Jonas Savimbi, UNITA are "terrorists" in Africans' eyes despite Washington's "freedom fighter" toga for him
By SHANA WILLS
Special to USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
USAfricaonline.com
and NigeriaCentral.com
As
Salih Booker, Director of Africa Action, puts it, "Savimbi's death
removes the principal obstacle to peace in that country. So long as
he was alive, it seemed virtually impossible that Angolans would ever
be able to conclude and implement a peace settlement. But his death
does not automatically ensure that peace will follow."
Following the February 22, 2002 ambush and murder of the 67-year-old veteran rebel leader by the Angolan army, obituaries in the American press have described his remarkable charisma and ferocious drive for power.
President George W. Bush's meeting with dos Santos, just four days after Savimbi's death is both illustrative of the Washington's erratic involvement in Angola and a signal that these days Washington is more interested in Angola's resources--oil and diamonds--than its ideology. But, if war is to end in this troubled country, the international community must work quickly and persistently to broker a peace deal and disarm the rebel combatants.
Savimbi first took to the bush in the early 1960s as Angolans began organizing against 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule. Billed as an anticommunist during the height of the cold war, Savimbi was actually no more than a power-hungry opportunist who changed his colors to suit the tastes of his particular financial backers. His enigmatic character confounded a great number of powerful people over the years. In 1999, for instance, one former U.S. diplomat told me in an informal conversation just how unsettling Savimbi's personality could be. This official, who had met the rebel leader over 25 times while he was in hiding, conceded each time he felt that he was in the presence of "pure evil." He explained that Savimbi was "so charming, intelligent, articulate, and dangerous" that he frequently had to spend return flights to Luanda "deprogramming African-American delegations who were charmed into thinking that Savimbi's vision for Angola was the right one."
Jonas Savimbi, a member of Angola's largest ethnic group, the Ovimbundu, was born and raised in the southern Angolan province of Moxico. A bright, charismatic, former doctorate student, Savimbi became fluent in more than six languages--including Portuguese, French, and English. His knack for learning languages boosted his credibility among the various groups with whom he negotiated. His gift in European languages facilitated his dealings with political opponents, diplomats, and foreign reporters, while he switched into Umbundo when rallying his followers among the Angolan people.
At the start of the Angolan independence struggle in 1961, Savimbi originally tried to acquire a leadership post within the MPLA, the principal national liberation group. However, the MPLA, which was backed by the Soviet Union, only offered him a rank-and-file militant position. Feeling rebuffed, Savimbi aligned with rebel commander Holden Roberto's anti-colonial group, the Union of Peoples of Angola (UPA), as it offered him a more prestigious rank as minister in its government in exile.
By 1964, Savimbi decided to resign from the UPA, claiming that Roberto (who was related to and backed by Zaire's pro-American dictator Mobutu Sese Seko) was a stooge for the "American imperialists." In 1966, Savimbi launched a third movement, the United Front for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Savimbi and other top UNITA leaders had received guerrilla warfare training in China from 1965 to 1966. And, over the next decade, China supplied the rebel movement with weapons and war material.
Since the start of the Angolan liberation struggle, Savimbi had touted himself as a nationalist fighting for independence from Portuguese colonialism. However, Savimbi showed more hostility toward the other indigenous freedom parties and forged a clandestine alliance with the Portuguese colonial government and its secret police, PIDE, according to University of Southern California professor Gerald Bender and a series of subsequently released documents.
As part of this alliance, code-named "Operation Timber," Savimbi and PIDE engaged in military actions against rival movements, and Savimbi provided the Portuguese with information regarding the activities of the opposition forces. After the Portuguese withdrew from Angola in 1974, Savimbi thwarted an agreement for multiparty, nationwide elections in November 1975, returned to the bush, and plunged the nation into another two decades-plus of war.
During the liberation struggle when Savimbi was receiving most of his aid from China, he boasted to reporters of his Maoist ideology. However, following independence, Savimbi strove to cut a better deal in the West. Declaring himself a capitalist, the charismatic rebel leader had, within a short time, joined Holden Roberto on the CIA's payroll in a civil war against the Soviet-backed MPLA.
