Another Day of Life (13 page)

FEBRUARY 4, 1961

The armed attack of MPLA fighters on the prison in Luanda (the so-called Casa de Reclusão Militar), where Angolan patriots are incarcerated. It is the commencement of the armed struggle for the liberation of Angola.

MARCH 15, 1961

In the north, the UPA gives the signal for a racist uprising of the Bakongo against all non-Bakongo. Armed bands of Bakongo murder Portuguese civilians, Angolan mulattoes, members of the Ovimbundu and Kimbundu tribes. The insurrection is suppressed by the Portuguese army and ends with a dreadful massacre of the Bakongo and the emigration of large numbers of Bakongo to Zaïre.

MARCH 23, 1962

The UPA changes its name to FNLA (Frente Nacional da Libertação de Angola, “National Front for the Liberation of Angola”). Its leader is the president of the UPA, a longtime employee of a Belgian company in Congo, Holden Roberto. Roberto was born in 1925 in Angola (in São Salvador), although he spent his whole life in Congo, where he still lives and where he possesses vast business holdings: hotels, restaurants, etc. FNLA was and remains a strictly tribal organization, the party of the Bakongo, whose ambition is the rebirth of the kingdom of the Bakongo and the incorporation into it of the rest of Angola. In 1970 the Bakongo made up eight percent of Angola’s population. Holden Roberto’s group, whose members belonged to the Protestant Church, was always bankrolled, through the Baptist Church, by the American Committee on Africa. The struggle between the FNLA and the MPLA had the additional overtones of religious conflict: the FNLA are Protestants; the MPLA counts many Catholics in its ranks.

NOVEMBER 1963

The government of Zaïre ousts from Kinshasa the headquarters of the MPLA, moved here from Luanda in 1961 after the Portuguese repressions. Conakry, Guinea, becomes the MPLA’s new seat, and then Brazzaville. Beginning in 1965, Brazzaville is home to a one-hundred-strong Cuban military unit, which acts as a security force for the then-president of the People’s Republic of Congo, Massemba-Debat. It is in Brazzaville that the MPLA establishes its first contacts with Cubans.

1964

A split in the so-called Government of the Republic of Angola in Exile (GRAE), created two years earlier by the FNLA. Among those quitting the GRAE is the minister of foreign affairs, Jonas Savimbi, who, in the periodical
Remarques
Africaines
of November 25, 1964, publishes a letter accusing Holden Roberto of corruption and nepotism. First, Savimbi cites the names of CIA agents working within the FNLA, then lists the roster of the FNLA leadership, which is worth quoting: “Holden Roberto, president, born in São Salvador; John Edouard Pinock, born in São Salvador, Holden’s cousin; Sebastião Roberto, born in São Salvador, Holden’s brother; Joe Peterson, born in São Salvador, Holden’s brother-in-law; Narciso Nenaka, born in São Salvador, Holden’s uncle; Simão de Freitas, born in São Salvador, Holden’s nephew; Eduardo Vieira, born in São Salvador, Holden’s cousin.”

MARCH 13, 1966

UNITA comes into being (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola, “National Union for the Total Independence of Angola”). The creator and leader of this organization is Jonas Savimbi, born in 1934 in the province of Bié, the son of a railroad worker. He had studied in Europe for a time. He underwent military training in Beijing (1964–1965). UNITA was financed by Portuguese settlers, who later created the organization Frente de Resistência Angolana: FRA. The leaders of the FRA were Colonel Gilberto Santos e Castro, the subsequent commander of the mercenaries fighting alongside the FNLA, as well as the millionaire and banker Antonio Espírito Santo. They wanted to wrest Angola from Portugal and create a state of white settlers (as Ian Smith had done in Rhodesia). UNITA, like the FNLA, is a tribal organization. Its members are recruited from the people of the Ovimbundu tribe. Savimbi, who for years quarreled with Holden Roberto, later created with him a common front against the MPLA. I remember the poster on which Savimbi and Roberto are embracing each other. The words: “Two leaders—one sun of freedom!”

1968

The MPLA moves its headquarters from Brazzaville to the forests of eastern Angola. The armed conflict intensifies.

APRIL 25, 1974

Revolution in Portugal.

JANUARY 15, 1975

The signing of an accord in Alvor, Portugal, between the MPLA, FNLA, UNITA, and the Portuguese government, creating a provisional coalition government in Angola and granting it independence on November 11, 1975.

JANUARY 30, 1975

The provisional government goes into effect in Luanda. Five months later, the FNLA and UNITA resign from it.

MARCH 1975

Bloody riots in Luanda. The civilian population of the capital, declaring itself for the MPLA, is attacked by the troops of the FNLA.

APRIL 17, 1975

A split in the MPLA. The chief of staff of the MPLA army, Daniel Chipenda, goes over to the FNLA. One of the founders of the organization, Mario de Andrade, also leaves the directorate of the MPLA.

JULY 1975

The MPLA liberates Luanda from the divisions of the FNLA. The majority of Angola’s territory comes under the control of the MPLA.

AUGUST 27, 1975

The troops of the Republic of South Africa first enter Angolan territory in the Cunene region. In a skirmish with them the commander of the southern front of the MPLA, Comandante Kalulu, is killed.

OCTOBER 19, 1975

The first Cuban army unit arrives in Luanda.

NOVEMBER 11, 1975

The creation of the People’s Republic of Angola. In accordance with the MPLA program, the new republic is to be a people’s democracy, in which the principal natural resources, as well as the principal elements of the economy, will be the property of the state. All citizens have a right to employment and education. Angola will conduct a politics of positive neutrality. Agostinho Neto becomes the republic’s first president.

