Between October 1987 and June 1988, in the fiercest conventional battles on African soil since Erwin Rommel was defeated at El Amien, the South African Defense Force (SADF) fought pitched tank and artillery battles with the Angolan army (FAPLA) and its Cuban supporters at Cuito Cuanavale. This small base at the confluence of two rivers, the Cuito and Cuanavale, located in southeastern Angola, became important in the military history of Africa. There the South African army, supposedly the best on the continent, was trapped with its tanks and artillery and held down more than 300 miles from its bases in Namibia.
The South Africans had started the heavy military buildup from bases in Namibia in July 1987 and began the offensive in October. Failing to take Cuito Cuanavale with over 9,000 soldiers, even after announcing that it had done so, losing air superiority, and faced with mutinies among black troops and a high casualty rate among whites, the South Africans reached such a desperate situation that President Botha had to fly to the war zone when the operational command of the SADF broke down.
With Cuban reinforcements, the Angolans withstood major assaults on 23 January, 25 February and 23 March. The South Africans were repulsed with heavy losses, and the Angolan and Cuban forces seized the military initiative. This initiative changed the military, political, and diplomatic balance in the region. After the coming to power of the Reagan administration in 1981 and the articulation of the principles of "constructive engagement," the SADF had become emboldened to embark on a massive destabilization of Southern Africa. This destabilization was in the form of a low-intensity war in Mozambique and an open, conventional war in Angola. There was a counterinsurgency war against the Namibian peoples, and in South Africa itself the troops of the SADF occupied the African township. The SADF was overstretched and its offensive in Angola brought to the forefront the limitations of an army fighting without moral support at home and abroad.
The Cuban and Angolan forces were aligned with the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa and the South West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) of Namibia. For the first time since 1981, the Angolan army was able to reoccupy the area adjacent to Namibia. So confident were the Angolans and Cubans that in the space of less than three months they built two airstrips to consolidate their recapture of the southern province of Cunene. Trapped by the rainy season, bogged down by the terrain, and encircled, the South Africans made one desperate attempt to break out on 27 June and were again defeated. One South African newspaper called the defeat "a crushing humiliation."
These episodes of war were followed by diplomatic initiatives that the South Africans had previously been able to block. After the 23 March reversals at Cuito Cuanavale, the South Africans started talks that culminated in the 22 December agreement on the the implementation of Resolution 435 of the Security Council of the United Nations, laying the steps for the recovery of the independence of Namibia. A year later, in the February 1990, the South African government released Nelson Mandel and unbanned the African National Congress (ANC) and the other liberation movements in South Africa.
The withdrawal of the SADF from Angola did not end the war. The army of UNITA continued fighting. There was a peace accord in 1991 leading to elections in September 1992. The party of UNITA lost the elections and returned to war. Twelve years after Cuito Cuanavale the Angolan society was still mired in warfare.
Source: Horace Campbell, "Cuito Cuanavale," The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World, Second Edition, p. 187, Oxford University University Press, 2001