MENONGUE

formerly Serpa Pinto, town, southeastern Angola. It was named, previously, after Alexandre Alberto da Rocha de Serpa Pinto, a late 19th-century Portuguese explorer of the interior of southern Africa. Located on the Cuebe River (a tributary of the Okavango River) at an elevation of 4,462 feet (1,360 m), it is a garrison town and market centre for the surrounding sparsely populated, semiarid region. Cattle and subsistence crops of corn (maize) and other vegetables are raised by the Nganguela and Chokwe peoples, and trade in cattle and hides and skins is locally important. Chokwe artists are noted for their traditional masks and wooden sculptures of human beings. Menongue is the inland terminus of a 470-mile (756-kilometre) railway from the Atlantic port of Namibe (formerly Momedes). The railway, however, has not functioned on a regular basis since the outbreak of civil war in Angola in 1975. A military headquarters of the South West Africa People's Organisation at Chitequeta, near Menongue, was destroyed in an incursion by South African forces in 1981. Pop. (1970 prelim.) 3,000.