Weary, war-worn Luanda limps on

Press, 24 June 1985, Page 12

Weary, war-worn Luanda limps on

By

PATRICK REYNA,

of Associated Press, in Luanda

From the air, Luanda, once the jewel of Portugal’s African empire, is still a city of tall buildings whose gleaming whiteness contrasts with the ochre-coloured earth and the deep blue South Atlantic.

On the ground, however, it is clear that the city has declined since the Portuguese departed in 1975. A decade of wear and tear on city streets and an estimated tripling of Luanda’s 1975 population, to 1.5 million, makes getting around here seem more like navigating than driving. Rubbish remains uncollected — special garbage trucks imported several years ago sit idly by, lacking spare parts that only hard currency can buy. Everywhere stand half-finished shells of apartment blocks abandoned by the departing Portuguese. On the corner of Avenida Karl Marx and Rua Lenin sits a burned-out building, apparently untouched for years. The city’s big hotels are being renovated for the annual conference in September of the Heads of State of Portugal’s five former African colonies. The elegant Presidente, a gleaming tower of steel and glass, has already been refurbished and is now under the management of the French hotel firm Meridien.

The task elsewhere is formidable: at the Tropico Hotel, for example, the promise of a good view from the eighth-floor terrace is spoiled by the fact that the lifts do not work.

Although the operations of Angola’s Marxist-inspired Government remain a well-kept secret from the rare Western visitor, there is little mystery about its Soviet-supplied air force.

In plain sight, Antonov 265, used to ferry small contingents of troops or equipment, and huge, lumbering Antonov 12s taxi about the runway of Luanda’s Fourth of February Airport, as MiG fighters scream past overhead.

“The military isn’t very happy about this,” the official guide, Katia Airola, acknowledged; but that is how the Portuguese built the airport — the military runway right alongside the civilian part.

It will be 10 years in July since Portugal relinquished control over Angola, after almost five centuries of colonisation and 13 years of bitter anti-colonial revolution.

Although the war ended for Portugal, it has never stopped for the People’s Movement of Angolan Liberation (M.P.L.A.) Government, which continues to fight a South African-backed guerrilla movement called Unita (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). The everyday reality of warfare is underlined by the omnipresence of the military, and by the mid-night-to-5 a.m. curfew, during which gunfire is heard every night in Luanda. Sometimes it is just a few shots, at other times rounds of automatic weapons fire. Saboteurs occasionally reach into Luanda.

Four years ago, the city’s petroleum refinery was blown up in a night-time attack for which Unita claimed responsibility but which many believe was the work of commandos from South Africa, whose white Government is engaged in a hidden war against the M.P.L.A. because the Angolans support guerrillas fighting for black-majority rule in the South African-controlled territory of Namibia.

Several Western reporters were recently granted visas to Angola after the Government announced that Angolan troops had killed two South African commandos and captured another on May 21 while foiling a raid on an oil complex in the northern province of Cabinda. The complex is a joint operation by Angola and the United States oil company, Gulf Oil.

South African officials at first denied knowledge of the group, then said the commandos were

gathering intelligence on black guerrillas attempting to overthrow the South African Government. The wounded South African, who identified himself as Winan Petrus du Toit, aged 27, told an Angolanorganised news conference that the raid on the Malongo depot was intended to cause considerable economic setback to the Angolan Government. A Later the Government flew reporters to Malange, a provincial capital 350 km east of Luanda, to see a captured airdrop of arms, ammunition, and supplies intended for Unita guerrillas operating in the area. Unlike Luanda, where the winter temperature reached 29 deg Celsius, with 90 per cent humidity,

Malange was higher, cooler, neat, and tidy. Like Luanda, the military were everywhere, including some of the estimated 25,000 Cuban troops in the country, awaiting transport back to the national capital. The provincial military governor, Colonel Ludy Kissassunda, said the 31-tonne drop had been picked up 58km from the Zaire border but had come from South Africa. All serial numbers had been filed off the Soviet-made AK-47 and Portuguese-made G-3 rifles, but the medical supplies were manufactured in South Africa, and the labels of the plastic bags of Sterisol sterilised water were written in English and Afrikaans.

The Government also flew reporters to the bush area outside the Malongo oil complex in Cabinda, 290 km north of Luanda on the Atlantic coast, where the Angolans surprised the South African commandos. Cabinda is an enclave of United States commercial interest in a Marxist-run country, a place where offshore wells operated by Gulf Oil produce most of Angola’s approximately 200,000 barrels a day in petroleum. Gulf Oil is not the only United States company evident in the area. As a bus carrying reporters turned around near the gate of the off-limits complex, a soldier on guard rose from his chair and saluted — after first putting down his can of Miller High Life beer.