Nicholas Howen
# The author of this report was Chief of the United Nations Human Rights Division in Angola from 1998 to 2000. He returned to Angola in October 2000 to carry out further work for the report. Research was completed in early 2001, since when there have been more positive signs of the growth and impact of civil society peace-building work.
SUMMARY
This report explores the peace-building work of civil society in Angola. It argues that the international community should play a greater role in supporting the green shoots of civil society in the midst of the continuing civil war. Donor states, the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as international nongovernmental organizations and the oil industry, all have a part to play. The report draws lessons from the past failed peace processes and sources of the current conflict. It concludes that greater participation by civil society in political processes at all levels could help to lay a foundation for durable peace.
Participatory politics & development in Angola
"Peace-building" is used in this report to mean expanding the political, social and economic spaces in which Angolans can identify their own solutions to the conflict and mobilize people and resources to achieve them. A key to peace-building in Angola is to encourage more opportunities for "participatory politics", which includes:
- an inclusive national debate about the
constitutional, political, economic and social future of the country;
- a civil society which can demand accountable
government and contribute its analysis and policy recommendations;
- practical and positive collaboration
between civil society and government;
- a government which responds to the needs
of the people and has the capacity to provide basic services;
- effective political oversight by the
National Assembly and courts;
- marginalized groups being able to demand
that they are not excluded - at local, provincial and national levels -
and that
- they receive their share of the national
wealth;
- strengthened freedom of expression and of the media and ensuring people's access to reliable information and alternative
- views;
- people being able to exercise their human rights - viz. obtaining redress for wrongs, which also requires a responsive government and functioning institutions such as the police and justice systems.
This is a longer term concept of peace-building than attempting to mediate in negotiations between belligerents. It recognizes that a top-down approach to peace can easily collapse, as Angolans know too well. Peace-building as participatory politics seeks to build a firmer foundation for a more sustainable peace, whether the end of hostilities comes about through military victory or negotiations.
These themes pick-up on and seek to nurture positive developments already happening in Angola. A weak civil society is beginning to organize itself and redefine the boundaries of popular participation in questions of war, peace and development. It is challenging the passive relationship between citizen and government and articulating views about how to build sustainable peace. At the same time, pressures on the government are encouraging it to tolerate more open and public policy debate, which may in turn influence government policy.
Humanitarian and development assistance can unwittingly exacerbate conflict. International assistance should instead consciously help to build peace. Otherwise the underlying causes of suffering will continue and perpetuate the need for emergency relief.
Development as peace-building can refer to discrete peace-building activities such as strengthening the capacity of local peace movements. It also means ensuring that traditional development and rehabilitation programmes (including water, sanitation and health care) are designed to expand the space of local actors to engage with political authorities and communities.
Developmental peace-building is possible now in Angola despite the grim picture of war and crisis. Conditions in the country vary enormously. There is a growing recognition that Angola is too complex to be treated simply as a humanitarian emergency that might lead later to rehabilitation and development when the war ends. A flexible approach is needed that combines emergency, transition and development. All three approaches will often be necessary in the same place at the same time. It is sometimes argued that Angola does not deserve to receive development assistance because the government has access to huge wealth which is being diverted and that any assistance should be limited to emergency humanitarian relief. While the emergency remains acute and requires generous support, some of the root causes for the suffering of the Angolan people also continue. If not resolved, these problems will only help to perpetuate the emergency and the need for humanitarian assistance.
Prolonged humanitarian assistance may be untenable unless it is accompanied by a broader, peace-building approach to conflict. Furthermore, development as peace-building does not "reward" corruption in government. On the contrary, it supports Angolans within and outside of government who are trying to tackle these endemic problems such as lack of accountability.
Lack of participatory politics in Angola
There is little tradition of participatory politics in Angola. The country experienced centuries of authoritarian rule and a mere ten years in which it has begun to experiment with moves towards an open society and democracy. There is no tradition of accountable government, of a government as a service provider that has a duty to consult, inform and explain to those affected by its decisions.
Angola enjoyed a democratic leap in the early 1990s, when a swathe of new legislation swept away the structures of the oneparty state and for the first time permitted pluralist political institutions, an independent civil society and a freer economy. Angola is still benefiting from these gains, though the unfinished agenda should be restarted on the road to future elections.
