Battle of Cuito Cuanavale

The battle usually described as the largest fought in Africa since the Second World War took place around a small town on the Cuito river, and nobody agrees on who won it. South African forces and their UNITA allies had pushed Angolan government troops back toward Cuito Cuanavale, and Cuba responded by reinforcing heavily and by moving combat aircraft and air defenses south, which took away the air superiority the South Africans had relied on. A series of assaults through early 1988 failed to take the town. While the fighting continued, a second front opened toward the Namibian border that threatened to widen the war, and all sides went to the negotiating table. The agreements signed in New York that December took South African forces out of Angola and set Namibia on the road to independence the following year.

Three national histories of this battle exist and they are close to irreconcilable: a Cuban and Angolan account of a decisive defeat inflicted on apartheid, a South African account of a tactical success that was never militarily beaten and withdrew for political reasons, and a scholarly middle that treats the fighting as a stalemate whose importance was diplomatic. Archives have moved the argument since, with South African military records opening after 1994 and Cuban documents used by historians such as Piero Gleijeses to show how far Havana acted on its own judgment rather than Moscow's. Nelson Mandela, newly released, told a Cuban audience in 1991 that the victory there had destroyed the myth of white invincibility, a statement that is quoted constantly and that scholars treat as a political assessment rather than a military one. The town itself remains among the most heavily mined towns in Africa, so the clearest legacy on the ground is the demining work still going on decades later.