The Battle of Quifangondo (popularly known as Nshila wa Lufu, or Battle of Death Road in Kikongo) was fought on 10 November 1975, near the strategic settlement of Quifangondo, Luanda Province, between the People's Armed Forces of Liberation of Angola (FAPLA), armed wing of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and the National Liberation Army of Angola (ELNA), armed wing of the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA). The engagement marked the first major deployment of rocket artillery in the Angolan Civil War, as well as the last serious attempt by ELNA forces to seize Luanda, the Angolan capital. It occurred on the last day of Portuguese colonial rule in the country, which formally received independence only hours later.
After defeating a FAPLA garrison at the nearby town of Caxito, an army of ELNA militants led personally by Holden Roberto began advancing southwards towards Luanda. Roberto's forces included a composite battery of three BL 5.5-inch Medium Guns and two 130 mm Type 59 field guns manned by Zairean and South African artillery crews. Their objective was to dislodge FAPLA from the vital waterworks at Quifangondo and an adjoining bridge which spanned the Bengo River. Air cover for the ELNA offensive was provided by a squadron of South African English Electric Canberra bombers. The defenders consisted of FAPLA's 9th Brigade and just under a hundred Cuban military advisers, bolstered by a composite battery of ZiS-3 anti-tank guns and Grad rocket launchers.
Following a poorly coordinated artillery bombardment and an ineffectual South African air strike, ELNA and Zairean infantry attacked the bridge early on the morning on 10 November, but became trapped in the open while crossing an elevated roadway and shelled by the defenders' rockets. The ELNA advance stalled, and the attackers were unable to regain their initiative. Roberto committed his reserves, but by noon his entire force had been routed with heavy casualties and nearly all their vehicles destroyed. The ELNA forces broke into a disorderly retreat and could only be re-mustered the following day. Realising the battle was lost, the South African and Zairean artillery crews withdrew to the nearby port of Ambriz and were later evacuated by their respective governments.
While the battle was taking place, Portugal renounced its claims to Angolan sovereignty and withdrew the remainder of its colonial administrative and military personnel from Luanda. On the morning of 11 November, the MPLA proclaimed the People's Republic of Angola, which was immediately recognised by Cuba, the Soviet Union, Brazil, and several sympathetic African states. ELNA had suffered such a catastrophic defeat at Quifangondo that Roberto was unable to launch another major offensive; over the next two months his forces were gradually scattered and destroyed by FAPLA and its Cuban allies.
Background
Since the late fifteenth century, Portugal had administered Angola as part of an African empire which included Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea (modern Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau). Following the loss of Brazil and the erosion of its influence in the Americas during the early nineteenth century, Portugal increasingly refocused on the consolidation of its African colonies. As the largest, most developed, and most heavily populated colony in the Portuguese Empire, Angola came to replace Brazil as Lisbon's most valuable overseas possession. Angolan nationalists, led by the nascent Angolan Communist Party, periodically challenged colonial rule, to little avail. The trend towards global decolonisation during the late 1940s and 1950s delivered an unprecedented boost to nationalist confidence and ambitions, and in January 1961 the Angolan War of Independence broke out when radicalised peasants launched the Baixa de Cassanje revolt.
Between 1961 and 1964, three major nationalist movements rose to prominence in the fighting between the Portuguese security forces and local anti-colonial militants supported to varying degrees by the Soviet Union, China, and several newly independent African states. The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) was led by Holden Roberto and recruited mostly from the Bakongo population of northern Angola and the Cabinda exclave, an area traditionally dominated by the Kingdom of Kongo. In the central highlands and southern Angola, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) was formed by Jonas Savimbi and drew its recruits from Ovimbundu farm labourers and peasants. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), was formed by the Angolan Communist Party and targeted the embryonic upper working class of public sector workers in Luanda. Most of its senior leaders, namely Agostinho Neto, were professionals and intellectuals educated in European universities. It was in this educated elite that the combination of anti-colonial resentment and exposure to international political theory came to be most articulated; for example, the MPLA invested heavily in lobbying campaigns overseas which won it support and recognition among political leaders in Africa and the Middle East. Its use of Marxist political language and open criticism of the United States in particular proved effective at winning support with the Soviet Union and leftist governments elsewhere.