Despite these gains, power has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of the Presidency. Key checks and balances, such as opposition parties, trade unions and some members of civil society and the media, have been co-opted, weakened or silenced.
Angolans know the rights they should enjoy, but fear violence if they speak out too much. Grinding poverty, the forced displacement of a third of the population, systematic abuses in the conflict and a weak police and justice system, are all major obstacles to people participating in politics at any level.
Sources of conflict - need for national debate
The conflict in Angola today is primarily a struggle for control of the state between two elite groups, made possible because both sides have access to huge wealth from mineral resources. It is driven by personal ambition and fuelled by a deep mistrust between the parties after more than a generation of war and two failed peace processes. The war is not essentially a conflict between ethnic, linguistic or regional groups or between ideologies. Nor do primarily external patrons fuel it, as was the case during the cold war. The dynamics of the conflict are now principally internal and specific to Angola.
The oil and diamond wealth of the government and UNITA respectively and the diminished role of external intervention, have reduced the leverage of the international community on the belligerents. This makes the growth of indigenous forces for peace even more important.
Although the war is not an ethnic-regional conflict, calls from UNITA and others for decentralization of power raise important issues. While such claims are part of the political struggle for power, they are also shorthand for a range of grievances that stem from the lack of participatory politics, a patronage system that favours urban and especially Luanda elites over rural and provincial communities, and a system in which provincial governors are not answerable to the local population they govern. The distribution of political power will have to be considered. It is already a key issue in the work of the National Assembly in preparing a new constitution. Peace-building work in Angola should popularise these dry parliamentary discussions. It should promote an inclusive, nation-wide debate about the best power structure, as part of a broader national discussion about Angola's future.
Lessons from Lusaka peace process
The Lusaka Protocol remedied many of the faults of the Bicesse Accords, yet peace still failed. The personal ambition of Jonas Savimbi and the refusal of UNITA to demilitarise, as well as the failure of the UN and member states to call UNITA to account, were critical in the failure of Lusaka. On another level, however, were three factors.
First, the peace was too shallow and polarized between UNITA and the MPLA; it was negotiated and implemented by a few dozen leaders on both sides and excluded Angolan civil society. Civil society grew on its own accord, but was shunned as a partner in building peace and reconciliation at all levels, including in municipalities and communes where the government, UNITA and ordinary people, collided most visibly.
Secondly, the extension of government administration failed to bring development to the countryside or win the confidence of people, many of whom had lived under UNITA all their lives. People hoped that peace would bring a better life with more to eat, basic health care and perhaps some education. Few development plans were realised and so the people did not enjoy the peace dividend they had been promised.
Thirdly, poor governance and human rights violations by both sides fuelled the mistrust. Attacks by UNITA continued sporadically and escalated in 1998. Some levels of the government were never really prepared to accept UNITA as a legitimate political party and a number of its officials and supporters in rural areas were killed, detained or harassed. Ordinary villagers, especially in former UNITA areas, often suffered from the arbitrary rule of poorly paid and trained police and administrators.
The impact of the failure of governance in former UNITA-controlled areas and human rights violations by both sides during the process, should not be underestimated. Abuses on both sides created a vicious cycle. Each incident created more resentment and mistrust, causing the victim in turn to seek revenge against the perpetrator. Each abuse polarized the atmosphere further, reinforced the view of the leaders that the other side would not share power and enabled them to fan the embers of resentment into fire. One commentator recently observed:
"Regardless of whether one perceives UNITA's intransigence as a reflection of its belligerence, in a climate of insecurity generated by the fact that the emasculation of UNITA is clearly in the interest of the MPLA, it is not hard to understand why UNITA refuses to disarm or to cede its revenue-generating territory. And it is also not difficult to appreciate why the elected government in Luanda has found this situation untenable." (Spears)
With the failure of two top-down peace processes, it is time to support an additional, bottom-up approach during and after the conflict. First, development assistance should aim to strengthen civil society's capacity to engage with government and communities and encourage the government to accept the legitimacy of civil society interventions.
Secondly, one test for future, nationwide reconciliation will be whether the government can practice good governance in former UNITA areas that have been recaptured since 1999.
