The remaining Cuban tactical groups are halted by U.S. air strikes just short of Pretoria; conceding defeat, Vega begins withdrawing his troops from the country. During the retreat, he and most of his general staff are killed by a disgruntled MK cadre. Because Vega sold them on an ultimate communist victory in South Africa, a humiliated Soviet leadership vows never to be involved in the continent again. Apartheid is formally abolished in the months after the fall of Vorster's government and a conglomerate of various political parties are brought to the table for establishing a multiracial federal republic with Johannesburg as its new capital. Vorster himself is later meted life imprisonment for his crimes.