Contextualising Angola's Reintegration Process Ruigrok, I.M

VU Research Portal Whose justice? Contextualising Angola's reintegration process Ruigrok, I.M. published in African security review 2007 DOI (link to publisher) 10.1080/10246029.2007.9627636 document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in VU Research Portal citation for published version (APA) Ruigrok, I. M. (2007). Whose justice? Contextualising Angola's reintegration process. African security review, 16(1), 84-98. https://doi.org/10.1080/10246029.2007.9627636 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. E-mail address: [email protected] Download date: 28. Sep. 2021 This article was downloaded by: [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] On: 26 October 2012, At: 02:58 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK African Security Review Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rasr20 Whose justice? Contextualising Angola's reintegration process Inge Ruigrok a b a Portugal b Research School for Resource Studies for Development (CERES) at the Free University Amsterdam, Netherlands Version of record first published: 22 Jul 2010. To cite this article: Inge Ruigrok (2007): Whose justice? 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The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. African Security Review 16.1 Institute for Security Studies Whose justice? Contextualising Angola’s reintegration process Inge Ruigrok* Over the past decade, international efforts to end protracted confl ict in Africa have directed large streams of funds towards the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of former combatants in rural areas. While designed as an integrated approach, the emphasis tends to lie on short time frames of transition through centrally managed programmes that narrowly target ‘the demobilised’. Despite the good intentions of these programmes, there are a number of questions that need to be answered, particularly how the benefi ciaries perceive them. This essay tries to answer some of these questions by analysing Caluquembe, a district in central Angola where villagers were subjected to violence on Downloaded by [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] at 02:58 26 October 2012 an everyday basis, and where since the war ended in 2002 hundreds of former UNITA soldiers and their families were reintegrated. The essay argues that the ongoing ‘normalisation’ efforts of reintegrating displaced people and demobilised soldiers are facing a number of challenges due to the narrow targeting of benefi ts, the lack of involvement of local government, the absence of any form of national reconciliation, and the emphasis on economic reintegration in an environment of extreme poverty and social exclusion. The essay also draws a number of lessons that could benefi t reintegration efforts in the Great Lakes Region, particularly for the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi. * Inge Ruigrok is a freelance journalist based in Portugal and a PhD candidate in the Research School for Resource Studies for Development (CERES) at the Free University Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Essays 85 Introduction: Angola’s reconciliation process Angola presents a quite unique and challenging context for a reintegration process, as the country lived through such a long episode in which there were two relatively clearly defi ned social and political structures, supported by rival ideologies. Both sides have built their internal mobilisation and support through the formation of an exclusive political, even national identity, while claiming to be the voice of the more authentic Angola. At the same time, the political and military divisions were both blurred and fl uent during the sequences of war since independence from Portugal in 1975, and often even crossed families. It is now a common belief in broader Angolan society that reconciliation is foremost a process that takes place on a micro-level, with help from the churches, expressed often as somos todos irmãos, ‘we are all brothers’. Another factor that complicates Angola’s post-war transition is the very nature of this process. The end of war was abrupt and for most, unexpected. While images of the trophy– a lifeless Jonas Savimbi lying on the grass in his underpants – were broadcast all over the world, President José Eduardo dos Santos fl ew to Lisbon to discuss the new situation with the Portuguese government, and then to the United States to meet with President George W Bush and Ibrahim Gambari, the UN Under-Secretary for African Affairs. Back in Luanda, on 13 March 2002, President dos Santos announced a peace plan that instructed the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) to stop all offensive actions against UNITA (União Nacional pela Independência Total de Angola) rebels.1 From then on, events followed one another in quick succession. On 4 April 2002, a new peace agreement was signed in which both sides promised to complete the implementation of the Lusaka Protocol. In fact, the political transition occurred without the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola) conceding any power. The government’s conviction has always been, especially in the last phase of war, that it was protecting the Angolan people and that its military campaign was a defence of democracy and sovereignty, a war that had to be Downloaded by [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam] at 02:58 26 October 2012 waged for peace. It made a great effort to portray Angola as a ‘normal’ country, above all through the restart of the constitutional drafting process.2 It is for these reasons that the government never felt the need to apologise for any wrongdoings, contrary to UNITA, whose secretary for political issues, Abílio Kamalata Numa, appeared on Rádio Nacional on 6 January 2003 to ask for forgiveness from Angolans who were directly or indirectly affected by UNITA’s mistakes. Angola’s 27 years of war has produced winners and losers, although the government has refrained itself from displaying a victorious mood and adopted a forgiving attitude, pre-empting prosecution and punishment for all. Reconciliation has practically been synonymous to a blanket amnesty for crimes committed in the context of war; such laws were continuously updated to include the next phase of confl ict. An amnesty clause was 86 African Security Review 16.1 Institute for Security Studies part of the 2002 Luena Memorandum of Understanding, which reiterated the ‘national reconciliation’ as called for in the Lusaka Protocol.3 At the same time, reconciliation concerned the broadening of Angola’s political structures on national and sub-national level to include UNITA, and more recently, with the end of confl ict in the province Cabinda, Fórum Cabindes para o Dialogo (FCD), and to establish a joint national army and police force. In the shadow of these arrangements between elites, ordinary Angolans were told to forget the past and look forward to the future. Such an effort to move on is not without danger as injuries are not so much forgiven but publicly ignored, leaving them to fester. The risk is that collective memory becomes a political tool, as the alternation of forgetting and remembering itself etches the path of power (Minow 1998:119). Yet, the complexity of the wounds have even made civil society activists believe that an institutionalised response to human rights abuses (which included a ‘scorch earth’ policy pursued by the FAA to wrench guerrillas from their support base while the increasingly isolated UNITA forces engaged in savage responses) would not be a favourable option in Angola today. The discourse is much about the necessity of having a ‘social peace’, a settlement that goes beyond a military agreement to include ‘transparent political competition’. ‘It is more important that people are lifted out of poverty, and have access to opportunities. Maybe, much later, through a national debate, we can look at the political side to try to understand the lessons that caused the confl ict to last for so long. Not at this moment.’4 In actual fact, Angola’s most inclusive national reconciliation initiative so far is the government’s reintegration programme, which it drew up as war ended in 2002 after which it was made to fi t the framework of the World Bank’s Multi-Country Demobilisation and Reintegration Programme (MDRP).

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