Column

The world is gearing up to celebrate the first United Nations International Day of Democracy on September 15. I suspect the celebrations would focus on high profile democracies and not so much on our newest democracy — Angola. That’s the country in South-West Africa which has recently broken free of 40 years of war (first against the Portuguese rulers, then a civil war) and has declared this week the results of their first ever peacetime elections.

So why is this chunk of darkest Africa important? Because Angola is the world’s fastest growing economy. It is Africa’s leading oil producer and China’s biggest oil supplier. Its capital, Luanda, is the world’s most expensive city — not Tokyo, London or Moscow. Because Angola is inching its way up from a bottomless pit of violence, inequality, injustice, misery and devastation with remarkable skill. Angola’s success as a democracy would be a huge tribute to human endeavour and collective political will.

To me, Angola’s civil war was more depressing than scary, even though I had two miraculous saves over there — once escaping a shell, and once a landmine. The Angola I saw in 1999 was a broken-down dump of internal refugees and tired locals with no escape route. People with no education or training, no jobs except with the military, stuck in bullet-riddled houses in a war-locked country with no landmine-free roads, with no money to fly out, no place to go except refugee camps on the coast. It was a country of no hope, tired of war but too divided to see it stop.

The violence had started in 1961, as an anti-colonial freedom struggle. The ruling Portuguese left in 1975, leaving a vacuum in which the communist MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) and the anti-communist UNITA (Union for the Total Independence of Angola) fought for control. Russia and Cuba stepped in to protect their comrades against the rebels backed by South Africa and the US.

In 1992, there was a brief interlude as elections were held to find a way out of the violence. The MPLA won, but UNITA rejected the results and plunged the country back into civil war. Angola’s rich mineral resources turned out to be a curse as the government used the country’s splendid oil reserves and the rebels its numerous diamond mines to fuel the war. The fighting ended in 2002, when UNITA chief Jonas Savimbi was killed. The new leader general Paulo Lukamba steered away from the ruthless guerrilla war and revamped it as a political party. “At the end of the war, it is necessary for leaders to humbly and courageously assume their responsibility in redressing any wrongs, hurts, scars, both physically and morally,” said Lukamba before the elections last week. “I’m sufficiently humble and have intellectual courage to tell
Angolans: Forgive us.”

It’s not easy to forgive when two generations have grown up with mindless violence and no education. The stunning inequality of wealth I saw a decade ago was only second to the inequality of opportunities that four decades of civil war can achieve. The life expectancy is still about 40 years, and half the population is under 15. Hopefully these elections will stabilise the country by establishing democracy and rule of law, developing tolerance, free speech, better human rights, infrastructure and increasing human capability through education, training and health care.

President Jose dos Santos’s MPLA have swept the polls. And this time the UNITA has accepted their victory. Their collaboration in parliament and the devastated country they rebuild together will be a true celebration of democracy.

The writer is Editor of The Little Magazine.
Email: sen@littlemag.com