History of Angola

This article summarizes the history of the Angola.

Angola is a country of the south-west of the Africa.

Old Portuguese colony, it is the second Portuguese-speaking country by its extent and the third by its population. The Angolan state was born in 1975. The current borders result from European colonization but African nationalities always take precedence over the national feeling.

Origin

The first inhabitants of l´Angola are khoisans alive of hunting and gathering, not knowing neither metal, nor l´agriculture. Their company did not n´était hierarchical but levelling.

The people of language Bantou E started to emigrate by successive waves since the gulf of Guinea and reached the area in the first centuries of the Christian era. The khoisans were gradually pushed back towards the south by Bantous. The latter were métissèrent during the centuries with the people autochtones and were divided into d´innombrables tribes (101 languages are counted) without true official tradition, the tribes n´ayant not delimited their territories, d´armées constant or of tax system. The political unit does not exceed the group of village, it is a cheffery. Each ethnos group s´identifie with a mythical ancestor, but these ethnos groups do not cease d´évoluer with their castes, their religious cleavages giving rise to d´autres often antagonistic ethnos groups. The bantous imposed a hierarchical company and brought the metallurgy and l´agriculture. The grounds were unsaleable and were a collective ownership. L´esclavage was already known, and was legal, the prisoners of war or the criminals becoming of the temporary slaves. The bakongos however managed to create a powerful civilization. The Kongo kingdom (“country of the panther”) ends up dominating the west and was with its apogee at the time of the arrival of Europeans, thanks to the exchange of objects of iron (weapons, hoes) against Ivoire with the people of the interior. The sovereign, the mani-kongo, lived in a vast capital, Mbanza Kongo (the fort of Kongo). The bakongos used the shells like Monnaie, and the weaving of the clothes with raffia or leather as well as the work of metal were reserved to the aristocrats: the mani vangu-vangu. The leopard is regarded as a crowned animal, symbol of the intelligence. Many will be the dignitaries to wear a hat leopard as a crown. The bakongos and Kimbundus are only the people in the area with s´être organized in state in order to protect itself from the incursions of their neighbor in particular of Yakas. In the center of the country, on the plates, another important nation bantoue, Ovimbundus lives, which subject many ethnos groups and a tribe (slaves, cattle, metals) imposes to them their language the umbundu is spread as commercial language in the east of the country. Among his subjected people called péjorativemnt ganguela , one counts inter alia Luchazis, Mbundas and Lwenas or Lovalés.

In the south of Kongos Kimbundus formed the Ndongo kingdom, whose king carries the title of Ngola, (from where the country will draw its name later). When in Ambo or Ovambo luers tribes are directed by various religious leaders, they live of l´élevage and the iron and salt trade.

Civilizations of Black Africa are oral civilizations which do not know the writing, but practice the cave painting. They cultivate a rich person oral tradition (legends, tales) transmitted from generation to generation and use the rates/rhythms of the tom-tom to communicate to far, the rates/rhythms being relayed by several tam-tameurs. In the absence of writing the word is very respected and the inhabitants develop an oral tradition to preserve their history.

Arrival of Europeans

Towards 1482, the explorer Portuguese Diogo Cão reaches the Cape of the Wolf to the mouth of the Fleuve Congo. Portuguese unloads and engraves the blazon of Portugal on the rock of Matadi (in Democratic republic of Congo) and sets up a cross on the Angolan coasts (padrao). The Portuguese benefit initially from the stupor of the Africans seeing for the first time of the white men having unknown firearms, the mani-kongo is taught reading and writing and converted while colleges Jesuits are built. The Portuguese train also masons stones (probably to build churches), Mbanza Kongo is renamed Sao El Salvador (Saint-Saver) of Kongo. The major part of the population saw nevertheless Christianity like an additional magic of the noble ones.

A civil war between pro and anti Portuguese bursts in 1506 and finishes with the victory of the first. But the Portuguese also learned how in Bakongos to manufacture and use arquebuses and mousquets with wicks. The river that Bakongos called Nzadi or Nzere gave Portuguese Zaire. The Kongo kingdom is then with its apogee is account approximately four million inhabitants and is thus populated more than Portugal (1,5 me).

The relations between initially levelling Portuguese and Kongos - exchange of ivory against firearms - turn towards a seizure of Portuguese who, eager to adapt the gold mines and to get slaves for their colonies of the Brésil, employed the force. The Portuguese push Bakongos to make the war against the close ethnos groups in order to capture slaves and exchange them against manufactured goods. In 1567 the counter slave trader of Luanda is built, there was a prison where the slaves were stored while waiting for their loading. Dice their loading the of the same prisoners ethnos group will be separate.

