The Jonas Savimbi Interview
Maier, Francis X.
"The Jonas Savimbi Interview" Francis X Maier THE JONAS SAVIMBI INTERVIEW The Carter administration doesn't like Angola's most popular guerrilla leader, apparently...
...And we will never give up...
...You cannot have peace in Zaire, in Zimbabwe, in Namibia, in Zambia, without Angolan stability and cooperation...
...Portions of this interview appear in the December 1979 issue of the National Catholic Register...
...Your question reminds me of a report John Fisher did on the situation in Angola for the World Council of Churches at the end of 1976...
...Why not, he asked, discuss the status of human rights in other countries, where people are shot without trials or are dying of starvation...
...My family has suffered a great deal...
...Fighting broke out even before the old colonial authorities had left...
...You must remember that Angola has had a 400-year relationship with the West...
...If ZANU, ZAPU, and SWAPO genuinely represent the liberation of their people, then those groups are entitled to humanitarian support from the World Council of Churches...
...Colonialism was a historical fact...
...As political analysts Chester Crocker and Kenneth Adelman point out, the Luanda regime is not a legitimate government...
...The American people have gone through a difficult period of frustration and selfdoubt...
...The result is, now we can talk to each other and understand each other...
...South Africa had no choice but to withdraw...
...Do you think the Council should be involved in financing such groups7 JS: UNITA also received support from the World Council of Churches when we were fighting the Portuguese...
...and he said that every time we came back to Mombasa, we would have to water it and thereby cement our peace forever...
...Nor does it control the land, as evidenced by UNITA's continuing successful closure of the economically vital Benguela Railway, which cuts through the heart of the country...
...And when we defeated the Portuguese in 1974, I went to my father's grave and stood over it and told my father that we had won, and that the suffering, the pain, and the struggle had not been useless...
...They compare the MPLA to the Portuguese and they say, "The Portuguese never did that to us, we had to work for them Monday through Saturday, but at least on Sunday we were free to do what we wanted...
...But it is important to distinguish genuine liberation movements from groups masquerading as liberation movements who are, in reality, merely agents of a new form of imperialism...
...The situation of the church in Angola is really tragic, and it is only now coming to the attention of the international press...
...The MPLA has two objectives...
...The following interview took place on November 6, 1979, at the Essex House in New York City...
...But now it is in the past...
...And the dismaying fact is that "this thesis has been adopted by thv" governments of many developing countric,~ and has even begun to influence interTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1980 11...
...Many people outside Africa look upon UNITA as a spoiler, a complication...
...JS: Do not forget us...
...UNITA had close relations with Mobutu in Zaire, and Kaunda in Zambia, and we were on excellent terms with SWAPO because we had trained their cadres, and we came from the same regions and were of the same blood...
...Mobutu lost...
...The disturbing thing is, I have heard many people say that these MPLA atrocities and violations of the freedom of religion are accidental...
...UNITA could have exerted a great moderating and stabilizing influence on the entire area...
...Q: So you see MPLA violations of political and religious rights as being inherent in the MPLA 's ideology ? JS: All the witnesses coming from the towns prove it...
...African countries are, militarily and in terms of international influence, still weak...
...But ,then the Cubans came with their tanks and their airplanes and their helicopters, and we had no choice but to retreat into the bush...
...The peace he got in Luanda is not in the interest of the Zairean people...
...And, for the moment at least, it is winning...
...We need your help...
...the state takes everything from them and the people resent it...
...Q: You have said many times that UNITA is the key to peace in southern A fro'ca...
...recognition is a bargaining card...
...Those who were not remained at home to talk, to think, to rest, to discuss problems...
...But the United States has done nothing, has no policy, or even worse, it has pursued objectives that are opposed to its own basic interests...
...His report was a premeditated lie, and it shocked us that a man who was working for the church would do such a thing...
...This is something that really puzzles us: Why does the United States always give away its bargaining cards...
...But Kenyatta forced us to do it anyway and we planted the tree...
