Desi is a South African student in New Zealand.
Bill
-----Original Message-----
From: Desigin Thulkanam
[mailto:Desigin.Thulkanam@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, 27 February 2002 2:13 pm
Subject: In case you missed this:
A Cold War monster Jonas Savimbi is dead.
Hi People
There has been little coverage about this in the media, Morning Report ran a
few minutes. A few reminders about that history.
The implications of Savimbi's death are major for the region. For decades, the
mineral wealth, oil and diamonds, was pillaged and used to finance the cold war
efforts in Angola. First financed by the CIA and then
later on a management contract from the CIA to the South African army and
finally support was taken over by the SADF as the destabilisation of frontline
states efforts, UNITA was very much the a creature of imperialism. Savimbi's
campaign with South African military support was part of the "secret
war" which prevented a socialist Angolan state from developing. This
brought the apartheid- state violence for whites, from the screen to the their
homes when their own children came home in body bags from classified locations
in the African hinterland. This jolted settler confidence in their state
apparatus. All this changed with the fall of the Soviet Union but not Savimbi.
Savimbi was supported right until Bush Snr was in power and was even given a
state leader's welcome by the Rea-gun. Sounds familiar?
desi
Unita to die with Savimbi
The rebel Angolan leader Jonas Savimbi, shot dead last week, was a secretive,
dangerous tyrant, writes Peter Beaumont
Sunday February 24, 2002
The Observer
Thet will be burying Jonas Savimbi's body in the village of Lucusse. But yesterday the body of the
veteran Unita guerrilla leader, once the favourite of America and the West, was displayed for
all the world to see - to prove that Savimbi's 30-year insurgency is over.
The elusive guerrilla died in a clash not far from the village in Moxico
province on Friday when his column was surrounded by government troops. Shot 15
times, a bullet through his throat, Savimbi's ambition to lead his fighters
into the country's capital - in a war that has claimed 500,000 lives - is
finally over.
His fighters laid siege to a country's cities, starved and enslaved its people,
and sowed its fields with mines. In 30 years they drove a third of the
population from their homes in their battle with the government.
Last night Angolan television broadcast images of his body to prove it was
67-year-old Savimbi. Dressed in blood-stained combat fatigues, his body was
shown laid out on a makeshift table on grass beneath a tree.
A gunshot wound was visible on Savimbi's neck, but otherwise his face was
undamaged. Flies crawled across his face and his eyes were half-open. Army
soldiers were shown looking on.
Yesterday Angolan army sources described Savimbi's last few hours, detailing
how they chased him and a group of rebel soldiers across two rivers. The army
cornered Savimbi next to the second river and targeted him with heavy fire. The
report said 21 other Unita soldiers were killed with Savimbi, including two
generals.
Among the wounded was one of Savimbi's wives, identified as Catarina, who was
wounded in the clash and was taken to a nearby hospital.
With Savimbi's death Angola's government yesterday urged the
fighters of Unita to come in from the long war in the forests and the bush.
Last August I went in search of Jonas Savimbi, interviewing the men who knew
the most about him and his methods - deserters from his Unita organisation
being held at the town of Kamacupa, half a day's drive from Kuito,
the regional capital.
We were led to a half-ruined compound where 50 Unita soldiers, police and
political cadres had been housed since crossing the lines a few months before.
Their spokesman was a tall, lean man of almost 50, Bernardo Antoni. He said he
had spent 27 years fighting for Savimbi, as a soldier between 1974 and 1994 and
later as a member of the Unita police.
'I was obliged to do active service since 1974 without pay or any benefits,' he
told me. 'I could not continue. People who live with Unita simply live from lie
to lie. Our commanders told us "Tomorrow you shall have this or
that". They tell us what we will achieve, but it never came. They are lies
that last for years.
'I am happy now because now I have a shirt and trousers and somewhere to live.
When I was in the bush I had only rags to wear.'
When I asked for news of Savimbi, the men seem surprised. 'I never saw him once
in 27 years,' said Antoni. 'I only had contact with my own commanders. Savimbi
does not like to be seen by everyone. He stays in the background and gives orders.
Whoever does not follow them is killed.'
