In Africa , during the 1968 – 1980 period , Angola , Benin , and the Republic of Congo , Ethiopia , Mozambique , Somalia and Zimbabwe became Marxist – Leninist states governed by their respective native peoples ; Marxist – Leninist guerrillas fought the Portuguese Colonial War in three countries , Angola , Guinea-Bissau , and Mozambique ; overthrew of the monarchy of Haile Selassie and established the Derg government ( 1974 – 1987 ) of the Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces , Police and Territorial Army in Ethiopia ; Robert Mugabe led the successful civil war to overthrow white-minority rule in Rhodesia ( 1965 – 1979 ) and established Zimbabwe . In South Africa , the anti-communist , white-minority government — based upon the official racist policy of apartheid — caused much geopolitical tension between the US and the USSR . In 1976 , anti-communism became morally untenable for the West when the South African government killed 176 people ( students and adults ) in suppressing the Soweto uprising ( June 1976 ) , which protested Afrikaner cultural imperialism , the imposition of Afrikaans ( a European Germanic language ) as the language for teaching school and as the language that black South Africans must speak to white people ; and the police assassination of Steven Biko ( September 1977 ) , a leader of the internal resistance to apartheid in South Africa
Soweto uprising
Soweto uprising
Marxism–Leninism