...On November 11 of that year, following a leftist coup in Lisbon 19 months earlier, the Portuguese hauled down their flag in Angola and sailed for home...
...Q: In your analysis, what has brought the United States to the point of having no policy ? JS: America was deeply frustrated by the defeat in Vietnam...
...But today the Western countries know exactly what Africa is, know better than anyone in the x~orld how important it is...
...My attention was brought to this problem in 1977 when I was in Dakar...
...Savimbi is a reminder that resistance does make a difference...
...But I can tell you that we are winning, and the Angolan people know it...
...OUt enemy is your the'my, has always 8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1980 been your enemy, and at least for the foreseeable future will remain your enemy...
...We have learned how to know the mind of Western countries...
...He was not misinformed--he did it to help the MPLA...
...If, in 1975, the United States had remained firm, and even now if there were strong signals coming from Washington, I think the Cubans would be finished...
...The great appeal of UNITA and Savimbi is that they have confounded, again and again, those experts who would exclude them from the destiny of their own homeland...
...This line of reasoning is criminal, and we will not accept it...
...Worse, the MPLA's human-rights record is dismal...
...Those premises can be traced directly to the Angolan debacle of 1975...
...Those who were Christians went to church...
...What are we to do now...
...Whenever possible, he sent me back home to the bush to see my grandfather...
...The United States should never have pressured Mobutu to deal with Neto...
...I doubt that McHenry would want to change any of the present administration's African policies, since he was the one who engineered all the present contacts with Luanda...
...Holden Robcrto's FNLA (National Front for the Liberation of Angola...
...State Department officials also argue that Luanda has been extremely helpful in the search for a Namibian peace settlement, although, at least at this writing, there is no peace in Namibia...
...As for the children who were born after the start of the revolution, they are really our greatest hope, because they understand themselves in a way that no generation before them ever has...
...I assume he would like to see the United States extend diplomatic recognition to the MPLA government...
...Why do you turn now to the West, and specifically to the United States, to seek assistance and understanding ? JS" The great drama of the West in the modern era is the playing out of its own guilt...
...According to Chalidze, the Soviet Union has "used the full might of its propaganda apparatus to convince people that they need not those rights which a person endowed with common sense wants but some other sort of rights discovered by Communists" The Soviet Union maintains, Chalidze said, that "economic and social rights take precedence over civil rights...
...The first is to compensate Cuba for the loss in labor manpower because of its troop commitments in Angola...
...Do not abandon us...
...Of course, this sort of repression only engenders more resistance...
...You should understand too that Russian support for our struggle came only in the 1960s, not before, because they were ignorant of the stakes...
...JS" We deplore the Carter administration's inability to respond to the occupation of the continent by Cuba and the Soviet Union...
...His trip created a great deal of anxiety at the State Department...
...On November 3, as a guest of Freedom House and Social Democrats, USA, Savimbi arrived in the United States to present, over the next ten days, his side of the continuing Angolan civil war...
...Stephen Miller HUMAN RIGHTS IN FOREIGN POLICY: A SOVIET SUCCESS As the West comes to accept the Soviet Union's definition of "human rights," the world grows less free and more impoverished...
...The first two hearings were held in Copenhagen fn 1975 and in Rome in 1977...
...And they give us faith that the country we want to build will be shaped, if not by us, then by our children...
...My mother, who is still alive, told my sister and myself that he never complained Before he died, he told my mother that he always agreed with what I was doing and that I should never give up...
...Within Africa, he is covertly supported by ten or eleven "moderate" states, reportedly including Gabon, Senegal, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Kenya, the Sudan, Egypt, and Tunisia...
...But the organizers of the hearings did not want to belabor the obvious Rather, they wanted to persuade Americans in particular and the West in general of a point they find compelling: Human rights means civil rights, not economic and social rights...
...J o n a s Malheiro Savimbi, now in his midforties and one of the leading figures in the Angolan independence struggle, is reviled by his enemies as a tribalist, a racist, and an opportunist...
