The Relationship Between UNITA and SWAPO: Allies and Adversaries

The dynamics of the Namibian liberation struggle in the late 1960s and early 1970s prompted the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) to seek comradely relations with all three Angolan liberation movements. These connections enabled SWAPO armed combat units to transit from their Zambian bases into southern Angola and to carry out political and military expeditions into Namibia. Following the collapse of relationships between the União Nacional para a Indepêndencia Total de Angola (UNITA) and SWAPO in 1976, SWAPO refused to acknowledge that UNITA had previously been its closest ally. This article, in challenging this claim, utilises both written sources and interviews with former SWAPO cadres, some of whom operated from UNITA's headquarters in Moxico province in Angola from 1973. As former SWAPO commanders and UNITA allies, their testimonies demonstrate the amicable relationship between the two organisations that SWAPO officially continues to ignore and repudiate. From this understanding, this article argues that the historic relationship between UNITA and SWAPO should be recognised, and suggests that the two liberation movements were united by shared nationalist projects. In fact, as allies and comrades in arms, their unity of purpose emphasised the importance of shared common values and principles: aspirations for independence, and freedom and human integrity for the oppressed people of Namibia and Angola.