Angola’s civil war may have ended, but the behaviour and attitudes of its people are still dominated by violence, with women often on the receiving end.
This is the disturbing picture that emerged from a new study by the country’s Council of Christian Churches, unveiled this week at a conference on national reconciliation.
”Peace on its own is not enough, either in words or in reality,” Reverend Luis Nguimbi told the conference, which opened in the capital Luanda on Monday.
”We need to start by putting the Angolan people back together before we can make progress on the physical reconstruction of the country.”
The country’s 27-year civil war pitted ordinary Angolans against each other in a relentless conflict between government forces and rebel movement Unita, led by Jonas Savimbi — whose death in action precipitated the end of the war last April.
Nguimbi said his study had found widespread
”indifference to other people’s suffering, be they neighbours, parents or colleagues”.
Women often take the brunt of the violence inflicted by a male population which appears not to care about their partners or offspring, he said, citing the growing numbers of abandoned children on the streets of the country’s larger towns.
The reverend called for action to curb ”violence against women by Angolan men” who often father children by a series of women, abandoning each partner in turn.
”These fathers are moral reprobates who need to be reintegrated into society,” Nguimbi added. ”We need to reestablish some sense of morality — otherwise we will never be able to turn reconstruction into a reality.”
An estimated 100 000 abandoned or orphaned children are the by-product of Angola’s civil war. Experts say the number is now growing despite the efforts of churches and non-governmental organisations to set up re-education programmes and children’s shelters.
Another study presented to the conference warned there was no agreement within society on the direction reconstruction should take, after a war that deprived the country of its own infrastructure for more than a generation, cementing its near-total
dependence on foreign aid.
”The truth is, we don’t even know what we want to reconstruct, or what reconstruction actually means,” said researcher Dr Ntoni Nzinga. ”And we need to know that before we can reach any kind of consensus.” – Sapa-AFP