On 4 May 1978, South Africa launched Operation Reindeer as part of an effort to destabilise the regional situation and strike SWAPO’s infrastructure. The operation combined air and ground attacks against SWAPO bases in Angola. Its main target was the camp at Cassinga, approximately 250 kilometres north of the Namibian border, where refugees and combatants were concentrated.

The attack on Cassinga caused more than six hundred deaths and a similar number of wounded. More than 1,200 people died across the operation. Survivors from the Chetequera and Vietnam camps near Cassinga were later imprisoned at Hardap, south of Windhoek, and were released only in 1984.

Cassinga became central to the memorialisation of SWAPO’s struggle, although the character of the site remained contested. The account records the finding of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Cassinga was both a military base and a refugee camp, housing a considerable number of combatants, including senior officers, as well as civilians. Testimony by Linda Nambandi recalled indiscriminate danger, bombing from above, and soldiers firing at people fleeing the camp.