These 9 volumes are the most comprehensive historical record of the liberation struggles in southern Africa. Comprising 2.4 million words in 5,394 pages, they record interviews with liberation fighters and supporters in the Frontline States and the extraordinary sacrifices they made so that Africa could, at last, be free. With the fall of the South African apartheid regime, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) identified the need to record the experiences of the liberation struggles in Southern Africa, from 1960, until that final liberation in 1994.
To that end, SADC launched the Hashim Mbita Project – named after the last Executive Secretary of the OAU Liberation Committee. The research covered liberation movements in the countries which engaged in liberation wars, the Frontline States and Extension countries; and the Research Project team comprised members from the SADC mainland states of Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland.
The support received from other regions is documented: Anglophone West Africa, Francophone Africa, North Africa, East Asia, Canada and the United States, Cuba and the Caribbean, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Nordic Countries, Western Europe, the Soviet Union, Non-Aligned Movement: India, Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka; Organisation of African Unity and United Nations.