Thirdly, many of the reasons for the poor governance and abuse of human rights during the Lusaka period had their origins in structural problems independent of the war. They can be tackled now to prepare for a future peace. There are some in the government and MPLA who are working for incremental change and need to be supported.
Such developmental peace-building is certainly fragile and sometimes financially and physically risky during a conflict, but needs to be pursued at the same time as emergency humanitarian assistance.
Current military situation & prospects for peace
The guerrilla war is likely to continue in Angola for the foreseeable future, with neither side being able to deal a knock out blow. The destruction of UNITA's conventional military capacity has just marked a return to the more usual guerrilla warfare. A number of spectacular attacks in and near major towns have shown UNITA's ability to continue destabilizing the country. It appears to be difficult for the government, even with great wealth, to forge a successful counter-insurgency operation. Even a diminished UNITA, hemmed in by sanctions, may be able to continue this fight for many years to come. This makes the international and domestic political landscape even more important.
The government has recently refined its position, suggesting that it would not rule out future negotiations with a UNITA led by Jonas Savimbi and could even envisage UNITA participating in future elections if they fulfil several conditions. UNITA has also stepped up the language of peace, asking in writing that the Catholic church do more to encourage reconciliation. It is too early to assess whether the statements represent changes of policy or just presentation. Internationally there is little pressure for peace, especially as most states expressly or implicitly supported the government's return to war in 1998.
The significant ingredient in today's Angola is a more confident and slightly better organized civil society. The more subtle government policy on UNITA and negotiations may at least in part be a response to growing criticism of both sides by the churches and secular civil society. The government and UNITA are finding it harder to ignore civil society this time around.
Whether peace comes soon or in several years, a significant contribution of international donors would be to support the drive by civil society to participate in Angola's long-term political processes. There will be conflict between the different visions of peace in the MPLA, UNITA and various civil society actors, but the political system should no longer be polarized between the two belligerents.
Angolan civil society actors - pushing back the boundaries
Civil society groups are expanding the legitimate space for debate about the future of their country. They are stimulating discussion about controversial questions. Should there be a ceasefire? What is needed for long-term peace? What are the causes of the conflict? How should political power be distributed? How can a culture of peace be nurtured? How can corruption and poor governance be tackled? How can human rights be protected? What is freedom of expression? How should the people benefit from the country's mineral wealth and what is the role of the oil industry?
There is a patchwork of initiatives that could strengthen participatory politics. The most promising activities include the following:
The Christian churches are the most legitimate and organized network for peace and change in a fractured Angola. Especially important have been initiatives by the conference of Catholic bishops (Conferência Episcopal de Angola e São Tomé - CEAST) and the ecumenical initiative (the Comité Inter Ecclésial para Paz em Angola - COIEPA), which is the product of 10 years of tentative joint Catholic-Protestant activities. They have already had a marginal impact on government rhetoric and approach. COIEPA says civil society should take the lead in a national debate about how to bring durable peace to Angola by changing the culture of violence, especially political violence, respecting human rights, establishing democratic governance and ensuring more equal distribution of wealth. It calls for a more profound transformation than a ceasefire and political dialogue between two warring elites. However, COIEPA is still largely limited to Luanda. These initiatives are fragile and could still wither away under the pressure of Angolan politics.
A relatively small number of Angolan non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been involved in peacebuilding activities, especially the loose coalition of organizations in the Angola Peace-Building Programme and those focusing on the exercise of human rights, stimulating public debate and integrating participatory methods into rehabilitation work, as well as some that carry out civic education programmes.
SINPROF, the Angolan teachers' union, is the only trade union repeatedly exercising its right to strike and challenging the government to invest in education.
Despite a government crackdown against journalists in 1999-2000, the non-governmental Angolan media (a few radio stations and a handful of newspapers), have never been more outspoken than since the war resumed in December 1998. The government has become more tolerant of criticism, provided it does not touch on allegations of high-level corruption. The state media is itself airing more robust debate. However, contradictory signals from the government have made the media cautious and journalists exercise self-censorship. The provinces are a more dangerous place for journalists than Luanda. Freedom of expression and the media and the public's 'right to know' are critical to participatory politics.
These civil society groups are trying to force ajar the door of accountability and national debate. In many areas of humanitarian and development work they are offering their expertise and commitment to the government as constructive partners. Civil society could eventually spark a significant change in political culture, encouraging political leaders at least to consider the views of those affected by decisions, including on questions of war and peace.
