ANGOLA, HISTORY OF

history of the area from prehistoric and ancient times to the present. The Stone Age population of Angola was very sparse. Ironworking and settled agriculture spread during the 1st millennium AD, but hunting and gathering remained important for centuries. Bantu languages may have entered Angola with iron technology, and they were certainly spoken by the 15th century. Additional reading Lawrence W. Henderson, Angola: Five Centuries of Conflict (1979), provides a broad treatment. Phyllis M. Martin, Historical Dictionary of Angola (1980), includes a bibliography. David Birmingham, Central Africa to 1870: Zambezia, Zare, and the South Atlantic (1981), synthesizes prehistory and the early Portuguese presence. More on the Portuguese presence can be found in Gerald J. Bender, Angola Under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Reality (1978). Analyses of the slave trade include Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 17301830 (1988), a masterful work; and W.G. Clarence-Smith, Slaves, Peasants, and Capitalists in Southern Angola, 18401926 (1979). Ren Plissier, Les Guerres grises: rsistance et rvoltes en Angola, 18451941 (1977), reviews modern history from a military and political perspective. John A. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution, 2 vol. (196978), analyzes the liberation movements up to independence. Henrique Guerra, Angola: estrutura econmica e classes sociais, 4th ed. (1979), is an essay on late colonial reforms. David Birmingham, Frontline Nationalism in Angola & Mozambique (1992), focuses on the period from 1961 to 1975. F.W. Heimer, The Decolonization Conflict in Angola, 197476: An Essay in Political Sociology (1979), provides the best guide to decolonization. W.G. Clarence-Smith, Class Structure and Class Struggles in Angola in the 1970s, Journal of Southern African Studies, 7(1):109126 (October 1980), analyzes the beginnings of the civil war. Fred Bridgland, Jonas Savimbi: A Key to Africa (1986), views the civil war from a UNITA perspective; while Keith Somerville, Angola: Politics, Economics, and Society (1986), does the same from an MPLA perspective. William Minter, Apartheid's Contras: An Inquiry into the Roots of War in Angola and Mozambique (1994), also discusses the civil wars. William Gervase Clarence-Smith The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica The economy Angola had a diversified and rapidly growing economy in the late colonial period, but it suffered badly after independence. A destructive civil war, the nationalization of most large enterprises, ineffective central planning, a heavily overvalued currency, and a constant exodus of skilled personnel were the main negative factors. From being the fourth largest coffee producer in the world, Angola sank to a position of complete insignificance. Manufacturing output slumped badly. Workers suffered a dramatic fall in living standards and were prevented from joining any kind of autonomous trade union. Angola was a net exporter of food before independence, but the country suffered from some of the worst famine conditions in Africa in the 1980s. Humanitarian aid has been hampered by poor security and political pressures. Economic reforms launched in 1988 remained largely ineffective, owing to the obstruction of the ruling party and the bureaucracy. The abandoning of Marxism-Leninism and the end of the civil war in 1991 offered new hope to a severely battered economy, which has the potential to be at the forefront of African development. The major exception to this dismal economic record has been the oil sector, which has made giant strides, boosting Angola to rank second as an oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa. Non-Portuguese foreign capital was exempted from outright nationalization, and, although the state took a share in the oil companies, management remained firmly in foreign hands. Moreover, the oil industry was protected from the worst effects of the fighting by its location on the coast and by the presence of Cuban troops. Oil accounts for more than 90 percent of Angola's foreign exchange earnings. Most of the rest comes from diamonds and fish, which have also remained mainly under foreign management. However, the linkage of the petroleum industry to the rest of the economy is minimal. The oil companies employ little local labour and do not reinvest their profits outside the oil sector. Nearly half of oil royalties have been spent on defense, and most of the rest has gone to pay for imports of essential foodstuffs for the urban population. Resources Angola's resources are considerable in comparison to those of most African countries, and they are particularly suited to the development of an industrial economy. There are large reserves of oil and natural gas, concentrated in the maritime zones off the Cabinda exclave and the Congo estuary. Total proven recoverable reserves of crude oil stood at more than 2 billion barrels in 1990. The quality of the oil is generally good, with a low sulfur content. Natural gas reserves are estimated at about 1.8 trillion cubic feet (50 billion cubic metres). Alluvial diamonds occur widely over the northeastern quarter of the country, with a high proportion of gemstones, and there are several kimberlite pipe formations that may be mined. Large iron ore reserves exist in the southwestern part of the country, but they are low-grade. Other minerals are known to exist in commercial quantities in Angola, especially in the area of the escarpment, but a great deal of systematic prospecting work needs to be done to gain a complete picture of the country's mineral resources. Angola's hydroelectric potential is one of the largest in Africa, estimated at more than 7,500 megawatts. Owing to the beneficial effects of the cold Benguela Current, Angola also has some of the richest fishing grounds in Africa, especially in the far south of the country. Stickleback, sardine, mackerel, catfish, mullet, and tuna are abundant, as are crabs, lobsters, and prawns. Timber resources are significant, with some 130 million acres of forest. The Maiombe forest in the north of the Cabinda exclave contains the most valuable commercial species, notably white tola (Balsamiferum harms) and limba (Terminalia superba). There are also stands of commercial timber along the rivers of the southeast, especially mussibi (Guibourtia