Roberto soon fell by the wayside, but Savimbi, as Washington's favorite, received in the early 1980s over $15 million in covert military aid from the Reagan administration, and, in the late 1980s, another $15 million from the Bush Sr. administration. This thrust the U.S. into an unsavory alignment with white-ruled South Africa, which not only supplied UNITA with money, arms, and material, but also frequently deployed troops into Angola and launched air strikes on MPLA positions.
The U.S. was repeatedly warned against aligning with South Africa and backing UNITA. In a January 1986 statement, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) said, "Mr. Savimbi is a known agent of apartheid South Africa, and has been responsible for the wanton killing of civilians, the destruction of economic infrastructure of the country, and the destabilization of the legitimate Government of the People's Republic of Angola. Any American involvement in the internal affairs of Angola ... will be considered a hostile act against the OAU."
Even U.S. officials warned against such unsavory alliances. Wayne Smith, a former career Foreign Service officer, cautioned that entering into a joint U.S.-South African pact would "undermine U.S. relations with black Africa for years to come." Richard Moose, former Assistant Secretary of State, also advised against the U.S. joining with South Africa in its battles against the Angolan government. In testimony in 1986 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Moose cautioned that to join or replace the South Africans as Savimbi's primary supporter "would be more than the Russians could hope for." Moose speculated, "In fact, I sometimes wonder whether Savimbi, educated in Marxism and trained by the Maoists, is not still the Communists' secret weapon in southern Africa."
Whatever the case, Savimbi certainly showed his skill as a political chameleon. In 1988, several former UNITA members reported to the Portuguese newsweekly, Espresso, that UNITA's political elite all followed the precepts of Savimbi's Practical Guide for the Cadre, which was described as "a manual of dialectical materialism and Marxism-Leninism with a distinct trait of Stalinism and Maoism." The UNITA dissidents claimed that the Guide was taught in a room filled with Lenin and Mao Tse-Tung busts, where the anthem of the Communist International was sung every day.
These former UNITA members denounced as fraudulent Savimbi's widely publicized pro-Western ideology and defense of democracy. They pointed out that there was a huge discrepancy between what UNITA claimed abroad as its objectives (i.e., negotiations with the MPLA, reconciliation, and coalition) and what the Guide taught. The Guide, said to be written by Savimbi, was considered a secret book accessible only to the political elite of UNITA.
For decades, Savimbi's forces fought Angola's MPLA government, which was supported militarily by the Soviet Union and thousands of Cuban troops--and was recognized by every country in the world except South Africa and the United States. In order to instill terror in the population and to undermine confidence in the government, Savimbi ordered that food supplies be targeted, millions of land mines be laid in peasants' fields, and transport lines be cut.
As part of this destabilization effort, UNITA frequently attacked health clinics and schools, specifically terrorizing and killing medical workers and teachers. The UN estimated that Angola lost $30 billion in the war from 1980 to 1988, which was six times the country's 1988 GDP. According to UNICEF, approximately 330,000 children died as direct and indirect results of the fighting during that period alone. Human Rights Watch reports that because of UNITA's indiscriminate use of landmines, there were over 15,000 amputees in Angola in 1988, ranking it alongside Afghanistan and Cambodia.
In the early 1990s, as the cold war and South African apartheid both ended, Jonas Savimbi could no longer claim to be a bulwark against communism. With Russian and U.S. support suddenly withdrawn, both the MPLA and UNITA agreed to a ceasefire in 1991 and elections in 1992. However, despite the MPLA's internationally recognized electoral win, Savimbi, the perennial rebel fighter, proved incapable of adapting to the new era of pragmatic democracy. In his quest for power, Savimbi quickly scuttled the elections and ordered his forces to return to battle.
In Washington, the new Clinton administration made a grave error in not recognizing the election results, granting diplomatic recognition to the MPLA government, or explicitly calling for Savimbi to abandon violence. Although the rest of the world (except South Africa) had officially recognized the new Angolan government, the U.S. rationalized its decision to delay recognition as a means to pressure the MPLA government to offer UNITA a greater share of power. In his confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Christopher Warren practically gave UNITA the go-ahead to continue fighting when he said U.S. diplomatic recognition depended on the Angolan government demonstrating effective control of its territory.
