Africa, Headlines | Analysis

ANGOLA: Peace in Cabinda, the Enclave Between the Two Congos

Analysis by Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Aug 1 2006 (IPS) - Tuesday’s signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for Peace and Reconciliation in Cabinda marks the end of 45 years of violence afflicting this Angolan province, the richest in the country because of its oil, gold, diamonds, phosphate, uranium, potassium and exotic woods.

The agreement between the Angolan government and the Cabinda Forum for Dialogue (FCD), however, is apparently only a formal one. Observers in Lisbon believe it is an important step forward on the road to ending violence, but that it is not a true peace accord. Instead, they say, it is a “conquerors’ peace” imposed by the Angolan government of President José Eduardo dos Santos.

Divided from the rest of Angola and sandwiched between the former French colony of the Republic of the Congo (also called Congo-Brazzaville, for its capital), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) – previously a Belgian colony and formerly called Zaire – the enclave of Cabinda was a major theatre of operations in the Angolan war of independence which broke out in 1961 and ended in 1974 with a coup d’état by leftwing captains of the Portuguese army.

However, the independence of this vast (1.25 million square kilometres) former Portuguese colony in southern Africa, with a population of 15 million people, and the end of Angola’s 1975-2002 civil war did not bring peace to the nearly 300,000 people living in the 7,300 square kilometres comprising the Cabinda enclave.

The Angolan government found it necessary to send 40,000 soldiers to Cabinda to prevent separatist guerrillas from taking power, and so it pre-empted possible options of independence or autonomy, and forced the FCD to negotiate a counter proposal for a special statute.

Not until Tuesday did the signatures of the Angolan minister for Territorial Administration, Virgilio de Fontes Pereira, and the FCD president, Antonio Bento Bembe, formally end four and a half decades of armed conflict in Cabinda, three of which took place during Angola’s existence as an independent country.

The ceremony held in the municipality of Namibe, a port on the south coast of Angola, was attended by government officials, political and religious leaders, ambassadors of several other countries, traditional tribal chiefs and representatives of civil society.

Peace was agreed between the Angolan government and the FCD at a meeting held Jul. 14-15 in Brazzaville. A ceasefire was declared between the warring sides and signed by their military commanders on Jul. 18 in the village of Chicamba, in Cabinda province. The peace deal outlines five basic principles: an amnesty, a ceasefire, demilitarisation of the FCD-controlled forces, a reduction in the number of the Angolan armed forces in Cabinda, and the reinsertion of the former rebels into society.

A local government with political and economic powers will be installed, under the control of the central government in Luanda, and Cabinda will have “special status based on the Constitutional Law and other legislation in force in the Republic of Angola, as a united and indivisible nation.”

The memorandum declares an amnesty for all crimes committed in the context of the armed conflict, and stipulates also that the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) guerrillas must disarm under the authority of the FCD.

However, the peace agreement is unlikely to enjoy a smooth reception. It has already been denounced by the historic leader-in-exile of a dissident sector of FLEC, Henrique N’Zita Tiago, who from Paris insists on negotiating directly with President Dos Santos.

“The Memorandum has nobody’s support. The people of Cabinda will not accept such a document. Hold a referendum, so that the Cabindan people can express their opinion. Angola has invaded a territory which is outside its boundaries,” N’Zita Tiago told the Lusa news agency in an interview.

In spite of what he says, during the war of independence, guerrillas from the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), led by legendary commander Caetano John Jacobo, came from other parts of the country to fight the Portuguese army, even though FLEC had been in existence since 1960.

In these circumstances, the last governor of Angola to be designated by the Armed Forces Movement’s Council of the Revolution, Admiral Antonio D’Alba Rosa Coutinho, included Cabinda as part of Angolan territory when he handed over power to the MPLA.

But N’Zita Tiago argues that, according to international law, “Cabinda is still a Portuguese protectorate, and the fact that the Portuguese abandoned us, does not authorise the Angolans to occupy us as colonialists.”

Cabinda is where most of Angola’s oil is produced, which made it an attractive target for the armed separatist struggle led by FLEC since 1975. The aim was to transform the enclave, whose population is living in extreme poverty, into a rich crude oil exporting country.

Separatists base their claim on treaties entered into by the Portuguese Crown with local populations 120 years ago, and espouse the view that the territory is still a Portuguese protectorate.

In fact, the treaties of Simulambuco, Chinfuma and Chicamba were signed by the Portuguese with the rulers of the traditional Cabindan kingdoms of N’Goyo, Kacongo and Loango, between 1883 and 1885.

By virtue of these treaties, Portugal was able to safeguard its claim to Cabinda, which was also coveted by the colonial powers of Belgium, Britain and France at the Berlin Conference (1884-1885), where a wholesale European carve-up of Africa took place.

Early this year, N’Zita Tiago used these arguments based on the 19th century treaties to temporarily topple Antonio Bento Bembe from the presidency of the FDC, and refused to take part in the so-called “discreet contacts” with the Luanda government which went on for over 12 months, and finally led to Tuesday’s signing of the peace agreement.

According to General Helder Vieira Dias, military chief of staff of the presidency of the Republic of Angola, N’Zita Tiago did not participate, not because he had been excluded, but because he simply did not agree with the aim of the negotiations, which were not going to result in independence for the enclave.

FCD spokesman Macário Romão Lembe told Portuguese correspondents in Angola that the agreement brings to an end “a war whose main consequence was the misery of the people.” But Romão Lembe’s final words suggested that the long and complicated history of the enclave is still far from a definitive settlement: “Today we choose to accept what is possible, the Memorandum of Understanding for Peace, but independence is Cabinda’s right and desire.”