...So I spent two months investigating it and that was how I found out that children were being shipped to Pine Island...
...He told me of the suffering he had seen and through his eyes I saw it too...
...The Russians and the Cubans, who were supposed to be our friends and who did give us help in our struggle against the Portuguese, are now bringing us a new style of slavery...
...A friend of mine showed me a picture taken by some of the technicians who worked in Luanda...
...Predictably, the MPLA and the Cubans drove their guerrilla opponents into the bush, claiming victory in early 1976 and settling down to the task of consolidating power...
...Albert Camus, "Bread and Liberty" During the last week in September, the Dirksen Senate Office Building was the scene of a unique American event: the third meeting of the International Sakharov Hearings to examine the status of human rights in the Soviet Union...
...And I am not talking about provoking a confrontation, I am talking about attitude, about general policy...
...foreign policy in Africa...
...Savimbi is a pragmatist...
...If someone takes away your bread, he suppresses your freedom at the same time...
...When Mobutu went to Luanda, there were no negotiations and no discussions...
...The war, my father's imprisonment and death--these things were very hard on my family, but these hardships drew us together and even today we are united I think this story, which has been repeated a thousand times in a thousand other families, says something about the strength of the Angolan spirit It is a source of great confidence and great pride for me...
...But if someone seizes your freedom, rest assured, your bread is threatened, because it no longer depends on you and on your struggle, but on the pleasure of a master...
...The reason Savimbi is persona non grata is simple: His continued existence calls into question the basic premises of the administration's policy in Africa...
...This is typical of the MPLA mentality and it is alien to Angolan culture...
...It cannot claim to represent the Angolan people because it has never held a free election (nor even a THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1980 7 rigged one...
...Let me give you a small example of why the MPLA is not accepted by our people...
...He has survived six assassination attempts, a variety of diplomatic betrayals, major military and psychological reverses--and yet today, UNITA controls up to half the total land area and population of Angola, with more than 15,000 guerrillas in the field, organized to battalion strength in key sectors...
...so much, ifi fact, that Richard Moose, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, reportedly tried to block the visit...
...He came to Angola, looked around, went back to Geneva, and said that everything was going very well for the church in Angola...
...Influential academics like John Marcum and Gerald Bender argue that the MPLA is the best educated, best organized, most politically systematic and forward.looking, and least racist of the rival nationalist movements, and therefore deserves to rule...
...Now we have agreed that you will work together in the future, so in the African tradition let us plant a tree to symbolize your friendship...
...It's another curious irony of the late twentieth century--and a hint of our moral disarray--that the only "freedom fighters" we will not wine and dine are those who profess our own values...
...Mobutu may or may not be corrupt, but he is still the leader of his people, and he deserves to be respected...
...It is ironic that your own government has finally recognized how important Angola is by attempting to court the Luanda regime in reaching a Namibian settlement-though they are going about it in a mistaken way...
...T I l E AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL 13, NO 1 ; JANUARY 1980 Francis X Maier THE JONAS SAVIMBI INTERVIEW The Carter administration doesn't like Angola's most popular guerrilla leader, apparently because he's pro-America and wants to drive the Russians and Cubans out of Africa...
...But that is a lie...
...S i n c e 1976, many people have been urging the United States to recognize "reality" in the form of the MPLA government...
...McHenry was instrumental in attempting to negotiate a Namibian agreement between the Luanda regime and the Western Five...
...It is in the interest only of the MPLA...
...The United States humiliated him...
...He seizes much of what he needs on the battlefield from his opponents (food has never been a problem, since UNITA is strongest in the heavily populated central regions of Angola, the nation's breadbasket...
...In trying to rebuild the zones of our country that they control, the MPLA has called upon the people to work for socialism from Monday through Saturday, and then on Sunday the MPLA calls on them to give yet another full day of work to the state...
...History did not end with Vietnam...
...JS: No...
...Let us equalize the terms of our relationship...
...The MPLA seized the capital city of Luanda, declared itself the sole legal government, and more than 15,000 Cuban combat troops and advisors poured in to back it up...
