Angola

Another Day of Life

In 1975, Angola was tumbling into pandemonium; everyone who could was packing crates, desperate to abandon the beleaguered colony. With his trademark bravura, Ryszard Kapuscinski went the other way, begging his was from Lisbon and comfort to Luanda—once famed as Africa's Rio de Janeiro—and chaos.

Angola, a slave colony later given over to mining and plantations, was a promised land for generations of poor Portuguese. It had belonged to Portugal since before there were English-speakers in North America. After the collapse of the fascist dictatorship in Portugal in 1974, Angola was brusquely cut loose, spurring the catastrophe of a still-ongoing civil war. Kapuscinski plunged right into the middle of the drama, driving past thousands of haphazardly placed check-points, where using the wrong shibboleth was a matter of life and death; recording his imporessions of the young soldiers—from Cuba, Angola, South Africa, Portugal—fighting a nebulous war with global repercussions; and examining the peculiar brutality of a country surprised and divided by its newfound freedom.

Translated from the Polish by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand.

Angola: The Weight of History (Columbia/Hurst)

Multiparty elections in 2008 will, it is hoped, cement a transition towards peaceful stability in Angola, which has suffered from over forty years of violent civil war. Since the end of the conflict in 2002, there has been renewed optimism that Angola, a former Portuguese colony with abundant natural resources, would finally evolve a political system that would ensure the country's sustained economic and social development. Some scholars and economists argue that the Angolan people could be on the cusp of a giant leap forward, based on the state's booming oil sector, which would lay the groundwork for long-term economic prosperity. But is this a realistic scenario?

Patrick Chabal and Nuno Vidal's Angola is a thorough introduction to the history and present-day reality of one of Africa's most complex countries. Contributors, who are all leading scholars in the field, offer incisive and original analyses of Angola's colonial history, its economic, political, and social evolution since independence, its current structural issues, and its prospects for the future. Essays begin with a probing look at Angola's difficult past and then discuss its move away from hegemonic domination towards a multiparty political system and a civil society.

Angola: The Anatomy of an Oil State (African Issues)

Why Peacekeeping Fails

Dennis Jett examines why peacekeeping operations fail by comparing the unsuccessful attempt at peacekeeping in Angola with the successful effort in Mozambique, alongside a wide range of other peacekeeping experiences.

The book argues that while the causes of past peacekeeping failures can be identified, the chances for success will be difficult to improve because of the way such operations are initiated and conducted and the way the United Nations operates as an organization. Jett reviews the history of peacekeeping and the evolution in the number, size, scope and cost of peacekeeping missions. He also explains why peacekeeping has become more necessary, possible and desired and yet, at the same time, more complex, more difficult and less frequently used.

The book takes a hard look at the UN's actions and provides useful information for understanding current conflicts.

Angola: Promises and Lies

Angola's civil war has been the longest and bloodiest in Africa. What was once a proxy conflict between the Cold War superpowers has become an apparently endless ethnic conflict. While the political leaders struggle to control the country's immense reserves of diamonds and oil, ordinary Angolans have been caught in the crossfire of a quarter of a century of conflict.

There have been many books written on Angola, either by South Africans or by authors who have favored and/or defended South Africa's involvement. Maier, through unbiased eyes, records perhaps the clearest view. In 1992 the country was supposed to, under UN auspices, hold its first ever democratic election-but it all went wrong. UNITA's Jonas Savimbi rejected his defeat. Pik Botha, for many years one of Savimbi's greatest defenders, went to Angola to help bring peace to the country. UNITA owes much of its current military strength to Pretoria, just as the MPLA had a huge debt to the Cubans and the former Soviet Union. Botha's diplomatic efforts were no more successful than those of other international peacekeepers and the diplomatic community eventually negotiated a new, though fragile, peace agreement.

Skeptical of both sides' promises and lies about peace, Maier has written a gripping account of conflict in one of the world's most tragic yet least understood war zones.

Big African States: Angola, DRC, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan

The Cuban Intervention in Angola, 1965-1991: From Che Guevara to Cuito Cuanavale (Cass Military Studies)

A new examination of why Cuba, a Caribbean country, sent half a million of its citizens to fight in Angola in Africa, and how a short-term intervention escalated into a lengthy war of intervention.

