Cassinga continued to thrive until Angola's independence from Portugal in 1975. Abandoned by its European supervisors, the mine and the settlement quickly fell into neglect during the ensuing Angolan Civil War. It is located about halfway from Huambo to the South-West African border where the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), the military wing of the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO), launched guerrilla attacks. After using the ghost town as a stopover point for a few weeks, a PLAN squad led by Dimo Hamaambo occupied the place. Not long after the establishment of the PLAN camp at Cassinga, it began to function also as a transit camp for Namibian exiles. The Angolan government allocated the abandoned village to SWAPO in 1976 to cope with the influx of thousands of refugees from South-West Africa, estimated in May 1978 to total 3,000 to 4,000 people.