At the end of World War II Portugal was the poorest country in western Europe and was ruled by a dictatorship, but it still claimed an immense overseas empire that included Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde. Unlike other European colonial leaders, the Portuguese dictator António Salazar (1889–1970) refused to consider ending colonial rule. Without government support for independence, nationalists in Portugal’s colonies resorted to armed insurrections. By the early 1970s independence movements in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique all fought guerrilla wars against the Portuguese army and colonial militias. The human toll was immense, and Portuguese officers returning from the colonies deposed the dictator in 1974. Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde became independent that same year; Angola and Mozambique gained independence a year later. The nationalist movements that took power were all Marxist. Their radicalism was a product of their long struggle against oppression, inequality, and lack of access to their countries’ resources.

The end of colonialism in Angola and Mozambique shifted the political landscape of southern Africa. Mozambique helped rebels fighting white-minority rule in Rhodesia, while the South African government saw independent Angola as a threat to apartheid and to its control over Namibia. The block of white-minority rule had been shattered, but neither Angola nor Mozambique would soon find peace.

The new government of Mozambique faced a guerrilla movement financed by Rhodesia. As Angola became independent, it faced immediate invasions from Zaire (encouraged by the United States) and South Africa. The new president of Angola, Agostinho Neto (1922–1978), requested military aid from Cuba. Until the late 1980s tens of thousands of Cuban troops faced off with the South African Defense Forces and mercenary armies to defend the government of Angola.

In the British colony of Rhodesia white settlers were a small minority of the population who declared independence on their own in order to avoid sharing power with the black majority. In 1965 they established a white-minority government under Ian Smith. The new Rhodesian state faced international condemnation for its treatment of black citizens, including the first economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

The Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) fought a guerrilla war against Rhodesia’s white regime. Rebuffed by the United States and Britain, ZAPU turned to China and the Soviet Union for support. When Mozambique gained independence in 1974, its government allowed ZAPU and other guerrilla groups to use neighboring Mozambican territory as a staging ground to launch attacks on Rhodesia, making it impossible for the Ian Smith government to endure. Negotiations led to an open election in 1980 that ZAPU leader Robert Mugabe won easily. The new Mugabe government renamed the country Zimbabwe after an ancient city-state that predated colonial rule.