Nevertheless, having chosen the path of armed confrontation, UNITA seems unlikely to respond favorably to the MPLA's proposals. In this issue we print the second and final part of an interview with Christine Messiant, a specialist on Angola, from where she early elections before accepting the cea sefire and the schedule leading up to the elections followed from this. The elections were thus largely a matter of UNITA gaining a democratic seal on the favourable relationship of forces it had established by spring 1991 in the eyes of the outside world. Furthermore, the means for verifying the elections results themselves were wholly inadequate.
The pre-election ceasefire was more or less respected, but this was simply a temporary freezing of the balance of forces on the ground, rather than a step towards peace. Many of the conditions had not been met by the time the elections arrived. For example, UNITA did not release all its prisoners, and held onto areas designated in the agreement as belonging to the government, the armies did not withdraw their armies while UNITA did not demobilize, the single army was not formed, hostile propaganda did not cease, and so on. Despite all this, it was made clear by UNITA and the USA that the elections must take place in the time span allotted.
Despite the violations, the international bodies supposed to be overseeing the has recently returned.* H AVE there been forces operating independently of the Angolan regime in recent years? There have been workers' actions, which were rather diffuse and have petered out. In sectors such as health and education there were united and repeated mobilizations, but these were suppressed. However, there has been virtually no political organization independent of the two big parties apart from tiny elitebased groups representing nothing but the individuals who form them.
UNITA prohibited any form of dissent in the areas it controlled. The MPLA regime used threats, abuse and force against its critics, and even in recent years placed innumerable obstacles in the way of any group wanting recognition. Thus the first autonomous organization, the Angolan Civic Association was only recognized in mid-1991, 18 months after its formation, months in which it was constantly denounced as subversive. The repression produced a self-fulfilling prophecy; there was no third force and what there was represented nothing.
The Catholic church has grown in strength over recent years owing to its repeated calls for peace and criticisms of the regime's violence - while the protestant churches, politically lined up behind the MPLA and UNITA, have been silent. The Catholic church has thus objectively fallen into the vacuum where the third force should be. However, it has not attempted to function as a political alternative and is now enjoying the benefits of the MPLA's new course. Furthermore, during and after the elections, its hierarchy has itself suffered the effects of the UNITA/MPLA polarization. In these conditions, political struggle has largely involved former dissidents and oppositionists from the MPLA and UNITA. Their orientation has been one of forming parties for the elections and making deals without any programmatic basis. Former divisions have not been overcome and groups with their origins in UNITA have been unable to work with those coming out of the MPLA.
The small formations got some ten seats out of the 220 and have since aligned themselves with one or the other of the two big parties.
The failure of a third force ready to challenge the arbitrary rule of the regime and fight for peace and social and democratic rights to emerge also means a failure to open up politics. The situation remains stuck in the rut established by the violent polarization of the MPLA and UNITA.
This outcome is in part the product o the agreements which laid the basis fo the elections. UNITA had demande implementation of the agreement remained neutral and just before the voting a solemn - and untrue - statement was untrue — statement was made that the two armies were no more. In fact, UNITA kept its military positions and its captive electorate, while the government drafted former soldiers into its police force and security services.
By the end of September, the conditions did not exist either for elections in which the Angolan people could freely express their will, or for the loser to accept the outcome. In these conditions, the massive and peaceful vote by Angolans which resulted in a victory for the MPLA represented a decision along the lines "between the UNITA which kills and the MPLA which steals, we prefer the latter". Thee is no serious evidence to back up UNITA's claims of "systematic and generalized fraud". • The fact that UNITA has refused to accept the results of the elections says much about that organization.
However the new battle of Luanda is strangely reminiscent of what happened in 1975 after the MPLA and UNITA had been in a coalition government.
This is not the same situation. In 1975
UNITA lacked the military means to take the initiative in the confrontation.
Now, after 16 years of war, it saw the
* Christine Messiant works at the Centre d'Etudes
Africaines of the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales in Paris. The interview took place on November 18. The first installment appeared in 5
International Viewpoint 240, December 7, 1992.
