Cassinga

Province

Cassinga is a former town in the province of Huíla in the south of Angola.

History

Cassinga emerged as a dwelling place for the employees of an iron ore mine. It was established by the Portuguese colonial rulers with the help of the German company Krupp. For shipment of ore a terminal was built in 1966 /67, Saco Bay twelve kilometers north of Moçâmedes, in which the of the Compania Mineira do Lobito (CML ) degraded material was transported. Construction of the mine and 300 kilometers of rail connection got Krupp. The harbor was built by a Portuguese- Danish company ( SETH / Hojgaard & Schultz ). The ore terminal was built within a year and the first 250,000 -ton freighter was already released in 1967. After Angola's independence from Portugal in 1975, the mining equipment and the city Cassinga with the start of the Angolan Civil War ( 1975-2002 ) were abandoned, partly because of a decline in world market prices.

It was in the 2000s Japanese interest in reopening the mine and the creation of a rail link to Walvis Bay on Oshikango on Namibia's northern border. About a concretization of these intentions is not known.

On 4 May 1978, in the village of the Cassinga massacre, a South African airborne attack on a training and refugee camps of SWAPO, that will be remembered every year in Namibia on Cassinga day occurred.