MARCH 13, 1966
UNITA comes into being (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola, “National Union for the Total Independence of Angola”). The creator and leader of this organization is Jonas Savimbi, born in 1934 in the province of Bié, the son of a railroad worker. He had studied in Europe for a time. He underwent military training in Beijing (1964–1965). UNITA was financed by Portuguese settlers, who later created the organization Frente de Resistência Angolana: FRA. The leaders of the FRA were Colonel Gilberto Santos e Castro, the subsequent commander of the mercenaries fighting alongside the FNLA, as well as the millionaire and banker Antonio Espírito Santo. They wanted to wrest Angola from Portugal and create a state of white settlers (as Ian Smith had done in Rhodesia). UNITA, like the FNLA, is a tribal organization. Its members are recruited from the people of the Ovimbundu tribe. Savimbi, who for years quarreled with Holden Roberto, later created with him a common front against the MPLA. I remember the poster on which Savimbi and Roberto are embracing each other. The words: “Two leaders — one sun of freedom!”
1968
The MPLA moves its headquarters from Brazzaville to the forests of eastern Angola. The armed conflict intensifies.
APRIL 25, 1974
Revolution in Portugal.
JANUARY 15, 1975
The signing of an accord in Alvor, Portugal, between the MPLA, FNLA, UNITA, and the Portuguese government, creating a provisional coalition government in Angola and granting it independence on November 11, 1975.
JANUARY 30, 1975
The provisional government goes into effect in Luanda. Five months later, the FNLA and UNITA resign from it.
MARCH 1975
Bloody riots in Luanda. The civilian population of the capital, declaring itself for the MPLA, is attacked by the troops of the FNLA.
APRIL 17, 1975
A split in the MPLA. The chief of staff of the MPLA army, Daniel Chipenda, goes over to the FNLA. One of the founders of the organization, Mario de Andrade, also leaves the directorate of the MPLA.
JULY 1975
The MPLA liberates Luanda from the divisions of the FNLA. The majority of Angola’s territory comes under the control of the MPLA.
AUGUST 27, 1975
The troops of the Republic of South Africa first enter Angolan territory in the Cunene region. In a skirmish with them the commander of the southern front of the MPLA, Comandante Kalulu, is killed.
OCTOBER 19, 1975
The first Cuban army unit arrives in Luanda.
NOVEMBER 11, 1975
The creation of the People’s Republic of Angola. In accordance with the MPLA program, the new republic is to be a people’s democracy, in which the principal natural resources, as well as the principal elements of the economy, will be the property of the state. All citizens have a right to employment and education. Angola will conduct a politics of positive neutrality. Agostinho Neto becomes the republic’s first president.
NOVEMBER 1975
The start of the counteroffensive by the army of the MPLA, supported by units of the Cuban army. During December and January the armies of the FNLA and UNITA are destroyed.
JULY 3, 1976
The destruction of a detachment of mercenaries commanded by the so-called Colonel Callan.
MARCH 27, 1976
The last South African army units withdraw from Angolan territory. They return along the same road that I once drove with Diogenes, and later with Farrusco, eaten by a fear I will never forget. Where is Farrusco now? Alive, probably. People in Lubango hid him during the invasion, he lay there for a long time, his wounds finally healed. He was a tough man. I don’t know what happened to Diogenes. I would like to think that he’s alive, too. Antonio was killed. Carlos was killed. It is calm on all fronts.
Those British mercenaries who escaped from the northern front are already in London, telling what they did in Angola. “Some people,” one of them says in a BBC report, “think that war is a nice, light flesh wound in the leg. They’re wrong. War is a head smashed to pulp, legs blown off, guys crawling in a circle with their guts spilling out, a guy soaked in napalm but still alive. It hardens you. For instance, you find a wounded Cuban and turn him over on his back, he makes some sort of movement. You think he’s going for a gun so you shoot him dead. But maybe he only wanted to pull out a photograph of his wife and say ‘Help me.’ And you shot him. You just didn’t want to take the risk. If a person fires into a moving wall of people he doesn’t look at their faces, doesn’t look at the people. He simply shoots at the silhouettes and doesn’t connect them with any human beings. When you come up directly on somebody and fight hand to hand, then you see plainly that it’s a person just like you, but then your life is usually at stake. You have to kill him before he kills you. I killed my first man when I was seventeen, seventeen and a half, maybe eighteen, in Aden. Later, I had nightmares — battle shock — and I woke up screaming, but now, now I can’t even remember what that guy looked like.”
Pieter Botha, the defense minister of the Republic of South Africa, passes his army in review as it returns from war across the border bridge over the Cunene River. Although the soldiers cross the bridge in silence, there is a lot of shouting and screaming in the vicinity, since at the same time the FNLA and UNITA units that until that moment had accompanied the white South African soldiers are throwing themselves into the river en masse and splashing across toward Namibia. Many drown in crossing. But the war has ended, the democracy of the front has ended; and the law of segregation applies again: Passage across the bridge is for whites only.
The years 1976–2000: the war continues. It is one of the longest-lasting armed conflicts in the contemporary world. Has anything changed? Unfortunately, not much. Yes, the Cubans have departed. As have the South Africans. But the Angolans are still there — it is their country: a country divided, torn apart, ruined by civil war, whose central government has been consumed for three decades by the rebellion of Jonas Savimbi.
The government has plentiful deposits of oil. Savimbi: great diamond mines. Each side reaps substantial revenues from these riches, which allow them to wage war into infinity. Maybe a million have already died in the fighting, but there are several million still alive; the list of victims will continue to grow.
I return in my thoughts to those I had met then. What has become of them? If Diogenes is no longer alive, it may well be that his sons are fighting. And strong, stocky, courageous Farrusco? Even if he did survive, he would be too old now to be in the trenches. But I remember him saying that a son had just been born to him. So if I were to meet a young officer on the Angolan front these days, ask him his name, and hear that it’s Farrusco, I would answer: Years ago, I rode in a jeep with someone who had the same last name. Yes, the young officer would concur, that was my father.
And tall, silent Comandante Ndozi? Ndozi is no longer alive. He was blown up by a mine. Monti was also blown up by a mine. Powerful, cheerful Batalha as well. In these wars, enemies see each other face-to-face less and less frequently. They perish as they walk, while everything around them is empty and quiet. Death comes at them covertly, lying in wait under some sand, beneath a stone, under a clump of blackthorn. The earth was once the source of life, a granary, something desirable. Now, in these parts, man regards the earth suspiciously, distrustfully, with fear and loathing.