User:Katangais/sandbox/Savannah

Operation Savannah was the code name for the South African invasion of Angola in support of the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) in 1975–76, during the Angolan Civil War. The invasion, strongly encouraged and collaborated on a covert level with the United States Central Intelligence Agency, was launched to preempt a military victory by the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Secondary objectives included protecting the strategic hydroelectric dam at Calueque in southern Angola, a vital source of electricity for the power grid of neighbouring South West Africa, then administered by South Africa under a contested League of Nations mandate. Operation Savannah was also intended to weaken the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO), a militant nationalist group in that territory which operated primarily from external sanctuaries in Angola and elsewhere.

A key part of South Africa's strategic military outlook during the 1960s was the perpetuation of a buffer of friendly regimes around its borders to insulate the country from external influences likely to influence its own, potentially volatile, political situation. Its controversial policy of racial apartheid had already provoked major domestic and international opposition, as had as its continued administration of South West Africa, which had been challenged by the United Nations. South Africa's ruling National Party was concerned that the rise of newly independent African states on its borders, led by hostile left-wing regimes, would make the infiltration of guerrillas and full external support for an internal challenge to its government a real possibility. Close military ties were thus fostered with Portugal and its colonial administration in neighbouring Angola and Mozambique. The collapse of the Portuguese Empire as a result of the 1974 Carnation Revolution upended this strategy, prompting South African policymakers to become intent on installing another friendly government which would, in turn, retain Angola as part of their own strategic cordon sanitaire.