It clearly details how in January 1965 Cuba formed an alliance with the Angolan MPLA which evolved into the flagship of its global "internationalist" mission, spawning the military intervention of November 1975 culminating in Cuba's spurious "victory" at Cuito Cuanavale and Cuba's fifteen-year occupation of Angola.

Drawing on interviews with leading protagonists, first-hand accounts and archive material from Cuba, Angola and South Africa, this new book dispels the myths of the Cuban intervention, revealing that Havana's decision to intervene was not so much an heroic gesture of solidarity, but rather a last-ditch gamble to avert disaster. By examining Cuba's role in the Angolan War in a global context, this book demonstrates how the interaction between the many players in Angola shaped and affected Cuba's intervention as it headed towards its controversial conclusion.

Culture and Customs of Angola (Culture and Customs of Africa)

Angola has been brutalized by the civil war, which only ended in 1992. The war's adverse effect on every facet of Angola's post-independence life is clearly evident in the range of topics covered in this volume. The human cost of the war can be counted in the enormous loss of life and large-scale population displacement and in the continued postwar deaths and serious injuries inflicted by mines. The war also severely stunted economic growth and the development of necessary social services. However, since the end of the war Angola is slowly progressing. Many people have returned to their homes to continue their life. The task of rebuilding has been greatly assisted by humanitarian aid. Readers will learn about the nearly 100 ethnolinguistic groups and their various ways of life. Oyebade shows how religion defines the cultural character of the country. Christianity, the dominant religion, is portrayed as more urban-based, popular among the educated elite and middle class. Indigenous religious practices, still popular particularly in the rural areas, are covered as well. Oyebade celebrates the prolific Portuguese-language literary output and the skilled Angolan artists. Discussion of the traditional foods, ceremonies, music and dance, and more rounds out the coverage.

Empire in Africa: Angola and Its Neighbors (Ohio RIS Africa Series)

The dark years of European fascism left their indelible mark on Africa. As late as the 1970s, Angola was still ruled by white autocrats, whose dictatorship was eventually overthrown by black nationalists who had never experienced either the rule of law or participatory democracy. Empire in Africa takes the long view of history and asks whether the colonizing ventures of the Portuguese can bear comparison with those of the Mediterranean Ottomans or those experienced by Angola’s neighbors in the Belgian Congo, French Equatorial Africa, or the Dutch colonies at the Cape of Good Hope and in the Transvaal. David Birmingham takes the reader through Angola’s troubled past, which included endemic warfare for the first twenty-five years of independence, and examines the fact that in the absence of a viable neocolonial referee such as Britain or France, the warring parties turned to Cold War superpowers for a supply of guns. For a decade Angola replaced Vietnam as a field in which an international war by proxy was conducted. Empire in Africa explains how this African nation went from colony to independence, how in the 1990s the Cold War legacy turned to civil war, and how peace finally dawned in 2002.

Sowing the Dragon's Teeth: Land Mines and the Global Legacy of War

"Gives the statistics a painfully human face."

—The Washington Post Book World



Philip Winslow offers the most complete and compelling book on land mines—the issue brought to world attention with the awarding of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize to the Campaign to Ban Land Mines. He draws on his years as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, the Balkans, and Africa, and journeys into rural Angola, where he introduces us to the victims, the deminers, and the way land mines destroy economies and infrastructures. He also writes about the Campaign to Ban Land Mines and the ways we might finally pull the "dragon's teeth" from the earth, to restore it to those who live there.
"Winslow's fine book puts names and faces to the victims and begs us to beware. Only such harrowing testimony and eloquent pleading will rid us of this scourge."


—William F. Schulz, executive director, Amnesty International
"Winslow's moving and powerful book shows why some weapons are so insidious that they do not belong in the arsenals of civilized nations. A land mine is such a weapon. It should be banished from the earth."


—U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy
"Makes a strong case that such a ban—championed by the late Princess Diana—is a necessity."


—Boston Herald
"A thoughtful, sometimes harrowing portrait."


—Utne Reader