17 April 2008
Luanda — The president of the Angola's main opposition Unita party, Isaias Samakuva, recently made some public utterances in Portugal seeking to pass a political message as part of his electoral campaign.
In his Portugal's campaign, according to an editorial of Wednesday edition of the State-run and country's only daily paper, Jornal de Angola, Isaías Samakuva told the Portuguese businesses that his party no longer destroys bridges, dams, hospitals, schools, public buildings and other "dangerous" military targets.
In these revelations, the politician should have also mentioned that scrapped is the "democratic" method of throwing defenceless women and incautious opponents into fire. But this much, as much or more important than the former, remains for when his party enters the electoral campaign battle.
In this trip of his to Portugal, he gave signs of being a perspicacious politician, with a deep sense of anticipation to developments. He made a statement at all rates notable, which shows clearly his dimension of a sagacious and intelligent politician.
Samakuva told journalists that his party wants to diversify the Angolan economy because, despite rising in a gigantic way, it "is centralised in the oil sector, but sectors like agriculture are strategic, they can employ many people."
He is right. And it is for knowing this reality that Unita has not as yet unequivocally detached from the landmines it planted in the farming fields from North to South of the country and maimed thousands from among the peasants.
In elucidating the Portuguese media, the politician should have mentioned that Angola is spending billions of dollars in the demining of the agricultural fields and only then will it be possible to plant and sow, and only through planting and sowing can jobs be created and food, nowadays imported, be produced .
But, despite this cruel reality, Angola is already investing strongly in the sector of agriculture, one of the fast growing.
When Samakuva and Unita staff flooded Angola with landmines, they already new that the day of peace would come, along with elections. And that in the electoral campaign, he has apparently launched, his party would slap in the face of the Government the accusation that it (party9 should not be held responsible for the peasants working in landmine fields.
Samakuva went further in his meeting with the Portuguese journalists who failed to ask Unita leader how he would afford practising agriculture, amid the danger of mines and without infrastructures and equipment.
He also slammed at the Government for maintaining the country locked in the coast areas, rather than opening it to the interior. This is one more statement from someone who has carefully designed an infallible strategy, started soon after the clamorous electoral defeat of 1992.
With the proclamation of the results, suddenly they surfaced with a clandestine and illegal army, seized almost all provincial capitals and impeded, by force of arms, the free circulation of people and goods.
With this attitude, this political leader knows he is telling lies. Today the country is open to the interior, but this required to bring the war to an end and restore everything that Unita destroyed.
As a reinforcement to his cunning strategy, it started to destroy bridges, dams, high tension pylons, railways, airports and mine roads.
In Portugal, before a group of journalists, Samakuva said that should Unita win the elections, his government would "rebuilt the bridges, the roads, airports, hospitals and schools." This is a statement long expected from the leader of the "Black Cockerel". It is just delayed.
By virtue of the accords signed and the magnanimity of the Government of Angola, Unita escaped to pay heavy compensations for the damages caused fore over 30 years.
Apparently, Samakuva is now ready to pay. Finally his party that, since its foundation, only destroyed and betrayed, is now ready to build. It is high time. But this has not been the actual practice as a partner to the Government of Unity and National Reconciliation, as it challenges the authorities and incites to disobedience.
The most touching of Samakuva's statements has to do with his concern with human rights. He said in the capital of the defunct Portuguese colonial empire that there are in Angola detentions of journalists and a Luanda UN Human Rights office was shut down.
This fact is associated with a journalist sentenced under the press freedom law and sent to serve a prison term on a court decision. He ended up released as a result of an appeal. The said UN office, after all, has never existed legally. Yet Samakuva sees these two cases, normal in any country of the world, as human rights abuse.
With these statements, Samakuva placed himself out of the law, of the democratic legitimacy and of the Courts. As he sees it, human rights would be impossible. These are re-emerging reminiscences of the past.
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This is commentary rather than reporting. The writer has some real points to make concerning issues in the agricultural areas, and post war problems, however.
I think you seem to forget that the MPLA immediately declared a one party state at the declaration of independecs, sidelining the indeginous group from the north and central highlands, namely the Ovimbundu and the Bakongo. The war was bad but it forced democracy. Nobody is clean in Angola.
Would you rate this article as "news"? I strongly feel that editors of allAfrica.com should make efforts, so that "news" and "politicking" be separate from each other. There is a clear line to be drawn between partisan opinions about facts, and investigated facts; between political mud hurling, journalism, and news reporting. Yours truly. Gilles Hosch