But in 1568 Bayakas wandering razzieurs manage to take Sao El Salvador and the Portuguese must intervene with the first guns. After this failure Bakongos and the Portuguese scramble themselves and the Portuguese take even subjects of the mani-kongo like slaves. They remove two nephews of the Mani-kongo (king) like slaves and an attack against this one fails.

In 1618 Portuguese is driven out of Angola but as of 1630 Bakongos must fight the Spanish slave traders until 1630. The Spaniards seek on their side, of the slaves for Cuba. The port of Benguela will be also a high-place of the draft, provided with a fort.

In 1630 the Dutchmen supplant the Spaniards, the slaves are then off-set towards Brazilian plantations. In 1650 the Portuguese colonists of Brazil manage to drive out the Dutchmen. The war between Kongos and Portuguese takes again and finishes in 1668. The mani-kongo is decapitated during the Bataille of Ambuila and the Royaume of Kongo disappears. Europeans had the control of the armament; they had arquebuses with wheel which enabled them to draw several blows from continuation, the armours and the guns, whereas African, certainly more, had only rifles with wick, lances, arrows, machetes, shields, axes and bludgeons. The European powers will justify the draft of the slaves by racial theories pseudo-scientists (Kant, Hume, Voltaire).

Kongos of current the Congo-Kinshasa were touched by the draft because the Portuguese slave traders were afraid of the rapids on the Congo river.

In 1671 Portuguese to overcome the Kimbundu armies is forces a quotats to them esclavrs required.

draft with colonization

Angola is the first African country to know the European Colonialisme. The Portugal is limited to the coastal region and banks of the river Congo.

The country becomes a vast territory of hunting for the slaves bound for the Brésil and of Cuba. It is estimated that, of the 16th century at the 19th century, some sixteen million Africans would have been off-set on board Portuguese boats, but only four million of them would have survived the voyage and would have become slaves in Brazil. During all the slave mode, Angola remains related to Brazil because it provided him the slaves to work in the plantations, the mines, etc and that in return Brazil sent its traffickers, its civils servant and “his Portuguese”, i.e. the variety of this spoken language in Brazil.

The Portuguese and Brazilian colonists settle on the coasts and mix with the black population to consolidate Angola like Portuguese possession, the Portuguese found there cities like Luanda (1575) or Benguela which possédentdes prisons to keep the slaves until their loading. An important métissée community develops, its culture mixing the African habits and those with the Portuguese.

In 1836, the Portuguese prohibit the Traite blacks. L´Angola will have been the country more depopulated by the draft. Towards the end of the 19th century appear Tchokwés, an ethnos group connected in Lundas, providing ivory to Europeans by intermediaries of the ethnos groups cotiéres.

It is only at the any end of the 19th century that the Portuguese start to develop the interior of the country, but the conquest of the remainder of Angola is slow. It is only in 1920 after more than 174 military campaigns that Portugal can control all the country. Portuguese makes build a railroad of Luanda towards the interior and develops the culture of the coffee, of sugar, the sylviculture and the extraction of iron and diamond. These raw materials exported by the ports of the coast, fed at unbeatable prices Portuguese industry. The oil extraction starts in 1954.

Mode of the indigénat

Starting from 1933, date of the foundation of the Estado Novo (“New State”) by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal, the colonial mode hardens considerably. Portugal then founds the “mode of the indigénat”.

Three categories of individuals are instituted:

the civilizados , Portuguese.
the assimilados gathering the mongrels and some blacks which have access to the instruction (in Portuguese)
the indígenas , the blacks (98% of the population), of which a part is subjected to the forced labors, with prohibition to circulate the night, the requisitions, the taxes on the “reserves” and with a whole of other measurements quite as repressive such as the corporal punishments (in certain cases).

This colonial system, perdure until in 1954, whereas it is reduced considerably, then definitively abolished in 1962.

Province of overseas

In 1951, Angola becomes a “province of overseas”. The Angolans can become “Portuguese citizens” realizing certain conditions.

However the movements of opposition grow, of the political parties such as the MPLA (the Popular liberation movement of Angola) a Marxist movement of orientation, expression of the mongrels and townsmen and the UNPA are created in 1956. The February 4th 1961 the members of the MPLA attack the prison of Luanda in order to release the political prisoners and massacre 2000 Portuguese colonists. The reprisals of the Portuguese army make 10 000 victims in the black community and of the hundreds of thousands of Angolan must flee towards Congo-Léopoldville. This " insurrection of Luanda" true catch " of Bastille" start the war of independence.