In May 1993, acting on the advice of the State Department and the National Security Council, the Clinton administration finally announced its recognition of the government of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. This signaled the end of U.S. support for Jonas Savimbi. Yet it did not halt Savimbi's rampage.
Instead, Savimbi quickly launched an attack on the diamond-rich areas of northern Angola, established control of the region, and proceeded to wage the war almost entirely through the trade of diamonds for arms. Diamonds enabled Savimbi to sustain a military force at a relatively high level of sophistication. Although the United Nations eventually imposed a ban on the purchase of UNITA diamonds in 1998, it came too late to hold any promise for prospective peace.
When I arrived to Angola in January 1993, the country and its citizens were fully engaged in another serious bout of bloodshed and suffering. UNITA was aggressively attacking and invading five provinces considered MPLA strongholds. In December 1992, UNITA troops had invaded a school for orphans in the northern province of Bengo. The 75 students fled their school, walking the long and rough terrain to an alternate school at which I worked in Luanda's slum district of Cazenga. These kids, most of whom had seen their parents killed by Savimbi's forces, described how UNITA soldiers had robbed their school of money, food, and clothes and then taken up residence in the children's dormitory.
For a period of nearly six months, UNITA consistently launched attacks on Luanda's main water source and electrical plant. People throughout the city stood in lines and paid for whatever water that they could locate, as the water shortage caused an increase in cholera and dysentery. According to the UN, more than 100,000 people may have been killed during this period alone and another 3 million Angolans were put at risk of starvation. When the MPLA government finally regained control of Bengo province, I joined the children on their first trip back to their school. In addition to the discarded UNITA uniforms, ammunition shells, and UNITA propaganda graffitied across the kids' bedroom walls, we uncovered several landmines.
Savimbi's death offers an opportunity for the U.S. to help end
such brutalities. As Salih Booker explains, "I think the Bush
administration, being very much oriented toward the oil sector and
with many of its key officials coming from the oil industry, sees
Angola as a strategically important country in economic terms ... in
terms of energy, specifically." As Africa's second largest oil
producer and with more potential oil reserves off its coast, Angola
could conceivably entice the Bush administration to play a
constructive role, together with other countries under the auspices
of the United Nations, in brokering a permanent peace deal in this
war-torn country.
Wills has worked
with several grassroots organizations in the Angolan provinces of
Bengo, Luanda, and Benguela from 1993 through 1995, and has made
several trips back since. She is a graduate student of African
Studies at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
February 27, 2002.
Sources for this special report:
Cilliers, Jakkie and Christian Dietrich. Angola's War Economy:
The Role of Oil and Diamonds. (Pretoria: Institute for Security
Studies, 2000.)
Conchiglia, Augusta. UNITA, Myth and Reality. (London: ECASAAMA, 1989.)
Hodges, Tony. Angola From Afro-Stalinism to Petro-Diamond Capitalism. (Oxford: The International African Institute, 2001.)
Minter, William. Operation Timber: Pages from the Savimbi Dossier. (New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1988.)
Minter, William. Apartheid's Contras: An Inquiry Into the Roots of War in Angola and Mozambique. (London: Zed Books, 1994.)
Stockwell, John. In Search of Enemies. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.)
Nelson
Mandela, Tribute to the
world's political superstar and Lion of
Africa
These views were
stated during an interview CNN's anchor Bernard Shaw and
senior analyst Jeff Greenfield had with Mr. Nwangwu on
Saturday November 18, 2000 during a special edition of
'Inside Politics 2000.'
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's
burden
mounts with murder charges, trials
Why Bush should focus on dangers
facing Nigeria's return
to democracy
and Obasanjo's slipperyslide
TRIBUTE
A KING FOR
ALL TIMES:
Why Martin Luther King's
legacy
and vision are relevant into 21st century.
