Angola enjoys peace after decades of civil war (1975-2002), but what were the real root causes of the Angolan civil conflict, and what role did the Americans play ?
By Olimpio Nhuleipo
If there is any country that received negative reports and biased international media attention in Southern Africa, it is Angola and its MPLA led government.
The international media coverage of the Angolan civil war was severely biased toward Unita and ignored almost all the positive developments by the MPLA government.
On the other hand, language barriers served in the best interest of those with intent to paint a negative picture of the MPLA government and have indeed managed to mislead a lot of people in Southern Africa, by sticking a label that belongs to Jonas Savimbi’s Unita to the MPLA, by providing selective negative reports about the Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos. But Mr Dos Santos proved himself to be the right leader Angola needed during her troubled times, honest and serious about peace in his country and of late has turned out to be one of the prominent African statesman, a true visionary and an icon of pacification.
This article presents a brief analytical history of political developments in Angola during the cold war, and is not about who preaches what or who believed in what acceptable or un-acceptable ideologies, or belonged on what side of the cold war, but of the truth and true reality about political events in Angola and about behaviors of the main actors during the struggle for the liberation of Angola, and why they adopted such pattern of behavior. I mean the root cause of the Angolan trouble, the civil war.
The main focus of this article is the root cause of the Angolan civil conflict, following the signature of the ceasefire agreement between the MPLA and the Portuguese colonial army in 1974.
The content of this opinion piece is derived from the use of assumptions and deductive reasoning and is based on the actions and behaviors undertaken by both sides during the struggle for the liberation of Angola. It (the article) places more emphasis on the global contexts under which most of the political events in Angola took place. It is also worth noting the fact that one cannot understand the Angolan conflict in isolation from relevant global political events.
The reality is that Angolans never shared a long period of peace in their country, since time immemorial and nobody knows if the current peace is there to stay or just momentary.
Advent of Europeans
Angolans lived a pre-colonial feudal life marked by inter-tribal wars, then observed the advent of Europeans, mainly Portuguese with whom they engaged in anti-colonial wars of resistance. Third they lived under Portuguese colonial rule for almost over 500 years and launched a liberation struggle for national independence in the 1950s, spearheaded by the MPLA, and gained independence in 1975, following the signature of the ceasefire agreement between the MPLA forces and the Portuguese colonial army.
The struggle for the liberation of Angola coincided with a coup d’???_?_’???_?’???_?