Angola Portugal Treated the People of Angola

Angola

Portugal treated the people of Angola with contempt and indifference for five centuries of colonization. From as early as the 1400s to the 20th century, the Africans under the Portuguese rule only knew of slavery, hunger and bloodshed.

Before the arrival of the Europeans, Angola was the home to many different African tribes. The first to arrive were the Bushmen, who were successful hunters and gatherers despite their simple existence. They have been discriminated against by other African tribes as well as Western countries for hundreds of years. By the beginning of the 6th century, a technologically advanced people called the Bantu came from the north and overpowered the Bushmen. The Bantu were master craftsmen and quickly dominated the other cultures with their excellent ability for metalworking, ceramics and agriculture. In fact, Angola derives its name from the Bantu kingdom of Ndongo, whose name for its king was ngola. The Bantu formed the Kingdom of the Kondo, one of the most powerful kingdoms in Africa during the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries.

Angolan peoples generally traced descent through their mothers, and lineages or extended families were important in social life. A man valued his wife because of the children she could give him, the garden that she provided and her ability to cook.

One of the larger branches of the Bantu, called the Ngangela, dwelled in circular living areas called kuimbo. A family group of between 20 and 40 people would be under the leadership of one man, who was the father or grandfather to the majority of the residents. In addition, a number of nephews might have attached themselves to a particular uncle. This family leader had many responsibilities to his extended family. For example, he would be the one to pass along important information that affected the entire family or would have to ensure safety and the necessary shelter and food.

Ngangela society was held together by the general principle of good behavior. A good person was one who respected others, was willing to resolve problems, acted as a friend to all others in the tribe, and who did not cause problems. A youth who reached adulthood without learning proper respect could be put to death by the tribe.

By the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese had sent Catholic missionaries and skilled workers to the Kongo Kingdom, and some Kongolese had gone to Portugal for schooling. In the earlier years of the 16th century, the King of the Kongo, King Afonso, was baptized into the Catholic church. He ruled for 40 years, and much of the country was converted.

A write all this information above in the past tense, because once the Portuguese took control of our country, Christian ways and ongoing strife made us lose close attachment to our culture. In the 1600s, the Portuguese came to our country and started to convert everyone to Christianity to gain control. They assumed political leadership and began using our people as slaves to work their sugar plantations in Brazil. They also wanted the product from our rich gold mines. Development of the interior began after the Berlin Conference in 1885 delineated the colony's borders, and European investment fostered mining, railways, and agriculture.

During the 1900s, the Portuguese continued to suppress African nationalism. When Antonio Salazar came into power in Portugal, he exploited our agricultural and mineral wealth by encouraging more countrymen to come to Angola to manage the mines and plantations. He also wrote and enforced strict labor laws.

After World War II, things became even worse, because our own people began to fight one another. The three most important liberation movements, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) were divided among ethnic and political lines.

Even in 1975, when Portugal finally gave us our freedom, Civil War, as well as involvement by other nations such as the United States and USSR, killed millions of people. Everyone has wanted our offshore oil, but have not been willing to give us needed support services in return.

One of the books that best describes our horrible plight is called South of Nowhere by Antunes. As he noted, there have been so many countries and political factions involved with Angola that no one ever can tell the good guy from the bad. A paragraph from this book sums up this terrible world we have had:

Forbidden to fish and hunt, dispossessed, hemmed in by barbed-wire fences and fed handouts of dried fish, spied on by the PIDE, tyrannized by the black bodyguards of the officers, the tribesmen fled to the bush, where the MPLA, the movement for the liberation of Angola, our invisible enemy, was hiding, forcing us to fight a hallucinatory war. With every wound from an ambush or a mine, the same distressing question occurred to me [...]: Who is killing us? The guerillas or Lisbon - Lisbon, the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese, the whole *****ing lot?"