In a seamless transition, the decolonization struggle thus turned into a civil war between UNITA and the MPLA over controlling Angola’s government, after the FNLA gradually disappeared from the scene as a military force (Ohlson, 1998). Until the mid-1980s, UNITA was able to gain control over significant parts of Angolan territory. While the MPLA controlled Luanda “and little else” (Malaquias, 2007, p. 39), UNITA was in charge of several south-eastern provinces, including Huambo, Angola’s second largest city. As Pearce (2015, p. 39) writes, Angola was literally “divided into what the press and the Por- tuguese authorities termed ‘zones of influence’: a euphemism for outright con- trol” by one of the movements. Although the area under its control was only sparsely populated, UNITA managed to create “basic insecurity in around 80 percent of the country,” with detrimental effects on the life and socioeconomic situation of the majority of Angola’s population (Tvedten, 1997, p. 38). In order to sustain control over its Terras Libres de Angola, UNITA thereby established an extensive system of parallel government that provided basic social services to the population it administrated, including the creation not only of 22 secondary and almost 700 primary schools “with 7,127 teachers and 224,811 students” (Potgieter, 2000, p. 262), but also centrally managed collective farms, a health care system with six hospitals and 1,989 clinics, as well as a national provisional capital in Jamba (Brittain, 1998; Pearce, 2015).
To manage this parallel administrative system, UNITA set up a broad politi- cal leadership structure, including a Party Congress that met every four years to select the decision-making Central Committee and Political Bureau, and to for- mulate policy for the controlled territories. In all meetings of the Congress, Sav- imbi was naturally reelected as President and Commander in Chief of UNITA’s
armed wing, Forças Armadas de Libertação de Angola or Armed Forces of the Liberation of Angola (FALA). UNITA also founded a youth wing – the Revo- lutionary United Youth of Angola (JURA) – and the Angola Women’s League (LIMA), and maintained an administrative council (that inter alia included Sav- imbi’s wife Ana Isabel Paulino Savimbi) and an external mission with offices in Portugal, Germany, the UK, Senegal, or at the UN (National Union for the To- tal Independence of Angola, 1991). All in all, UNITA tried to establish itself as “an alternative state model for Angola” (Heywood, 1989, p. 48) – with success: during the 1980s, Angola essentially had two governments.81
The first phase of Angola’s civil war culminated in the six-months long Battle
of Cuito Cuanavale in 1987 and 1988, a former Portuguese military base held
by the FAPLA and Cuban troops that UNITA desperately wanted to control in order to achieve a strategic advantage in the fight against the MPLA government (Birmingham, 2015). For several months, no side was able to defeat the other, but each party was reporting high numbers of casualties. Then, UNITA and South Africa had to retreat from the city in the spring of 1988, which turned Cuito Cuanavale into “a symbol across the continent that apartheid and its army were no longer invincible” (Brittain, 1998, p. 36). But also the MPLA had experienced heavy losses. Hence, for the first time, room for negotiations opened and Angola’s warring parties embarked on a peace process that would last for several years. On 22 December 1988, Angola, South Africa, and Cuba signed the New York Accords that regulated the withdrawal of South African and Cuban armies from Angola monitored by the United Nations Angola Verification Mission I (UNAVEM I), a peacekeeping mission that had been authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 626 two days earlier (United Nations, 1988). The New York Accords thus “removed the international character of the Angolan conflict without bringing it to an end,” because it had little to do with the violent struggle between the warring parties (Ottaway, 1998, p. 135).
But strongly pressured by the international community, the warring parties engaged in further peace negotiations and for the first time, Savimbi and dos
81Why was the MPLA in the initial years of Angola’s civil war able to consolidate its power
and drive UNITA and FNLA forces out of Luanda but then lost ground so quickly against UNITA? Part of an explanation is the involvement of foreign powers during the Cold War that turned the conflict into an international affair. In 1975, the MPLA had the strongest external backing and received weaponry, training, and on-the-ground support from the Soviet Union and Cuba. This made the party prevail over the FNLA – with financial help from the US and on-the-ground support from Zaire – and UNITA, fighting with Chinese weapons and the help of South African troops (Malaquias, 2007). But during the 1980s, intensified operations of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Southwest Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) in Angola were used by South Africa’s apartheid government as an excuse to launch several invasions into Angola, arguing that it feared the MPLA government would offer support to the ANC or SWAPO (Birmingham, 2015). While South Africa’s advances helped UNITA to make territorial and military gains against the MPLA, it was changing US foreign policy that made the difference. The 1976 Clark Amendment had long prohibited closer US assistance to Angola’s rebels, but the amendment was repealed in 1985 as a new policy under the Reagan administration advocated backing anti-Marxist strives in Africa as the US did not wish “to see the MPLA lead the nation-building process in Angola, fearing a socialist-style regime with close ties with the Soviet bloc” (El-Khawas, 1977, p. 36).
Figure 7.1: Intrastate Armed Conflict in Angola 0 2000 4000 6000 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002
Notes: Figure based on data from the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset (Sundberg and Melander, 2013) displaying the number of battle-related deaths per month for the UNITA – MPLA dyad. The rule of the interim government is shaded in gray.
