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Angolan Women in Search of Peace

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Angolan Women in Search of Peace The African e-Journals Project has digitized full text of articles of eleven social science and humanities journals. This item is from the digital archive maintained by Michigan State University Library. Find more at: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/ Available through a partnership with Scroll down to read the article. Afr. j. polit. sci. (1998), Vol. 3 No. 1,70-81 Angolan Women in Search of Peace Horace Campbell* Abstract The paper deals with the multiple wars against the Angolan people, and the central role being played by Angolan women in developing new forms and initiatives for peace. It shows how Angolan women have had to draw on the historic memory and practices of resistance and survival to maintain their dignity and pursue peace. It concludes that the success of any peace initiative would require a fundamental transformation of politics and society to give voice to Angolan women , and not simply the reconciliation of waring military factions. Introduction Ten years ago the combined forces of the Angolan army, the Cuban internationalist forces and elements of the South West African Peoples Organisation (SWAPO) defeated the forces of South Africa and UNITA at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola. However, the continuing bloodshed in Angola four years after the Lusaka Accords (of 1994) and ten years after the peace accords on Namibia compels progressive scholars to fully examine the meaning of peace and to attempt to understand the cultural, ideological and military forces that rob African people of their humanity. This devaluation of the lives of Africans is most keenly felt by African women who have borne the brunt of masculinity and violence that are celebrated in the warrior traditions in Angola. Progressive African women and feminist scholars have made it clear that it is not simply enough to understand the mil itary defeat of South Africa. It is also necessary to understand the ideas and cultural practices that validate violence and war. Our knowledge of the linkages between direct violence, structural violence and the ideas of cultural domination has been enhanced by the work of researchers and scholars who seek to move beyond a superficial under- standing of war and peace in Africa. 1027-0353 © 1998 African Association of Political Science Angolan Women in Search of Peace 71 According to Johan Galtung, "structural violence exists when social and economic conditions are such that people die or suffer as a consequence of the unequal distribution of resources, not as the result of physical violence". This concept of structural violence as a component of warfare is very critical to the wars against the Angolan people. African women, who bear the brunt of the structural and cultural violence, have been in the forefront of the struggle to redefine peace in a way that transforms the total reality of domination in Africa. The whole experience of Angola points to the need for more profound transformations in the society than merely silencing guns. Africans embarked on struggles of liberation to end the arrogance of Europe that is inscribed in the whole colonial project. Unfortunately, this struggle was not predicated on transforming the colonial ideas of capitalist relations, patriarchy and the warrior traditions in politics. The icon of the African soldier with the gun was supposed to be the hallmark of liberation and revolution. But now, in the aftermath of the end of formal apartheid, it is clearer that replacing colonial overlords with African males without changing the eco- nomic and social structures can only lead to entrenched exploitation. In Africa where the nationalist ideology of male leaders has negated the positive aspects of the struggles for self determination, African feminists have deepened our understanding of how ethnicity and nationalism, as backward looking ideolo- gies were anchored in a past which was based on male domination and masculine prowess. These scholars have been able to outline how African women experience "nationalism and ethnicity as violation, war and conflict between men who appropriate the female body as the territory upon which they fight their vicious and destructive games - often in the name of national sovereignty and the search for peace among themselves" (McFadden 1994: 33). Angola provides a compelling lesson of nationalist and ethnic identifications that seek to appropriate the female body. In Angola, peace today, like the pacification campaigns of the colonial era, provides the context for warfare, rape and destruction. Since the anti colonial war (1961 -1974), the war of destabilisation (1975-1991), and the destruction of the country by UNITA from 1992 to 1994, millions of the Angolan peoples have been uprooted from their village communi- ties and over a million lost their lives. Angolan women have been affected disproportionately by the warfare, exploitation and violence. On top of the misery and the massive loss of life in this rich but under-populated society, the living conditions of the Angolan producers deteriorated according to every index of quality of life: health care, access to water, infant mortality, access to primary education, nutrition and food security, pre and post natal care and household incomes. In the pervasive climate of devastation and degeneration, women were more susceptible to multiple assaults and attacks. Increased violence in the society meant that there was more sexual abuse and beating of women. In the midst of the war the Organisation for Angolan women had to set up a special hostel 72 Horace Campbell for battered women. With the collapse of the economic infrastructure (other than the extraction of petroleum products) the survival techniques, remnants of the matri- centric production unit, of the African women on the whole kept body and soul together. The large scale movement and dispersal of population which had been precipitated by war and violence imposed more grievous responsibilities on them. It was in this context of war and dispersal that Angolan women were searching for levers of participation in their society to end militarism, violence and oppression. The renegotiation by Angolan women of their place in society has been facilitated by the destruction caused by war and the breakdown of the village as the social unit. Millions of poor people were dispersed from their village communities and "rendered displaced" persons in the statistics of the United Nations. For example, Luanda, acolonial city constructed for less than 200,000 people, was now bursting with a population of more than 2 million. In the midst of such massive urbanisation, women engineered new survival strategies while maintaining those aspects of African culture which served the requirements of social reproduction. As was evident in the Luanda wars of October 1992 and January 1993 women demonstrated new forms of solidarity and comradeship. In the rural areas of Angola the struggles for food and life distinguished women who crossed military lines to forage for food and to ensure the survival of their children. The women of Kuito - Bie in particular, who organised the resistance against UNITA in the nine month siege, stamped a new image on the society and forever buried the myth of ethnic loyalty to UNITA. This paper deals with the multiple wars against the Angolan peoples and the centrality of African women in moving away from warfare to new forms of social interaction. Angolan women have had to draw on the historic memory and practices of resistance and survival to maintain their dignity as human beings. The record of the spiritual, military and cultural resistance of the peoples is manifested in the songs, dance, art, drawings and other areas continues to inspire large sections of the population. The spirit of resistance has been manifest in numerous ways but nowhere as evident as in the forthright emergence of Angolan women on the centre stage of the economic life of their society. Despite the noteworthy presence of women in all spheres of existence, in the discussions on peace and reconstruction women are still marginalised. If one were to measure the resources invested into reconciling warring parties as the basis for peace, one would then understand the limits of the present peace accords on Angola. This is evident from a study of the United Nations and its peace efforts in Angola. Two Scenes of War and Resistance Scene 1: Kuito, Bie The battle for Kuito, Bie in the heartland of Angola, raged on with artillery Angolan Women in Search of Peace 73 bombardment and a siege of the main urban administrative area for nine months (January to September 1993). The Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FALA), the army of UNITA and Jonas Savimbi, trained and equipped by a dying apartheid regime, had laid siege to this city in the central highlands of Angola. The peoples of Kuito, whose memory of African military and cultural resistance to colonial pacification campaigns was still fresh, shared a history of resistance to colonialism with the other peoples of Angola. These people had voted for UNITA in the 1992 elections. Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA, claims his lineage from Kuito and had pinned his hopes on a quick victory in this town to reinforce the military occupation of over 65 per cent of the administrative centers of Angola. After the 55 day siege of Huambo, from January to March 1993, UNITA had dithered in the "peace talks" in Abidjan hoping to take Kuito in order to boost its bid to seize power by force. The army of UNITA had controlled most of the barrios of this city but there were three barrios which were not taken. The barrio of Katonge struggled to remain free and it was from this community that the women organised to stay alive. The women of Kuito demonstrated exemplary courage in breaking the siege by going out at night to forage for food, transiting land mines, and using different techniques of dress, language and trading patterns to bypass the soldiers of the government and UNITA.
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