Maarten van Munster

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Angolan UNITA soldiers parade in Jamba, the armed movement's headquarters, in 1989. UNITA's bloody internal purges are now at the heart of the reconciliation commission's controversial investigations. © Trevor Samson / AFP

MundoÁfrica,

In August, Angola's government-led Reconciliation commission (CIVICOP) stirred up controversy by taking yet another contentious step. A CIVICOP delegation, closely accompanied by a group of journalists from state television broadcaster TPA, set out on a journey to search for victims in an area that was, during Angola's civil war (1975-2002), controlled by current opposition party UNITA. The delegation, headed by the director of Angola's intelligence service, was on a specific mission: locating the remains of disfavored UNITA members who were allegedly killed during the civil war on the orders of Jonas Savimbi, UNITA's founder and former leader. The commission's initiative triggered significant outrage within UNITA and exposed a reconciliation process that has become increasingly politicized and polarized.…  Seguir leyendo »

In June 2022, the remains of four prominent individuals killed in 1977 were returned to their families. But were they really their remains or were the Angolan authorities' DNA tests wrong? © Adjali Paulo / Novo Jornal

MundoÁfrica

Angola's transitional justice process has suffered a major blow. On 22 March, a group of relatives of civil war victims, known as the 27 of May orphans, announced that the samples  of bone matter they had received from the Angolan authorities as probably belonging to their  parents, turned out not to be related to them at all. In an open letter to the Angolan people, the orphans describe the returning of the wrong mortal remains as an "exercise in cruelty", "in which feelings of loss, pain and sorrow were unnecessarily aroused, with goals that have nothing noble".

The return of the remains was part of the work of the government-established reconciliation commission that has been operating in Angola since 2019.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica,

After almost two decades of silence in the aftermath of its civil war (1975-2002), the Angolan government on 10 December 2019 changed its course by launching a “Reconciliation Plan in Memory of Victims of the Armed Conflicts in Angola”. Why was this plan established and how likely is it that this new approach will contribute to the healing of open wounds and genuine reconciliation?

Straight after its war of independence against the Portuguese colonizer, Angola went through a devastating civil war between 1975 and 2002. What could be characterized as a ‘proxy Cold-War’ in the 1970s and 1980s, turned in the 1990s into a ‘greed’ based war over the control of natural resources.…  Seguir leyendo »