Ah. I had missed these posts of yours, @gavvet. The Cold War may have been cold in Moscow and Washington but it sure as hell wasn't cold in Africa, that's for damn sure!

It's fascinating to read these articles and then look at the present day state of these places and realize that the past isn't really past, it's caught in an eternal moebius loop with the present. For instance, we all know about how communism and the black liberation struggles made strange bedfellows since their weirdly mutual enemy was (white) imperialist colonialist (capitalism) hence the presence of the Cubans who were of course mostly a Soviet catspaw at the time. What a lot of people don't know about the period is just how big a presence the North Koreans had at the time and how helpful they were to countries like Namibia (SWAPO guerillas received training in NK for example) in the struggle. Apparently Nujoma established a friendship with the Kim family and to this day, North Korea is providing construction assistance there. Quite a few other African countries can make similar claims.