Global Ideologies, Local Politics: The Cold War as Seen from Central Angola

Abstract

International rivalry in the Cold War has dominated scholarship on the post-independence war in Angola, but little research has been done on how foreign support for the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) had an impact on political mobilisation inside Angola. This article draws upon interviews with people who remembered the conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s in the Angolan Central Highlands, the area in which UNITA made its strongest identity-based claims against the MPLA state, and which was fiercely contested during the war. It compares these with memoirs and other secondary material that record elite perspectives on the war. I argue that ideologies espoused by the external players in Angola had little direct impact on the political affiliations of people in the contested area. Nevertheless, external support for rival movements in Angola indirectly shaped and polarised popular attitudes towards the movements, notably by providing the MPLA and UNITA with the capacity to present themselves as state-like.

Acknowledgements

This article is based in part on research conducted in the course of doctoral studies at St Antony’s College, Oxford. I acknowledge the financial support that I received from the ORISHA fund, the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford, and St Antony’s College. I am currently supported by a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, research grant number 74978. The themes in the article were developed in conference papers at the Working Expert Seminars on Southern Africa in the Cold War Era, hosted in Lisbon by the LSE Cold War Studies Centre and the Instituto Português de Relações Internacionais in 2009 and 2010, and at the JSAS conference in Livingstone in 2015. I acknowledge the support of the Santander Student Travel Fund and of JSAS in attending these events, and I am grateful for the useful input of fellow participants in the conferences and of two anonymous peer reviewers.

Notes

¹ The same is true for the literature on the wider southern African region during the Cold War, with the notable exception of work that examines the impact of the Cold War international context on the internal ideologies of settler state regimes. See D. Lowry, ‘The Impact of Anti-Communism on White Rhodesian Political Culture, ca. 1920s–1980’, Cold War History, 7, 2 (2007), pp. 169–94; J. Miller, ‘Things Fall Apart: South Africa and the Collapse of the Portuguese Empire, 1973–74’, Cold War History, 12, 2 (2012), pp. 183–204.

² Two journalistic accounts are V. Brittain, Death of Dignity: Angola’s Civil War (London, Pluto Press, 1998) and M. Wolfers and J. Bergerol, Angola in the Front Line (London, Zed Books, 1983). Scholarly treatments include W. Minter, Apartheid’s Contras: An Inquiry into the Roots of War in Angola and Mozambique (London, Zed Books, 1994) and G. Wright, The Destruction of a Nation: United States’ Policy Toward Angola Since 1945 (London, Pluto Press, 1997).

³ The pre-eminent journalist account is F. Bridgland, Jonas Savimbi: A Key to Africa (Edinburgh, Mainstream, 1986), though an earlier example is F. Sitte, Flammenherd Angola (Vienna, Kremayr und Scheriau, 1972).

⁴ Shafer’s comment on literature about the Mozambican guerrilla movement, Renamo, is pertinent also to Angola and UNITA: ‘scholars analyzing Renamo’s success at anchoring itself in the countryside initially attempted to find explanations which denied the role of civilian support, because of their over-riding belief that Renamo was not ideologically motivated, but rather a puppet of the apartheid regime’, J. Shafer, ‘Guerrillas and Violence in the War in Mozambique: De-Socialization or Re-Socialization?’, African Affairs, 100, 399 (2001), p. 216. A rare exception is the work of Heywood, who examines the longer historical roots of UNITA’s social relations in Angola: L. Heywood, ‘UNITA and Ethnic Nationalism in Angola’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 27, 1 (1989) pp. 47–66; L. Heywood, ‘Towards an Understanding of Modern Political Ideology in Africa: The Case of the Ovimbundu of Angola’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 36, 1 (1998) pp. 139–67; L. Heywood, Contested Power in Angola: 1840s to the Present (Rochester, University of Rochester Press, 2002).

⁵ O. Westad, The Global Cold War (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 31.

⁶ Ibid., p. 72.

⁷ P. Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill and London, University of North Carolina Press, 2002), p. 377.

⁸ Westad, The Global Cold War, p. 397.

