Washington, DC — Unita's interim leader General Paulo Lukamba, known by his nom de guerre "Gato", has warned that more resources must urgently be delivered to former Unita combatants gathering in 'quartering' areas in eastern and central Angola.
Speaking at a briefing on Friday hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, DC, Unita's former military commander confirmed his organisation's commitment to the peace process, which was triggered when Unita commanders signed a ceasefire on April 4 with government forces.
The ceasefire agreement, or Memorandum of Understanding, was effectively a conditional surrender by Unita after mounting military pressure culminated in the death of Unita leader Jonas Savimbi in February this year. Both sides agreed to end the fighting and complete the outstanding issues of the 1994 power-sharing Lusaka Protocol.
General Gato said Unita had worked intensively to persuade its soldiers that peace would be good for them and their families and the results were evident - 80,000 soldiers had come into the quartering areas.
But two months on, he said, it was clear that although the government had been trying to meet their needs, its efforts had not been sufficient.
Gato said he had received reports of ex-combatants escaping from the camps and of children and old people dying of hunger and disease.
There have been repeated warnings from aid agencies that the quartering areas are insufficiently resourced to cope with the need. Soldiers entering the quartering areas have been accompanied by some 300,000 family members.
This week the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres criticised both the Angolan government and the United Nations for being "unacceptably slow to respond to the urgent humanitarian needs of at least half a million Angolans".
Gato asked the government to "redouble its efforts" and also called on the international community to complement the government's response.
Gato, chairman of Unita's management committee, noted that the issue of resources would continue to be important. He noted that only 5,000 of the quartered soldiers would be integrated into the army and police, leaving 75,000 men in need of employment.
He called for training programmes to be funded and stressed the importance of investing in the country's agricultural sector so that the manpower released by the end of the war could be absorbed into productive work.
If this was not done, he warned, there was a danger that Unita's ex-combatants would feel excluded from the peace agreement. "We should not allow them to become pockets that destabilise the country," he said.
Other work was needed to rebuild roads, bridges and other priority infrastructure, he said, so that the "necessary balance" in recovery and development be achieved "across the national territory".
Looking ahead, Gato praised Angola's govering MPLA party for having agreed, at its recent Central Committee meeting, to organise a national forum for debate to consider political and national matters. There had been a "deficit of dialogue" in Angola, he said. "Whether this body was called a national conference or an inclusive debate, what mattered was that Angolans should be allowed to talk".
He also stressed the importance of civil society in helping to rehabilitate political life, praising the work for peace by churches and singling out the Catholic church for special mention.
Gato said the independent media were a "fundamental instrument" for democracy, adding that there had been a "deficit in this field in our country".
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Regarding widely reported tensions within Unita, Gato said he was aware of the key role that his movement must play in Angolan democracy.
He said Unita had been thrown into serious crisis by its loss of direction this year, but that he was determined to achieve reunification.
Next month he would call a meeting of cadres - members of the National Assembly, ministers in the government, Unita's foreign missions and its former military commanders - to elect a provisional leadership. The meeting would then "readjust our strategies" and debate policies so that Unita could go into its 9th Congress "with the least amount of conflict possible."
Unita was moving "slowly but surely" towards reconciliation, he said, and was committed to achieving it "without exclusion or humiliation". Even the problem of "Unita renovada", a breakaway faction, could be resolved, he believed.
