Description
Right through the final fifteen years of the Cold War, southern Africa underwent a period of upheaval, with dramatic twists and turns in relations between the superpowers. Americans, Cubans, Soviets, and Africans fought over the way forward for Angola, where tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were stationed, and over the decolonization of Namibia, Africa’s last colony. Beyond lay the good prize: South Africa. Piero Gleijeses uses archival sources, particularly from the US, South Africa, and the closed Cuban archives, to supply an unprecedented international history of this necessary theater of the late Cold War.
These sources all point to at least one conclusion: by humiliating the US and defying the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro changed the course of history in southern Africa. It was once Cuba’s victory in Angola in 1988 that forced Pretoria to set Namibia free and helped break the back of apartheid South Africa. Within the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cubans “destroyed the parable of the invincibility of the white oppressor . . . [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa.”