 Mobutu 's support for the FNLA policy backfired when the MPLA won in Angola . The MPLA , then , acting ostensibly at least as the Front pour la Libération Nationale du Congo ( Front for the National Liberation of the Congo ) , occupied Zaire 's Katanga Province , then known as Shaba , in March 1977 , facing little resistance from the FAZ . This invasion is sometimes known as Shaba I. Mobutu had to request assistance , which was provided by Morocco in the form of regular troops who routed the MPLA and their Cuban advisors out of Katanga . The humiliation of this episode led to civil unrest in Zaire in early 1978 , which the FAZ had to put down . 
