Rebels and Robbers: Violence in Post-Colonial Angola

263 Pages·2007·1.239 MB·English

by  Assis Malaquias

Rebels and Robbers
Violence in Post-Colonial Angola
Assis Malaquias
Nordiska afrikaiNstitutet, uppsala 2007
Indexing terms:
Violence
social structure
obstacles to development
political aspects
political power
Civil war
peace
Nation building
National security
post-conflict reconstruction
angola
language checking: elaine almén
index: Margaret Binns
Cover photo: angola War. Military training for members of Movement for the
liberation of angola in kinknzu, Zaire. august 27, 1973. © tramonto
isBN 978-91-7106-580-3
© The author and Nordiska afrikainstitutet 2007
printed in sweden by elanders Gotab aB, stockholm 2007
Dedication
To my mother Amélia Ussova Malaquias
and to the memory of my father Mimoso Nelson Malaquias,
for their inspiration
To my daughters
Chyara Malaquias and Nafela Malaquias,
for their love

Contents
acknowledgements ………………………………………………………… 7
preface …………………………………………………………………… 9
introduction ……………………………………………………………………… 11
1. Background
legacies of diversity, wealth, and colonialism …… 23
2. Violence and fractured Nationalism …………………… 45
3. external interventions and internal Violence ……… 72
4. uNita’s insurgency
Mutations and self-mutilations …………………………… 91
5. The problematic post-Colonial state …………………… 115
6. War termination as survival strategy …………………… 137
7. post-Conflict Challenges
identity and governance …………………………… 169
8. toward a Citizen-friendly state ………………………… 189
9. external dimensions of positive peace …………… 207
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………… 238
list of acronyms ……………………………………………………………… 243
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………… 245
index …………………………………………………………………………………… 259
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Acknowledgements
i owe an immense debt of gratitude to many people who, over the
years, have encouraged me to write this book. Many of them were fel-
low african(ist) graduate students at dalhousie university who were at-
tracted to Halifax by our dynamic and devoted mentor, professor tim
shaw. under tim’s guidance, this group – including david Black, John
inegbedion, abilah omari, sandra Mclean, the late Joshua Mungenyi,
and larry swatuk – became an informal think tank where impromptu,
lengthy, and intense discussions about africa regularly took place. i
learned much from those discussions, often held at the Grad House. i
am most thankful to this group of friends and colleagues for the cama-
raderie and all the help and encouragement they gave me.
i am also indebted to my colleagues in the department of Govern-
ment at st. lawrence university. for the past decade, this extraordi-
nary group of individuals – patti ashlaw, alan draper, Gus diZerega,
fed exoo, sandy Hinchman, Grace Huang, Joe kling, Val lehr, laura
o’shaughnessey, ansil ramsey, karl schonberg, and Bob Wells – have
provided me with the perfect environment to write this book. Their
encouragement and support played a critical role in my ability to con-
clude this project while fulfilling my various other responsibilities as a
member of the department and within the wider st. lawrence com-
munity.
This book received its final touches while i was on sabbatical at the
university of the Western Cape in south africa in the fall of 2004. i
am very thankful to the head of the department of political studies,
my friend and colleague keith Gottschalk, for ensuring that i had an
office and a computer to finish my manuscript. in addition to provid-
ing me with the material conditions to finish the book, he regularly
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dropped in to offer a cup of coffee and his brilliant insights about the
complexities of the regional context of which angola is an important
part.
sonja Johansson of the Nordic africa institute quickly recognized
the project’s potential and played a critical role in guiding it through
the final stages. i thank her and the anonymous reviewers who care-
fully read the manuscript and offered constructive comments on both
form and substance.
above all, i am most thankful to the many angolans who gener-
ously shared with me their insights about the conflict analyzed in this
book.
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Preface
after more than four decades, violent conflict has been absent from
angola for four years. The key challenge for this richly endowed coun-
try in the decades ahead is to undertake the arduous transition from
negative to positive peace. Given the legacies of colonial and post-co-
lonial violence, the achievement of positive peace is by no means guar-
anteed – at least not in the foreseeable future. This book highlights this
challenge by analyzing some of the critical historical and contemporary
factors hindering the attainment of positive peace in angola.
The book had a long gestation period. it is the culmination of years of
research and writing about the political economy of angola’s turbulent
transitions: first toward independence and statehood and, later, toward
peace. over the years, the focus of my research has expanded from the
relatively narrow relationship between oil and conflict to the political
and economic dynamics of transition away from a system dominated
by a single political party overseeing a command economy toward a
system based on multiparty politics and free-market economics. i had
not, initially, set out to write a book. But the number of requests i
regularly received to write and speak about the conflict in angola sug-
gested that there was sufficient interest among scholars, students, and
the general public to justify writing a book on the subject.
The book’s long gestation also reflects its ambitious scope. When
analyzing angola’s conflict, it is not difficult to fall into the temptation
of reducing the conflict to a single major analytical variable: whether
ethnicity, ideology, resources, personality, and so on. such variables
can, admittedly, be useful as lenses through which angola’s recent chal-
lenges can be viewed. undoubtedly, ethnicity played an important role
in creating the conditions for the long civil war. likewise, the ideologi-
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cal rivalries that developed in the context of the wider global conflict
between east and West during the Cold War contributed to the length,
intractability, and lethality of angola’s conflict. But ideology alone can-
not explain why this particular conflict lasted for several decades. even
when, ideology was no longer a major factor fueling global instability,
angola did not follow international trends deemphasizing ideological
differences as a way to resolve conflicts. instead, angola’s conflict only
came to an end after the death of one its key personalities. This would
appear to confirm the centrality of the personal level of analysis in un-
derstanding the dynamics of the conflict. But a focus on the personali-
ties is not sufficient to fully explain the causes, dynamics, and length of
the conflict. peace, even of the negative kind, was delayed because war
was too profitable for too many key domestic players. in other words,
the availability of economic resources played a key role as well.
The book recognizes that multiple factors must be taken into ac-
count to gain a clear view of the big picture. such factors are all pieces
of a complex puzzle. The process of putting all the pieces together was
both challenging and enjoyable. admittedly, this is not a static puzzle
because it is shaped by changing challenges facing angola.
Canton, N.Y., october 2006
assis Malaquias
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