There were tears when ANC head of international relations Lindiwe Zulu visited the Viana transit camp on the outskirts of Luanda last week.
Many young people who left SA after the 1976 Soweto uprisings went to Viana for military training and to join the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). It was also the site of mutiny in the early 1980s.
“I cried it out today,” Zulu wrote beneath a video on Instagram showing herself, dressed in a golf shirt emblazoned with the MK military veterans’ logo, weeping bitterly at the entrance to the camp. “The spirits are here and need to be fetched. Fetch them we will. As long as we live!”
Of course, Zulu hadn’t returned to the country for that reason. She was there to “participate in Angola’s 2022 general elections as part of an international party political observer mission”, supported by the deputy minister of international relations & co-operation, Alvin Botes, in his capacity as ANC national executive committee member.
Angola’s elections, held last Wednesday, “were generally peaceful and its logistics were well organised by the Commission of National Elections [CNE] of Angola”, the party said.
Statements by other observer missions were more critical. The EU, for example, agreed that the elections were peaceful, but said it was aware of complaints by the opposition and civil society about the electoral process. It urged “stakeholders to use all legal remedies to address their concerns”.
The AU said something similar, and called on the CNE “to conduct the remaining electoral processes in a transparent and accountable manner”.
It noted “reports of an uneven playing field”, such as biased media coverage, a lack of transparency around voters lists, and the fact that the voter registration process was handled by a government ministry, which “limits the role of the CNE in ensuring full control of all key responsibilities of election management”.
Seven parties and one coalition took part in the elections for 220 National Assembly seats, allocated through a proportional representation system.
But the real contest was between the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which won 51.2% of the votes, and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita), which secured 44% — its best result yet.
A second presidential term is now imminent for the MPLA’s João Lourenço, who took over when José Eduardo dos Santos stood down in 2017, after 38 years in power.
Dos Santos, who died in Spain in July aged 79, was buried in Angola on Sunday. Zulu extended her stay to attend the funeral, with President Cyril Ramaphosa also jetting in.
[The ANC] will never forget [the] MPLA’s contribution, sacrifices and the suffering that was borne by the people of Angola
— Lindiwe Zulu
When Zulu stepped off the plane in Joburg early on Monday morning, she was wearing an MPLA T-shirt featuring Lourenço’s face. It made her allegiance clear.
As she said in the ANC’s post-election statement: “The historical fraternal party relations between the ANC and MPLA [span] over decades — in particular stemming from [the] MPLA’s gracious support for the liberation of the peoples of Southern Africa from the yoke of apartheid, colonialism and imperialism.”
And, she added, the ANC “will never forget [the] MPLA’s contribution, sacrifices and the suffering that was borne by the people of Angola due to its hosting of army training camps”.
The country also provided refuge to the military wings of liberation movements such as Namibia’s Swapo and the Zimbabwean African People’s Union (which later merged with Zanu-PF). All four former liberation movements are still in power and maintain strong ties, together with Frelimo in Mozambique.
But SA’s relations with Angola are complex. The apartheid government was for years involved on the side of the Unita rebels in their war with the MPLA government — a war that destroyed Angola’s economy.
And relations remained decidedly cool after SA became a democracy in 1994. After becoming president, Nelson Mandela attempted to broker a peaceful solution to the civil war — against Dos Santos’s wishes.
President Thabo Mbeki’s personal relations with Dos Santos were strained, and the two countries disagreed on responses to crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zimbabwe. There were also accusations that SA mining company De Beers was buying diamonds from areas controlled by Unita.
It was only during president Jacob Zuma’s tenure that relations warmed up. In 2011, Dos Santos paid his first official visit to SA after Zuma’s state visit to Angola — his first after being elected president — in 2009.
There were suspicions that the MPLA had helped fund Zuma’s hard-fought ascension to the ANC presidency in 2007, which were fuelled by the fact that the MPLA sent a high-level delegation to the ANC elective conference in Polokwane that year.
By the time Lourenço took over from Dos Santos and embarked on his programme of reform — including an anti-corruption crusade and, later, the erasure of Dos Santos’s name from roads and places — relations had warmed significantly.
When Lourenço visited SA in November 2017 — shortly before the end of Zuma’s term as ANC leader — a visa-waiver agreement between the two countries was signed.
Independent analyst Marisa Lourenço (no relation to the president) tells the FM that this agreement, which in particular facilitates business travel, signalled that relations were no longer “informed by what happened in the past”.
All five former liberation movements in Sub-Saharan Africa remain in power. Should one lose an election, it will dramatically alter the dynamic
— What it means:
Though the MPLA is no longer the socialist party the exiled ANC first forged ties with, relations between the two countries remain important, given SA’s power in the region and the role Angola plays, through its ties with the neighbouring DRC, in containing the power of Rwandan President Paul Kagame.
“Lourenço is close to [DRC President Félix] Tshisekedi,” says Marisa Lourenço, adding that the alliance offers Tshisekedi, seen as a weak leader, some protection against Kagame.
Like Zulu, Mbulelo Musi spent time in MK’s Angola camps. The national political commissar for the MK Liberation War Veterans tells the FM how the then ANC president Oliver Tambo and MPLA leader Agostinho Neto — later Angola’s first president — forged close relations in the 1960s.
“Most countries in the OAU [Organisation of African Unity] were not keen to give us military bases, but Agostinho was most daring to say: ‘Come to our country and make it your home,’” he says. “We landed as a big contingent of students who left our country after the Soweto uprising.”
The group felt particularly at home, he recalls, upon learning that the Portuguese slogan they’d seen when landing translated as “Angola, a firm trench of the revolution in Africa”.
“They gave us camps, space, and weapons to train our people,” Musi says.
Though diplomatic relations have improved since the early 1990s, Musi believes closer party-to-party and people-to-people ties could benefit both countries.
“Angola is rich with oil and other strategic materials, which will be good for sustainable development,” he says. “Diplomatic, security and trade relations [have] to strengthen [to take advantage of this].”
Still, the ANC’s history in Angola is somewhat chequered. “Different MK people have very mixed feelings about it,” says Justin Pearce, senior lecturer in history at Stellenbosch University. “There was notorious oppression in some of those camps, and there was a mutiny in 1984 and a march to Luanda to protest MK cadres being deployed to fight against Unita.”
Those who were in the upper MK echelons would have fonder memories, he says.
If we can’t allow democracy, what are we fighting for?
— Mbulelo Musi
Though it’s hard to draw comparisons between SA and Angola — SA has stronger democratic institutions and comparatively fairer elections — there are predictions that the former liberation movements could both be out of power by 2029.
Pearce says it’s possible that the MPLA could drop below 50% in 2027, but that might depend on the integrity of the election process. “I suspected there was going to be fraud [in the current election],” he says, adding that if the party hadn’t prevailed, it may well have cheated to ensure victory.
Of course, there would have been pushback. While the MPLA controls the electoral commission, Unita has mobilised more strongly than ever to guard against electoral fraud.
“Now that the two parties are much closer in parliament, Unita and some of the opposition parties can push for institutional change,” Pearce says.
Though the MPLA suffered big defeats in Luanda and Cabinda, the large number of voters on the government payroll in provincial towns, as well as a climate of fear still remaining from the war, mean the party’s support in these places remains strong.
If the MPLA or any of the other four former liberation movements still in power should lose a future election, it could signal a dramatic change for the country concerned. “There is no precedent for how it would be if one of these liberation movements [loses] power,” says Pearce.
Back home, Musi says “it’s quite logical that voting patterns will change” — in SA too. But, he adds, democracy should run its course. “If we can’t allow democracy, what are we fighting for?”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.