The Settler Redoubt

CHAPTER 9 · 1965–1990 · The Decolonization of Africa, 1945–1994

By 1970 the map’s red reaches almost everywhere — except the far south, where the charcoal of settler rule digs in for a last stand. Here were the hardest cases of all, for the Algerian reason multiplied: entrenched white populations who would not surrender power to the African majority. Rhodesia went first and hardest. Rather than accept London’s condition of eventual majority rule, its white settlers declared independence unilaterally in 1965 (watch Zimbabwe flip to charcoal) — “kith and kin” defiance, sustained for fifteen years by sanctions-busting and South African support. Two guerrilla

The turn: Cuito Cuanavale, 1987–88 — the hinge.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.