ANGOLA: FROM FOREST TO DESERT IN SOUTHWEST AFRICA

For this week’s nation state, we will analyze the nation of Angola. In my lifetime and for many other citizens of this planet, the first time Angola came across our radar was being the unfortunate first victim of the 1992 Michael Jordan-led Dream Team in the Summer Olympics. Angola got crushed 116-48 in an absolute obliteration as that American team cruised to a Gold Medal. Angola also borders a country that was previously analyzed, Zambia, which lays to its east. It also shares a border with the massive Democratic Republic of Congo to the North/Northeast and Namibia to the south.

There are narratives about the African continent that have always had a kernel of truth but are actually false premises. As the world has evolved towards big government nation states and centralization, Africa has always been seen as the exception to this rule. While Africa does embrace scientific and technological change, it is often observed through a First World lens that complains about the infrastructure, trade difficulties and severe topography. While colonization and exploitation by European powers is often blamed for many of the continent’s current problems (Again, a kernel of truth), history tells a much different story. While kingdoms did exist inside Africa, they often existed in a decentralized manner with multiple different kingdoms ruling inside existing borders as the example of Angola in this article and earlier nations like Zambia and Zimbabwe have shown. The ability to centralize the continent has proven to be impossible up to this point. Even the long running Egyptian Empire was limited in its scope due to the brutality of the Sahara Desert and the limitations put onto it by the Nile River. Recently, Google made a bold claim that they could connect the entire African continent and bring it into the modern world by laying Google Fiber throughout the continent. Up to this point, it has been a massive failure due to last mile issues related to the infrastructure and consistent problems with the underseas cables along with piracy problems on the East Coast. Personally, the solution to Africa is decentralization. If the continent needs to be broken up into hundreds of nations (There are currently 54) to bring about peace and development, this maybe the best solution. The people of a region know what is best for them. The globalists need for control over the Earth requires continental unions and world government organizations. But up to this point, not much of this has helped Africa. Especially when it comes to global health initiatives.

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The Angolan flag was actually designed by the Portuguese. Upon declaring independence on November 11, 1975, the Angolan people kept it. The primary language of Angola is Portuguese (More on this later) and the majority religion is Catholicism. Unlike many African nations that rejected many aspects of their colonization, the Angolans adopted many of the customs of the Portuguese and brought them into their culture. Three ethnic tribes (Ovimbundu, Amibundu and Bakongo) make up over 70% of the population. Around 5% of Angola is Asian, European or Mestico (The term used for a mixed individual of European and African descent) ethnicity. The capital of Angola is Luanda that rests on the Atlantic Ocean coast to the northwest of the nation. The population of Luanda is around 8.8 million people and is the largest city by far.  Angola transitions from tropical forests in the north to drier desert climates in the south. The overall population of the country is approximately 36.6 million people. Their currency is the Angolan Kwanza. Angola has a very large disparity of wealth. Looking at GDP, the country comes in around middle of the pack (68th) but due to its massive population, the per capita income rests on the lower end of nations (Usually in the 130s). Angola is the 22nd largest nation on the planet and continues to this day to have issues with water often being forced to import large amounts of it to keep the population satisfied.

Like so many countries in Southern Africa, the ancestors of this land were often very innovative and creative people. Like Zambia and Zimbabwe, archaeological evidence has shown that the early Angolans had sophisticated political structures and specialized in pottery making. The Bantu migrated into this region around 100-200 AD displacing the Bushmen and Khoihoi hunter-gatherer tribes that originally settled in this land for over ten thousand years. The Bantu specialized in iron works, cattle herding and agriculture which would establish the background of their future kingdoms.

The first kingdom in Angola was the Kingdom of the Kongo which records show developed at some point in the thirteenth century and which took control of the region in the 14th. The main city of the Kongo Empire was Mbanza Kongo which was located inside present-day northern Angola. The territory stretched through almost all of modern day Angola, parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo and Gabon. The wealth of this nation was agriculture and each territory was controlled by a Mani, aristocrats who operated with tons of autonomy and who only could be controlled by the King. The King (Manikongo) broke the territory up into six sections and allowed the Mani to create their local bureaucracy that collected taxes through cloth, shells or agricultural products. The people were highly creative specializing in metal works, clothing and a very sophisticated system of law that was used to resolve personal disputes.

