11.8: Angolan Civil War- 1975-2002
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Anti-Colonial Movements in Africa
While the resistance movements in Latin America challenged US dominance, the anti-colonial movements in Africa were primarily focused on achieving independence from European colonial powers. Africa had been the main target of the European imperialism of the late nineteenth century. The Scramble for Africa was both rapid (within two decades, between the 1880s and 1902) and total, with the exception of Liberia and Ethiopia. After World War II, almost every African country gained independence just as quickly; the European empires in Africa collapsed just as rapidly as they emerged. Independence from European colonialism in Africa and Asia improved living conditions for most people. However, the anti-colonial struggles were bloody and did not lead to economic freedom. Instead, the new world order transformed the elites of the newly independent nations into partners to create markets for goods and supply cheap labor and resources.
In West Africa, Kwame Nkrumah not only successfully led Ghana to independence in 1957 after a peaceful independence movement and negotiations with the British but also founded a movement called Pan-Africanism in which, he hoped, the nations of Africa might join in a “United States of Africa” that would achieve parity with the other great powers of the world to the betterment of Africans everywhere. His vision was of a united African league, possibly even a single nation, whose collective power, wealth, and influence would ensure that outside powers would never again dominate Africans. While that vision did not come to pass, the concept of pan-Africanism was still vitally important as an inspiration for other African independence movements at the time.
In Kenya, in contrast, hundreds of thousands of white colonists were not interested in independence from Britain. By 1952, a complex web of nationalist rebels, impoverished villagers and farmers, and counter-insurgent fighters plunged the country into a civil war. The British and native white Kenyans reacted to the uprising by creating concentration camps, imprisoning rebels, and slowly starving them to death in the hills. The rebels, disparagingly referred to as “Mau Maus” (meaning something like "hill savages"), in turn, attacked white civilians, in many cases murdering them outright. Finally, after 11 years of war, Kenya was granted its independence and elected a former insurgent leader as its first president. Ironically, while British forces were in a dominant position militarily, the British state was financially over-extended. Thus, Britain granted Kenyan independence in 1963.
Civil War in Angola: 1975–2002
Angola is a large resource-rich African nation. Unfortunately, Angola’s natural resources (oil, iron, copper, bauxite, diamonds, and uranium) also sustained Africa’s longest and bloodiest war since World War II, from 1975 to 2002. Angola was a Portuguese colony. Figure 11.8.1 is a map of Angola and shows the location of its capital city Luanda on the Atlantic coast. On April 25, 1974, the Portuguese Armed Forces Movement (AFM) overthrew Portugal’s Prime Minister Marcello Caetano in a mostly bloodless coup and ended Portuguese colonial rule in Africa. In 1974, Angola’s three main political parties, the Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) led by Agostinho Neto, National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) led by Holden Roberto, and National Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) led by Jonas Savimbi met with Portuguese representatives and signed the Alvor Agreement, which created a transitional government. Although a power-sharing arrangement was agreed upon, power struggles ensued almost immediately after the withdrawal of the Portuguese. The Angola crisis of 1974–1975 ultimately developed into a Cold War battleground as the superpowers and their allies delivered military assistance to their preferred clients. The map in Figure 118.1 also shows the location of the city of Huambo in central Angola, which became the headquarters of UNITA during the civil war.
Angola attained official independence on 11 November 1975, but over five hundred years of Portuguese colonial rule resulted in the politicization of ethnicity by combining and placing vastly differing ethnicities under one centrally administered colonial territory The Portuguese left Angola without supervising elections and did not hand over power to any one party. Consequently, the common anti-colonial goal was abandoned. Starting in 1975, the three dominant liberation movements engaged in a struggle for power. This was the beginning of a bloody civil war that lasted until 2002.
The United States supplied aid and training for both the FNLA and UNITA while troops from Zaire assisted Holden Roberto and his fighters. China, also, sent military instructors to train the FNLA. The Soviet Union provided military training and equipment for the MPLA. The MPLA also had long-established relations with Fidel Castro’s Cuba. UNITA, which enjoyed U.S. support, approached the Apartheid government in South Africa for military reinforcement. The U.S. Government had encouraged the South African intervention but downplayed its connection with the Apartheid regime. The initial stages of the war saw victories for the MPLA, which took over the capital and established a de facto government. But fighting intensified in the mid-to-late 1980s, culminating in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale.
As the Cold War wound down, a series of international talks, including the Lusaka Accords signed in 1994, paved the way for a ceasefire in Angola along with conditions for the departure of South African and Cuban forces from Angola and a political transition to multi-party elections under UN supervision. The Lusaka Accords were signed in November 1994. In December 1998, after a tenuous four-year ceasefire, the accords collapsed, and the country plunged back into full-scale war. In 2002, government forces killed Jonas Savimbi. The assassination of Savimbi led to negotiations between UNITA and the MPLA, resulting in a peace agreement in April 2002 and ended the bloody 27-year civil war.
The MPLA remains a ruling party in Angolan politics. Although most of the infrastructure damaged by the war has been rebuilt, the scars of the conflict are still present. Today Angola ranks as one of the lowest in world ratings in terms of human development, as less than 40% of the population has access to clean water and sanitation. The generation born in 1975 has known nothing but war for 27 years, while almost one million people died, and hundreds of thousands have been physically and psychologically maimed. Four million people have been displaced, and 27 years of war have meant that almost every single Angola victim of disrupted family life.
- Why didn't the sudden collapse of the Portuguese empire in Angola lead to democracy in Angola?
- Who was Agostinho Neto?
- In what ways did South Africa and Cuba act as proxies of the superpowers in Angola?
- How decisive was the Cuban intervention for the ultimate success of the MPLA in Angola?