The war in Angola is over, and the rebuilding has supposedly begun. But the people of this vast country are a long way from normal life, writes Mercedes Sayagues
Such an odd sight: a woman pushing a brand- new, lavender-coloured, padded pushchair, more at home in a Johannesburg shopping mall than in a dusty quartering area for Unita soldiers in Muxinga, a remote part of Lunda North province, tucked in Angolas north-eastern corner.
But then, this is Unitas diamond country, and anything is possible. The reddish soil is fertile and water plentiful. So are alluvial diamonds. Few bother with crops. People are frantically into garimpo (illegal diamond panning).
Goods arrive by plane, from abroad, illegally. This part of Lunda North is beyond state control. Unita is not about to relinquish the diamond fields that provide an income of at least $500-million a year.
Diamonds are cheap, food is expensive. One egg costs $15, the same as a beer. A 10kg goat, $400. At Christmas, a head of cattle can fetch $5 000. This could explain the unexplained massive theft of thousands of cattle in Benguela province last year.
Put the cattle on a plane, bring it to the Lundas, and earn a nice profit. Car thieves in Luanda do it. Many of the privately- owned 4x4s in the government-held Lundas were stolen in the capital, repainted and flown to the diamond fields, where they fetch $100 000 easily.
Not in Unita areas. The brand-new Nissan Patrol and Pajero without licence plates fashionable among Unita officials in the bush probably come through the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire). The lavender pushchair could have come in any of the many planes landing in Luzamba, Unitas diamond capital.
During two hours hanging around Luzamba airfield, waiting for a United Nations chopper to Muxinga, four unmarked cargo planes landed. One of them, a DC-4, with an EL-Webb sign, unloaded crates of oranges, toilet paper, red-and-white plastic chairs, large cardboard boxes and fuel drums.
So much for the arms and fuel embargo slapped by the UN Security Council on Unita in September 1993. It has been violated daily. Unita holds airfields in Luzamba, Andulo and Negage and Angolan air space is uncontrolled. A UFO could land undetected.
Some goods are brought to the Lundas on foot. Along the road from Muxinga to Luzamba, peasants are trekking back to Bie province, 300km south.
They brought chickens, goats and their own labour to sell, to grow food or garimpar. Weeks or months later, they are going home, carrying polyfoam mattresses and bundles of clothes on their heads. They live in Unita- controlled northern Bie. Their access to government-held areas is blocked. So they walk for weeks to do a little business in the Lundas.
If they lived near Bailundo, Unitas headquarters in Huambo province, they could trade at the market in Alto Almas. At this border point between government and Unita areas, open 24 hours a day, diamonds and dollars are traded for soap, cooking oil, clothes and fuel. The exchange rate is lower than in Luanda.
Diamonds are cheap in Kuito these days: the market is flooded. Kuito, the government- held capital of Bie province, is the geographical crossroads for garimpeiros who make a deal with Unita to dig in its Bie domain, along the Kwanza and Kuchi rivers.
Unita gets the lions share of the catch. Garimpeiros emerge from the bush to find that food and building materials are more prized than diamonds in the central highlands. In Huambo, a square metre of glass, which costs $8 in Pretoria, goes for $100. One metre of electric cable costing 50c sells for $8. A plywood sheet, worth $20, goes for $110.
In its economy and geography, Angola remains a divided country. Under strong international pressure, Unita has relinquished some territory and abolished some checkpoints, as stipulated in the Lusaka Protocol of November 1994 that ended the civil war.
Some 30 locations have been handed over out of 140 to be returned to state administration by the end of October. Unita still controls about half of a country of 1,2-million km2. Circulation of people and goods is restricted.
It is not always Unitas fault. Two weeks ago in Lunda North, a UN relief team was denied access to the ghost village of MBuia by Alpha 5, a private security company linked to Executive Outcomes, contracted by the national diamond company Endiama. MBuia lies 45km south-east of the diamond town of Nzaji, crowded with 10 000 displaced people who fled fighting between Unita and the government in May and June.
MBuias 1 000-odd people are not in Nzaji. They have disappeared. Obviously they fled in a hurry, leaving fuba (the staple food) airing on straw mats, cooking pots, tools, and clothes strewn throughout the village. But where are they? Only a handful of residents have surfaced in nearby camps for displaced people.