All three movements quickly formed militant wings to coordinate their insurgent campaigns against the Portuguese: the FNLA formed the National Liberation Army of Angola (ELNA), UNITA formed the Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FALA), and the MPLA formed the People's Armed Forces of Liberation of Angola (FAPLA). The creation of three separate insurgent armies provoked internecine strife which doomed any attempt to present a united front against the Portuguese and limited their effectiveness on the battlefield. Until the formation of the militant wings, disputes between the movements had been largely confined to political theory. However, beginning in late 1961 there were a number of clashes between ELNA and FAPLA that became central to the rivalry between the FNLA and MPLA, and evolved into outright hostility. It was not uncommon for ELNA to intercept and kill FAPLA personnel who strayed into its area of operations. Hamstrung by violent divisions, the insurgents aggravated the colonial administration but did not threaten its control of the territory.
In late April 1974, Portugal's authoritarian Estado Novo government was toppled by the Carnation Revolution, which sounded the death knell for that country's pretensions as a colonial empire. Angolan nationalists perceived the political upheaval in Lisbon as an opportunity to upend the colonial order; the MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA rejected ceasefire requests and demanded the Portuguese affirm an unconditional right to independence. General António de Spínola, head of the Portuguese provisional government, was initially in favour of retaining the colonies as semi-autonomous federal subjects, but found little support for this measure in the progressive atmosphere which dominated after the revolution. On 27 July 1974, he announced that the colonies were to be granted independence, unconditionally.
By November 1974 the authority and morale of the Portuguese security forces in Angola had been seriously undermined; meanwhile, the three nationalist movements were attempting to exploit the developing power vacuum by amassing troops and stockpiling arms. The nationalists' political and military wings rushed to establish authority on the ground, moving rapidly to take over key towns left unguarded by the withdrawing Portuguese. Massive shipments of foreign arms from their various allies made the movements increasingly more lethal as tensions grew. The insurgents also seized large quantities of Portuguese weapons from the arsenals of disbanding colonial units. As long as their administrative structures were not attacked, the Portuguese made no attempt to enforce internal security, and the nationalists were able to continue their buildup unopposed.
Prelude
ELNA expelled from Luanda
FAPLA benefited most from the erosion of Portuguese rule throughout mid-1974, seizing control of eleven of Angola's sixteen provincial capitals. However, distracted by an internal power struggle between Agostinho Neto and Daniel Chipenda, it was unable to consolidate its control of Luanda. In October, Holden Roberto took advantage of the situation to begin airlifting ELNA troops into Luanda from their training camps in neighbouring Zaire. With each movement extending its influence over the local population, the uneasy peace soon broke down and within a month the capital had erupted into bloody street battles. On 3 January 1975, at the behest of Organisation of African Unity, Neto, Roberto, and UNITA's Savimbi signed an accord in which they agreed to a permanent truce and promised to terminate mutually hostile propaganda. The nationalists then participated in a multi-party conference in Alvor, Portugal, which formed a coalition government of MPLA, FNLA, UNITA, and Portuguese representatives to govern Angola during the interim period. The coalition government would draft a constitution, to be followed by democratic elections. Angola's independence date was set for 11 November 1975, the four hundredth anniversary of the founding of Luanda.
