ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book highlights the importance of Southern African regional geopolitics; it is not a comprehensive study on how the subcontinent as a whole reacted to the Congo Crisis. It shows how Congolese leaders like Patrice Lumumba and Cyrille Adoula supported the decolonisation of Southern Africa and forged relations with Southern African nationalist organisations like the Pan Africanist Congress and the South West African People’s Organisation. The book demonstrates that the Congo Crisis was transformed into a symbolic event that shaped the perceptions and discourse of South Africa’s citizens and political organisations. Most of Africa followed suit throughout the decade and decolonised – except for the Southern African region. The role of African actors in the continent’s Cold War battlegrounds has been neglected in the historiography, even if – as Elizabeth Schmidt noted – ‘the most consequential external intervention was intracontinental’.
