Word: bakongo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Movement for the Liberation of Angola--MPLA--controlled large areas of Angola. In these areas it set up cooperatives, while in the towns it organized trade unions. The FNLA, which the CIA had supported since 1962, was "virtually inactive" by 1972. (1) FNLA was based almost entirely in the Bakongo tribe. Unita retained a little more credibility, but was also small and tribally based. The U.S. government showed its opinion of Unita when it said in a top secret memorandum (NSSM 39) that the Portuguese allowed Unita to exist mainly to "offset" the MPLA. Unita reportedly controlled some small areas...
Shootout in Huambo. The F.N.L.A.-UNITA coalition is one purely of military necessity - and a tenuous one at that, since the two groups have strong tribal rivalries. The F.N.L.A. is almost to tally Bakongo, UNITA almost totally Ovimbundu. In 1961, at the start of the guerrilla war for independence in north ern Angola, the Bakongo savagely murdered and mutilated hundreds of the Ovimbundu tribe, which has never forgotten or forgiven...
Apart from Mobutu's hope that an independent Cabinda would be easy prey for Zaire, he has concentrated on aiding the FNLA, whose leader, Holden Roberto, is his brother-in-law. The FNLA is essentially a tribal organization of the Bakongo, some 500,000 of whom fled to Zaire after the abortive 1961 uprising, and operates largely from Zairean bases. Since the FNLA has no real program beyond anti-communism and tribalism, the movement has attracted a great deal of Western support which is funneled through Mobutu. The U.S., which is increasing military aid to Zaire from $3.8 million...
...Holden Roberto, it also began among the European-educated, but was originally connected quite closely to Bakongo nationalism and then to Pan-Africanism. The Bakongo, former residents of the Kingdom of the Kongo destroyed in the nineteenth century, are a populous nation divided among Zaire, Congo, and northwestern Angola, whose bitter experience with forced labor on the Portugese coffee plantations provoked them to a bloody revolt in 1961 and to energetic resistance ever since. While the FNLA's precursors sought to reconstitute the Kingdom of the Kongo, whose last king died in 1962, Roberto's contacts with African nationalists...
Beyond tribal rivalries, whose significance is problematic, there are two key issues: the territorial integrity of Angola and the nature of its path to economic development. Angola could be partitioned along political tribal geographical lines: the Bakongo and the Ovimbundu might rejoin their countrymen to the north and the south, leaving an MPLA rump consisting of Luanda and its hinterland. This solution is certain to be opposed by responsible African leaders, such as Kaunda of Zambia and Nyerere of Tanzania, but would be welcomed by South Africa...