It should be remembered, however, that civil society is still relatively weak and isolated from each other and the outside world. For Angolan NGOs in particular, life is usually a daily struggle just to survive. Most have no paid staff or outside funding. Organizations may be committed but often lack professional skills and knowledge. The scarcity of funding makes them vulnerable to being co-opted by the state or having to do work that is dictated by the donor market rather than their own assessment of needs. Many Angolans are also discouraged from exercising their rights or participating in political processes because of the shadow of 40 years and more of violence, which they fear could be turned against them should they go too far.
External actors have limited direct leverage over the government and UNITA. The best hope for change is domestic pressure from below. These civil society efforts may not end the war or bring improved governance in the short term. But civil society initiatives that have emerged in the last few years are the best hope for setting in train a series of changes which could help to make a future peace more durable. Even if the government was fully carrying out its responsibilities there would be plenty of space for civil society initiatives and support from the international community.
The oil industry & corporate responsibility
A significant proportion of the government's income and expenditure - including an estimated half of the spending on defence and public order - is unrecorded, or outside official budgetary processes and records and is controlled by the highest echelons of the regime. This opaqueness is a critical issue in the struggle for participatory politics. The results of the Staff Monitored Programme signed with the IMF in April 2000, including the oil diagnostic being carried out by accountants KPMG, will test whether the government is beginning to open up.
The oil industry in Angola has an enormous impact on the country's macro-economic, political and military situation. The government is dependent on oil companies for 80-90% of its revenue, yet with most of the oil earnings going to service the external debt, finance the military effort and service the patronage system, very little is used to provide basic services to the people or to develop the non-oil economic sectors for the future. The Angolan government has the responsibility to govern and decide how to spend its revenues. The Angolan electorate, however, has a right to know what that income is and to hold its representatives accountable for how it is spent.
Increasingly, oil companies will be seen to be complicit with corruption, lack of good governance and abuses of human rights, unless they take reasonable steps to demonstrate their social responsibility. They can no longer use the sovereignty of the Angolan state as a shield and assert they are businessmen who can do no more than what is set out expressly in their contract. The debate has moved on, propelled by emerging international human rights standards that apply directly to businesses, public opinion and codes of conduct adopted by businesses themselves.
The responsibility and risk to reputation of the oil companies in Angola flows from a combination of the dominance of the industry in the country, the benefits the companies reap, their knowledge of the political and human rights situation in the country, their close economic and political relationship with the government and the opportunities they have for ensuring their industry has a positive impact on the development of Angola. The government could be said to be within the oil companies' 'sphere of influence'. Even in this competitive oil market, the industry has considerable access and at least some opportunity or influence with government authorities.
There are constructive ways in which the oil companies could contribute to peace-building in Angola for the benefit of the Angolan people, without violating their contractual obligations or their proper role. The industry should examine how it can contribute to peace-building through transparency of payments made to the government, effectiveness of its own social responsibility projects, combating corruption and projecting a vision of a future in which human rights are respected in Angola.
Poverty reduction strategies, the World Bank & IMF
Some of the underlying causes of extreme poverty in Angola are remarkably similar to reasons for the failure of durable peace in Angola, including poor governance, lack of accountability and transparency and high levels of corruption. Effective poverty reduction and urban rehabilitation strategies require a participatory approach. This is very similar to the peace-building strategies that increase opportunities for people to participate in the political process.
Development agencies should ensure that poverty reduction programmes seek to build the capacities of communities and NGOs to organize, to respect basic internal democratic values including resolving disputes peacefully, to articulate their needs to government and seek accountability, to develop constructive partnerships with government, and to network with other civil society organizations. Poverty reduction and peace-building are both enhanced by empowering marginalized communities to influence their political environment, beginning at the local level.
This is also a critical time for donors to encourage the government to follow participatory poverty reduction strategies. As part of the IMF Staff Monitored Programme the government has committed itself to preparing a poverty reduction strategy "in consultation with civil society." Both the IMF and World Bank are meant to monitor and assist in preparing the strategy. The process is going slowly. The government has not yet consulted properly, or worked with, Angolan civil society, which should be seen as a supportive yet independent partner in this work.
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