Revolving around the volatile decades after Angola’s independence, the new book by Fred Bridgland, The Guerrilla and the Journalist: Exploring the Murderous Legacy of Jonas Savimbi (Jonathan Ball), draws the reader into the political turbulence that engulfed most southern African countries.

The real instigators and propellers of Angola’s civil war, steeped in ideological and political rivalry, were foreign powers vying for world domination during the Cold War: the imperial West and the socialist Soviet Union. Angola had natural resources like oil, gold and diamonds in abundance, and a good climate to fend for its people, but these turned out to be the main reasons that led to the untenable derailing of democracy and a tortuous and brutal decline of humane values and great loss of life.

What could have been a peaceful transition to multiparty democracy following the 15 January 1975 Alvor Agreement between the liberation movements the MPLA, Unita and the FNLA, which stipulated 11 November 1975 as the date of independence after holding elections a month before, turned out to be the beginning of the bloodshed as the MPLA, backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, drove Unita and the FNLA from Luanda into the wilderness so as to proclaim itself the sole victor of the liberation struggle.

What drew me to the book is a strong longing to learn more about Unita’s story from someone who has had first-hand experience since 1975 while living from time to time with Unita’s leader, Jonas Savimbi. Bridgland writes: “As I talked with Savimbi, I had only the thinnest grasp that Angola was becoming a hot adjunct to the Cold war – of all unlikely places, it had become a cockpit of the wider ideological struggle.”

Savimbi co-founded Unita with an elderly Jonatão Chingunji in 1965. The book is an intriguing discourse of Savimbi’s egomania and greed for absolute power versus all the Chingunji family who stood for the ideals of Unita to liberate Angola from five centuries of Portuguese colonialism and bring progress and peace to its people.

A man with exceptional credentials of leading the struggle from the bush since October 1966, Savimbi had rubbed shoulders with the world-renowned Che Guevara, had military training in Mao Zedong’s China, and adopted Maoist philosophy in the process. His execution of the military tactics learnt from the East helped resuscitate Unita when Western countries were less sanguine about its survival.

Read in Daily Maverick: “Unita shakes foundations of MPLA, slashing ruling party’s majority by 27% in Angola”

“The refusal of the West to respond to the Soviet-Cuban build-up was at the heart of Unita’s dilemma. Savimbi felt he had been left with no choice other than to sup from the West’s gift of a poisoned chalice and accept help from black Africa’s sworn enemy, apartheid South Africa,” writes Bridgland.

Enter the young son of Unita’s co-founder, the ever-dedicated and hardworking Tito Chingunji. His diplomatic prowess catapulted Unita’s standing to international recognition… and more financial and military support.

The author has quite flattering memories of his lasting friendship with Tito and dedicates the book to the whole Chingunji family and extended family – all slaughtered by Savimbi, except for one survivor.

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But as a journalist Bridgland could not be just an observer while everything around him was spiralling out of control. The charm of Angola and its people was stronger, despite the danger lurking behind its appeal.

At the time, Angola was difficult to fathom, what with the ruling MPLA being embroiled in its own internal troubles. Purges of “traitors among us” beginning on 27 May 1977 even rubbed off onto the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, up to the formation of the concentration camp, Quatro, for any dissenting voices.

It is estimated that 20,000 people, mainly doctors, engineers and teachers, were summarily executed by the MPLA after the alleged attempted coup. Their guests, the ANC, got entangled in the madness in Angola and had their own casualties.

In the words of Sousa Jamba, who won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for his novel, Patriots, writing about Savimbi: “I am one of many Unita members who have kept quiet until now about killings inside our movement in the interest of the wider struggle against Cuban and Soviet domination of our country… The way he and his fellow African dictators have treated their fellow blacks make the worst racist seem like a mere schoolboy bully.”

Read in Daily Maverick: “Angola’s José Eduardo dos Santos was a ruthless manipulator who left no legacy”

Bridgland’s book is authentic and should be read by many in South Africa as South Africa’s history is heavily embedded in the proceedings of the time. It will leave the reader emotionally charged for a long period – whether one was in favour of Savimbi or not.

Claims and counterclaims of what actually unfolded in Angola may be clarified.

Sometimes the fear of discovering that what we believed in was not real should not hinder us from exploring the truth – as portrayed by Fred Bridgland. DM

Luthando Dyasop was a member of Umkhonto weSizwe in Angola between 1980 and 1988, and a prisoner in the ANC’s Quatro prison between 1984 and 1988. His book, Out of Quatro: From Exile to Exoneration, was published by Kwela Books in 2021.