Other empires that existed inside Angola around this time or after the demise of the Kongo Kingdom were the Ndongo which is what the nation currently takes its name from. Ruled by Kings bearing the title of Ngola, the Mbundu people lived in the highlands, specialized in ironworks and agriculture and created a similar decentralized structure to their northerly neighbors giving power to local chieftains who were loyal to the king. The Lunda Empire existed in eastern Angola and was known for its elaborate trade networks that brought copper from the mines to the Atlantic Coast. As the Lunda Empire grew, its people, the Chokwe, became internationally renowned for their artistic masks and wooden sculptures that were used in rituals. Inside Angola was also the Kingdom of Matamba east of the Ndongo. In the south, the Kwanyama developed an agricultural and pastoral community in the semi-arid desert climate. There was also a tribe that developed during this Middle Ages era called the Herero who maintain a distinctive cattle-herding culture to the present day. The women can be identified by the elaborate headresses and body coverings they still wear in the 21st Century.

The Portuguese first arrived in the late 1400s and the Kingdom of Kongo signed a trade agreement with them. Providing the Portuguese with minerals, ivory and slaves while receiving technological advancements and weaponry in return, the Kingdom quickly adopted Christian culture and began the conversion of its people to this newfound religion. As the Europeans began to encroach more and more into the territory, the Kongan King was eventually beheaded. This led to a power vacuum in which Angolan hero Queen Nzinga emerged. Famously sitting on an attendant’s back during negotiations with the Portuguese, she was rejected as an equal. After her brother died in 1624, she took control and conquered the Kingdom of Matamba and formed alliances with the remainder  (Kongo, Kassanje, Dembos and Kissamas). During her reign, she aligned with the Dutch, embraced escaped slaves and pushed the Portuguese out of their area of control until she died a national hero in her 80s. During this guerrila war, the Portuguese were conquered by the Spanish making their overseas territories a secondary concern. This allowed Nzinga to bring in the Dutch and push the Portuguese back to their only remaining settlement in Massangano. After the Portuguese regained independence, their Brazilian colony attacked the Kingdom. After Nzinga’s death, the Kingdom of Kongo put up a valiant fight but eventually ceded control of the territory to the Portuguese in 1671.

Many books have been written about Luanda which was founded in 1575 by the Portuguese. The re-capture of Angola made Luanda the centerpiece of the trans-Atlantic slave trade which was maintained for almost 300 years before being abolished in 1836. Luanda was often considered one of the primary economic hubs of the Portuguese Empire for centuries as it became a center for the export of raw materials and minerals, agriculture, ivory and rubber. While the Portuguese often engaged with the population better than the British, the cultural differences eventually led to racism, forced labor camps and a lack of modern development. The Portuguese did nothing to invest in the people famously not building one university inside the country during their rule. This inevitably led to the development of revolutionary groups who initiated their first attack against the Portuguese in 1961 which led to the Colonial War.

The Portuguese Colonial War was brutal with every side committing atrocities. There were three main belligerents in the war. Despite all of them fighting the Portuguese, they also fought each other. The MPLA (The People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) was the Marxist/Democratic Socialist Group that had a large amount of support from the Mbundu people, the city elites of Luanda and was supported by the Communist nations of the Soviet Union and Cuba. An educated poet named Agostinho Neto led this group. The FNLA (The National Liberation Front of Angola) was led by Holden Roberto and was backed by the Bakongo People and supported by the dictatorship of Zaire (The DRC now) and by the United States for a short time. Finally, the UNITA (The National Union for Total Independence of Angola) founded by Jonas Savimbi represented the Ovimbundu majority and was backed by China, Apartheid South Africa and the United States. No one won this war. It ended because in 1974, the Carnation Revolution overthrew the ruling Portuguese dictatorship and one of their first acts was to withdraw from their African territories. In January of 1975, the Alvor Agreement was signed giving Angola its autonomy. With no definitive ruling coalition, the inevitable Civil War between the three groups mentioned above became reality. With the help of 50,000 Cuban troops who repelled interventions by Zaire to the north and South Africa to the South, the Socialist MPLA emerged victorious in November. Independence was declared shortly after. And as soon as this occurred, another Civil War broke out that lasted all the way into 2002. The battles between the MPLA and UNITA who controlled the “blood diamond” trade in the South were brutal leading to anywhere between half a million to 1.5 million deaths. During this war, the country to the South, Namibia, gained independence and after Jonas Savimbi was killed in 2002, the war finally came to its bloody end. Jose Eduardo dos Santos ruled from 1979 through the war into 2017 and amassed a massive fortune in mineral wealth. Since then, the country has been cracking down on corruption and been trying to establish a more people friendly democratic government with anti-corruption campaigns. The MPLA still holds power winning the last election with a small majority (51%) but the capitalist forces inside the country are rising as Angola has slowly evolved to become the second largest producer of oil in Africa which if handled correctly, can make the country incredibly wealthy in the future once they put their recent violent history behind them.

Next week, a country that has been in the newspapers a lot lately, Venezuela, our first South American country. Until then.

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