ANGOLA / IRELAND agreement as a way of consolidating and extending its battlefield gains. Savimbi's objective is power in Luanda, not over just a part of Angola. Even at the time of the agreements, some in UNITA wanted to continue the war "until Luanda" fearing that the ceasefire would rob them of imminent victory. Thus a secession will be a prelude to a further war in pursuit of central power (or perhaps a desperate retreat).
Savimbi has often explained that "you have to win, since once you have won, you can write history to justify your victory, while history never pardons the loser". Thus the UNITA leadership cannot accept defeat in the elections, despite hypocritical statements to the contrary from Savimbi. In any case, UNITA is more than Savimbi. It is now a 20 year history of organization and military activity involving a large number of cadres.
It is this essentially military history which makes it impossible for UNITA to turn itself into a political movement.
After the elections, the UNITA generals rapidly pulled out of the united army and UNITA began to occupy positions and encircle towns in the hope of preventing the publication of the election results. When the results had been announced and the elections pronounced
"globally free and fair" by the international observers, who urged UNITA to accept the organization of the second round, UNITA began to regroup and strengthen its military forces and occupy territory to the accompaniment of incredible verbal violence. It talked of its ability to "turn Angola into another Somalia" and reduce it to dust even without the support of its former allies, who it accused of having sold themselves for oil and diamonds.
This was both a preparation for the resumption of war and an attempt to change the balance of forces in negotiations before the second round. Now UNITA demanded what it had itself refused at the time of the Estoril agreement in return for its re-entry into the single army and acceptance of the agreement's military terms: the formation of a coalition government to oversee the transition. Its presence in this would be supplemented by its integration into every level of the administration, control over the means of communication, the dissolution of the riot police, a reconsideration of the organization of the elections and increased international surveillance of the voting. Besides giving expression to UNITA's claims of fraud, these demands break both the spirit and the letter of the agreements. In any case, the government, fee6 and a "diplomatic situation that is more ling strengthened by its election victory International Viewpoint # 241 • 1 favourable than ever" was in no mood to accept any of UNITA's conditions.
An impasse was thus reached as
UNITA advanced on the ground and its radio began to pose the problem of the regime in terms of the "north" versus the
"south" ", demanding the participation of all ethnic groups in power.
While the government denounced
UNITA's moves - and the international observers deplored it - it colluded in it by not convoking the elected parliament where UNITA was strongly represented, and by not appointing a prime minister and government of national union as had been agreed before the elections. Press statements about "waging the war that
UNITA has already started" and appeals to "generalized popular mobilization"
poured out, demobilized troops were being remobilized and arms were being distributed in Luanda.
The first effort was to decapitate
UNITA in the capital and head off any attempt by the latter to take power by force — by no means an imaginary scenario. At the same time, UNITA was to be deprived of any possibility of negotiating conditions for the run-up to the second round and thus of, in effect, robbing the government of its victory.
These tactics have much in common with the repression of the attempted coup in 1977 by Nito Alves. This police response to "restore the authority of the state" certainly affected Savimbi's ability to influence the second round. But the same aim could have been achieved by convoking parliament and forcing
UNITA to choose whether it wanted to be inside or outside the democratic framework and by the appointment of a prime minister and the formation of a government of national unity. Now, after the fighting, such measures have lost much of their meaning.
Since Savimbi is even less likely to win in the second round, UNITA may well decide to initiate all-out war. The outcome of such a war and the international alliances it will produce cannot be predicted. But what is certain is that it will be a mortal blow to this already devastated country and would lead to many of Angola's people fleeing.
But, even if international pressure compels Savimbi to accept the government's conditions for the second round, it is unthinkable that the whole of UNITA will accept continued MPLA rule; they will probably plunge the councry into a chronic state of war, which try into a chronic will foster banditry fed by the worsening social and economic crisis, and which will be met by a reinforced repressive paratus on the other side. The future or Angola is not bright. *