...IVhen will you win--if you win ? JS: There is no timetable in a guerrilla war like ours...
...It is clear that Angola plays a major role everywhere on the southern Africa sub-continent...
...Vietnam is over...
...If there had been elections in 1975, UNITA would have won, and if there were elections today, UNITA would still win...
...If, as Valery Chalidze (a prominent dissident who played a major role in the hearings) has said, "the most important contribution that can be made to the defense of human rights in any country is publicity," then the hearings did little to advance the cause of human rights throughout the world To some degree it is understandable that the American press did not think the hearings worth much attention...
...The motives of corporations like Gulf, Texaco, Boeing, and Mobil are somewhat less altruistic: Angola is potentially one of the richest countries in Africa, with massive deposits of oil in Cabinda and major concentrations of iron, manganese, diamonds, and other minerals useful to the American economy...
...Abandon them...
...My father was a very astute man...
...Kenyatta had the goats slaughtered anyway, but when we were called to go to the ceremony, Neto had disappeared...
...How can it...
...Before we fought the Portuguese, we told them, "This kind of relationship, the way you treat us, is inhuman...
...Instead, because of the victories the Soviets and Cubans have scored in Africa, the "nonaligned" movement has become just another platform for Russian propaganda...
...It was appropriate, Chalidze said, to focus on the Soviet Union because of that country's "role in formulating and propagating the ideological justification for human rights violations...
...Q: What do you consider to be the main failing of U.S...
...They did not respond, and that forced us to pick up arms, but in 1974 we sat down and we talked in good faith--and we gained our independence...
...And now we will have to kill a goat and put the blood of that goat on the tree to water i t . " Neto refused to do it, and he ran away...
...And in the long ltifl...
...The irony is, we never hated the Western countries--the Portuguese or the Americans...
...The FNLA, UNITA, and the United States were denounced as racists, and Congress, inspired by the recent disaster in Vietnam, cut off covert assistance to the pro-Western nationalists...
...Cuba has 60,000 soldiers on the continent, and because of that, it has become a major force in international politics...
...Beyond Africa, his key patrons are France and, to a lesser degree, China...
...We knew that Fisher was simply lying...
...But we have not been defeated...
...lr/hat kind of an effect 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1980 has it had on you and your family ) What kand of life is being led by the children who have been brought up without ever knowing peace ? JS: The revolution is a call that you cannot run away from I cannot really point to the exact day I decided to join, but I was fortunate that my father worked on the Benguela Railroad...
...When one hundred people gather in a church these days, more than 20 are government informers...
...He fights an inexpensive war, and he does it well, according to Don Junior of the State Department...
...JS: Over 6,000...
...Q: The World Council of Churches has given "humanitarian" grants to ZANU, ZAPU, and SV~'APO guerrillas in southern Afn'ea...
...They also criticized widespread arrests without cause, and indirectly confirmed what UNITA has been claiming for some time: that large numbers of Angolan children are being abducted and forcibly relocated for political education...
...We were stunned because at the same time cries were coming to us from all over the country--from Protestants as well as Catholics--that the MPLA was destroying everything that had anything to do with the church...
...The Cubans, or rather the Russians, will then have bases from which to operate against Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Zaire Your strategy is all wrong...
...Angola is now training ZANU, ZAPU, and SWAPO guerrillas, as well as Katangese secessionists...
...The administration involved the country in a war without adequately explaining it or justifying it...
...According to one report, the participants "were livid with the Washington newspapers and national media for all but ignoring them...
...A ship had come to Angola full of arms for the MPLA, but it was going back full of people...
...I didn't know...
...But this new form of colonialism is absolutely different...
...We went back and Kenyatta said, "Look, that day you planted the tree you did not really agree to peace in your hearts...
...The hearings in Washington were rich in human drama...
...Q: lr/asn 't it Fisher who recommended that the World Council of Churches give the MPLA government C130 planes, allegedly so Mat they could fly food into southern Angola...
