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Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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Angola Out of the East -
Saurimo, Lunda Sul (I)

If the peace in Angola holds, Unita should eventually get to govern three of the country's 18 provinces, writes Chris Simpson

U
IGE, IN THE north, is "coffee country", a region once studded with coffee plantations, but now in urgent need of revival. Although expelled from the provincial capital of Uige last November, Unita is well-established across the province, with the comparati vely prosperous city of Negage acting as its unoffical northern headquarters. Trade links with neighbouring Zaire have been crucial in the past and are likely to remain so.

Kuando-Kubango, in the south-eastern corner of the country, is Unita territory of o ld, where Jonas Savimbi took his followers after defeat in the mid-1970s and where the key battles were fought in the 1980s. But apart from the capital, Menongue, and a handful of other towns, Kuanado-Kubango is largely scrubland and desert, a prize barely worth having. Unita has already signalled its intention to abandon its former bush headquarters in Jamba, with the UN ready to evacuate some 40,000 people.

The eastern province of Lunda Sul is a much more intersting prospect. One of the last regions to be colonised by the Portuguese, until 1984 it was joined to Lunda Norte. Unita has had little support here over the years, but still holds large swathes of territory, exploiting both the government's military and administrative weaknesses and the Lundas' luc rative diamaond reserves.

The Lundas are often viewed as a country apart, the Angolan "Wild West", synonymous with banditry, diamond-dealing and intriguingly wayward local governors, who run the provinces as their own corrupt fiefdoms, incurring the antago nism of a population traditionally hostile to central government. Not, in short, a place for the faint-hearted.
The stereotype is inevitably exaggerated, but there is always an extra frisson when you board a flight to the east.

On arriving in Dundo, in the far north-eartern corner of Angola, I ran straight into trouble with some polite but obdurate immigration officials. My press credentials failed to impress. "The Lundas are a very particular kind of place," I was told. Help arr rived in the form of an Irish priest, fluent in the local Chokwe dialect, who charmed the officials and took me under his wing. Graham Greene, you feel, would have worked wonders with this part of Angola.

Lunda Sul is shortly to receive a major influx of Zibabwean peace-keepers, with the capital, Saurimo, their operational headquarters. It's a somewhat unprepossessing town. In March I got a guided tour with a British UN logistics man on his first posting in Angola. He drove mournfully to the airport, bemoaning the squalor of it all. "That was a bar once, now it's a public toilet. Where's the wildlife around here?"

Others, however, have settled in admirably, pride of place going to two redoubtable British missionaries who are an invaluable source of information on local currents, the ups and downs of the diamond business and the shortcomings of the UN.
Aid workers from the Irish relief organisation, GOAL, are also firmly established, making some headway in addressing a critical primary health situation. Saurimo's hospital and overall medical facilities defy description.

Rather less altruistic, but now more accesible are the thick-set Afrikaners working for Executive Outcomes, the South African outfit whose "trainers", "technical assistants" or "mercenaries" - call them what you will - reportedly played a pivotal role in t urning the war the government's way. Saurimo has been a key military base for the government in the past, a launching-pad for attacks elsewhere in the Lundas, particularly around the diamond area of Cafunfo, and would doub tless be so again should hostilities resume.

Saurimo is fiercely entrepreneurial. As elsewhere in the Lundas, you are more likely to fly out on a Russain cargo plane, chartered by an Angolan foot importer, than on an aid flight. With most road links still far from secure and local industry moribund, virtually everything is flown in from Lunanda, soft drinks, whisky, bicycles, at substantial mark-ups.

The openings are there if you have a head for business. A neighbour in Lunada flies huge quantities of alcoh ol to Saurimo whenever she can hire a plane. In Saurimo itself, the best, and possibly only hotel accommodation in town belongs to Dona Kina from Kuito, whose small family restaurant is much less modest than it initially seems, but far from cheap. She was coaxed down from $85 to $50 a night by a business friend anxious to set up in the area amidst protestations about rising prices and the lack of a steady clientele.

There is certainly good money to be made in Sau-rino. While the big companies, led by Oderbr echt of Brazil, are increasing their stake in Lunda Sul, concentrating particularly on the Catoka Project in the north of the province, the informal diamond sector is ever-present. Another of Dono Kina's guests, an Angolan raised in Zaire, spoke lyrically of the deals to be struck and the welcome lack of governement regulation. There are endless offers, discreet and drunken, of pedras , (diamonds) from local sellers of all ages, in the market, in the local bars and on the streets.

In its time Saurimo was seen as fairly solidly pro-MPLA. But not any more. Lunda Sul returned five deputies from the Partido de Renovacao Social at the elections in 1992. The PRS, another of Angola's myriad self-proclaimed "third forces", has a strong following in the Lundas and Mosico province to the south, pushing a vaguely separatish agenda which dwells heavily on the east's neglect and exploit ation by central government.

Opposition activity in Saurimo is sporadic, with probably more heady rhetoric than hard action. There have, ho wever, been local demonstrations, studiously ignored by the state media, with the hint of further protest to come. A few casual enquiries led easily to a meeting with a dissident journalist, freshly out of detention. He pleaded anonymity but gave a lucid a ccount of current grievances.

These included, inevitably, the lack of electricity and water in the city and the lack of funding for schools and hospitals, despite eloquent election promises by the MPLA in 1992. But of more concern was the clampdown on garimpo , the illegal diamond digging which provides a living for thousands in the Saurimo region and which the government, in collaboration with incoming diamond enterprises, is trying to eliminate. There were allegations also that the government was sanctioning large-scale illegal diamond operations by a select few.

"The government is like the father of the house," I was told. "When a father can't look after his children and sends them out without clothes, unable to study, then he is clearly failing. The government is to blame for all this."

Foreign diamond companies were roundly chastised for their greed, refusing to acknowledge the needs of the local population. "If they're coming here we want proof they are going to build schools and hospitals. As yet, we've seen nothing."
l To be continued next week



Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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