Elsewhere, weapons are not obvious at Unitas checkpoints but quick to appear. Tension flares easily among the soldiers manning the timber-pole barriers. In early September, a CNN crew travelling with UN staff was briefly stopped at a Unita checkpoint, accused of filming without permission.
In spite of tight controls, some manage to escape from Unita. Highly publicised was former Unita official Colonel Altino Kassanji, who fled in June, claiming Unita was preparing for war.
Two weeks ago, Eugenio Ngolo Manuvakola and 15 family members escaped overland from Bailundo to Huambo. Manuvakola, who signed the Lusaka Protocol on behalf of Unita, has been under house arrest since Unitas eighth congress expelled him in February 1995. So was his wife, Bela Malaquias, formerly a zealous presenter of Unitas viewpoints on its Vorgan radio station.
At a press conference in Luanda, Manuvakola said: We were like chickens in the coop, never knowing if tomorrow we would land in the pot or what. He was manacled and in leg irons for one week, then endured months of house arrest with his family in Andulo and Bailundo. I was whipped on my bum, he said.
Less publicised were a major who turned himself in in Kuito in the first week of September and a major who fled with 40 family members in northern Huila. Unnoticed except by relief agencies are some 600 peasants who fled, through mined fields, to Cunhinga, 40km from Kuito. They complained of increased, unbearable food taxes being demanded by Unita.
Kuito is one of the most remarkable sights in Angola. This city of 250 000 people, untouched by war before 1992, suffered a savage nine-month siege by Unita in 1993. At least 30 000 people died of bombing and starvation. Half of the city was razed by government MIGs to flush out Unita troops. The other half was heavily hit by Unitas long-range artillery. Not one house was undamaged.
At the end of 1994, the British demining organisation Halo Trust described Kuito as the worlds most dangerous city, with four daily explosions from landmines and unexploded ordnance.
Today, Kuito is alive. Freshly asphalted, its roads are free of bomb craters. Thanks to the Irish non-governmental organisation (NGO) Concern, schools are repaired and working. The Medecins sans Frontieres-run hospital is the best outside Luandas private clinics. The number of cars on the streets grows steadily. Shops, luncheonettes, a bank and a discotheque have opened. Even the phones are working.
The city is reasonably clean. Blue rubbish bins dot its sidewalks. Flower beds at road junctions are neatly kept. While the government first repaired the governors palace, then built pastel-painted prefabricated houses for government officials, people have done all kinds of repairs to their homes.
More importantly, Kuitos spirit is alive. The market is bustling. People are out on the streets. It is safe to walk at night. A neighbourly feeling prevails, as if the horror of the siege had given residents strong ties and unbreakable strength.
What a contrast with Huambo, 150km away. The former industrial and agricultural capital of the central highlands is reduced to a ghost city, its streets full of potholes, its bombed buildings still a pile of rubble, its economic life in paralysis.
Huambo lived through a bloody 45-day siege at the beginning of 1993, when Unita took the city. Unitas occupation was a reign of terror, with hundreds imprisoned, tortured, and executed.
One man who wants to be known as Eusebio describes how his mother was shot in the head while he jumped through his kitchen window. A neighbour had accused them of supporting the MPLA. Eusebio hid for months in a convent, smuggled his daughter to Portugal, and returned to Huambo only to build a tomb.
When the government army retook Huambo in mid-1994, Unita looted what they could before fleeing. In turn, government troops went on an orgy of looting and revenge.
Huambos residents have been through several stages of terror. Their spirit is broken, the fabric of urban life torn apart, links of solidarity destroyed. Few of those who fled have returned. The economic agents, the teachers, researchers and students at the renowned faculties of veterinary and agronomy have stayed away.
The faculties, looted several times, are a sad sight. With tears in their eyes, agricultural technicians show the damage. They tell of vaccine vials and test tubes sold in the market to measure cooking oil; book pages to roll tobacco.
Government investment in Huambo is almost nil some say it is a way of punishing the city for being Unitas capital in 1993 and 1994. The battalion of Uruguayan peacekeepers stationed in Huambo injected some measure of safety, amusement and money into the ghost city. Now they have left, Huambo has reverted to its stupor.
Meanwhile, in Luanda, President Eduardo dos Santos feted his 55th birthday with a week of charity and social events.
At a reception given by his philanthropic and cultural foundation, Fundacao Eduardo dos Santos (Fesa), the big shots of the Angolan economy lined up to shake hands and be thanked for their contribution to Fesa. In the background, just a token donation, as one executive said, of one car and three computers.