Portugal is present with a quota of approximately 200.000 men come from metropolis and voluntary bodies of colonists. Three armed groups are constituted opposite, the MPLA of Agostinho Neto, the FNLA of Holden Roberto supported by Congo de Mobutu and the United States and UNITA of Jonas Savimbi expression of the Mbundu ethnos group supported by China.

Portugal then does not plan at all to decolonize Angola but to integrate it like province. Indeed this Brésil fallen through had a key function in the Portuguese economy: to provide hard currencies (diamond, oil), cheap raw materials for industry (cotton, sugar, coffee, wood), the policy of president Salazar being based on a substitution of the imports. It also constituted a tank of forced workers.

Since 1962 the FNLA forms an Angolan government in exile with Léopoldville and UNO condemns the Portuguese massacres and recognizes the right of the Angolan people to independence. To calm the independence movements Portugal abolishes the forced labor in 1962, and agrees to invest more money in Angola. Indeed the manpower of the teachers quadruples between 1961 and 1974. However the majority of the pupils of the secondary were always white. The metropolis offers the Portuguese citizenship to all the Angolans; so some l´acceptent and emigrate in Portugal with research d´un better standard of living, d´autres reject it by nationalist conviction. Lisbon sought a foreign support by opening its colony for the foreign assets, l exploitation of oil was entrusted to the companies Frenchwoman and American, that of diamond to the Belgians (still main of close Congo) and in the south-africiains. This marks a turning in the African history, the colonial powers gradually lose foot in the continent but not only with the profit of African but also of new imperial powers.

Portugal imposes a military service then and sends hundreds of soldiers thousands to hold Angola; 3300 Portuguese soldiers will die in 14 years of war while in other provinces of overseas, with the Mozambique and in Guinea, start wars of the same type. The effort of war will absorb 40% of the budget of the state. Portugal becomes country of emigration and will have to make come from African labor.

April 25th, 1974, a group of captains of the Portuguese army, gathered in the Movement of the Armed forces, and which had taken part in the colonial war, seizes the power in Lisbon, where they are amply supported by the population and reverse the dictatorial mode of Marcelo Caetano. This revolution, known under the name of Revolution of the Eyelets, allowed the end of the colonial war between Portugal and its colonies. In January 1975, the new Portuguese authorities meet with the representatives of the three independence movements to establish the parameters of the division of the capacity in the ex-colony between these movements and the independence of Angola.

In spite of the Agreements of Alvor, the transition from Angola towards independence is not made in a peaceful way. In several districts of Luanda the black civilians start to be caught some to the colonists, and the troops of the three movements start to fight the ones against the others for the control of the capital. The city sinks then in the riot and plunderings. Between January and November 1975, the Portuguese troops set out again precipitately towards Lisbon, with 300 000 colonists in what was one of the largest airlifts in the world. During the summer 1975, the MPLA gains the war of the cities and expels two other movements (FNLA and UNITA) of the capital and the main cities.

November 11th, 1975, day agreed upon for independence, the Portuguese authorities descend for the last time the Portuguese flag from the Palate from the Civil Governor and the evening even António Agostinho Neto proclaims the independence of the Popular republic of Angola, with the sound of the engagements a few kilometres from Luanda. Then begin the first Angolan civil war, which begins in summer 1975 and finishes only in 1991 with the Agreements of Bicesse, on May 31st.

Independence and the cold war (1975)

The November 11th 1975, Agostinho Neto proclaims the independence of the Popular republic of Angola. South-African troops were already at the Angolan border ready to make an incursion.

South Africa there renonça following an ultimatum of l´URSS. The Zairean troops, they, returned already to Angola and support the FNLA. C´est this coalition which threatens to take Luanda. At this point in time thousands of cuban soldiers flow to help Neto and sweep without difficulty the Zairean troops. The leaders of the MPLA seize then vast regions of the country but do not manage to overcome the guerilla of l´UNITA.

The country is inserted at once in an ethnic civil war, between the Popular liberation movement of Angola (MPLA or Movimento Popular de Liberação of Angola), that is to say the mongrels and the townsmen supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and in addition, the Union for the total independence of Angola (UNITA or União Nacional para has total Independencia of Angola), a movement especially gathering Ovimbundus (40% of the population) and supported by the Westerners (the United States and the United Kingdom) and the South Africa. The war s´enracine also in the difference in development between the occidentalized and modern coast and delayed l´arrière-country remained much African and where the feeling clanqiue is even omnipresent. In 1976, the western powers fearing a swing of the South Africa in the communist camp give him the atomic bomb what dissuades the Cubans and the Angolans d´attaquer the RSA.

