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A Brief History of the War In Angola |
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After the end of World War I, Germany was required to renounce all its colonial claims to South West Africa, or SWA (as Namibia was previously called) under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. South Africa was granted a mandate to administer SWA as part of the Union of South Africa in 1921 by the League of Nations.
The mandate was renewed by the United Nations after World War II, but South Africa wanted to annex SWA as a fifth province, refusing to relinquish its grip on the territory. The UN applied mounting pressure on South Africa throughout the 1950, to no avail.
Sam Nujoma took over the leadership of the Owamboland People's Organisation in 1959, and had gathered more supporters and created the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO) in 1960. With their headquarters in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, SWAPO took the issue of South African occupation to the International Court of Justice in 1966. Despite fact that the United Nations had voted to terminate South Africa's mandate, the court ruled in favour of South Africa.
This prompted SWAPO to launch a campaign of guerilla warfare in Owamboland, northern SWA, on 26 August 1966, designed to disrupt the SWA economy through terrorism and sabotage until the end of the 1980s. All this time, Sam Nujome remained in exile under the protection of Tanzania's sympathetic Julius Nyerere.
After 500 years of Portuguese rule, things in Angola were coming to a head in the early 1970s, when in 1975, Angola finally gained its independence, but erupted into Africa's longest civil war, destroying innumerable lives.
The Soviet Union saw this as a chance to spread its Marxism ideals and supported Jose Eduardo Dos Santos's Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Fidel Castro of Cuba, shipped in up to 30 000 troops, with arms and ammunition, while the Soviet Union sent key military advisors, and millions of dollars' worth of T-54, T-55 and T-62 tanks, MiG-23 fighter planes, thousands of assault rifles, and countless landmines.
The United States could not sit idly by while communism gained a foothold in southern Africa. It was the height of the Cold War, as so they entered the conflict on the side of Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), by providing monetary and moral support only.
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