₦airaland Forum

festacman:
Is it fair for you to judge and call Jonas Savimbi an evil man based on propaganda of his enemies? What do you, personally, know about him and the cause he fought and died for?

How dare you profile and demonise a grown-ass man based on life of his rebel father?

Have you been to Angola before?

panafrican:
Listen no need to go to Angola to know about this Jonas Savimbi.
What do I know personally about him ? well , I know things such as:

1. He and his sister had Ivorian Passports ( Passport of the country of Cote d'Ivoire). After his eath, she moved Abidjan from Cote d'Ivoire to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

2. His sister was investing there and himself used to go there to rest

3. Him and Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso connived to create loopholes to help UNITA avoid the UN arm embargo that prevented

UNITA from buying weapons. Compaore got millions of dollars from ordering those weapons under the name of Burkina Faso. Once the weapons get there, they were flown to Huambo, Angola You know " El Gato " , Paul Lumkamba right ? seen him on a mission in West Africa

4. Savimbi enthusiastically worked with the Apartheid regime to undermine the independence of Namibia. The South African ( Malan and other South African thugs ) equipped him with weapons to fight MPLA on purpose to weaken Angola and preven that country from sheltering SWAPO military troops.

5. He used child soldiers. You know it.

6. The brutal Angola war caused the death of hundreds of thousands over three decades. Had Savimbi settled for peace after the withdrawal of portuguese troops, milions of lives wouldn't be shattered in Angola.

festacman:
Angolan's protracted civil war was product of COLD WAR between capitalist US and communist USSR. US supported and armed Jonas Savimbi while USSR supported and armed Dos Santos. It was about who will corner rich mineral resources of Angola. Rebel Savimbi had his fair share of internal support but Dos Santos being the official Head of State and C-in-C had larger support. Eventually, USSR began to disintegrate, Cold War began to die down and US abandoned Savimbi. He refused to lay down his arms following several negotiations. Gradually, many of his commanders and troops were lured by government and defected. He continued weakly and eventually got killed by government forces.

All over the world rebel movements have engaged arm struggle for ethnic, political or economic reasons. Some like Pres. Museveni' succeeded and some like Savimbi's failed.

So what makes Jonas Savimbi peculiarly EVIL in all these?

dermmy:
Bravo!!!

festacman:
Angolan's protracted civil war was product of COLD WAR between capitalist US and communist USSR. US supported and armed Jonas Savimbi while USSR supported and armed Dos Santos. It was about who will corner rich mineral resources of Angola. Rebel Savimbi had his fair share of internal support but Dos Santos being the official Head of State and C-in-C had larger support. Eventually, USSR began to disintegrate, Cold War began to die down and US abandoned Savimbi. He refused to lay down his arms following several negotiations. Gradually, many of his commanders and troops were lured by government and defected. He continued weakly and eventually got killed by government forces.

All over the world rebel movements have engaged arm struggle for ethnic, political or economic reasons. Some like Pres. Museveni' succeeded and some like Savimbi's failed.

So what makes Jonas Savimbi peculiarly EVIL in all these?

panafrican:
How long did that war last ?
Did Museveni connive with Apartheid led South Africa ?
Did Museveni help a racist regime perpetuate its colonial rule in Namibia or any other African country ?
Savimbi couldn't see himself in any position other than head of state of Angola, its led to a 30-year war , despite him having
being defeated in an election.
His actions caused the death of at least half a million people, not to count he wounded and those who disappeared.
So what does not make Savimbi an eveil warlord like Charles Taylor of Liberia, Fodeh Sankho of Sierra Leone, Pol Pot the Leader of Khmer Rouge regime in the Democratic Kampuchea etc?

It took a rebel to catch a rebel

CONTRIBUTED TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED APRIL 3, 2002
UPDATED APRIL 16, 2018
PUBLISHED APRIL 3, 2002
This article was first published in 2002


At age 49, General Geraldo Nunda, deputy chief of the Angolan Army, is a man with a surprising past. He's the man who last weekend dictated and signed the deal that effectively ended one of the longest-running, most destructive civil wars in Africa. One month ago, he masterminded the hunting down and killing of Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, Africa's most charismatic and notorious guerrilla.

I once "yomped" (British slang for traversing rough country with a pack on your back) several hundred miles across Angola with Gen. Nunda and his men. I recall canoeing and wading across rivers, digging parasites from our feet, passing abandoned, roofless settlements until we arrived on the forested outskirts of the town of Alto Chicapa. There, as he launched a surprise dawn attack with a brigade of 2,000 men, Gen. Nunda told me: "The morale of the enemy is very low, and in one hour everything will be over."

