Death of Dignity

Angola's Civil War - by Victoria Brittain

Published 1998 by Pluto Press pp 108 ISBN 0 7453 1247 0

While hopes are rising that Angola has moved irreversibly towards a lasting peace away from its murderous Cold War-backed civil conflict, there remains the formidable task of stitching the country back together again and resuscitating its economy. For years Angola was all but ignored by English-speaking academics and journalists, but over the past three years there has been a comparative glut of accounts and analyses of the conflict and the prospects for its post-war future. These include: an incisive account by journalist Karl Maier of the war; a detailed report on international efforts and failures to police the peace-making by former UN Special Envoy to Angola Margaret Anstee ; and another by journalist Judith Matloff . The latest two books by the Guardian 's Deputy Foreign Editor, Victoria Brittain , and Portuguese diplomat Fernando Guimaraes are in different ways important additions to writing in English on Angola.

Brittain's book, based on repeated visits to the country between 1984 and 1996, has an unambiguous point of departure: 'It was a time of secrets, a time of polarisation and taking sides, with no middle way for impartial observers'. Sources are drawn either from the ranks of MPLA activists, the Angolan povo she met on her extensive travels, the victims of the civil war or from Angola's small class of urban-based intellectuals. Brittain makes no apologies for not interviewing UNITA officials nor for excluding 'Western diplomats'. The resulting work has no pretence of journalistic balance but is instead an impassioned description of how the 'Birth of Africa's Brightest Hope' at Angola's Independence in 1975 had by the early 1990s turned into the world's worst war. And it provides a valuable insight into the development of MPLA thinking in the post-independence years.

The central argument of the book about foreign intervention is hardly contested these days. It details how United States ' and apartheid South Africa 's support for Jonas Savimbi and UNITA transformed a national power struggle into a Cold War crusade against the Cuba and Soviet -friendly MPLA government. Most of Savimbi's former backers in Europe or the USA have since deserted him; some remarkably metamorphosed into lobbyists or advisors for President José Eduardo dos Santos and the MPLA government. In the final two chapters, Brittain traces in some detail how Savimbi tore up the election result and returned to war. But it would have been useful to learn more about how the MPLA handled the crisis; the emergence of General João de Matos (who is not a party member) as the force behind the government's military fightback; the decline of political morale in Luanda; and the chronic corruption in the higher echelons of both party and state.

One element of the Angolan tragedy alluded to by Brittain is Savimbi's attempt to mobilise an ethnic and regional support base among his Ovimbundu people in the planalto against the coastal and urban peoples who support the MPLA. Fernando Guimaraes' historical inquiry into the causes of the war examines how the anti-colonial movements divided three ways, with Savimbi trying to recruit on an ethnic basis. He relates how Savimbi bristled with resentment at perceived slights against the Ovimbundu and claims by Luanda politicians that they had collaborated with the Portuguese colonialists. Guimaraes' book is divided into firstly an analysis of the anti-colonial movements and the Portuguese response, and secondly a study of the foreign role in exacerbating internal conflict.

The second section is full of the minutiae of Soviet, US, Chinese , Cuban, South African and Zaïrois involvement in Angola's war but is thin on Portuguese policy. This is a shame, given the writer is a Portuguese diplomat. Guimaraes' first section on Angola's internal politics, relying for the most part on secondary sources, points to the need for an analytical work on the war and post-war periods by an Angolan political insider. Perhaps this recent harvest of books about Angola may inspire such a work.