I asked if they had seen this happen. They all clamoured in assent.
I heard stories of the summary murder of anyone who stood in his way, of the
immolation of opponents and their families on bonfires as 'witches'. I heard,
too, of a man who was run over by a tractor as his family watched.
Savimbi's last months were a game of cat-and-mouse with the Angolan army,
closing in on his column as it moved through the bush of Angola's central highlands. His army was
once supported by South Africa and the US against the Marxist-Leninist
government of Jose Dos Santos, which was backed in turn by the Soviet Union and Cuba. In 1986, the rebel leader trav
elled to Washington where he was received like a head
of state, meeting Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office.
But after the break-up of the Soviet Union, the government dropped its
Marxist policies and moved closer to the US, prompting American oil companies
to invest billions of dollars in Angola.
Also, Savimbi's rejection of his defeat in Angola's first elections in 1992 and his
return to war left him isolated as Western powers pushed for democracy in Africa.
By late last year Unita had been transformed into an ideology-free Khmer Rouge,
slaves to a messianic personality cult, fighting without wages or proper
clothes in thrall to one man's dream of absolute power.
By then Unita had lost the tanks, planes and airbases that had made it such a
formidable threat. UN sanctions had also closed Savimbi's lines of military
supply from Bulgaria and Ukraine via Zambia, South Africa and Burkina Faso.
In recent months, even Savimbi's vast personal wealth - looted from the
country's diamond mines - was under threat as Richard Ryan, the Irish diplomat
who heads the sanctions committee on Angola, asked investigators Kroll
Associates in New York to track his overseas assets.
Then Ryan told me from New York: 'Unita have been reduced to a
pedestrian army, starving and clothed in rags. If they are dangerous, it is the
last gasp of a dying animal.'
But what of Dr Jonas Savimbi himself in his last days?
People told me then that he had been suffering from high blood pressure and
that his medicine was smuggled in across the Zambian border. They told me he
moved every night, never sleeping twice in the same bed, rarely sleeping in any
case but reading voraciously. A favourite book was Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
But the story I liked best depicted him travelling the country's rivers by
motorised canoe, gliding from river base to river base with his wives and many
children.
It is unlikely now that Unita can survive without him. The main fear is what
will happen as Unita fragments. Hermann Hannekon of the Africa Institute of
South Africa, an academic research group, said yesterday the main concern if
Savimbi has died is that Unita may break up into lawless armed gangs that could
menace civilians in remote areas.
There is no natural successor to replace Savimbi, who has ruled the group
ruthlessly since he founded it in 1966 to battle Portugal's colonial administration. Unita
vice-president Antonio Dembo, as well as Savimbi's close aide, Paulo Lukamba
Gato, are believed to be hiding in rural Angola.
The challenge, say diplomats and observers, is to persuade the Angolan
government to be generous in victory in the terms for Unita's surrender, to
persuade them to lay down their arms and go home. Then, perhaps, another of Africa's long wars will finally be over
Pentagon Denies Role in Tracking and
Killing Savimbi
Alex Belida
Pentagon
25 Feb 2002 21:12 UTC
U.S.
defense officials say the Pentagon had no role in the tracking down and killing
of Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.
"No, unequivocally, no." That is how defense officials respond when
asked if the United States
provided any intelligence or other military assistance to Angola's
armed forces in tracking down and killing UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.
The denial comes just days after Angolan authorities revealed the 67 year-old
Savimbi was shot and killed by government troops in a firefight near the
Zambian border.
It also comes on the eve of talks here in Washington
between President Bush and Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos.
Mr. Dos Santos is long known to have wanted U.S.
help in his government's hunt for the fugitive rebel leader.
But some 18 months ago, U.S.
officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told VOA Washington had refused
to provide any help because it did not want to be a party to Mr. Savimbi's
death.
Diplomatic sources say Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos had issued
orders that Mr. Savimbi was to be captured alive and brought to the capital, Luanda,
to stand trial on criminal charges.
But even senior aides to the Angolan leader had conceded any soldiers involved
in Mr. Savimbi's capture would be unlikely to restrain themselves. These aides
were convinced the rebel leader would be killed on the spot in retaliation for
the years of bloodshed he is accused of causing in Angola.