coleosperma). Fertile agricultural land is limited to a few favoured locations in the highlands and river valleys, and less than 10 percent of the land area is thought to be arable. The combination of poor soils and insufficient rainfall over most of Angola is a severe limitation to the growing of crops. However, the country's agricultural potential remains underutilized outside the Bi Plateau, the coastal oases, and the Ovambo floodplain on the Namibian border. Pastoralism is inhibited by tsetse fly infestation, poor pastures, and the lack of surface water in the Kalahari Sand zone. Conditions for pastoralism are best in the southwestern quarter of the country. The land Relief From a narrow coastal plain, the land rises abruptly in a series of escarpments to rugged highlands, which then slope down toward the centre of the continent. The coastal plain varies in width from about 125 miles in the area south of Luanda to about 15 miles in the Benguela region. The Bi (Angolan) Plateau to the east of Benguela forms a rough quadrilateral of land above the 5,000-foot (1,500-metre) mark, culminating at about 8,600 feet and covering about one-tenth of the country's surface. The Malanje highlands in the north-central part of the country are less extensive and lower in altitude, while the Hula Plateau in the south is smaller still but rises steeply to an elevation of 7,700 feet. The almost featureless plateau that covers the eastern two-thirds of Angola gradually falls away to between 1,650 and 3,300 feet at the eastern border. Drainage The Lunda Divide forms a watershed on the plateau, separating north- and south-flowing rivers. In the northeast, rivers such as the Kwango (Cuango) flow out of Angola into the mighty Congo River, which forms the boundary between Angola and Congo (Kinshasa) for the final 90 miles of its course. The central part of the plateau is drained by the Kwanza (Cuanza), the largest river entirely within Angola's frontiers, which is about 620 miles in length. It runs for some 300 miles in a northerly direction before bending westward to break through the escarpment between the Malanje highlands and Bi Plateau, and it flows into the sea about 40 miles south of Luanda. The southwestern part of the country is drained by the Kunene (Cunene) River, which heads south before turning west and breaking through the escarpment at the Ruacana Falls, after which it marks the boundary between Angola and Namibia to the Atlantic Ocean. Some rivers in the southeast of the plateau flow into the Zambezi, which itself crosses the Kazombo salient in the far east of the country. Other rivers in this area feed the Okavango Swamp in Botswana. Small rivers in the south run into the internal drainage system of the Etosha Pan in Namibia, while others, often seasonal in nature, drain the steep western slopes of the escarpment. The people Ethnic and linguistic composition Apart from a few Europeans and isolated bands of !Kung in the remote southeast, all Angolans belong to the Bantu linguistic family, which is found throughout central, eastern, and southern Africa. The largest ethnolinguistic group is the Ovimbundu, who speak Umbundu and who account for nearly two-fifths of the population. They inhabit the Bi Plateau, have migrated to Benguela and Lobito and areas along the Benguela Railway to the west and east, and live in fairly large numbers in Luanda. The next largest ethnic group is the Mbundu (or Akwambundu), who speak Kimbundu and who make up one-fourth of the population. They dominate the capital city and the Malanje highlands and are well represented in most coastal towns. Speaking Kikongo, the Bakongo in the far north are the third group. They account for about 15 percent of the population and are numerous in Luanda. Many Kikongo speakers are also found in neighbouring parts of Congo (Kinshasa) and Congo (Brazzaville). Lunda, Chokwe, and Ngangela peoples live scattered through the thinly populated eastern part of the country, spilling over into Congo (Kinshasa) and Zambia. The Ovambo and Herero peoples in the southwest also live in Namibia, while the closely related Nyaneka-Nkhumbi people are confined to Angola. Portuguese is the official language. It has become fairly widely spoken since independence, replacing Kimbundu as the lingua franca of Luanda, and it is understood in much of the country. English and Afrikaans are sometimes spoken in the south and east, especially by people who have migrated to Namibia and Zambia as workers or refugees, while French and Lingala are often understood among the Bakongo in the north. Religion The numerous and highly localized traditional animist religions of Angola are giving way to Christianity and syncretic Afro-Christian religions. The first centuries of Portuguese presence on the coast resulted in few conversionsapart from the early and atypical case of the Kongo kingdomand it was only in the 20th century that Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries began to have a major impact. The Roman Catholic church, to which more than two-thirds of Angola's Christians belong, is especially well established among the Ovimbundu. Various Protestant groups, with strong American and British links, make up the remaining Christians. Baptists have traditionally worked among the Bakongo people, Methodists among the Mbundu, and Congregationalists among the Ovimbundu. Afro-Christian religions, especially the Our Lord Jesus Christ Church in the World (Tocoist church), have spread from Congo (Kinshasa). Protestants and Tocoists were suspected of subversion in colonial times and suffered various forms of petty persecution. All religion was frowned upon by the Marxist-Leninist government in Luanda after 1975, and religious institutions lost their schools, clinics, newspapers, radio stations, and properties. However, freedom of conscience was legally guaranteed, and the Methodist church, which educated most of the government leaders, was relatively privileged. Other Christian denominations were closely watched and occasionally harassed, and the Jehovah's Witnesses were formally banned in 1978. Religious organizations regained considerable influence when the government abandoned communism, especially the Roman Catholic church, which played an important role behind the scenes in securing national reconciliation. Angola is unusual in Africa in having no Muslim population.