Fighting almost immediately broke out in Luanda again when Neto took advantage of the ceasefire to launch a purge of Chipenda's supporters. The Chipenda faction was largely annihilated, leaving ELNA as the only remaining obstacle to FAPLA control of the city. Chipenda and 2,000 of his surviving troops defected to ELNA around February, which further heightened tensions. ELNA had the largest number of personnel inside Angola at the time, and was further strengthened by over 400 tonnes of weaponry donated by the People's Republic of China and channelled through a sympathetic Zaire. ELNA also benefited from covert financial aid supplied by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Roberto was pressed by his field commanders to destroy Neto's forces while he held an indisputable advantage in manpower and logistics. On 23 March, ELNA began attacking FAPLA bases in Luanda. A week later, a motorised column of 500 ELNA troops drove into the capital to join the fighting, unopposed by the Portuguese troops on duty. The threat posed by ELNA's troop buildup was proving far more formidable than Neto had anticipated, and near the end of March he appealed to the Soviet Union and Cuba for military backing.
As an ELNA victory in Luanda became more apparent, Soviet policymakers grew increasingly anxious about Angola. They believed that Angola's fate carried heavy implications for the global strategic and diplomatic momentum gained by the Soviet sphere after the end of the Vietnam War. They saw Roberto as an agent of Bakongo tribalism rather than a true revolutionary and assumed that his success would serve the interests of Beijing and Washington. The coincidence of Chinese and American patronage of Roberto was especially alarming, as it seemed to indicate the possibility of a future Sino-American alliance dominating Angola, to the detriment of Soviet interests. The result was approval of Neto's request for a massive increase in Soviet military aid to FAPLA. During March 1975 alone, Soviet pilots flew thirty planeloads of weapons into Brazzaville, where they were unloaded and transported by rail, truck, and ship to waiting FAPLA units around Luanda. In the span of three months, the Soviet Union had airlifted thirty million dollars' worth of weaponry to FAPLA. Neto had received enough new arms to equip an additional 20,000 troops, which proved instrumental in turning the tide against Roberto. Additionally, a Soviet military delegation offered to provide training instructors and logistics staff during well-publicised talks with the MPLA leadership on 25 April. For its part, Cuba deployed a contingent of 230 military advisers and technicians to Angola to assemble Soviet hardware and train an influx of new FAPLA recruits. The first Cuban advisers began arriving in May.
The infusion of Soviet arms helped fuel increasingly heavier confrontations in Luanda and provided the raw material for a major conventional FAPLA counteroffensive. In late May FAPLA violated a short-lived ceasefire by attacking and defeating several ELNA garrisons in the Cuanza Norte, Malanje, and Uíge provinces. Buoyed by these victories, the MPLA Politburo authorised a counteroffensive with the objective of isolating and destroying ELNA in Luanda. Between 3 June and 5 June, FAPLA eliminated the ELNA presence in the Cabinda exclave. The Portuguese succeeded in imposing a ceasefire on 7 June, but this was short-lived: the ELNA units stationed in Luanda had been sapped by the fighting in late May and the FAPLA general staff, detecting weakness, was eager to finish them off. On 9 July, FAPLA and the MPLA's popular militia resumed their counteroffensive, bringing the full weight of their Soviet-supplied weapons, including mortars and T-34-85 tanks, to bear against the lightly armed ELNA infantry. After several days of street battles, FAPLA was in full possession of Luanda, having driven ELNA out of the capital and its outlying suburbs. ELNA released a press statement accusing Cuban advisers of having played a major role in the FAPLA counteroffensive. Placing emphasis on the fact that FAPLA had violated the most recent ceasefire, Roberto announced he was no longer prepared to negotiate peace with Neto. The MPLA responded that it would likewise pursue the war until the FNLA and ELNA were permanently defeated.
Zaire and South Africa intervene
Following its expulsion from Luanda, ELNA withdrew to the nearby port of Ambriz, where it established its new military headquarters and began planning a counteroffensive on Luanda. Roberto, who had hitherto directed the war effort from Kinshasa, immediately made preparations to return to Angola and manage all ELNA operations personally. He claimed he would capture Luanda before Angolan independence. For the time being, however, he contented himself with preparing for that decisive action. Over the late summer and early fall, ELNA recruited more troops and consolidated its control over most of northern Angola.