Santos shook hands and announced the verbally concluded Gbadolite Agreement at the Summit Conference of African Presidents in June 1989. This ceasefire agreement however collapsed immediately, not least because confusion reigned over what had actually been decided on in the meeting (James, 1992): The MPLA declared that Savimbi had fully agreed to all points of dos Santos’ peace plan – which would inter alia have required UNITA to respect the Angolan constitution and the MPLA’s one-party rule (Foreign Ministry of Angola, 1990). Savimbi yet objected in a The New York Times opinion peace, reasoning that it would have been “silly” for him to surrender to the MPLA that way (Savimbi, 1989). The MPLA’s reaction: “Savimbi is lying” (Foreign Ministry of Angola, 1990). Likewise, UNITA’s Washington representative Macos Samondo stated that the MPLA “thought the cease-fire was an end in itself,” while UNITA “thought the cease-fire was a means to achieve ... continued dialogue toward a government of national unity” (in James, 1992, p. 245).
Despite the hostile atmosphere between the two party leaders, their meeting in Gbadolite was not the end of Angola’s peace process. Especially the MPLA was under intense pressure after the collapse of the Soviet Union meant an end to its financial support. On 31 May 1991, Savimbi and dos Santos met in Lisbon in order to sign the Bicesse Accords. This peace agreement provided inter alia for the disarmament and demobilization of both standing armies and the cre- ation of an integrated national army with guaranteed posts for UNITA, as well as an interim period governed by the incumbent MPLA that would culminate
in multi-party general elections monitored by the United Nations Angola Verifi- cation Mission II (UNAVEM II). The latter had been created the day before in UN Security Council Resolution 696 (United Nations, 1991b; United Nations, 1991c). The pressure that the MPLA was facing internationally was thus also reflected in the one-sided concessions it had to agree on with Bicesse: At the meeting in Gbadolite two years earlier, it had vehemently insisted on retaining a one-party state and the constitution of Angola, while it had to agree with Bicesse to constitutional changes and multi-party politics that would for the first time allow UNITA to participate in national elections.
Peace after Bicesse was brief. While the 16 months between the signing of the peace agreement and the holding of national elections are described as “the most spectacular period of optimism and freedom that Angola had ever witnessed” (Birmingham, 2015, p. 109), the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative to Angola Margaret Anstee (1993, p. 495) also notes that while “there were sixteen brief months of comparative peace ... after elections which the United Nations certified as ‘generally free and fair’, civil war broke out again, of a ferocity worse ... than at any time in the previous thirty years.” These elections to determine the post-interim President and National Assembly of Angola were held on 29 and 30 September 1992. All observers, including Savimbi and the MPLA, had been certain that UNITA would win the vote. After all, it was 1991 and “all over the world socialist parties which had run one-party states, such as MPLA, were being rejected by their people after years in power” (Brittain, 1998, p. 46). At a campaign rally in early September 1992, Savimbi had declared that he would “easily” take 75 percent of the presidential vote (in Ellis, 1992), and he had also announced that if “UNITA does not win the election, it has to be rigged,” and if elections were rigged, “I don’t think we will accept them” (in The Toronto Star, 1992). UNITA thus left no doubt that a vote for the MPLA was a vote for war – “Savimbi himself suggested as much ... ten days before the election” (Maier, 1997, 12f.).
The elections themselves, monitored by UNAVEM II and 400 additional in- ternational monitors, were conducted peacefully and without larger disruptions (cf. a similar situation in Cambodia, Chapter 8). To the surprise of many, both the vote to the parliament and the presidential vote resulted in a MPLA victory (Fortna, 2003a). In the legislative elections held under a system of proportional representation, the MPLA received 54 percent of the vote and 129 of 220 seats in the parliament, while UNITA gained 34 percent and 70 seats. In the presiden- tial vote, dos Santos gained 49.6 and Savimbi 40.1 percent (Clemente-Kersten, 1999).82 As official results were published on 3 October, Savimbi claimed fraud
82Results also showed that while regional and ethnic patterns of voting remained, this was
not the key factor that determined voting behavior. While Savimbi gained the majority of Ovimbundu votes and many Bakongos in Angola’s north cast their vote for the MPLA (Heywood, 1998; Ottaway, 1998), an MPLA-commissioned research team conducted a survey in August 1992 in which, in response to the question “In choosing who to vote for President, do you think it is very important ... that your candidate be from your region or province?”, 65 per cent of respondents replied that it was “not at all important” (Pereira, 1994, p. 18).
and declared on UNITA’s radio station Voz da Resistência do Galo Negro or Voice of the Resistance of the Black Cockerel (VORGAN):
“We would like to draw the MPLA’s attention to the fact that there are men and women in this country who are ready to give up their lives so that the country can redeem itself. As far as we are concerned, it will not depend on any international organization to say that the elections were free and fair” (in Maier, 1997, p. 13).
On 5 October, UNITA pulled its generals out of the joint army that had been hastily created only days before the vote, and its soldiers began attacking MPLA troops (Ohlson, 1998). On 16 October the UN issued the final election results and Special Representative Anstee declared the vote free and fair. She also noted that in accordance with the electoral law – that required the President to be elected by an absolute majority – a second round of presidential elections would have to take place in due time, as neither Savimbi nor dos Santos were able to gain the necessary 50 percent. This second round never took place: by November 1992, Angola’s civil war had resumed in full scale.