Angolan War of Independence
Angola's war against Portuguese rule began in 1961 and ran for fourteen years, and the country has been at war for most of the time since. It opened in two places. Cotton workers in the Baixa de Cassanje revolted in January over forced cultivation and were bombed; in February the MPLA attacked prisons in Luanda; and in March the UPA, later the FNLA, rose in the north-west and killed several hundred Portuguese settlers and a larger number of African labourers, which brought a settler and military reprisal in which tens of thousands died. Portugal was the last colonial power to concede because its own regime rested on not conceding. The Estado Novo had redefined the colonies as overseas provinces, and Salazar fought simultaneously in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. The independence movement never unified. The MPLA under Agostinho Neto was urban, Marxist and drew on the Mbundu; the FNLA under Holden Roberto was Bakongo and backed by Zaire and the CIA; UNITA under Jonas Savimbi split from it in 1966 and drew on the Ovimbundu of the south. They fought each other as much as the Portuguese. The Carnation Revolution in Lisbon in April 1974 ended the war, and the Alvor agreement provided for a coalition that collapsed before independence day. The MPLA held Luanda in November 1975 with Cuban troops; South Africa and the United States backed the others. The civil war lasted until 2002. Something over half a million people died in the civil war, and Angola remains among the most heavily mined countries in the world.
- Year: 1961 CE
- Category: Political
