Savimbi's Angola

Title: Savimbi's Angola

Photographer(s): Cloete Breytenbach

Writer(s): Cloete Breytenbach

Designer(s): Paul Hansen

Publisher(s): Howard Timmins Publishers, Aylesbury, England

Year: 1980

Print run:

Language(s): English

Pages: 144

Size: 21,5 x 30,5 cm

Binding: Hardcover

Edition:

Print: Cape & Transvaal Printers, South Africa

Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: Angola,1979

ISBN:

Savimbi was the only Angolan guerrilla leader who continued fighting within Angola until the nation reached independence from Portugal in 1975; by this time he had expanded his initially small band of supporters into a guerrilla army numbering in the thousands.

Savimbi spent most of the next eight years inside Angola leading his forces. UNITA carved out a liberated area in eastern Angola where it established primary schools, agricultural cooperatives, and clinics under his direction.

In 1996 Savimbi indicated that he would retain control of the lucrative diamond regions in northeastern Angola, although some were transferred to the government in 1998.

The Angolan government released a statement confirming the death of Jonas Savimbi, which occurred on 22 February 2002, near Lucusse, in the province of Moxico, Angola.

Savimbi's death means the end of the most destructive guerrilla movement the world has known. For two generations hundreds of thousands of Angolan peasants were killed, wounded, and displaced. Tens of thousands of children, boys, and girls, were kidnapped and forced into UNITA's army as porters, sex slaves, or fighters.