Living through and Escaping from Angolan Sectarian Violence

Contributed by Trevor Miranda

An interview with a veteran of the Angolan colonial forces established by Portugal as tensions and body counts rose on the path towards Angolan Independence, and subsequently a bloody civil war.

A NOTE OF CAUTION: There may be parts of this interview or its addendum that some might find distressing, disgusting, horrifying, or depressing. It was a time of incredible violence and horror for both the native Angolans and the Portuguese citizens that had called Angola their home.

Angola had been a Portuguese colony ruled by Portugal for hundreds of years. The Angolan War for Independence was a building up of various societal tensions as Portugal exerted its regional supremacy more forcefully. Civil disobedience began in the 1940s and 1950s. By 1933, Portugal had signed the "Portuguese Colonial Act," a piece of legislation that reinforced Portuguese supremacy over the native Angolans. This inspired various national groups that petitioned the UN for protectorate status. During the 1950s, there was a wave of immigration to this settlement on the heels of another Portuguese bill that established Angola as a province of Portugal. This, again, raised Angolan nationalist parties like the Party of the United Struggle for Africans in Angola and the Angolan Communist Party. During the 1960s, the problem was not just denial of nationalism, Angola became a hot bed of societal unrest. A major event was the Baixa de Cassanje revolt, which had Angolan natives revolting against a multi-national corporation by the name of "Cotonang" because of poor working conditions. This, on top of two attacks by Angolan natives on a Portuguese police stations and Portuguese prison in Angola, caused a rash, harsh response by the Portuguese provincial government. The Portuguese enlisted settlers as vigilantes to destroy slums in Angola and slaughter their populations. This obviously caused a problem with Angolan natives and further fueled more nationalism in Angola. The Union of Peoples of Angola began the incursion into Angola on March 15, 1961. Eventually, the fighting ended with the Portuguese granting the Angolan province sovereignty, because they couldn't afford to wage war in Angola with a few other colonial skirmishes happening elsewhere. Then began the Angolan Civil War.

The two main groups at battle during the civil war were the MPLA (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola) and the FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola.) The war was stereotypical of most African politics. These two main nationalist groups absorbed various, smaller nationalist groups that then had it out for control of the political vacuum created by the loss of the provincial power, Portugal. The Communist-supported MPLA party won in the end and is now the current government of Angola.

Very luckily, my grandparents and mother only had to experience a bit of the civil war before they made their escape in 1975.

Below is an interview I conducted with my grandfather, a man who had no family, who was sent to Angola, and then forced to fight for the Angolan provincial forces because of a mandatory service law. I tried not to dive too deeply into anything too specific, because the man still relives the horrors of this time in his life every time it's brought up. There is a point towards the very end of the interview where he gets a bit incoherent. I've left it in and my mother has translated it as best she could. He was getting very emotional and shaky when describing the escape. The interview is subtitled for your convenience with a backdrop of some hopefully less melancholy photographs mostly taken by contracted photographers during his enlistment (as taking photographs by yourself was a serious offence.) Note: To see the subtitles, you must select "Watch on Youtube" and then hit the CC for the caption setting.