Another perspective. http://www.conservativeusa.org/angola.htm One has to measure him against Africa's norms, not Western norms.Treason within treason, also on South Africa's part. He was a guerilla fighter in the African way, perhaps more a black nationalist for his own people who at the end died a heroic death.Imagine living your whole life seeing nothing but war, living under the crudest and most spartan conditions - those are not the actions of an average man, but the actions of a man with a deep seated idealism, a man way above the masses. Quite a few Western leaders could take an example from him, a black man, I am sorry to say. Would we fight for our nations today like he did for his people?Somehow the whole UNITA saga has the feel of a great tragedy play in the manner of Shakespeare. While he and his men were fighting for over 40 years basically for nothing at the end except for a heroic struggle which rather has the feel of the way of the Teutons than that of a common black man, those that betrayed him were living in splendor and luxury, and still are living in splendor and luxury, while managing the West, our white West, into the ground.

Still, the Cuban general staff in Angola is gambling for the tenth time since 1976 that UNITA can be dealt a crippling blow. swtor credits swtor credits

I very much doubt if Unita could have survived without South Africa. That civil war was going bad for Unita already in 1975, when South Africa was withdrawing from Luanda (and Angola). That was with the Mpla following them, thus also pushing back Unita. By 1987, the Mpla were already closing in on Jamba, which was right in the southeast of Angola. That was during the famous Cuito Cuanavale battle.
Unita also never got much help from the USA - only a little more than the Stinger SAM missiles. After the South African withdrawal in 1989, the civil war probably continued to go from bad to worse for Unita - due to little outside aid. Plus, Unita was also shunned by the outside world then.
That civil war ended in 2002, when Savimbi was gunned down. I doubt if Unita could have held out much longer. Perhaps a Unita soldier shot him - in order for the war to end. A former Unita soldier told me that he doubts it (and was Mpla).

Published in 1986 in "Combat & Survival" magazine, this was Jim Hooper's account of his first two weeks with Koevoet in 1986. It also appeared in the French magazine "RAIDS" and "Soldier of Fortune."