...Guilt is devouring the values of the West, and it is a tragedy to watch...
...American and Russian interests are not the same...
...But Neto said, "I'm not going back to Mombasa," and he left...
...An agreement had been prepared beforehand by his "friends," the Americans, and it turned out that Mobutu was just there to sign the paper...
...The Luanda regime was voted into the UN (with the United States abstaining), and received the diplomatic recognition of most of the world's nations--with several exceptions, notably the United States and the People's Republic of China...
...But that sort of ritual is the root of his people, and when he rejected it, he was rejecting his people, his past, and even himself--and that is why his message will never penetrate the Angolan heart...
...The second is gradually to mold a new Angolan generation in the image of the Cuban revolution, to provide the MPLA with a greater power base among the people...
...JS: Yes, he said that the planes could help bring food to refugees, but of course the planes were used to fly MPLA soldiers to the front...
...JS: What I am saying is this You cannot have peace in southern Africa without peace in Angola, and you cannot have peace in Angola without a government of national unity and reconciliation that will include UNITA, because UNITA represents the majority of the Angolan people...
...The people don't understand this...
...Couldyou elaborate on that...
...The tragedy is that, had UNITA come to power in 1975, we would have been in an excellent position to solve at least some of the region's prbblems...
...Priests and pastors are leaving the towns and coming to the bush and they tell us about massacres and arrests...
...These are people who have been loyal to us and have supported us through 14 years of war...
...Now we have talked again...
...everything, even his own personal prestige...
...It came to power on Cuban bayonets, presides over an economy in chaos, and is kept in power by massive Soviet aid, 28,000 Cuban combat troops, and thousands more Cuban and East European advisors...
...From the Soviet Union we have come to expect one story and one story only, the story of human suffering, and there may be a limit to the number of harsh tales we can bear to hear...
...Those who are friends of the United States need to be supported by America...
...Q: Have you sensed a shift in the policies of the United States since Donald McHenry replaced Andrew Young at the United Nations...
...He is also a witness to the fact that, somewhere along the way, the United States has lost the ability to distinguish our natural friends from our natural enemies...
...In the short run, acquisition of these resources would be easier if relations with the Luanda regime were normalized...
...Why have we gathered here," Valery Chalidze asked on the opening day of the hearings, "to discuss human rights in the Soviet Union...
...So people now are afraid to go to church, where they are vulnerable, and they meet instead in small groups...
...But I am afraid that the World Council of Churches has been subverted, and is now being manipulated by those who are sympathetic to the Soviet Union...
...Will that sort of peace really last...
...Who were they...
...Yet for many of the Stephen Miller has written for many jour nals, including Encounter, Commentary, and the American Scholar...
...Q: A large school of American thought feels that it was Western imperialism that destroyed the fabric of African hfe in the first place...
...JS: They are true...
...But since founding UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) in the rugged countryside of his homeland 14 years ago, Savimbi has lived, worked, and fought as a guerrilla hero to a significant portion of the Angolan peasantry...
...These children are now on Pine Island...
...But today they don't have any time at all...
...The United States must understand that forcing people to make a bad peace is wrong...
...Q: I f you had to ask one thing from the American public, what would it be...
...According to the dissidents, those who regard economic and social rights as equal in importance to civil rights not only undermine freedom throughout the world, they also make it more difficult for the masses of the world to avoid poverty, starvation, disease, and neglect...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1980 9 Well, we returned to Angola, but there was more fighting among us and so I convinced Kenyatta to call us back to talk again...
...Cuba has gained great prestige from its successes in Angola, in Ethiopia, and elsewhere...
...It makes no sense to give it away and get nothing substantial in return...
...What we are telling you is this: "You have left our countries because we fought, but our relationship has merely changed, it is not over...
...People are saying that you have to recognize the regime in Luanda because that will help you to solve the problem of Namibia...
...And he can keep on doing it indefinitely...
