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The South African Border War (also known as the Namibian War of Independence) was an asymmetric conflict fought from 26 August 1966 to 21 March 1990 across Namibia, Angola, and Zambia, primarily between the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), the armed wing of SWAPO. After years of unsuccessful UN petitions, PLAN was formed in 1962 with Soviet and African support, and their guerrilla campaign escalated as the SADF launched massive conventional raids into Angola and Zambia, deploying elite counter-insurgency units like Koevoet. The war became deeply entangled with the Angolan Civil War, as South Africa armed UNITA while the Soviet Union backed the FAPLA with advisers and billions in military aid, and Cuba sent thousands of troops—culminating in the pivotal Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. The conflict was effectively ended by the US-mediated Tripartite Accord, which secured the withdrawal of Cuban and South African forces and led to Namibia's formal independence as the Republic of Namibia on 21 March 1990. Beyond the battlefield, the apartheid government framed the war as a stand against Soviet expansionism to stoke domestic anti-communist sentiment, leaving a lasting cultural imprint through a unique genre of Afrikaans literature known as grensliteratuur ("border literature").