Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 /]cpiero Gleijeses

672 Pages·2016·3.95 MB·English

by  Piero Gleijeses

Visions of Freedom
the new cold war history
Odd Arne Westad, editor
Visions of Freedom
Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the
Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991
piero gleijeses
The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill
© 2013 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Designed and set in Calluna by Rebecca Evans
Manufactured in the United States of America
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and
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The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gleijeses, Piero, author.
Visions of freedom : Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the struggle
for southern Africa, 1976–1991(cid:21)/(cid:21)Piero Gleijeses.
pages cm. — (New Cold War history)
isbn 978-1-4696-0968-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Africa, Southern—History—1975– 2. Cold War—Political aspects—
Africa, Southern. 3. Africa, Southern—Politics and government—1975–1994.
4. Africa, Southern—Foreign relations—1975–1994. 5. Africa, Southern—
History—Autonomy and independence movements. I. Title. II. Series:
New Cold War history.
dt1165.g54 2013
968.0009048—dc23 2013024964
Portions of this work have appeared earlier, in somewhat different form,
as “Moscow’s Proxy? Cuba and Africa 1975–1988,” Journal of Cold War Studies
8:4 (Fall 2006): 98–146, © 2006 by the President and Fellows of Harvard
College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and “A Test of Wills:
Jimmy Carter, South Africa, and the Independence of Namibia,” Diplomatic
History 34:5 (Nov. 2010): 853–91 (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., publisher), and are
reprinted here with permission.
17 16 15 14 13 5 4 3 2 1
To Setsuko Ono
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Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations Used in Text xiii
Prologue 9
1 The Cuban Drumbeat 17
2 Neto, Castro, and Carter: A New Beginning? 37
3 The Cubans in Angola 65
4 Strained Relations: Cuba and Angola 98
5 The Fronts Harden: The United States and Cuba, 1978–1980 119
6 Carter and Southern Africa: A Balance Sheet 139
7 Enter Reagan 166
8 The Wonders of Linkage 197
9 Angolan Travails 213
10 The Failure of Lusaka 242
11 The United States, South Africa, and Savimbi 279
12 The View from Cuba, 1984–1986 314
13 Havana and Moscow: Conflicting Strategies 343
14 Negotiations in the Offing? 379
15 Cuito Cuanavale 393
16 Maniobra XXXI Aniversario 421
17 Chester Crocker Meets Jorge Risquet: Talks about Talks 431
18 The Negotiations 450
19 The New York Agreements 482
20 Visions of Freedom 503
Notes 527
Bibliography 613
Index 641
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Maps and Illustrations
maps
Cuba 2
Africa 3
Angola 4
Namibia, showing the homelands and “White Area” 5
Southern Angola, showing the Cuban defensive line 6
Angola’s eleven military regions 7
Zaire and its neighbors 40
Angolan territory occupied by South Africa, February 1984 237
Military operations near the Lomba River, late September
and early October 1987 395
illustrations
President of Angola Agostinho Neto with Fidel Castro 265
Agostinho Neto with President of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito 265
Agostinho Neto with Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union 266
Lúcio Lara, Neto’s closest aide 266
President of Angola José Eduardo dos Santos 267
Jorge Risquet, Castro’s point man for Africa, with José Eduardo
dos Santos and Fidel Castro 267
Chief of Staff of the Angolan Army Ndalu with Jorge Risquet 268
Sam Nujoma, leader of the Namibian rebels, with Fidel Castro 268
Namibian guerrillas 269
Sophia Ndeitungo, Namibian student in Cuba 269
Cuban Special Forces lieutenant with Namibian insurgents 270