Bram Posthumus takes a look at what lies at the heart of Angola’s misery
A snapshot, taken in Kuito two months ago on Angola’s 23rd birthday. The crowd in front of the bullet-riddled government buildings at the Praa de Vergonha (Shame Square) listens impassively to the music and speeches and then walks away.
There’s not much else to do on Independence Day in Kuito. In the afternoon, the roofless sports hall is filled with children who possess a great deal less revolutionary zeal than the slogans they are rehearsing with a local MPLA cheerleader. “MPLA for peace and reconciliation!” is the text of one.
If the buildings on Shame Square have since succumbed to Unita shelling, only Kuito’s long-suffering inhabitants know. Since early December no one can get in or out of the town.
A second snapshot. In front of a bombed-out building in the large city of Huambo, a Unita flag is fluttering. Workmen are rebuilding the nearby office. Has Unita returned to the city it terrorised in 1993 and 1994? No, this is Unita Renovada (Unita-R), the new party that says it has severed all ties with the old rebel movement and its leader, Jonas Savimbi.
In Huambo, passers-by shrug their shoulders. They don’t want to comment. Whether the Unita-R office still stands is uncertain; perhaps the people of Huambo have decided that they are, after all, not too keen on having a “new” Unita around, flying the same flag as the “old” Unita which is shelling their city once again.
On December 4 1998, full-scale war returned to the area that matters most in the Angolan military landscape: the Planalto, of which Huambo and Kuito are the principal cities.
An aid worker described it thus: “It was like a swarm of locusts had descended on the place.” Local people are generally pleased with the protection the presence of government soldiers offers, but there is a price to pay – an army has to eat.
There is an alternative available to the locals: being attacked by Unita.
Kalenga is a peaceful town near Huambo, set in the hills of the Planalto. It was singled out as a target in the first week of November. The administrador escaped with his life.
“They came in the dead of night,” he recalled. “Everyone was asleep. They killed six soldiers and then they tried to get me … There were about 100 of them. They have taken cattle, clothes and food. Even a 16-year-old girl. It is a sad situation for us all.”
He was in no doubt as to who was responsible. “Savimbi sends them here to destabilise our region.”
While the war rumblings in the field were getting louder, the political scene in the capital, Luanda, witnessed something of an earthquake. Until early September, the picture was pretty clear-cut. The political scene was dominated by the ruling MPLA and Unita.
But the spring ushered in a period of intense manoeuvring. On August 31, Unita was expelled from the Government of National Unity and Reconciliation. A few days later, Unita-R appeared out of the blue. It declared its allegiance to the government and denounced Savimbi as the main obstacle in the way of the peace process.
All this suggested that the MPLA element in the government was moving to isolate Savimbi politically. But the moves also indicated a deliberate preparation for war, both politically and militarily.
Unita had lied about its demobilisation, had frustrated the implementation of the Lusaka Protocol – enough, it was felt, was enough.
The moderating influence of President Jos Eduardo dos Santos gave way to more radical elements among top decision-makers who plot Angola’s course from the presidential palace.
Then there was the army. Its chief of staff, General Joao de Matos, a mestizo (“coloured”: colour politics matter in Angola) and a non-partisan professional soldier whose fate depends on army performance, had been a very frustrated man since 1994.
At that time, the military felt it was capable of finishing off Unita on the battlefield. The signing of the Lusaka Protocol thwarted all that.
As the implementation of the protocol stuttered on, Unita’s military actions became a matter for law-enforcement officers. But by mid-1998, the police could no longer deal with the spate of rebel hit-and-run attacks.
The army was brought back in. The hardware was already in place: after the lifting of the international arms embargo, the government had gone on an arms shopping spree.
On September 29, the government banned all flights from its territory to Unita zones. For United Nations personnel, working there became impossible and by mid-October it was clear the UN was moving its peace monitors out of Unita territory.
A week later, it was clear how ill- conceived the war plans had been. Unita hit back hard and has been declared “stronger than ever before”.
Unita is as divided on the situation. Take, for instance the story of Cazombo, in the Moxico Province near the Zambian border.
There, a peace zone was declared in July. Even the Unita administrador declared himself a man of peace. He had gauged the mood of the people correctly: no more fighting. It is doubtful whether the Unita leadership ever took notice of this signal and if they did, they chose to ignore it.
Government planes dropped bombs near the town in the first week of November. If the intention was to scare people away, it certainly achieved its objective. People left for Zambia.
One month later, Unita looted what was left. Now it is a ghost town.
The political game being played in Luanda is hard to understand. The real actors are hidden and what the public gets to see is this dizzy array of confusing scenes. It has not helped reduce the high levels of mistrust and paranoia which already exist.
For instance, this was what the Kalenga administrador had to say about Unita-R, which was opening an office in the town: “I don’t trust this thing. It’s a trap. They want to co-operate in Unita- R but in fact they are doing Savimbi’s murderous work.”
Unita-R could be a real and viable alternative. It distracted attention from the very serious military momentum building up on both sides, a development that Unita-R was in no position to influence, since it did not – and still does not – have a military constituency.
But there is an even more fundamental point to be made, so obvious perhaps that it is often overlooked. The Luanda show attracts a very limited audience and does not solve any of the problems, which are in essence not political, but economic.
It’s not war – it’s poverty and what causes it that lies at the heart of Angola’s misery. Fernando Pacheko is the director of a large local development NGO. “People are all citizens of this country – in theory,” he observes. “There are large sections of this society which are not even neglected or exploited – they are not noticed! Outside the city centre of Luanda exists a forgotten city …”
The same is true of other towns. A local aid worker in Huambo remembers the time when the city had to be defended against Unita attacks, back in 1992. Elaborate works were put in place by the MPLA – but there were entire neighbourhoods that remained outside the protective barrier.
The inhabitants on the outside concluded there were those who merited official protection and those who did not. When Unita entered Huambo, it exacted bloody revenge on those who had excluded it.
The cruelty with which Unita treated Huambo’s citizens once it entered the town has scarred people there forever. “They have no respect for human life,” is a mild comment people venture – if they are at all willing to talk about the 1993/94 reign of terror.
UN observers know of gross human rights abuses last year in the provinces of Uige and Zaire, at the hands of the army and police. There were murders, people disappeared. Perhaps this is yet another sign of the old MPLA paranoia about the BaKongo, who inhabit these provinces and have vague yearnings for the long-expired empire of Kongo.
Similarly, Human Rights Watch has documented human rights abuses in the territories that were returned to the government when the Lusaka Protocol was, at least partially, still a going concern.
Unita has turned its zones into prisons, exacting food taxes on its farmers and hammering people into discipline.
What is next? Most likely the formal announcement of the death of the Lusaka Protocol. There is no longer a role for the UN, which has allowed itself to be outmanoeuvred by the hawks in Luanda.
There is something to be said for the argument that the long-term mediation process has actually prolonged the war. It has certainly created enough time for both Unita and the MPLA to prepare for war.
The recent downing of two of its aeroplanes and the unwillingness on the part of both combatants to help in search and rescue operations has made it clear that the UN has overstayed its welcome in Angola.
In the absence of the UN, regional bodies like the Southern African Development Community (SADC) might finally get involved. Again, this is unlikely. The SADC Organ on Defence and Security that would be responsible for restoring a semblance of normality is the plaything of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is using it to great personal effect in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The SADC will probably limit itself to the release of a number of turgid statements. So the war will once again run its destructive course.
There is money for it: Unita can still smuggle its diamonds and the MPLA can still sell its oil and its exploitation rights. And there is money in it: the group of high-level career racketeers, speculators and mercenaries on both sides continue to do well out of the conflict and remain unaffected by the catastrophic state of what might be termed – with a little fantasy – the national economy.
Angola has a US$7-billion foreign debt, oil and diamond prices are at their lowest for a very long time, large swathes of the countryside can again not be used for agriculture. But those are other people’s problems.
A final snapshot. A group of young people gather in the backyard of a villa in the part of Huambo where Savimbi’s bungalow used to stand. They call themselves “The Voice of Africa” and bring theatre to the people.
They have little in the way of props; these are not professional actors and the scenes tend to get a bit crowded and crass. But they have a message: respect for human rights.
People in the barrios will recognize the depictions of child abuse, corrupt doctors and male chauvinist behaviour, facts of life in a country whose leadership has so little regard for the rights of the bulk of its people.
Naive perhaps, but if, as many Angolans and observers believe, none of the existing parties and their factions in either Luanda or Bailundo are parties of the future, then you have to start somewhere to create an alternative.