The racially segregated system of apartheid in South Africa was part of a larger region of white-minority rule that included Portuguese Angola and Mozambique, the government of Ian Smith in Rhodesia, and South African control of the former German colony of Namibia. In the 1970s the buffer of neighboring white-minority governments around South Africa crumbled. Independent Marxist regimes in Angola and Mozambique denounced apartheid and supported black militants in South Africa. South Africa invaded Angola in 1975 to try to install a puppet government. The two countries remained in almost constant conflict between 1977 and 1988 as Angolan forces backed by Cuban troops made South Africa’s incursions into a long and violent conflict. In Namibia, the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) fought for independence from South Africa. Domestic and foreign pressure brought a political transition to majority rule in Namibia and South Africa in the 1990s.