrees to sign the agreement and abandon its interference in neighboring countries, its semi-independent military may not listen, as the civilian government cannot control the military!

Then came the issue of "abandoning armed struggle" itself, which Slava could not accept.

Let's assume the Soviet Union truly persuaded the African National Congress (ANC) to abandon armed struggle. And let's assume the ANC actually came to power through peaceful elections, and Mandela became leader, just like in South Africa in 1993. Then what?

What we got was a South Africa that had only formally abolished apartheid.

Because the economic foundation hasn't changed! As a compromise, Mandela didn't reform the system after coming to power; the gold mines, the banks, and the land are still in white hands. What good is it to have a black government sitting on a white economy?

Black people gained nominal political power, but not economic power! The word "racial segregation" was legally erased, but the oppressive economic structure remained unchanged.

The suffering of Black people will not end just because of a change of government.

After Mandela stepped down, the new South African government quickly launched a counterattack, and the reforms that had shown some signs of socialism immediately veered towards neoliberalism.

After Mandela left, he left behind a politically free but economically extremely unequal South Africa—a country where blacks were in charge but whites held all the money, ultimately becoming one of the most unequal places in the world.

On the surface, apartheid was over; in reality, the poor remained poor and the rich remained rich.

“South Africa was in this state when I was fighting with armed forces, and it remains in this state now that I have given up the armed struggle. Doesn’t that mean I gave up the armed struggle in vain?”

In that case, it would be better to reduce overall support for the African National Congress and have the Soviet Union directly support the South African Communist Party in preparing for armed struggle!

Parliamentary struggles are futile.

Slava knew that the bloodless way to eliminate a communist party was to bring it into a coalition government.