The Angolan civil war (1975-2002) was the longest conflict in Africa and one of the longest conditioned by the context of the Cold War. It was fought as an escalation of the Angolan War of Independence, from 1961 to 1974, which pitted several antagonistic Angolan movements, and their respective allies, but resulted immediately from the decolonization process, from 1974 to 1975, which sharpened and amplified this conflict. The Angolan conflict faced the government of the MPLA and its allies in Cuba and SWAPO, which was fighting for the independence of Namibia, against UNITA, the FNLA, South Africa and Zaire. The former received support from advisors and Soviet material and the second advisors and material from the United States and Israel, as well as from Western mercenaries.
From the independence of Mozambique in 1975 to 1992, the country was embroiled in a civil war between the communist government of FRELIMO and the anti-communist guerrilla of the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), supported by apartheid South Africa. After the war and the establishment of a multiparty system, RENAMO became the main opposition party.
The legacy of the plunder and colonization has been the expansion of capitalism as system and the massive accumulation of capitalists—and “their” nation-states—at the expense of greatly weakened states and economies in Africa.
