ANGOLA: Thousands Return Home from Portugal

By Mario de Queiroz Reprint | | Print |

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Mar 3 2003 (IPS) - Thousands of Angolans, Portuguese, and Portuguese-Angolans are returning from Portugal to Angola, a country in southwest Africa which two million people fled during four decades of armed conflict that left a death toll of over one million.

Three peace agreements, signed in 1975, 1992 and 1994, brought little more than short-lived ceasefires. Only the death of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi a year ago put the vast African country of 12 million firmly on the uphill route to peace.

The guns have been silent in Angola for a year, ”which is the best guarantee of safety, so necessary for the return of thousands of people who had fled the war and are longing to go back home,” Joao da Costa Márques, a young doctor from Angola, told IPS.

He said the immense majority of those who wish to return are Angolans living in Portugal and Portuguese citizens who had prospered in Angola.

The process began around five months ago, and between 8,000 and 10,000 Angolans who resided in Portugal or members of Portuguese- Angolan families have returned so far, according to estimates issued in mid-February by the Angolan Embassy in Portugal, which reported that some 400 people a week have been flying from Lisbon to Luanda.

A large majority of the Portuguese nationals who undertake the journey are of Angolan origin and mixed-race descent – ”people who are nostalgic for Africa and have been impatiently waiting for a long time to travel to the country where they lived as children,” said Eliseu Bomba at the Angolan Embassy in Portugal.

Since hostilities ceased the day Savimbi – the head of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) – died, many members of Portugal’s business community began to see the African country as a sort of ”promised land”, where economic recovery was just over the horizon and nearly every area of business would be potentially lucrative.

On Feb. 22, 2002, an Angolan army patrol discovered Savimbi’s hide-out in the country’s central plateau, and shot him dead, putting an end to 41 years of civil war that broke out in February 1961 with the start of the armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule.

In April 1974, a group of leftist army captains in Portugal overthrew Marcello Caetano, the successor to dictator Antonio de Oliveira e Salazar, putting an end to the corporatist, authoritarian regime that had ruled this southern European nation since 1926.

After taking power, the group of middle-ranking officers organised in the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) put an end to Portugal’s wars in the so-called ”overseas provinces” and dismantled the country’s colonial empire in Africa and Asia.

In Angola, the MFA clearly sided with the Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and in 1975 named Antonio de Alva Rosa Coutinho, known as the ”Red Admiral” for his pro-MPLA sympathies, as governor during the transition to independence.

On Nov. 11, 1975, the same day Rosa Coutinho handed over the keys of the former colony to the MPLA, Savimbi withdrew into the jungle to launch the bloodiest and longest war Africa has seen in its history of independence.

UNITA, basically backed by South Africa’s apartheid regime and the United States, held the government forces at bay for over three decades.

The civil war claimed 1.1 million lives, forced two million refugees to flee the country, and left around 400,000 orphans, many of whom are still wandering the streets of Angola’s cities and villages.

Although Angola has basically been reduced to rubble, it still has great wealth in oil, diamonds and coffee, and few doubt that it will begin to experience a rebirth.

There are people in many countries interested in moving to Angola, Augusto Baptista, an Angolan who lives in Portugal, where he is the director of a company that organises travel arrangements to that African nation, told IPS.

”Many engineers and lawyers from (the former Portuguese colonies of) Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Sao Tomé-Príncipe are packing their bags, because they see possibilities for professional advancement in a nation which, although it is not their own home country, is also Portuguese-speaking,” said Baptista.

Bomba, meanwhile, said the Angolan Embassy has information on ”many people living in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Cuba, Brazil, the United States and former Soviet republics who would like to return to Angola.”

But, she added, United Nations support would be needed to plan an orderly return that would provide people with concrete employment prospects.

”There is great confidence in the peace process, because this time it was ‘made by Angolans’,” rather than international peace brokers, said Baptista.

Despite the consolidation of what looks to be a lasting peace, and the country’s potential riches, there are severe problems to be overcome today.

On Feb. 16, the France-based non-governmental organisation Medecins sans Frontieres reported that at least 1.5 million Angolans are suffering from hunger, and that as of late last year, 1.9 million people were dependent on food aid from international relief agencies.

In a report released on Feb. 23, the United Nations predicted that in spite of the country’s newfound peace, over two million Angolans would need humanitarian assistance to make it through the coming year.

Savimbi’s political heir, Gen. Paulo Lukamba Gato, said in an interview published on Feb. 27 by the Lisbon daily ”Publico” that war would not return to Angola.

”We have our feet planted firmly in our past, preserving our character as a movement based on a broad grassroots foundation,” but the new UNITA must have ”a progressive vision, and above all must practice a democratic model of leadership,” rather than Savimbi’s authoritarian style, he said.