afrol News, 22 February - Seldom has a death been such a welcome incident as the one of Angola's infamous rebel leader Jonas Savimbi five years ago. Immediately after Mr Savimbi was killed on the battlefield, the UNITA rebel movement began to crumble and within months, peace returned to the country for the first time in decades.

President Eduardo dos Santos only days after Mr Savimbi's death acknowledged that the leader of the National Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) "fought until the last consequences for his ideals." This was one of the most positive statements made in the aftermath of his killing.

Because as time quickly went by, developments in war-ravaged Angola went even faster towards peace, reconciliation and economic development for the country's millions of poor and displaced. Already one year after his death, peace was assured, UNITA had turned into a political party that apologised for having partaken in the war and investors were streaming into the country. Mr Savimbi since then has been remembered for only one great dead - having passed away.

Jonas Malheiro Savimbi, son of an evangelist pastor who worked as a railroad employee, was born in 1934 in Bie province, on Angola's central high plains. At the time, Angola was Portugal's largest and most important colony.

As a result of his excellent performance as a student, he won a scholarship for university study in Lisbon in 1960. But in Portugal he was arrested three times by the secret service of the fascist regime of Dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. Upon release from the third arrest, Mr Savimbi fled to Switzerland, where he received a degree in political science in 1965, four years after the anti-colonialist war against Portugal was launched by the Marxist-inspired People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

Mr Savimbi and a group of followers received political and military training in Mao Zedong's China in 1965 and 1966. He returned to Angola to found UNITA, a movement that rapidly reached an agreement with Portugal's secret service, under which the colonial army would not harass the rebels in exchange for information on the movements of the MPLA.

In April 1974, leftist captains overthrew the fascist Salazar regime, restoring democracy and putting an end to war in Africa as they dismantled the archaic Portuguese empire. In Angola, the MPLA was handpicked by Portugal's new rulers to lead the colony into independence, which was formally achieved on 11 November 1975.

Mr Savimbi thus withdrew into the jungle to launch the bloodiest and longest war Africa has seen in its history of independence. Sustained by the US and apartheid South Africa, UNITA fought the Luanda government and MPLA on all fronts, turning the central provinces of Huambo, Bie, Moxico, Malangue and Huila into bastions untouchable by the MPLA and its allied 50,000 Cuban soldiers.

The fighting continued for more than 15 years until the international community forced UNITA and the MPLA to sit down at the negotiating table, hammer out a ceasefire, and confront each other peacefully at the ballot box. The MPLA soundly defeated UNITA in the October 1992 elections, but Mr Savimbi refused to recognise the results and launched a second civil war, interrupted for a few brief months in 1994.

Mr Savimbi after two failed peace deals became a fugitive, condemned by the UN and the US, and he was abandoned by his most faithful allies - Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, and Morocco - and even by most of his comrades in arms. The guerrilla leader fought for nearly a decade more, able to equip his troops with weapons purchased from arms traffickers, funded by sales to European markets of diamonds extracted in the provinces under his control.

On 22 February 2002, Mr Savimbi finally was trapped by Angolan government forces and killed on the battlefield. It was the only way for the most stubborn warlord in Southern Africa's history to end his eternal battle. With his death, Angola could finally rest in peace.

The 27 years of nearly uninterrupted war caused by Mr Savimbi's war ideology is estimated to have cost the lives of half a million Angolans, mostly civilians. The violence further forced approximately a third of the population from their homes. Large parts of the country's agricultural lands are still infested by mines, causing the memory of Mr Savimbi to last for generations to come.

By staff writers

© afrol News

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