The outcome of the series of battles around Cuito Cuanavale (1987-88) is contested by historians. The one argument, supporting Corbyn's statement, is that the failure of the South African Defence Force to achieve its aims in Angola lead it to reconsider its military involvements and eventually move towards a negotiated settlement. In particular, the Cubans had air superiority, and the South Africans realised that there was no feasible way to match this. It was the first time they had met their match militarily, and the continued expense of its military pushes, coupled with financial sanctions, led the leadership to change direction. The counter argument is that the South African military did achieve their aims, never intended to push further but simply wanted to stop FAPLA's (Angolan liberation movement) offensive, and suffered far fewer casualties, so these battles and the Cuban involvement played relatively little role, with the main drivers being the fall of communism and the general poor state of the economy.

The former argument was made by Nelson Mandela in a visit to Cuba, and is probably the main reason for its widespread adoption around the world. The apartheid government argued otherwise, but as the 'losers', their view is less widely adopted

To build on the the strictly military consequences of Cuban intervention in Angola, I want to highlight the broader diplomatic and ideological impact which is what I believe Corbyn may actually be referring to.

Because South Africa increasingly viewed their involvement in Angola between 1963 and 1988 as a fight against Communist imperialism, and by extension a fight for the survival of Apartheid in Southern Africa, by the time the Soviet bloc began to collapse in the late 1980s South Africa's ideological struggle had come to dominate policy making in the region. What this meant was that when the shifting world order became apparent after 1986, SA was forced into an untenable position of fighting a "communist insurgency" which was no longer recognised as the global threat it had a decade earlier.

Into this international context comes Chester Crocker's (U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs) peace and withdrawal strategy of "Linkage" - i.e. that in order to successfully end the war in Angola, it was necessary for both SA and Cuba, as well as the Angolans themselves, to consider each other as viable political groupings despite the realities of overwhelming SA dominance in military engagements. Furthermore and perhaps more importantly, the concept of "linkage" and the subsequent New York Accords were designed to incorporate Namibian independence (at the time a territory of SA and having played host to multiple Angolan incursions) into the discussions. The subsequent Bicesse Peace Accords cemented the issue of the end of apartheid in Namibia as a key issue for peace in Angola, and thus began to lay waste to the SA government's continued belief in Apartheid as a social and political system.

The social impact Cuban intervention in Angola had on the black SA population was a result of both of these elements also. Having seen the success of foreign-backed African liberation nationalism in Zimbabwe in 1980, and now the public (if not entirely truthful) victory of combined Cuban/Angolan troops in Angola, black Africans in SA were presented with further evidence as to the fallibility of apartheid state. When one considers the realities of Namibian independence emerging directly from the Cuban/Angolan/SA peace negotiations, it is easy to combine these elements into a narrative that shows apartheid SA as a wounded beast through the 1980s and early 1990s, becoming increasingly weaker. As an inspiration and motivation to the struggles of the ANC in SA, Namibian independence and the SA withdrawal from Angola were key factors. It should also be mentioned that with both of these events, SA was now alone on the continent as a white-minority ruled nation and thus came under increasing pressure from antagonistic neighbours, making the defence of thousands of kilometres of borders incredibly difficult.

Do people in the West believe this? Both the Soviet Union (with Cuba) and the US used Angola and much of Africa as a plantation for their spheres of influence during the cold war. African leaders used both sides to get what they want. The people as usual, suffer. USSR basically sucked out resources out of Angola and left allot of debt, broken promises and destroyed infrastructure. After all of that, all sides left. Next came 20+ years of civil war.