TIMELINE

10 December 1956	MPLA formed in Luanda to demand independence for Angola from Portugal.
February 1965	Che Guevara meets Jonas Savimbi in Dar es Salaam.
12 March 1966	UNITA founded in eastern Angola to fight the Portuguese.
25 April 1974	Carnation Revolution in Portugal. Dictatorship overthrown by military officers who favour rapid decolonisation from Portugal’s African empire.
15 January 1975	Agreement signed at Alvor, on Portugal’s Algarve coast, setting Angola’s Independence Day as 11 November 1975.
9 August 1975	A 30-man South African Army patrol moves more than 50 km into southern Angola and occupies the Ruacana-Calueque hydro-electric complex and other installations on the Cunene River.
21 August 1975	Some 500 Cuban instructors begin arriving in Angola to set up MPLA military training camps in Cabinda, Salazar (N’Dalatando), Benguela and Henrique de Carvalho (Saurimo).
23 September 1975	South African Paratroop Colonel Willem Van der Waals arrives in the central Angola town of Silva Porto to begin training UNITA guerrillas.
14 October 1975	Several columns of armoured South African soldiers, encouraged by the CIA and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, secretly cross Angola’s southern border and advance northwards. The South Africans overrun Fapla and Cuban defences and enter Benguela and Lobito. Cuba officially recognises its first losses: four killed, seven wounded and thirteen missing in action.
7 November 1975	Cuban troop reinforcements and warplanes begin arriving in Luanda.
11 November 1975	Angolan Independence Day. The MPLA in Luanda proclaims itself the government of the People’s Republic of Angola.
12 November 1975	South Africa’s invasion force reaches Novo Redondo, more than 800 km inside Angola and within 320 km of Luanda.
14 November 1975	Reuter’s Central Africa correspondent publishes a detailed report exposing South Africa’s secret invasion of Angola.
19 December 1975	US Senate cuts off covert aid to forces fighting the MPLA in Angola. The South African Army, following the United States’ decision not to back the Angolan invasion publicly, begins a strategic retreat from Angola which is completed on 26 March 1976.
13 March 1976	Heavily reinforced Cuban armoured forces complete recapture of southern Angola. UNITA’s Jonas Savimbi leads a Long March of his guerrillas back into the forests of eastern Angola to begin a prolonged post-independence civil war.
March 1981	Chester Crocker, the new US Under-Secretary of State for Africa, begins an eight-year-long ‘constructive engagement’ peace process to link Cuban withdrawal from Angola to South African withdrawal from Namibia.
23 August 1981	South Africa re-enters southern Angola with 5,000 soldiers supported by tanks and armoured cars, hitting SWAPO guerrilla bases. Training and supply of UNITA begins again.
March 1985	Chester Crocker presents ‘basis for negotiations’ to Angolan and South African governments. The pre-negotiations quickly collapse.
5 July 1985	The US government restores covert military aid to UNITA.
28 May 1987	General Rafael Del Pino, commander of the Cuban Air Force in Angola, defects to the USA, criticising Fidel Castro for his Angolan operation which he says is riven by corruption and incompetence.
4 August 1987	The South African Defence Force initially deploys 2,000 men, armoured cars and heavy artillery into Angola to assist UNITA to defend Mavinga against a huge Soviet-backed Fapla assault from the town of Cuito Cuanavale.
3 October 1987	In Africa’s biggest land battle since the battle of El Alamein in North Africa between the British and the Germans in October–November 1942, the South African Defence Force destroys the Fapla advance on Mavinga, annihilating Fapla’s 47 Brigade and driving three other brigades into headlong retreat towards their starting point at Cuito Cuanavale.
30 January 1988	General Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez, commander of Cuba’s armed forces in Angola, is summoned to Havana by Fidel Castro and ordered to begin a strategic retreat from Cuito Cuanavale, leaving only one Fapla brigade in the small town. Ochoa does not comply with Castro’s orders and leaves four brigades in the town and across the river to the east.
23 March 1988	The SADF’s counter-offensive against Cuito Cuanavale stalls on the eastern bank of the Cuito River, opposite the town, as South African tanks are crippled in a massive minefield. Cuban troops capture three South African tanks.
27 June 1988	A big SADF armoured unit attacks a Cuban and MPLA garrison in southwest Angola at Techipa, about 40 miles inside Angola. Some 300 Fapla troops and a number of Cubans are killed. Eight Cuban Air Force Mig-23 fighter-bombers immediately retaliate, attacking the South Africa-occupied Calueque Dam on the Cunene River in southwest Angola. Twelve South African soldiers are killed and permanent damage is inflicted on the dam infrastructure.
28 June 1988	Hostilities suddenly end. The War for Africa is over.
30 August 1988	Last South African soldiers withdraw over border from Angola into Namibia, ending a quarter-century of military involvement in Angola.
22 December 1988	The Angolan, South African and Cuban governments sign the historic New York Accords which provide for the withdrawal of all Cuban troops from Angola, the withdrawal of all South African troops from Namibia and Angola, and the disarming and expulsion of South African ANC guerrillas from Angola.
10 January 1989	First 3,000 Cuban troops leave Angola.
13 July 1989	Ochoa Sánchez, the Cuban general who commanded the defence of Cuito Cuanavale, is executed by firing squad in Havana after being denounced for four hours by Fidel Castro at a ‘Court of Honour’.
7 November 1989	Namibia holds a pre-independence general election. SWAPO wins.
9 November 1989	The Berlin Wall comes down, triggering the collapse of Soviet Union and socialist bloc.
11 February 1990	Nelson Mandela released from prison in South Africa after serving 27 years of a life sentence.
21 March 1990	Namibia becomes independent.
31 May 1991	The MPLA and UNITA agree to end their civil war and hold free multi-party elections.
14 June 1991	The last Cuban troop ship from Luanda docks in Havana, officially ending the Cuban intervention in Angola.
29–30 September 1992	Angola’s first multi-party general election is held since independence 17 years earlier. The MPLA wins 54 percent of the votes and 129 seats in the Luanda parliament. Jonas Savimbi declares the election rigged and takes his UNITA movement back to war against the wishes of some of his senior military officers.
27 April 1994	The ANC wins a large majority in South Africa’s first all-race general election and Nelson Mandela becomes the country’s first black State President.
2 February 2002	Jonas Savimbi is killed, aged 67, in an ambush planned by one of his former and finest generals, Geraldo Nunda. UNITA’s surviving leaders immediately sign a ceasefire agreement with the ruling MPLA and agree to their followers being disarmed, ending a civil war that lasted more than a quarter-century.
5 December 2013	Nelson Mandela dies at the age of 95.
25 November 2016	Fidel Castro dies at the age of 90.