Why States Recover by Mills Greg;

Author:Mills, Greg;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: C. Hurst and Company (Publishers) Limited
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Political choices

What does the death of this rebel leader explain about the nature of conflict and of political choices?

In an age when the public ‘default stop’ is towards conflict resolution and negotiation, military solutions can play their part in settling conflicts, just as the death of one person can make a substantial difference. The number of senior UNITA generals who came in from the bush after Savimbi’s death, in spite of many expecting them to carry the fight on, is testimony to the hold mais velho (old man) had over them and the error of his ways.

Savimbi’s decision to go back to war confined him to a life on the run, a short period of military ascendancy in the mid-1990s being overturned by his rapidly narrowing international support base (itself a function both of his increasing illegitimacy following the 1992 election and the politics of oil) and the stiffening of the military resolve of the Angolan government. His poor choices are borne out by his uncertain legacy for UNITA. Following his death the party has, perhaps inevitably, struggled to redefine its character out of the shadow of its ‘big man’, to rebuild its leadership and institutional structures and normalise its funding sources outside of the diamond booty favoured by Savimbi. Many of its former fighters continue to face uncertainty, with endemic unemployment in their rural home areas in spite of Luanda’s post-2002 demobilisation, demilitarisation and reintegration programme. This has affected even those closest to him. Valentine, the wife (Savimbi had several and apparently fathered some 30 children) who was with him at his death, is today a nurse in Luanda. But she is ‘struggling’ financially in the opinion of her colleagues, since her welfare and of people like her ‘is not on the agenda of the government’.

Stability, however, requires more than just a military victory, even if that is a good place to start. It demands inclusive development to avoid building a constituency of losers who have little option but to resort to violence as a means of survival, and a political opposition as a critical check and balance on untrammelled power. Thus, if the path to peace was eventually locally owned, funded, led and organised, what of the path to prosperity?

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