That trip with Gen. Nunda happened 18 years ago. Back then, he was the most outstanding brigade officer in the UNITA guerrilla army -- the army of Mr. Savimbi, the man he would one day plot successfully to kill.

At that time, Gen. Nunda was helping me to complete research for a book I wrote on Mr. Savimbi and UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). The trip I made with him to Alto Chicapa was my last and longest yomp with the guerrillas across central Angola's great forests. How Gen. Nunda made the transition from commander of Mr. Savimbi's all-important Northern Front to become the UNITA leader's nemesis is the untold story of how peace finally came to Angola after 27 years of civil war. (...)

In 1991, Gen. Nunda, a lean, calm, mild-mannered man who was much loved by his soldiers, was called from the north to become chief of staff of UNITA's army, second in the military hierarchy to only Mr. Savimbi himself. Gen. Nunda believed intensely that Angolans deserved the opportunity to vote in multiparty elections.

In 1992, after 17 years of MPLA-UNITA warfare, the two sides signed a peace deal. Parliamentary and presidential elections were held, and Gen. Nunda saw his ideal achieved. UNITA lost both elections only narrowly, the presidential election so narrowly that a runoff vote was ordered. However, Mr. Savimbi was so incensed with the results that he ordered that UNITA return to war.

His top commander, Gen. Nunda, protested against the order. "I told Savimbi that the decision to go back to war was a mistake," he told me when we met recently in Luanda, the Angolan capital, in his new role as Savimbi-hunter. "I told him the people wanted peace and it would be a long time before we got the opportunity. I demanded a meeting of all UNITA's generals to discuss whether they agreed with Savimbi's decision to return to war."

Mr. Savimbi then tried to bribe Gen. Nunda's bodyguards to kill their commander. Instead, they tipped him off. "Most of my bodyguards had been with me for 17 years. They were like brothers," said Gen. Nunda. "They gave me Savimbi's $2,500 in American dollars. They said, 'Take the money, the important thing is your survival and our honour.' "

Gen. Nunda had been closely involved in peace negotiations with the MPLA in the two years prior to the elections. During that time, he made a lot of friends with military officers from the MPLA (following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the MPLA did an ideological flip-flop and became pro-Western and capitalist). With the help of two senior MPLA commanders, Gen. Nunda, his wife and children and his senior bodyguard were whisked by helicopter from the UNITA stronghold of Huambo to safety and the MPLA-held Atlantic port of Lobito.


This was a huge relief for Gen. Nunda, who had been growing disillusioned with Mr. Savimbi for some years. Although isolated in the north from Mr. Savimbi's southern HQ, he knew the UNITA leader had been executing many of the movement's outstanding second-tier leaders, including Gen. Nunda's own second cousin, UNITA's popular foreign secretary, Tito Chingunji.

"I concluded Savimbi was insane," Gen. Nunda told me. "Multiparty elections were what we had fought for and now he was destroying all that. He was afraid of being an ordinary citizen. He wanted to be a presidential dictator. Until as late as 1989, I still thought that UNITA was a big project of all the people. After that, as the killings of dissidents and women who refused to sleep with Savimbi accelerated, I realized that Savimbi had turned the party into his own personal project. He knew how to manipulate people. Like a scientist, he was always experimenting to see how far he could go. I saw he would advance to the end."

Immediately after his defection from UNITA, Gen. Nunda was inducted into the national army as a special adviser, and then deputy army chief, charged with the task of eliminating Mr. Savimbi. "While he lives, there can be no peace," one Angolan government minister said.

Early in 2000, Gen. Nunda began working with a special force formed around the national army's crack 16th Brigade -- troops he had often fought when he was with UNITA. The troops began a scorched-earth campaign around Alto Chicapa and Mr. Savimbi's other strongholds in eastern Angola. Mr. Savimbi, an outstanding guerrilla strategist trained under Mao Tsetung at Nanking Military Academy, responded by playing cat-and-mouse, staying constantly on the move.

Supported by new equipment from Western countries and old Soviet bloc countries in eastern Europe, Gen. Nunda's offensive gradually tightened the noose. Crucial information supplied by U.S. and Brazilian intelligence helped him locate UNITA troops and anticipate their movements. Rebel communications were intercepted by the CIA; Israeli specialists laid down a radar screen that made it impossible for Mr. Savimbi to bring in fresh supplies by air. Lack of fuel paralyzed UNITA's tank and truck units. Meanwhile, Gen. Nunda persuaded his old colleague, Gen. Demostenes (Implacable) Malaquias, to defect from UNITA, drastically undermining morale in Mr. Savimbi's ranks.

On Feb. 22, Gen. Nunda's force trapped Mr. Savimbi on a riverbank. His body was riddled with at least 15 bullets.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/it-took-a-rebel-to-catch-a-rebel/article753880/