Luanda | Friday
SOME 40 000 Angolans took to the streets of Luanda on Friday to celebrate a historic ceasefire deal signed one day earlier by the army and rebels.
The crowd, dressed in white and carrying lit torches, first gathered in a stadium before marching down the capital’s main avenues and then gathering at Heroine’s Plaza.
The march, which included students, teachers, youth, and senior government workers, was organised by the ”Spontaneous Movement,” a group close to President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
Some legislators and clerics joined the demonstration, where people chanted slogans in favour of reconciliation. ”Peace, a victory for all the Angolan people,” was one popular chant.
Similar rallies also took place in other parts of the country, according to radio reports.
The demonstrations came the day after a ceasefire was officially signed in Luanda by General Abreu Karmorteiro and General Armando Da Cruz, leaders of the military and the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita).
The deal aims to end a 27-year civil war that has killed at least 500,000 people, displaced four million others and destroyed the national economy.
Meanwhile, the United States hailed the formal signing of a ceasefire agreement between the government of Angola and Unita rebels aimed at bringing peace to the country after nearly three decades of civil war.
”We welcome the news that the Angolan government and Unita rebels have formally signed the preliminary ceasefire,” deputy State Department representative Philip Reeker said.
The truce, initialled by the two sides on March 30 was formally signed earlier on Thursday in Luanda by the military chiefs of the government and Unita, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola.
The accord provides for a ceasefire, the disarmament and demobilisation of about 50 000 Unita soldiers and the revival of a failed 1994 peace deal, the Lusaka Protocol, which foresaw the disarmament of the rebels and Unita’s participation in a power-sharing government.
According to the most conservative estimates, more than half a million people have died in the civil war, which followed a 14-year war of independence against Portugal.
The deal was forged after the deaths in combat last month of longtime Unita leader, Jonas Savimbi, and his second in command, General Antonio Dembo. – Sapa-AFP