⁹ On Zimbabwe, see T. Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe: A Comparative Study (London, James Currey, 1985); N. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992); J. Alexander, J. McGregor and T. Ranger, Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the ‘Dark Forests’ of Matabeleland (Oxford, James Currey, 2000). On Mozambique, see A. Nilsson, ‘From Pseudo-Terrorists to Pseudo-Guerillas: The MNR in Mozambique’, Review of African Political Economy, 20, 57 (1993) pp. 60–71; C. Geffray, La Cause des Armes au Mozambique: Anthropologie d’une Guerre Civile (Paris, Karthala, 1990); R. Gersony, Summary of Mozambican Refugee Accounts of Principally Conflict-Related Experience in Mozambique (Washington DC, Department of State Bureau for Refugees, 1998); Margaret Hall, ‘The Mozambican National Resistance Movement (RENAMO): A Study in the Destruction of an African Country’, Africa, 60, 1 (1990), pp. 39–68. Michel Cahen, ‘Dhlakama é maningue nice!: An Atypical Former Guerrilla in the Mozambican Electoral Campaign’, Transformation, 35 (1998), pp. 1–48; J. McGregor, ‘Violence and Social Change in a Border Economy: War in the Maputo Hinterland 1984–1992’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 24, 1 (1998) pp. 37–60; Alex Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique (London, James Currey, 1991).

¹⁰ L. White and M. Larmer, ‘Introduction: Mobile Soldiers and the Un-National Liberation of Southern Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 40, 6 (2014) pp. 1271–4.

¹¹ C. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 75.

¹² V. Broch-Due, ‘Violence and Belonging: Analytical Reflections’, in V. Broch-Due (ed.), Violence and Belonging: The Quest for Identity in Post-Colonial Africa (London, Routledge, 2005), p. 10.

¹³ Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, p. 235, and Minter, Apartheid’s Contras, p. 271, point out how little is known about the politics of mobilisation in Angola, owing to practical difficulties in research.

¹⁴ This observation about the relationship between military control and political identity echoes the findings of S. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006). These issues as they pertain to Angola are discussed more fully in J. Pearce, ‘Control, Politics and Identity in the Angolan Civil War’, African Affairs, 111, 444 (2012) pp. 442–65.

¹⁵ In Portuguese, the term ‘aderência’ (literally, adherence) is used to describe the following of a political movement. People were described, and described themselves, as ‘povo da UNITA’ or ‘povo do governo /povo do MPLA’ (‘UNITA people’ or ‘government/MPLA people’).

¹⁶ On the tendency to ‘criminalise’ the rebel movement, see R. Marchal and C. Messiant, ‘Une Lecture Symptomale de Quelques Théorisations Récentes des Guerres Civiles’, Revue Lusotopie, 13, 2 (2006), pp. 3–46.

¹⁷ Pearce, ‘Control, Politics and Identity’.

¹⁸ P. Abrams, ‘Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State (1977)’, Journal of Historical Sociology 1, 1 (1988), pp. 58–98; Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat, States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State (Durham, Duke University Press, 2001).

¹⁹ E. George, The Cuban Intervention in Angola, 1965–1991: From Che Guevara to Cuito Cuanavale (London, Frank Cass, 2005), p. 22.

²⁰ George, The Cuban Intervention, p. 14.

²¹ Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, p. 83.

²² Ibid., pp. 174–82, 244.

²³ ‘Between November 1975 and 1976, 36,000 Cuban soldiers poured into Angola.… Their number peaked at 55,000 in 1988’; by 1978, there were nearly 7,000 Cuban aid workers in Angola, including teachers, construction workers and health staff. Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom, pp. 9, 84.

²⁴ J-M. Mabeko-Tali, Dissidências e Poder de Estado: O MPLA Perante Si Próprio (1962–1977) Vol. 2: 1974–1977 (Luanda, Nzila, 2001), pp. 132–3. Mabeko-Tali’s account benefits from unique access to the personal papers of Lúcio Lara. All translations from Portuguese written sources in this article are my own.

²⁵ J.E. dos Santos, A Luta do Povo pela Unidade e pelo Socialismo (Lisbon, Avante, 1985), p. 26.

²⁶ Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom, p. 103.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 194.

²⁸ Dos Santos, A Luta, p. 30.

²⁹ Ibid., p. 168.

³⁰ Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, p. 342.

³¹ D. Birmingham, ‘Angola’, in P. Chabal (ed.), A History of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa (London, Hurst, 2002), p. 150.

³² Bairro in Angola usually refers to a poor outlying neighbourhood, sometimes semi-rural. Although the succession of sobas is supposedly on the basis of lineage and community discussion, in practice it has been subject to political interference.

³³ Interview with a village chief, Huambo, May 2008. All interviews for this article, unless otherwise stated, were conducted and translated by me.

³⁴ Interview, farmer, Huambo, May 2008.

³⁵ Interview, civil servant, Huambo, June 2008.

³⁶ Bridgland describes a piece of UNITA propaganda theatre in which Agostinho Neto strikes a bargain with Leonid Brezhnev and Fidel Castro, and Cuban soldiers slaughter Angolan peasants until being defeated by UNITA. Bridgland, Jonas Savimbi, p. 313.

³⁷ Interview, farmer, Huambo, July 2008.

³⁸ Interview, lawyer, Huambo, May 2008.

³⁹ Interview, development worker, Luanda, October 2008.

⁴⁰ Interview, priest, Huambo, September 2008.

⁴¹ Interview, farmer, Huambo, May 2008.

⁴² Group interview with farmers, Huambo, October 2008.

⁴³ S. Chiwale, Cruzei-me com a História (Lisbon, Sexante Editora, 2008), p. 239.

⁴⁴ J. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution, Volume 2 (Exile Politics and Guerrilla Warfare, 1962–1976) (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1978), p. 195.

⁴⁵ Interview, Jaka Jamba, Luanda, September 2009.

⁴⁶ Chiwale, Cruzei-me, pp. 243–4, 253.

⁴⁷ F. Spies, Operasie Savannah: Angola 1975–1976 (S.A. Weermag, Direktoraat Openbare Betrekkinge, 1989), p. 149.

⁴⁸ J. Muekalia, Angola: A Segunda Revolução (Lisbon, Sexante Editora, 2010).

⁴⁹ Interview, former soldier, Lisbon, May 2009.

⁵⁰ Chiwale, Cruzei-me, p. 221.

⁵¹ Interview, former soldier, Lisbon, May 2009.

⁵² Chiwale, Cruzei-me, p. 246.

⁵³ Interview, General Nunda, Luanda, September 2009. Dôndi, near Katchiungo in Huambo province, is the best-known of the Protestant missions in the Central Highlands, and is where Savimbi was educated.

⁵⁴ Interview, Jaka Jamba, Luanda, September 2009.

⁵⁵ Chiwale, Cruzei-me, p. 250. See also Muekalia, Angola, p. 94.

⁵⁶ The last visit to China by a senior UNITA delegation was in 1978 (interviews, Abel Chivukuvuku and General Nunda, Luanda, 2009).

⁵⁷ Muekalia, Angola, p. 41.

⁵⁸ Birmingham, ‘Angola’, p. 147.

⁵⁹ Dash’s reports were published in the Washington Post on 10 and 11 August 1977. He quotes UNITA officers justifying UNITA’s struggle in terms of the Cuban presence, and saying that MPLA officers and Cubans would be killed, while civilians and foot soldiers would be ‘re-educated’.

⁶⁰ Chiwale, Cruzei-me, p. 237.

⁶¹ Ibid., pp. 251–2.

⁶² Muekalia, Angola, pp. 147–9.

⁶³ Chiwale, Cruzei-me, p. 246. See also Muekalia, Segunda Revolução, pp. 78–84.

⁶⁴ Muekalia, Angola, pp. 91–2.

⁶⁵ Jonas Savimbi interviewed by Dominique de Roux, quoted in Bridgland, Jonas Savimbi, p. 231.

⁶⁶ South African Department of Defence Archives, Minister van Verdediging, box 102 Angola Verslae, Office of the Head of the State Intelligence P18/14/6, ‘Brief van Dr Savimbi’, undated (probably 1976).

⁶⁷ South African Department of Defence Archives, Minister van Verdediging, box 102 Angola Verslae, MV 56/6/1, Office of the Head of the South African Defence Force HSAW 520/2/2, ‘Vervoer van UNITA–Leiers van RSA na Zaire’, 20 September 1977.

⁶⁸ Bridgland, Jonas Savimbi, p. 335.

⁶⁹ Ibid., pp. 289–90.

⁷⁰ I discuss this more fully in J. Pearce, Political Identity and Conflict in Central Angola: 1975–2002 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015).

⁷¹ Interview, former soldier, Huambo, June 2008.

⁷² Interview, catechist, Huila, November 2008.

⁷³ Interview, former soldier, Huambo, June 2008.

⁷⁴ Conversation with government official, Huambo, July 2008.

⁷⁵ ‘Mestiço’ refers to a person of mixed race, and ‘assimilado’ to a black person who, under colonial rule, had achieved the status of being ‘assimilated’ into Portuguese culture.

⁷⁶ Westad, Global Cold War, p. 397.

⁷⁷ Interview, pastor, Huambo, May 2008.