Angola And Africa (2)

The continent has a lesson or two to learn from Angola in nation-building, argued Okello Oculi

Prolonged collaboration between President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), and the American government - to promote opposition parties against the Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA) - did not earn him the love of its leaders. They hit back by supporting several invasions by former soldiers of Katanga who, after the fall of secession by Moise Tshombe, had fled with their weapons for refuge across the border in Angola. American and French governments flew in soldiers from Morocco, Senegal, and Togo to repulse these efforts to overthrow Mobutu.

This tradition of inserting foreign troops into Mobutu’s affairs would in the late 1970s encourage Uganda and Rwanda to send troops to help put Laurent Kabila in power in Kinshasa. Kabila’s triumph may have sprouted aspirations by Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and Paul Kagame in Rwanda – rulers of two small countries on Congo’s eastern border- for a repeat of tiny Belgium’s colonial rule over a vast Congo.

The prospect of two countries supported by Euro-America becoming occupation powers in Congo, however, provoked intervention by Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia. In what was called “Africa’s First World War’’, Angola’s troops earned the reputation of being the most battle-hardened and disciplined. Rwanda and Uganda were beaten back from repeating in Central Africa an ‘African colonisation’ event which Morocco had inflicted on Western Sahara following the end of Spanish colonial rule.

Jonas Savimbi’s Union for the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA) influenced by Hutu violence against Tutsi in Rwanda and a mutiny by troops in Southern Sudanese with the onset of independence, resented “assimilated’’ elites in Luanda, Angola’s capital, who led socialist Popular Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA) ruling over ‘pure Africans’ elites from the up-country, including his home highlands in Huambo. His resentment fed a civil war which devastated Angola from 1979 till his assassination in 2002.

In the elections of 2017, MPLA’s commitment to a vision of building a common political community animated by socialist values is reflected in their winning 175 seats in parliament compared to a total of 45 seats by four of the leading opposition political parties. The report that MPLA won only 50 per cent of votes cast in Luanda, supports its claim that it has support in the vast rural part of Angola. UNITA won 32 seats. Jonas Savimbi’s son, Rafael Massanga Savimbi, repeated his father’s electoral war cry in the 1992 presidential election that the election was “rigged’’ in favour of MPLA. Following Jonas Savimbi’s exit, MPLA did not take the familiar route across Africa of working to annihilate UNITA. The lesson for Africa is that nation building does not crawl out of the rotting carcass of political silence born of repression.

President Agustinho Neto, a medical doctor and distinguished poet, was a man without inferiority complexes which Kay Whiteman claims that Europeans exploit in relations with African leaders. Neto’s successor, Eduardo dos Santos, trained as a Petroleum engineer in Azerbaijan, a former part of the Soviet Union. He became fluent in Russian and French. Competence in French gave him easy access to views prevalent in its huge neighbour – Zaire/ Congo. He complained that the long wars for liberation slowed his strengthening state institutions or even carrying “out the normal processes of democratisation’’. This self- confidence flowed into putting emphasis on reconstructing a country terribly decimated by 27 years of civil war. Defending sovereignty at home; with his foreign relations , while avoiding hopping to capitals of Euro-American countries, were his menu.

That self-respect was reflected in rejecting insistence by the European Union that their election monitors would follow rules set by them. The Foreign Minister affirmed that only monitors from the African Union and SADC (the Southern African Development Commission bloc of countries), have such a privilege. “These are the only institutions for which Angola must abide by the electoral processes’’, he said.

The passing of the baton of leadership to Joao Laurenco, former Defence Minister and deputy head of MPLA, has coincided with the country getting used to the collapse of oil revenue; a severe drought with echoes of global climate change; a whittling of the arrogance of the IMF and World Bank over Africa following the arrival of China as an alternative source of vital capital and market for natural resources. Angola’s relationship with China should mature into a focus on industrialisation with clean energy. Having a long coast on an open Atlantic combined with the Benguela Ocean current which support plankton and a rich fisheries zone, Angola must push for a collective African diplomatic and naval confrontation with countries whose huge fishing vessels loot with impunity the continent’s two fishing zones bellow and above the equator. A collective naval capacity is clearly the only route to the defence of these resources and their nutritional importance. The number of African countries with deposits of oil, natural gas and other resources onshore or offshore has increased in recent years. The funding of collective naval capacity should benefit from this development.

Eduardo dos Santos, a petroleum engineer, is leaving office when oil is under attack by vehicles run on sugar cane juice and electricity. On the eve of his exit he commissioned the hydroelectricity plant at Lauca; the third generating plant built on Kwanza River. Built by a Brazilian conglomerate at the cost of 4billion dollars, it shall be “one of the most powerful plants on the African continent’’; yielding 2070 megawatts. In the context of the politics of contracts, it is enough to provoke vitriolic media reports on Angola and dos Santos in Euro-American media; as befits the legacy of a resolute African patriotic combatant.