Angola is literally a country on the move.
“Refugees are moving, the displaced are moving and so are ex-combatants,” said Kallu Kalumiya of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
“Everybody seems to be on the move in that country,” Kalumiya, regional coordinator for the Angolan repatriation programme, told a news conference in Johannesburg this week.
In June this year, the UNHCR began one of its biggest global repatriation exercises to bring home nearly half a million Angolans scattered throughout neighbouring countries.
To date 67 000 refugees have returned home from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia and Namibia.
The UNHCR says it expects to boost the pace of the repatriation operation over 2004 and help about 160 000 Angolans to go back.
The returnees have been assisted with food, blankets, plastic sheeting and other items as well as transport to areas declared open for return.
The Angolan voluntary repatriation operation recently received a major boost with a contribution of an addition $1,8-million from the government of Japan for the UNHCR’s reintegration projects. So far this year $23-million (out of the requested $28-million) have been pledged from donors including the United States, Japan, Germany, the European Commission and Canada.
The UNHCR is seeking to raise an additional $3-million.
Angola’s repatriation and reintegration programme is, however, beset with challenges and constraints. Foremost is ensuring that refugees “return in safety and dignity”, and this is hampered by the presence of landmines.
Angola has one of the highest number of landmines in the world — an estimated 11-million, or roughly the same number as the population. As a result, the repatriation process is taking place in a phased approach, according to the UN refugee agency.
The refugees are returning to a country where nearly three decades of civil war between the governing MPLA and rebel forces have left Angola in a state of near destruction. Despite its vast wealth — oil and diamond — Angola has suffered massive infrastructural damage: 85% of basic infrastructure was destroyed during the war. Electricity and plumbing need to be restored, roads, bridges, airports all need to be rebuilt.
The end of the Angolan war did not come on a silver plate. Over the years there have been many international attempts at brokering peace — the accords of Bicese, Lusaka and Lisbon. But in April last year — two months after the death of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi — the peace protocol was signed in Angola between the former warring parties.
“Since then there have been no violations of the ceasefire agreement, with the exception of low-level conflict in Cabinda province,” Kalumiya said.
Separatists in the oil-rich Cabinda enclave, with a population of 200 000 people, on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, have been battling government troops since independence from Portugal in 1975.
The enclave, whose oil resources account for nearly two-thirds of Angola’s oil production, has lost about 30 000 people to war since 1975.
The people of Cabinda, an autonomous enclave handed to the Angolan government by Portugal on independence in 1975, are demanding a separate state.
It is unlikely that the international community will back Cabinda’s bid for independence, given Washington’s interests in its vast oil resources. Angola, along with the enclave, produces nearly one million barrels of oil per day, 70% of which is exported to the US. Sub-Saharan Africa’s second largest oil producer after Nigeria, Angola is the ninth-largest oil exporter to the US.
The US, which is facing political uncertainty in the oil-rich Middle East, imports about 16% of its oil requirements from sub-Saharan Africa. This figure is expected to rise to 25% in 2015, according to a report by the US national security committee.
Kalumiya said: “The peace process in Angola is probably the most robust in Africa since the conclusion of the peace accord in that country last year.”
More than 100 000 former Unita combatants have been encamped, disarmed and demobilised and a further 5 000 have been absorbed into the Angolan army.
Yet the situation in Angola remains dire. Almost half of Angola’s children are out of school, 45% suffer chronic malnutrition and a quarter of children die before their fifth birthday, according to the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef).
Nevertheless, expectations are high among the Angolan people, says Unicef. Sixty percent of the population are children, keen for change and a better future.
For peace to prevail, the government and private business must provide jobs. Sixty percent of Angolans live in poverty. Oil, widely regarded as a solution to Angola’s poverty, represents about 90% of the $3-billion to $5-billion of the country’s annual Budget.
An International Monetary Fund internal report last year claimed that about $1-billion vanished from Angolan government coffers in 2001. But Angola has denied the claims.
President Eduardo dos Santos (61) told visiting Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva this month that oil had resolved many of Angola’s woes. He did not elaborate.
Brazil plans to invest about $100-million to get Angola’s sugar cane industry up and running again, Brazil’s Trade and Development Minister, Luis Fernando, said.
Human rights remains an issue particularly in the countryside, as Maria Makendo (not her real name) has found out.
Makendo refused to go out with a police officer, and ended up in a hospital in Lunda, the capital of Angola, after being savagely beaten up by her assailant.
“We airlifted her to Lunda to receive medical treatment,” Kalumiya recalled. “We then alerted the authorities about the incident.”
The policeman was detained but died in detention, apparently due to torture in the hands of his colleagues.
“We didn’t achieve anything,” Kalumiya said, referring to the death of the policeman. “But it sent a strong message to others.” — IPS