DIPLOMACY
Walter
Carrington:
African-American diplomat who put principles above self for
Nigeria
(USAfrica's
founder Chido Nwangwu with Ambassador Carrington at the U.S.
embassy, Nigeria)
DEMOCRACY'S
WARRIOR
Out of
Africa.
The
cock that crows in the morning belongs to one household but
his voice is the property of the neighborhood. -- Chinua
Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah. An editor carries on
his crusade against public corruption and press
censorship
in his native Nigeria and other African countries. By
John Suval.
The Economics of Elections
in Nigeria
HUMAN
RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY
How far, how deep will Nigeria's human rights
commission go?
Rtd. Gen. Babangida trip as
emissary for Nigeria's Obasanjo to Sudan raises curiosity,
questions about what next in power
play?
110 minutes
with Hakeem Olajuwon
Nigerian
stabbed
to death
in his bathroom in Houston.
Cheryl
Mills' first class defense of Clinton and her detractors'
game
It's wrong
to stereotype Nigerians as Drug
Dealers
Private initiative,
free
market forces, and more
democratization
are Keys to prosperity in Africa
Apple announces Titanium,
"killer
apps" and other
ground-breaking products for 2001. iTunes makes a record
500,000 downloads.
Steve Jobs extends digital
magic
Since 1958, Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" set a
standard of artistic excellence,
and more. By Douglas Killam
Should Africa debates begin
and end at
The
New York Times and
The
Washington Post?
No
USAfricaonline.com
has been listed
among the world's leading web sites by the international
newspaper, USAToday.Africa
suffers the scourge of the virus.
This life and pain of Kgomotso Mahlangu, a
five-month-old AIDS patient (above) in a hospital in the
Kalafong township near Pretoria, South Africa, on October
26, 1999, brings a certain, frightening reality to the
sweeping and devastating destruction of human beings who
form the core of any definition of a country's future, its
national security, actual and potential economic development
and internal markets.
22 million Africans HIV-infected, ill
with AIDS
while African leaders
ignore disaster-in-waiting
In a special report a few hours after the history-making
nomination, USAfricaonline.com
Founder and Publisher Chido Nwangwu places Powell within the
trajectory of history and into his unfolding clout and
relevance in an essay titled 'Why Colin
Powell
brings gravitas, credibility and star power to Bush
presidency.'
Powell
named Secretary State by G.W. Bush; bipartisan commendations
follow.
AFRICA
AND THE U.S. ELECTIONS
Beyond U.S.
electoral shenanigans, rewards and dynamics of a democratic
republic hold
lessons
for
African politics.
CONTINENTAL
AGENDA
Bush's position on
Africa
is "ill-advised."
The position
stated by Republican presidential aspirant and Governor of
Texas, George Bush where he
said that "Africa will not be an area of priority" in his
presidency has been questioned by
USAfricaonline.com Publisher Chido
Nwangwu. He added that Bush's "pre-election position was
neither validated by the economic exchanges nor
geo-strategic interests of our two continents."
Nwangwu,
adviser to the Mayor of Houston (the 4th largest city in the
U.S., and immigrant home to thousands of Africans) argued
further that "the issues of the heritage interests of 35
million African-Americans in Africa, the volume and value of
oil business between between the U.S and Nigeria and the
horrendous AIDS crisis in Africa do not lend any basis for
Governor Bush's ill-advised
position which
removes Africa from fair consideration" were he to be
elected president.
By Al Johnson
Johnnie Cochran
will soon learn that defending Abacha's
loot is not as simple as his O.J Simpson's
case.
By Chido Nwangwu
Biafra-Nigeria
war
and history
get fresh, critical look from a
survivor.
By Alverna
Johnson and Vivian Okeke.
'Biafra: History
Without Mercy' - a preliminary note.
By Chido Nwangwu
ODUMEGWU EMEKA OJUKWU:"It
was simply a choice between Biafra and enslavement! And,
here's why we chose Biafra"
Biafra:
From Boys to Men. By Dr. M.O. Ene
Ige's
murder is another
danger signal for Nigeria's nascent democracy