Customer Reviews

The Death of Dignity: Angola's Civil War

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At least Ms. Brittain acknowledges her prejudices early in the book. She freely admits a bias toward the MPLA government. Unfortunately, she repeats the same falsehoods and half-truths which MPLA partisans have spouted for years.

I was an observer to the 1992 Angolan national elections. Along with others we did witness voter intimidation and ballot box tampering. Thirteen parties, including UNITA, protested to the UN about fraudulent activities of the MPLA. The UN and U.S. had spent too much money to allow for such problems to derail the peace process.

Untruths have attained mythical status. For example, under the Bicesse Accords, UNITA was allowed 600, not 3000, soldiers in Luanda. How could 600 UNITA soldiers attempt a coup in the heart of MPLA Angola? Ms. Brittain, in other places, has written that over 20,000 UNITA supporters were massacred by the MPLA in October 1992 in Luanda alone.

Several times the author mentions UNITA documents, "Operation Timber, and the Chitunda diaries, produced by the MPLA which seem to implicate UNITA in some fashion. Ms. Brittain accepts the authenticity of these documents without question.

THE DEATH OF DIGNITY is well written. Too bad it is so biased. In the Angolan civil war blame can be cast on all, not just UNITA.

The book attempts to be a brief history of Angola since independence, but it is distorted by glaring pro-government bias. There is neglible discussion of the contentious period of government rule immediately after independence and the reports of atrocities during that period. Hence the discussion of deterioriation of the governance of the country in the nineties is portrayed as an aberation from revolutionary ideals rather than a continuation of a pattern of abuse of human rights into the post cold-war political economy. The lack of balance in the book also means that any proper discussion of the horrors perpetrated by UNITA, the rebel movement, lacks credibility.

In sum the book does not provide any dependable insight into the history and politics of Angola. For Angola to emerge into a just society, one where the oil and diamond revenues are used to benefit the many rather than the few, requires (among other things) journalism that tells the truth about the entirity of the society rather than making excuses for or ignoring the horrors perpetrated by any single faction. Unfortunately this book fails utterly in that test.

Though informative, this book is VERY partial to MPLA's organization. I think it's great that Bittain was able to go to Angola, and see the civil war and its effects first hand, but she went with a division of MPLA (OMA) and only saw one side of the war. She presnst this angle wonerfuly, but i woul like to see a non bias, informative approach.

This is a very interesting book from someone whos been there. She knows what she is talking about. She talks about the hopes of the angolan people, about their dreams during the cold war period, then she talks about what MPLA and UNITA were back in that period and what they have become. A good introduction book to the understanding of the Angolan Problem longside whith Margaret Anstee's Orphan of the Cold War (the inside story of the collapse of the angolan peace process 1992-93).