Angola has not
enjoyed peace since its independence from Portugal
in 1975. A 1994 peace agreement triggered hopes of an end to civil strife. But
Mr. Savimbi refused to live up to his disarmament commitments under the United
Nations brokered deal, and the government launched what was billed in Luanda
as "the final war for peace" in late 1998.
A year later, the offensive forced Mr. Savimbi to abandon UNITA's traditional
strongholds in Angola's
Central Highlands. He had been on the run since then.
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Pravda.RU:Politics:More in detail
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11:00 2002-02-26ANGOLA: REACTIONS TO SAVIMBI DEATH
Generalised hopes for peace as President Santos visits Washington.
In Lisbon, rumours that US
intelligence was behind the death of Savimbi.
President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’
visit to Washington was scheduled
around a month ago and curiously, on the eve of the visit, the rebel movement
UNITA’s leader Jonas Savimbi was killed by Angolan government troops.
White House spokesperson Richard Boucher declared that George Bush will ask
President Santos to proceed with peace after 27 years of a bloody civil war
which has left 100,000 dead and a further 100,000 maimed.
The Bush administration, without expressing sorrow for the death of Jonas
Savimbi, despite his having been a privileged ally of Washington
for decades, described him as “a new victim of the war which should have
finished a long time ago”.
The USA, Russian
Federation and Portugal
make up the troika of nations which are the observers of the Angolan peace
process. The efforts of this troika resulted in the peace treaties of Bicesse
(1991) and Lusaka (1994), both of
which failed. The first, because the UNITA leadership was massacred in Luanda
by MPLA after a hung election. Those leaders who managed to escape, Savimbi
among them, fled back to the bush. Lusaka
failed because UNITA did not seize the opportunity to disarm and integrate into
the Angolan Armed Forces basically because Savimbi did not want to be
vice-President.
Gone are the times when Jonas Savimbi was feted as a hero in Washington,
being decorated by Ronald Reagan as a Freedom Fighter in 1986. As Cabinda’s
oil became more and more important and as the USA
became its main destination, UNITA was officially dropped.
Regarding the future, the Portuguese Foreign Minister, Dr. Jaime Gama, declared
after his one-hour meeting with President Santos, that “he is committed
to taking positive and very rapid steps” towards a lasting peace in
Angola and that in the near, “but not immediate” future, there will
be democratic elections.
The big question mark is what happens in the meantime. UNITA itself is divided
internally. Although Antonio Sebastiao Dembo is the vice-President of UNITA and
as such should naturally succeed Savimbi, others may covet the position,
provoking na internal struggle. Certainly, UNITA declares that it was not a
one-man movement. Abel Chivukuvuku, one of the senior figures in the movement,
declares that MPLA did not finish when Agostinho Neto died, so neither will
UNITA on the death of Jonas Savimbi. Chivukuvuku goes further, claiming that
“The liquidation of Jonas Savimbi was always on the agenda of the
MPLA...because it is the only party which can offer democracy to Angola”.
He added that MPLA “also wants to physically liquidate other UNITA
leaders in the bush” (a reference to number 2 General Antonio Dembo,
General Paulo Lukamba Gato and Alcides Sakala). He went on to denounce that
although the government had announced a complete cease-fire, this is not the
case on the battle front. He states that UNITA fears that the government forces
will try to eliminate as many of its leaders as possible before elections are
called.
In Lisbon, Joao Soares, son of
ex-president Mario Soares and ex-Mayor of Lisbon,
who visited Savimbi on three occasions in Angola,
suspects that Savimbi was killed as a result of US
intelligence. “The truth is that it was probably the Americans who
provided the satellite intelligence information which led to his death”.
He also claims that MPLA uses former soldiers of the South African Defence
Force as its mercenaries.
Both Jonas Savimbi and Jose Eduardo dos Santos,
along with those around them, lived comfortable lives supported by commissions
from the war effort and by sacking Angola’s
vast natural wealth. President Santos is claimed by some to be one of the richest
men in the world. Well may be step down, with the conscience that neither he
not Savimbi served their people justly although either one could claim that
there could never be peace without the disappearance of the other.
Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY