persists’
Mercedes Sayagues
Hang around the tarmac at Luanda’s airport awhile and you’ll get a crash course in the politics and economy of Angola.
The relief plane has to wait. Aid is not a priority. Military planes are. Every four minutes one roars by. Unmarked Iliyushin and Antonov 12s and 26s; Air Azerbaijan and dozens of Alada, whatever that is, with yellow, red and blue stripes; battered blue-and-white Russian M1 helicopters; camouflage-painted Swiss-made P-9 jet fighters, in non-stop take-off.
They are ferrying weapons and supplies to the troops who have been fighting a four- pronged offensive against Unita’s headquarters of Bailondo in the central highlands since September 12. They’d better hurry: the rains are starting.
A sleek, red-and-white corporate Gulf Stream jet taxies close to the main building. Two American-looking businessmen in shorts step out. Two Angolan officials escort them to the VIP entrance. Big business is doing fine.
Two military cargo planes land. Soldiers in fatigues disembark, leading goats tied together. Big, fat, healthy goats on the tarmac at Luanda’s airport. Then it is chicken time. One soldier has a dozen hanging around his neck. His comrades carry large baskets brimming with chickens. Stealing from Angolan peasants goes on nicely, thank you.
Two hours later, tower control says we can take off for Malange.
Malange is an eerie carcass of a town. Under the Portuguese, it thrived on rice and maize. After independence, it was mostly a conduit for diamonds from the Lunda provinces.
So far this year, Malange has been shelled almost daily by Unita. Its residents fled to Luanda, 350km to the west. The city is dead, its shops boarded up, its pastel-coloured colonial villas and drab apartment blocks empty.
The middle class have gone, but Malange has filled up with about 150 000 starving peasants. Until a month ago, they camped out in abandoned warehouses and schools. They shat everywhere.
Last month, many were moved to a site 20km along the road to Luanda. It looks like a medieval settlement, a mass of low straw-and-grass shelters teeming with 10 000 families on a treeless plain. There are no cars – just the odd tank, truck or aid agency 4×4 clattering down the potholed streets. At night, a dozen artillery-mounted vehicles silently cross the deserted town. You can hear shelling in the hills. The safe perimeter is 20km at most.
Malange and Huambo have an uncanny Blade Runner feel to them – cast-off people living among urban ruins, industrial detritus and forgotten technology. Inside pock-marked factory shells, ragged peasants cook a bit of mealie meal on twig fires. They have a shell-shocked, hungry, hopeless look.
After visiting a centre for severely malnourished children with my United Nations minder, Maria, we went for lunch. Over a plateful of golden chips she lamented her lack of will-power in following a diet. Oh, how she wanted liposuction to get rid of the rolls of fat on her hips and thighs. On and on she went, oblivious of the thin famished children we had just seen. She reminded me of President Jos Eduardo dos Santos, toasting with French champagne while scores die – as they died when no aid reached Malange in June and August because of shelling.
Today, a precarious lifeline keeps starvation at bay.
In August, the World Food Programme base manager complained in an interview with Voice of America stringer Isaias Soares that police and soldiers stole food aid from people. The reporter was briefly detained by army commandos and now faces criminal charges.
Soares (30), a thin, reserved man, says he doesn’t dare to walk alone or at night on the streets. His sources avoid him. His career is shot.
Behind the heavy-handed response is the lord of Malange, governor Flavio Fernandes. He runs Malange as a feudal fief, committing gross abuses. “Authoritarianism, corruption, theft, maltreatment of civil servants, violations of human rights,” ticks off an aid worker who does not want to be identified for fear of jeopardising his NGO.
During the siege of Malange in 1993/94, Fernandes controlled the lucrative salt market. Upset that the World Food Programme flew in free salt, Fernandes threatened its base manager with deportation if salt kept coming. She resisted but, after receiving death threats, had to be pulled out of Malange
Angola Unravels, a recent book by Human Rights Watch, describes how Fernandes sold fuel to Unita. A number of truck drivers told a Human Rights Watch researcher that, on the governor’s orders, fuel trucks were driven past Malange to Quela, where their contents were siphoned off by Unita. This went on for many months.
Diplomats in Luanda told Human Rights Watch they had raised the issue with the government, which did nothing. Only when the latest siege of Malange began in late 1998 was the police sub-chief arrested for facilitating the sale.
This is one reason why the parastatal Sonangol has only one plane to supply fuel to provincial capitals. The government reckons that, if the depots are full, some might find its way to Unita. When the plane goes for maintenance to South Africa, fuel supply stops. Aid agencies must airlift their own.
A pro-MPLA (government)weekly in Luanda, Angolense, named Fernandes the most corrupt among all governors. In one scheme, Fernandes was paid by the treasury for 10 000 civil defence militias. Under investigation, he could only produce a few hundred. Reports of his dealings in diamonds and fuel reached the presidential palace of Futungo, where they were quashed.
Only two shops are open in Malange. One is a pharmacy, which reportedly belongs to a top official. Another is a bar where army officers, NGO staff and visiting journalists consume cold beer and French fries with sizzling jindungo, Angola’s spicy condiment.
By the railway tracks, a young woman sits dejectedly behind her shop, a rusty ironing board, neatly covered with an old flower print sheet. She sells four handfuls of broken maize gathered from food aid spilt from trucks.
In 40 soup kitchens scattered among the town, crowds of gloomy, war-weary, thin Angolans wait patiently for their daily food handout.
Says the Bishop of Malange, Luis Perez de Onraita: “The poor don’t matter. The authorities and the institutions don’t care about them. This is why their misery persists.”