Whereas the forces of the MPLA are supported by cuban soldiers (ordered by the general Arnaldo Ochoa, carried out by the mode castrist in 1989) and Soviet aviation, those of the UNITA are it by South-African soldiers. Neto launches an military operation to Zaire close in the area to Shaba and fact walnut tree of the mines in order to harm the economy of the powerful neighbor.

With died of Neto in 1979, Dos Santos seizes the power with Luanda. Skilful politician, it slowly defuses the war while turning to the occident, by drawing aside the radical wing of his party. The sectors agricultural and mining are devastated by the war which makes come from many refugees in Luanda, oil remains the only source of richness on which the fortune of the senior officials of the MPLA rests, while l´UNITA is financed thanks to the diamond traffic. Even independent the country is still depend on matter d education Portugal in particular; if l alphabetisation progresses c´est thanks to ONG Portugueses and Brazilian which also develop for the first time l´enseignement secondary and university.

In January 1984, South Africa obtains from Angola the promise of the withdrawal of its support for SWAPO (independence movement Namibian Marxist-Leninist installed in Angola since 1975) in exchange of the evacuation of the South-African troops of Angola. Nevertheless, the cuban troops remain, just like the South-African soldiers.

In 1988, if the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale between Angolan soldiers and Cubans against the forces of the UNITA, supported by the South-African army, leads to a relative failure of the involved forces, it constitutes nevertheless an element release for the resumption of negotiations on the future of the Namibia.

The July 20th 1988, an agreement of 14 points is found between South Africa, Angola and Cuba. Among those, the implementation of resolution 435 far-sighted of the elections in Namibia under the control of the the United Nations n the other hand of the fold of the cuban quota (expressing the success of the " linkage" formulated since 1979 by South Africa with the support of the the United States since 1981).

The protocol of Geneva is signed the August 5th. The 8 and August 12th, South Africa and the SWAPO accept the suspension of the hostilities one towards the other and the August 22nd, the peace agreement is signed between Angola and South Africa in Ruacana.

The general secretary of UNO, Javier Perez de Cuellar goes then to the Union Buildings of Pretoria to prepare the agreement of Brazzaville which leads to the signature of the December 22nd preparing the calendar of the implementation of resolution 435 and that of the cuban withdrawal of Angola.

In spite of a disastrous attempt at infiltration of Namibia by 1200 guerillas of the SWAPO starting from its bases of Angola on April 1st, 1989, the process will go in its term under the joint administration of United Nations and South Africa.

However, in Angola, the civil war continues with a little less strength. The agreements of Bicesse in 1991 lead to one cease to it fire and with the organization of general elections supervised by the United Nations. The MPLA gains 49% of the votes compared with 40% with the UNITA. Jonas Savimbi, leader historical of the UNITA, denounces frauds and takes again the weapons, this time without more any international support. A second peace agreement is finally signed with Lusaka the November 20th 1994 envisaging the integration of the forces of the UNITA in the regular army.

In 1995, the agreement is broken.

In 1997, a government of national union is formed with Jonas Savimbi but in 1998 the engagements begin again after Savimbi had denounced, according to him, the failure of the MPLA to its obligations. The August 28th 1997, the Safety advice of the United Nations imposes sanctions against the UNITA.

In 1999, the MPLA tries the death-blow then and starts a massive military offensive against the general headquarter of the UNITA and its principal bastions. The operations show a general success in spite of the escape of Savimbi.

The February 22nd 2002, Jonas Savimbi, is finally cut down at the time of an attack of the governmental army.

The April 4th 2002, a new agreement of cease-fire is signed putting an end officially to 27 years of a conflict which made a half-million died and involved the displacement of four million people. L´agriculture and transport was almost entièremnt destroyed. In spite of l´aide food, the keep silent famine and the country saw only l exportation of oil. Like d´autres country, L ´Angola claims compensations, that Portugal and l´Union European prefer to pour in form d´aide with the development (schools, drinking water, roads, hospital) or of visas of work. In spite of the civil war indeed the schooling, certainly poor, increased much (15% d´enfants provided education for into 1975,88% in 2005). The Vatican and of many Protestant missions also frame the populations since l´indépendance.

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