ANGOLA-WOMEN: Living with War in the Forests of Cabinda

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nana Rosine Ngangoue

NKUTU, Angola, May 27 1996 (IPS) - Shells crashing through the forest around this village in the Angolan enclave of Cabinda sends a group of women and children scurrying for the relative safety of a shallow ravine, leaving their hoes in the field they had been tending.

They have been hearing the sounds of war for years, but the boom of artillery fire is still frightening to most. Later, this correspondent learnt that the shelling, which occurred on May 19, caused one expectant mother to give birth prematurely.

“It’s the Angolans who use heavy artillery,” explained Silou Tchibinda, a member of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC), referring to the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA).

“We cannot respond because we don’t have weapons like that,” she adds. “They have more sophisticated, deadlier weapons than our people. We have been subjected to this since the 1970s. That’s because we have dared to demand our independence from Angola.”

Cabinda, a 7,200-sq. km enclave just south of Congo, is separated from the rest of Angola by a narrow band of Zairean territory. The some 300,000 Cabindans make up less than three percent of Angola’s population of 10.5 million.

During Angola’s war of liberation from Portuguese rule, which ended in 1975, the FLEC sought independence for Cabinda whereas the now ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) has always opposed the separation of the oil-rich enclave.

While the 19-year war between the MPLA and the main Angolan rebel force, the Union for the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA) ended in 1994, the conflict in Cabinda has dragged on, with the FLEC insisting on independence for Cabinda.

The FLEC-Cabinese Armed Forces (FLEC-FAC) claims to have freed 340 sq. kms of the enclave, mainly heavily forested zones along the border with Zaire. Its fighters are men and teenage boys. They women contribute in other ways.

Silou, for example, is a member of a group of about 50 women who have taken on the task of getting other women to support the rebel group’s struggle.

“Our role as women who have joined up is to increase the fighting capacity of Cabinda’s women,” she says. “There are nearly 80,000 women in Cabinda and we are trying to make them understand the meaning of mobilisation.”

“Every Cabindese is a combattant because this is a war that has been imposed on us,” said one (male) FLEC-FAC fighter. “Even if someone is a civilian, he or she still plays a role in the revolution.”

In addition to encouraging their sisters to support the struggle, some women contribute by teaching the children who live in the areas controlled by the rebel group. About 40 teachers give classes to some 600 children behind rebel lines.

“I teach in the schools in the bush so as to contribute to improving the intellectual capacity of Cabindese children who will continue this liberation struggle,” says Silou. “For that I don’t need a salary. We devote ourselves totally, body and soul, to keeping the Cabindese cultural patrimony alive.”

Others help to feed the combattants, like one elderly woman who refused to give her name but said she had a 21-year-old son in the FLEC-FAC.

“By producing cassava, yams, bananas and other crops we feed our fighters, our husbands and sons,” she said. “In this way we give them the courage to face our Angolan enemy.”

“By accepting to send our young sons to the front, we are sacrificing ourselves for the independence of our country. We accept this with heavy hearts, but we have to do so in the interest of future generations.”

There are reportedly at least 100 child soldiers in the rebel army, whose total strength is a closely guarded secret. Many teenage boys in rebel-controlled zones join up because, after secondary school, they are unable to continue their studies whereas youths in other parts of Cabinda can go to university in Luanda. While the boys bear arms, girls in FLEC territory join the women in tending the fields.

Life is hard for women in the rebel zones, says Fernandez Sakout Jeanne of the Union for the Development and Democracy of the Cabindese People, a political party which, like the FLEC, advocates independence for the enclave. “Women in the struggle have no time to educate their children as they should. They don’t have time to be mothers,”

“During bombings, you can’t give classes to the children,” says Fernandez Sakout, who is based in Brazzaville. “You also can’t go to the hospitals, which are often kilometres away from the villages.”

“How can you expect women to be emancipated in such conditions?” she said, explaining that Cabindese women are already disadvantaged by the fact that few of them have formal education.

“Only a few sisters who live in exile in neighbouring countries (Congo and Zaire) have had an adequate education,” she says. “To fill this gap we are now setting up a mechanism to enable women to express themselves since it’s often men who get together to talk about the problems of Cabinda’s women.

“We want to end all that by giving women the means to express themselves and to be in contact with women elsewhere in the world and in existing women’s movements.”

Asked whether the future of Cabinda should be decided by the gun or through dialogue, Fernandez Sakout responded without hesitation. “We can only silence the guns when the occupant decides on a cease-fire,” she said. “If they don’t stop shooting we shall encourage our men to do likewise. All means, whether weapons or dialogue, are good to achieve this long struggle for independence.”

But the Cabindese themselves are divided. While FLEC-FAC, led by Nzita Henriquez Tiago, has kept on fighting, other groups, such as the FLEC-Renove, have accepted the autonomy proposed by Luanda even though some still hunker after independence. Fernandez Sakout says this has weakened the Cabindese liberation movement.

“We women feel that if the men can make an effort to come together to free Cabinda, they could succeed,” she says. “But if they remain divided, nothing will be resolved.”

That issue is scheduled to come up at a meeting of Cabindese political groups to be held in June in Libreville, Gabon.