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NEWS & LETTERS, April 2002
Column: Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes
Death
of Savimbi The
death of Angolan warlord Jonas Savimbi came as welcome news indeed to all
supporters of African liberation. Savimbi started his career as a minor leader
in the movement against Portuguese colonialism. As independence loomed in 1975, he aligned himself with
apartheid South Africa and Mao's China, claiming that the main liberation group,
the Movement for the Total Independence of Angola (MPLA), was a tool of Russian
Communism. This charge was as
ludicrous as similar ones South Africa was leveling against the African National
Congress at the time. After
the immensely popular MPLA won the battle for independence with the aid of Cuban
troops, Savimbi continued his war. Over
the years, he used bases in U.S.-allied Congo (then Zaire) and Zambia, while the
funding came from the CIA and South Africa.
All these forces were interested in control of a country rich in
diamonds, oil, and fertile land. The outside funding ended in the 1990s, but Savimbi was able
to persist via the illicit diamond trade. Since
1976, some 500,000 Angolans have been killed, with millions more wounded or
displaced. The logic of permanent
war played no small part in another tragic development, the transformation of
the MPLA from a liberation movement into the ruling party of a remote,
dictatorial, and corrupt regime. |
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