Word: angolans
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Africa's political show trial of the year was under way in Luanda last week, and seemingly everyone was tuned in. Citizens of the Angolan capital walked the streets with transistor radios pressed to their ears. In the evening, silent, intent knots of people watched tape replays of the trial over Angola's single, government-controlled TV channel. The unwilling stars of the judicial spectacular in Luanda's sandstone Chamber of Commerce building: 13 foreign mercenaries, all captured in the northern part of the country last February, who were accused in a 139-part indictment of more...
...TIME Nairobi Bureau Chief Lee Griggs from Luanda, the mercenaries were dressed identically in beltless, one-piece tan prison-issue jumpsuits. During the twice-daily sessions, the prisoners sat calmly on backless wooden stools on a red-roped dock facing the tribunal−a court that consisted of two Angolan lawyers, two soldiers and a representative of OMA, the national women's organization. The mercenaries followed the questioning intently on headsets for simultaneous translation into five languages−English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian. There was a point to having the proceedings delivered in the two latter languages: Russian...
...ranged from specific atrocities (murder, assault, arson, sabotage, rape and robbery) to vague accusations of "meeting with the traitor Holden Roberto" (head of the defeated National Front for the Liberation of Angola−F.N.L.A.). The "crime" of being a mercenary, charged against all 13 defendants, is not denned in Angolan law, but most foreign observers were impressed by at least the surface fairness of the proceedings...
Before independence last November, most of the 400,000 or so Portuguese and Angolan whites fled the country. The administrative and technical gap has only partly been filled by a few trained Angolan blacks, the few whites who stayed behind and an influx of Communist helpers (mostly Cubans, Yugoslavs and East Germans). They have helped Luanda to limp along, but nonetheless most restaurants have closed for lack of food and fuel, mountains of uncollected garbage pile up, and street crime is on the increase-more because of desperation than avarice. Almost every day, the government paper Diario de Luanda rages...
...Cubans are destined to play a major role in Angola's reconstruction. In addition to patrol duties, Castro's troops are slowly shaping up the M.P.L.A. army of 35,000 men, instilling a much-needed dose of discipline. Angolan soldiers complain that the men from Havana work them too hard and sometimes steal their women. But relations are good at officer level, and many M.P.L.A. soldiers now wear Che Guevara-style beards and berets...