...For four days both prominent dissidents and numerous 6migr6s from all walks of Russian life gave testimony to a distinguished panel that included Lane Kirkland, Arthur Schlesinger, J r . , Robert Conquest, Tom Stoppard, and Simon Wiesenthal...
...The idea for such tribunals was first suggested by a group of prominent Soviet dissidents, including Andrei Sakharov, in an open appeal on February 14, 1974, the day Alexander Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union...
...Q: Are these children taken from the UNITA areas exclusively ? JS" The majority are taken from UNITA areas, but there are some from the Luanda region also...
...And if a priest or pastor says something that is politically incorrect, he will be arrested by morning...
...South Africa intervened on the side of the other guerrilla groups...
...That ended 400 years of colonial administration and 14 years of inconclusive guerrilla warfare--at least for the Portuguese...
...though the operation was a military success, it turned into a political fiasco...
...Nor, according to South African sources, is there likely to be any as long as Angola continues to encourage "terrorists...
...He said that if I did not fit in with the people in the bush, I was nothing at all, because I would never be a Portuguese...
...and UNITA, then a maverick group nobody knew much about...
...And while it is true that colonialism brought with it a domination that tried to destroy our values, we learned through colonialism the ideas and methods needed to resist...
...Q: How many children are we talking about...
...In Neto's mind, the whole ritual was just another example of a reactionary past...
...The MPLA's harassment of religion is a deliberate and systematic policy...
...This particular program is designed as a form of political repression-the areas where resistance to the MPLA is strongest are those areas from which they take the most children...
...participants the hearings were a failure, because they received scant attention from the American press...
...There are four Catholic bishops now in Portugal who have recently come from Angola, and they are speaking out...
...You must move on...
...Q: How long can you keep this up...
...But I think the way of organizing a recovery is for the leaders to lead, to come forward with new initiatives, to be strong and willing to risk themselves, not to fall back on the nation with excuses and fear...
...We met first in Mombasa, and Jomo Kenyatta told us, "You carried rifles and you fought the Portuguese, but you have also fought each other for many years...
...We have much common ground, and while we are not asking you to fight our war, because we are capable of doing that ourselves, it is natural for us to cooperate...
...But the difference between what is happening in Angola and, say, the disasters now befalling Mozambique under FRELIMO, is that in Angola there is still an armed resistance...
...Neto argued, "No, this man is a reactionary, it has no significance in my life, to plant a tree--what's that...
...In a Pastoral Letter released in January 1978, the Angolan Catholic bishops attacked the MPLA's systematic repression of freedom of speech, worship, and assembly...
...The majority of the people of Angola are now in areas that we control...
...The MPLA was in the process of transforming churches all over the country into military barracks and warehouses, but when Fisher came, he said that everything was going smoothly, that the MPLA was helping the churches and guaranteeing freedom of religion...
...According to the Alvor Agreement, power was to be shared by representatives of all three liberation movements: the Marxist MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) led by Agostinho Neto (who died in MosFrancis X. Maier is editor of the National Catholic Register...
...But if America recognizes the MPLA government in Luanda, it will encourage the Cubans to stay in Angola by making their crimes diplomatically legitimate...
...I remember when UNITA went to Kenya to make peace with the leaders of the other parties--the MPLA and the FNLA...
...Then, with Watergate, people lost whatever confidence remained in the leadership...
...Q: You have been involved in the struggle now for 20years...
...I don't think that such assistance is necessarily wrong, if the aim is to help liberate people who are oppressed...
...The fabric of Angolan culture is gradually being annihilated...
...Now we hear people telling us that we should accept defeat, lay down our arms, and eliminate ourselves from the scene for the sake of peace...
...Q: What about reports that the MPLA has been shipping children from Angola to Cuba for political education and work in the sugar cane fields...
...Today there is a total absence of resistance to Russian and Cuban aggression, and after long years of struggle against colonialism, it pains us to see that a new form of imperialism is dominating our continent...
...they did not know what Africa meant for them...
...cow on September 11, 1979...
...My father died in jail after five years of iraprisonment...
Vol. 13 • January 1980 • No. 1
