Black Revolution

The Black Revolution was a civil and military conflict in the mid-1990s. The conflict resulted in the collapse of white-dominated South Africa and the emergence of Azania as a self-governing state dominated by a black African majority.

The conflict was instigated by the effects of Apartheid on relations between the ruling white colonial minority and the black African majority population. Increasingly severe repressions resulted in an escalation of public backlash into armed insurgencies and secession movements, supported by neighbouring Zululand and Angola. International allies became involved through the US-sponsored Operation Dawning Freedom intervention and through covert Soviet support for socialist insurgent groups.

The armed phase of the Revolution is considered to have been ended by the Kaapstad Agreement, in which a rump Apartheid government agreed in writing to relinquish all instruments of state to a transitional government led by members of the Western-backed Azanian People's Congress and their armed wing, the Azanian Resistance Army. The establishment of black government left several border disputes unresolved, including the ultimate status of Namibia, a contributing cause to the later Angola War. Border disputes with Botswana and Bopediland also remain unresolved, while remnants of Afrikaner Nazi groups and socialist militias continued to operate in remote areas of the newly-established Azania well after the transition took place.