NOVEMBER 1975

The start of the counteroffensive by the army of the MPLA, supported by units of the Cuban army. During December and January the armies of the FNLA and UNITA are destroyed.

JULY 3, 1976

The destruction of a detachment of mercenaries commanded by the so-called Colonel Callan.

MARCH 27, 1976

The last South African army units withdraw from Angolan territory. They return along the same road that I once drove with Diogenes, and later with Farrusco, eaten by a fear I will never forget. Where is Farrusco now? Alive, probably. People in Lubango hid him during the invasion, he lay there for a long time, his wounds finally healed. He was a tough man. I don’t know what happened to Diogenes. I would like to think that he’s alive, too. Antonio was killed. Carlos was killed. It is calm on all fronts.

Those British mercenaries who escaped from the northern front are already in London, telling what they did in Angola. “Some people,” one of them says in a BBC report, “think that war is a nice, light flesh wound in the leg. They’re wrong. War is a head smashed to pulp, legs blown off, guys crawling in a circle with their guts spilling out, a guy soaked in napalm but still alive. It hardens you. For instance, you find a wounded Cuban and turn him over on his back, he makes some sort of movement. You think he’s going for a gun so you shoot him dead. But maybe he only wanted to pull out a photograph of his wife and say ‘Help me.’ And you shot him. You just didn’t want to take the risk. If a person fires into a moving wall of people he doesn’t look at their faces, doesn’t look at the people. He simply shoots at the silhouettes and doesn’t connect them with any human beings. When you come up directly on somebody and fight hand to hand, then you see plainly that it’s a person just like you, but then your life is usually at stake. You have to kill him before he kills you. I killed my first man when I was seventeen, seventeen and a half, maybe eighteen, in Aden. Later, I had nightmares—battle shock—and I woke up screaming, but now, now I can’t even remember what that guy looked like.”

Pieter Botha, the defense minister of the Republic of South Africa, passes his army in review as it returns from war across the border bridge over the Cunene River. Although the soldiers cross the bridge in silence, there is a lot of shouting and screaming in the vicinity, since at the same time the FNLA and UNITA units that until that moment had accompanied the white South African soldiers are throwing themselves into the river en masse and splashing across toward Namibia. Many drown in crossing. But the war has ended, the democracy of the front has ended; and the law of segregation applies again: Passage across the bridge is for whites only.

The years 1976–2000: the war continues. It is one of the longest-lasting armed conflicts in the contemporary world. Has anything
changed? Unfortunately, not much. Yes, the Cubans have departed.
As have the South Africans. But the Angolans are still there—it is
their country: a country divided, torn apart, ruined by civil war,
whose central government has been consumed for three decades by
the rebellion of Jonas Savimbi.

The government has plentiful deposits of oil. Savimbi: great
diamond mines. Each side reaps substantial revenues from these
riches, which allow them to wage war into infinity. Maybe a million have already died in the fighting, but there are several million
still alive; the list of victims will continue to grow.

I return in my thoughts to those I had met then. What has
become of them? If Diogenes is no longer alive, it may well be that
his sons are fighting. And strong, stocky, courageous Farrusco?
Even if he did survive, he would be too old now to be in the
trenches. But I remember him saying that a son had just been born
to him. So if I were to meet a young officer on the Angolan front
these days, ask him his name, and hear that it’s Farrusco, I would
answer: Years ago, I rode in a jeep with someone who had the same
last name. Yes, the young officer would concur, that was my father.

And tall, silent Comandante Ndozi? Ndozi is no longer alive.
He was blown up by a mine. Monti was also blown up by a mine.
Powerful, cheerful Batalha as well. In these wars, enemies see each
other face-to-face less and less frequently. They perish as they
walk, while everything around them is empty and quiet. Death
comes at them covertly, lying in wait under some sand, beneath a
stone, under a clump of blackthorn. The earth was once the source
of life, a granary, something desirable. Now, in these parts, man
regards the earth suspiciously, distrustfully, with fear and
loathing.

What happened to Oscar? Perhaps he survived, and has
retired. I would so much like him to have a good and peaceful old
age. And Gilberto? I don’t know, I cannot say. Felix? I also don’t
know. People disappear without a trace, so completely and irretrievably, first from the world, and then from our memory.

And Dona Cartagina? I am almost afraid to think about it.
What if she is no more? But this seems impossible. Without Dona
Cartagina, I cannot imagine either Luanda, or Angola, or this
whole war. That is why I am convinced that should you be in
Luanda, sooner or later you will meet a gray-haired old woman
walking in the morning toward the Hotel. Tivoli She will be hurrying, because, just like every other day, a lot of cleaning awaits
her. If you stop her and inquire, “Excuse me, are you Dona
Cartagina?” the woman will stop for a moment, look at you with
surprise, and then politely answer, “Yes, it is I.”

And she will continue briskly on her way.

Ryszard Kapu
ci
ski

ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE

Ryszard Kapu
ci
ski, Poland’s most celebrated foreign correspondent, was born in 1932. After graduating in history from Warsaw University, he was sent to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to report for Polish news, beginning a lifelong fascination with the Third World. During his four decades reporting on Asia, Latin America, and Africa, he befriended Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, and Patrice Lumumba; witnessed twenty-seven coups and revolutions; and was sentenced to death four times.

His books—
Shah of Shahs
(about the Iranian Revolution),
The Emperor
(about the fall of Ethiopia’s Haile Selassie),
Imperium
(about the fall of the Soviet Union), and
The Soccer War
(a compendium of reportage from the Third World)—have been translated into nineteen languages. His most recent book,
The Shadow of the Sun
, “a record of my forty-year marriage to Africa,” will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2001.