Angola was a hub for the training of soldiers from Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and hosted by far the largest contingents of foreign instructors and military personnel including an estimated 50,000 Cubans alongside Soviet officers. In this way Angola became a place of contact between soldiers from across parts of the world with vastly different experiences and expectations, sometimes in shared camps or other shared spaces such as hospitals and even prisons. While has been written about the politics of these alliances, very little research has been done on how they formed military cultures both within the MPLA and in the liberation movements that it hosted. At the same time, the former liberation movement UNITA continued to operate in parts of Angola that were beyond the control of the MPLA, and hosted military advisors from apartheid South Africa in its war against the MPLA.