The 30 members of Fesas general assembly executives from oil and construction companies, banks, airlines, car dealers and computer firms sipped champagne with the president and his wife, dazzling in a flowing pink gown. The location: a grand colonial mansion, lavishly restored, in Luandas choice spot, the Miramar, overlooking the bay, alongside the American embassy and Jonas Savimbis former house.
Thanks to the combination of free-market policies and the absence of war, Luanda has changed drastically. It is still Africas filthiest city. But, where six years ago there was a hardly a shop, now Luanda is awash in boutiques, restaurants and discos. The glamorous and the wretched, the officials in Saville Row suits and the ragged amputees, obscene wealth and shocking squalor live side by side.
Hooked on easy money (oil, diamonds and the UN), Luanda has become one of the worlds most expensive cities. A small two-room apartment rents for $2 500. A local phone call is charged at $1. A taxi to the airport charges $20 for a 5km drive. A normal meal will set you back $30.
The week of the presidents birthday an obscure American NGO called the Centre for Common Ground organised a concert for Luandas elite. About 25 bands performed one song each at the Karl Marx theater to a packed audience of young people. The idea was to get Angolan musicians of various political persuasions Filipe Zau, Filipe Mukenga and Bonga performing a song for peace. The cost of the concert, 10 000 tapes and CDs: $75 000.
To work, it should have been an outdoors mass concert in the culturally deprived provinces, instead of an indoor show for a bunch of spoiled kids in the capital. When a singer tried to chant: Peace Yes, War No, the audience yelled Peace No, War Yes. The singer desisted. So much for peace-building through music.
That week, the Jornal de Angola carried a full-page ad showing a development scheme in Subantando, a small town in Cabinda. Faced with a separatist movement in Cabinda, the government last year agreed to inject back into Cabinda 6% of the taxes paid by oil companies, or $72-million a year. The World Bank estimates that Angolan oil production is worth nearly $4-billion annually. At 760 000 barrels a day, Angola is the second biggest oil producer in Sub-Saharan Africa.
What Subantando got water and sanitation, school, clinic and market, houses for teachers and nurses, electrification, and a training centre should be standard across Angola, if the government had its priorities right.
And after the recent off-shore oil discoveries in Cabinda and off Soyo, Angola has become the worlds hottest oil property. United States oil sources say Angola could double its exports to the USA in one decade, to account for 14% of total US oil imports.
Little of that wealth trickles down to Angolas people. The government spends 70% of its revenue, or $1,6-billion out of $2,3-billion, on security. This means oiling the war machine.
Unita also oils its war machine, with diamonds. On September 30, it faces sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council if it does not demobilize its army fully.
Accordingly, Unita has revealed 6 000 additional troops. It also allowed demobilization to begin in the critical Lundas. On Saturday August 30, it kicked off in the quartering area of Muxinga, close to Unitas diamond capital of Luzamba.
Out of 4 400 troops originally registered, only 800 are present. The rest are, in UN jargon, temporarily absent. Of 25 names chosen at random by the UN, only six turn up. Amidst the chanting of Unita slogans (Discipline! Viva Savimbi!), five men queued to get their papers and kit.
At 45, two were, by Angolan standards, too old to be soldiers. One trembled, out of fear or malaria. Only one looked like he had proper military training and was fit. The four unfit said they were all from the Lundas and had joined Unita in 1994. Once the ceremony was over and people scattered, groups of men armed with picks and shovels headed towards the nearby river and its diamonds. It was a farce one that has been repeated at quartering areas across Angola, in 1991, and again in 1996.
On the way to the airport in Luanda, the truck ahead, blaring kizomba, the danceable Angolan music, carries a pile of garbage. From it protrudes a foot. To the side, a skull rests with human flesh on it. It could come from one of the many mass graves being unearthed across the land.
A fitting departing image for Angola. A complex, fascinating country, grappling simultaneously with three major transitions: from war to peace; from mono- to multi-partyism; from a centrally planned economy to the free market.
Such major changes have been imposed from outside. All are turbulent, lack a blueprint, and create confusao (chaos).
But then, as Angolan singer Teta Lando says:
I come from this land, even if it is in ruins, we know war is not our only fate. My land, albeit in ruins, I like it. Like a woman whose youth is fading she should be loved more.