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Angola Chapter. 1. Historical Setting
![[GIF]](http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/angola/ao01_00a.gif)
A village near Pungo Andongo, formerly Pungua -Ndondong, the capital of the Ndongo Kingdom in the sixteenth
century
![[PDF]](http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/pdf.gif)
Figure 2. Major Angolan Kingdoms, 1200-1900
IN NOVEMBER 1975, after nearly five centuries as a
Portuguese
colony, Angola became an independent state. By late 1988,
however,
despite fertile land, large deposits of oil and gas, and
great
mineral wealth, Angola had achieved neither prosperity nor
peace--
the national economy was stagnating and warfare was
ravaging the
countryside. True independence also remained unrealized as
foreign
powers continued to determine Angola's future.
But unattained potential and instability were hardships
well
known to the Angolan people. They had suffered the outrage
of
slavery and the indignity of forced labor and had
experienced years
of turmoil going back to the early days of the indigenous
kingdoms.
The ancestors of most present-day Angolans found their
way to
the region long before the first Portuguese arrived in the
late
fifteenth century. The development of indigenous states,
such as
the Kongo Kingdom, was well under way before then. The
primary
objective of the first Portuguese settlers in Angola, and
the
motive behind most of their explorations, was the
establishment of
a slave trade. Although several early Portuguese explorers
recognized the economic and strategic advantages of
establishing
friendly relations with the leaders of the kingdoms in the
Angolan
interior, by the middle of the sixteenth century the slave
trade
had engendered an enmity between the Portuguese and the
Africans
that persisted until independence.
Most of the Portuguese who settled in Angola through
the
nineteenth century were exiled criminals, called
degredados
(see Glossary), who were actively involved in the slave
trade and
spread disorder and corruption throughout the colony.
Because of
the unscrupulous behavior of the degredados, most
Angolan
Africans soon came to despise and distrust their
Portuguese
colonizers. Those Portuguese who settled in Angola in the
early
twentieth century were peasants who had fled the poverty
of their
homeland and who tended to establish themselves in Angolan
towns in
search of a means of livelihood other than agriculture. In
the
process, they squeezed out the mestiços (people of
mixed
African and white descent; see Glossary) and urban
Africans who had
hitherto played a part in the urban economy. In general,
these
later settlers lacked capital, education, and commitment
to their
new homelands.
When in the early 1930s António Salazar established the
New
State (Estado Novo) in Portugal, Angola was expected to
survive on
its own. Accordingly, Portugal neither maintained an
adequate
social and economic infrastructure nor invested directly
in longterm development.
Ideologically, Portugal maintained that increasing the
density
of white rural settlement in Angola was a means of
"civilizing" the
African. Generally, the Portuguese regarded Africans as
inferior
and gave them few opportunities to develop either in terms
of their
own cultures or in response to the market. The Portuguese
also
discriminated politically, socially, and economically
against
assimilados (see Glossary)--those Africans who, by
acquiring
a certain level of education and a mode of life similar to
that of
Europeans, were entitled to become citizens of Portugal.
Those few
Portuguese officials and others who called attention to
the
mistreatment of Africans were largely ignored or silenced
by the
colonial governments.
By the 1950s, African-led or mestiço-led
associations
with explicit political goals began to spring up in
Angola. The
authoritarian Salazar regime forced these movements and
their
leaders to operate in exile. By the early 1960s, however,
political
groups were sufficiently organized (if also divided by
ethnic
loyalties and personal animosities) to begin their drives
for
independence. Moreover, at least some segments of the
African
population had been so strongly affected by the loss of
land,
forced labor, and stresses produced by a declining economy
that
they were ready to rebel on their own. The result was a
series of
violent events in urban and rural areas that marked the
beginning
of a long and often ineffective armed struggle for
independence.
To continue its political and economic control over the
colony,
Portugal was prepared to use whatever military means were
necessary. In 1974 the Portuguese army, tired of warfare
not only
in Angola but in Portugal's other African colonies,
overthrew the
Lisbon regime. The new regime left Angola to its own
devices--in
effect, abandoning it to the three major anticolonial
movements.
Ideological differences and rivalry among their
leaderships
divided these movements. Immediately following
independence in
1975, civil war erupted between the Popular Movement for
the
Liberation of Angola (Movimento Popular de Libertação de
Angola --
MPLA) on the one hand and the National Front for the
Liberation of
Angola (Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola -- FNLA)
and the
National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (União
Nacional
para a Independência Total de Angola -- UNITA) on the
other hand.
The MPLA received support from the Soviet Union and Cuba,
while the
FNLA turned to the United States. UNITA, unable to gain
more than
nominal support from China, turned to South Africa.
Viewing the
prospect of a Soviet-sponsored MPLA government with alarm,
South
Africa invaded Angola. The Soviet and Cuban reaction was
swift: the
former provided the logistical support, and the latter
provided
troops. By the end of 1976, the MPLA, under the leadership
of
Agostinho Neto, was in firm control of the government.
Members of
UNITA retreated to the bush to wage a guerrilla war
against the
MPLA government, while the FNLA became increasingly
ineffective in
the north in the late 1970s.
The MPLA, which in 1977 had declared itself a
Marxist-Leninist
vanguard party, faced the task of restoring the
agricultural and
production sectors that nearly had been destroyed with the
departure of the Portuguese. Recognizing that traditional
MarxistLeninist policies of large-scale expropriation and state
ownership
would undermine redevelopment efforts, Neto permitted
private
involvement in commercial and small-scale industry and
developed
substantial economic relations with Western states,
especially in
connection with Angola's oil industry.
After Neto's death in 1979, José Eduardo dos Santos
inherited
considerable economic difficulties, including the enormous
military
costs required to fight UNITA and South African forces. By
the end
of 1985, the security of the Luanda regime depended almost
entirely
on Soviet-supplied weaponry and Cuban troop support.
Consequently,
in the late 1980s Luanda's two main priorities were to end
the
UNITA insurgency and to make progress toward economic
development.
By late 1988, a United States-sponsored peace agreement
held out
some hope that, given time, both priorities could be
achieved.
Data as of February 1989
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