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Subject: Mixed-Race Angolans Say UNITA Targets Them<By Karl Maier=Special to The
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 92 09:54:16 EST
Message-ID: <22.1992Nov23.095416@AmeriCast.com>

Mixed-Race Angolans Say UNITA Targets Them<By Karl Maier=Special
to The Washington Post=

BENGUELA, Angola - When a 49-year-old mother of six returned home
here after a cease-fire quelled this month's brief but deadly
flare-up of fighting between Angola's former civil war enemies,
she found two corpses blocking her front gate.

The bodies have been removed - but the fear remains.

Widespread fighting between government forces and the former
guerrillas of the National Union for the Total Independence of
Angola (UNITA) broke out Nov. 1 over UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi's
refusal to accept the results of Angola's Sept. 29-30 general
elections, which the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation
of Angola (MPLA) won by a wide margin. Savimbi charged that the
government rigged the polls, which U.N. monitors declared free
and fair.

The three days of fighting between the two sides of Angola's 16-
year civil war, which U.N.-sponsored peace accords ended last
year, killed an estimated 1,000 people in the capital, Luanda;
500 in this coastal provincial capital in southern Angola, and
hundreds more in neighboring towns.  Despite a cease-fire that is
holding in Luanda and Benguela, the woman and other residents of
Celestino Madeira Street here say they are afraid to go to sleep
at night - for fear that it might be for the last time. They re-
fused to give their names, citing fear of reprisals by UNITA
troops.

"They are just on the next street, and we are scared that they
will come knocking at the door at night," the woman said. The
body of local radio journalist Jorge Costa was found in his
apartment, a discovery that heightened fears on Celestino Madeira
Street.

The woman said she was especially fearful because she and her
children are of mixed race and her husband is white.

UNITA soldiers have been targeting mixed-race Angolans in Bengue-
la and the neighboring towns of Catumbela and Lobito, according
to accounts here. "They call us the children of Agostinho Neto,
our first president, because he had a white wife," the woman
said.

Many observers have noted an anti-white bias in UNITA despite the
funding and military support provided it by the white-minority
government of South Africa and white, conservative supporters in
the United States during the civil war against the Soviet-backed,
formerly Marxist MPLA. UNITA officials have denied the charge of
anti-white bias.

Alleged UNITA documents captured by the government during this
month's fighting in Luanda, however, included a detailed list of
all senior white and mixed-race members of the MPLA. A purported
letter from UNITA foreign affairs spokesman Abel Chivukuvuku to
Savimbi repeatedly referred to Western governments as "the
whites."

In colonial times, the Ovimbundu, who inhabit the central high-
lands and form UNITA's base of support, were at the bottom of the
social order. They were sent to northern Angola to work on coffee
plantations as forced labor and to the port of Lobito, today a
UNITA stronghold. "Perhaps that is where the great hate comes
from," said another resident of Celestino Madeira Street.

During the election campaign, in which he ran for president, Sa-
vimbi claimed that his opponent, President Jose Eduardo dos San-
tos, was born in Sao Tome, an allusion to the mixed ancestry of
most of the islands' population. Dos Santos defeated Savimbi by
49.7 to 40.07 percent in the presidential vote.

Each side blames the other for starting the fighting in Benguela,
Catumbela and the natural deep-water port of Lobito. Accounts
here, however, suggest that neither side was solely responsible:
Rising political tension simply exploded into three days of
widespread street fighting that pitted police and armed civilians
against UNITA troops. It ended with a cease-fire followed by
several days of looting, costing millions of dollars in damages
and loses, in all three towns.  The British firm Woods Interna-
tional Co. lost an estimated $2.5 million. The U.N. World Food
Program had 11 railways cars of corn and two warehouses looted.
Hundreds of shops in Benguela, Catumbela and Lobito, where more
than a half-million people reside, were emptied.

A foreign witness blamed much of the looting in Benguela, a
government stronghold, on supporters of the MPLA.  He said the
police began handing out guns to civilians, including women and
teenagers, a day before the fighting began. "We did arm the civi-
lians, mainly demobilized soldiers, once the fighting began,"
Benguela provincial governor Paulo Jorge said in an interview.
"Those we armed were all volunteers who presented themselves to
the police."

Despite the ferocity of the fighting in early November, govern-
ment police and UNITA troops still jointly inspect cars and
trucks at the main checkpoint on the 430-mile road north to Luan-
da. Such coexistence would be impossible in Luanda, because the
recent fighting wiped out UNITA's presence in the capital.

Since the flare-up, the military picture remains blurred, with
locally negotiated cease-fires holding in some areas while fight-
ing has broken out in others.

UNITA has been most aggressive in the traditionally MPLA-
controlled north. In recent weeks, it captured important cities
such as Caxito, the capital of Bengo Province, just 35 miles
north of Luanda, and N'dalatando, provincial capital of Cuanza
Norte.  After the fighting ended in deadlock in Benguela and Lo-
bito, UNITA's provincial leadership sued for peace and signed
agreements to disarm and withdraw from several small towns it re-
cently occupied.

In other villages and towns, however, UNITA has set up the sem-
blance of administration.  Thirty-five miles north of Lobito, a
sagging piece of string marked a UNITA checkpoint, where party
members duly inspected passing vehicles.<09:03 11-23C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor-
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