Sound off Atmo

0:03

In Lubango , a small town 800 km south east of Angola‘s capital Natalia Rasasinhao prepares banana beer in her  sparsely furnished by European standards but in Angola, the family are considered quite prosperous.Natalia is a teacher and has had nine children . The young try and  help her in the kitchen. Twenty dollars a month is usually what can be scraped together, and on top of that there is the added bonus gained from selling  banana beer. 

They could live on this if it wasn‘t for the war.

0:40

Original sound (OS) Natalia da Rasasinhao, widow.

Translation: 

‘We all want the war to stop.  30 years of war is far, far too long. Many have lost their lives - relatives, people we know.  Many people are totally without families.  They live alone in their houses, hungry, with no money. Lots of people can't even buy themselves food.

1:07

Sound off- music

1:13

Luanda, the capital of Angola was once a thriving metropolis of South West Africa.  But the Portugese left in 1975 leaving elegant colonial buildings.

1:26

Sound off- music

1:30

The Colonial days are over. The war of independence lasted for five years and since then civil war has ransacked the nation .  The ‘liberators' from those times are divided. The MPLA, controls the cities and  government, and UNITA, controls most of  rural areas.

1:48

The economy is suffering, corruption is thriving, and the infrastructure is in ruins., Only rusty carriages remain from the golden era of the Portugese railways.

2:02

Yet Angola is rich - it‘s wealth comes from the land. Land full of natural resources - oil,  diamond and uranium mines can be found all over Angola and  are very lucrative. Much of the unrest can be attributed to control of these mines. 

The mining minister sees the sitution with realistic cynicism:

2:20

OS Manuel Bunjo, mining minister

Translation:

‘Working in the mining industry is difficult because a large part of the country is no longer under our control.  But there are many rivers here - one quite nearby in Uize - where you only have to dip your hand in and diamonds flow by.  We are rich paupers.  We have everything except money.

2:58

Sound off cue/ reporter

3:04

The state-controlled Angolan television station TPA  does not present the whole picture.

3:10

Sound off reporter

3:14

The main story of the day is the issue of the warrant for the arrest of Unita‘s leader Jonas Savimbi . Nothing is mentioned about the peace agreement which was recently

being negotiated with him. It  also does not mention that the vice-president‘s position had  been unofficially offered to him along with use of 400 bodyguards.

3:34

Sound off commentary

3:36

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos is presented as the saviour of  the Angolan people All his activities are described with critical acclaim .Whereas Jonas Savimbi  the rebel leader is portrayed as the man responsible for the hunger, poor health and deteriorating education of Angolan people , services which are practically unoperational.

3:57

Sound-off Savimbi

4:00

Santos‘s control over state television prevents cases of corruption within the government or UNITA's gains being  mentioned.

4:11

An eye-witness account shows how drastic the situation  in Angola has deteriorated.

The city of Uize  has been under siege by UNITA for 6 months. At the end of last year  the city had almost 90,000 inhabitants, but now only 18,000 remain. People have fled the gun battles leaving the area deserted.

With little  food or water people suffer from hunger and malnutrition. The situation is critical and with shortages of medicine disease becomes widespread.

A German aid worker  reports:

4:44

OS Angelika Mattke, aid worker:

''You can imagine what the situation is like here - the hunger is
never-ending. A tragic incident occured 10 days ago when a convoy of 80
trucks carrying basic supplies such as food, salt, sugar and toilet paper
was hijacked. The UNITA attacked the convoy in the middle, so 10 lorries
were able to get away, but we lost the rest of the supplies. There are a
lot of funerals at the moment and prices are very high. All we have here
is the fruit on the trees, but apart from that, nothing.''

5:22

The urban population knows little about the scale of the misery.

5:26

OS Manuel da Silva

Information officer TPA

Translation:

‘Of course it's necessary to treat certain topics with due caution given the war situation.  And as far as radio is concerned, you can say that we have complete freedom of press here'

5:42

Back in Lubango Natalia celebrates her 51st birthday by looking at photos of happier times. She tells us this is how she looked, when she was young. Photographs make her happy. Her favourite photo shows her now deceased husband and her with their two newly born twins.

6'06

OS Natalia da Rasasinhao, widow.

Translation:

‘Life was better before, in colonial times.  We didn't have much money, but everyone had their own little business. Whoever had work could rely on the fact that the whites would pay them for it. Everyone who worked got something for it, even if it wasn't much.

6:25

Sound off music

6:28

Outside Luanda is Le Roque  ,Angola‘s biggest market .On busy days one million people come here.The place is alive with activity. Here people barter with everything they own and everything they have acquired illegally.  This is where the daily fight for survival takes place. Five years ago Luanda had a population of one and a half million, now it has three . The civil war has driven peole away from the countryside  and into the cities. Overcrowding and  competition for the  few jobs available inevidently leads to poverty.

7:16

OS Luis Maria Perez de Onraida
 Bishop of Malange

Translation:

‘The UNITA buys weapons to kill, the government buys weapons to defend itself, and to kill too. They don't do anything to provide the nation with food.  The country is clearly rich enough to buy weapons, but too poor to provide food.  That sounds like a contradiction, but it is reality.

7:45

In Luanda life carries on.  An urban infrastructure which struggles to function  provides some comfort away from the raging gun battles in rural areas . The MPLA government claims there is no room for democracy in Angola. They say democratic elections are an unnecessary intrusion in time of civil war. If democracy was given a chance maybe money could be channelled to improve the prosperity of Angola.

8:06

OS Lazaro Dias

Vice parliamentary president

Translation:

The UN has seen how the UNITA has not only failed to disarm, but has in fact increased it‘s arms.  This has all happened whilst we, the government, have maintained a negotiated ceasefire. The tragedy of this country is that the UN is unwilling to see what is happening here.  For a while now the UNITA has no longer been about ideology but about power.  It's about nothing but power.

8:37

The united nations has had enough and is pulling 8,000 peacekeeping troops out of Angola which had been stationed there to supervise a fragile ceasefire agreement. Only 500 will remain to supervise their withdrawal.

8:53

OS Hamadoun Toure, UN spokesperson

Translation:

‘When mistakes are made and lessons are to be learned from them, then it concerns all of us. It concerns the United Nations, the Angolan government, the UNITA, of course the UN peacekeeping nations, especially the USA, Russia and Portugal. They were all at the conference table, and all decisions were reached unanimously.  No-one has the right to hold others responsible for mistakes. What has happened up to now has to be borne by everyone.

9:03

music open

9:06

Natalia  Rasasinhao sits down to watch television before going to bed .

For a long time now Natalia has not believed the images she receives from her television or the official version that only one side is responsible for the war.

9:26

OS Natalia da Rasasinhao
 Widow

Translation:

‘ I hope that the war will finally come to an end. We've got to finally be able to live normal lives again. I can't stand this misery any longer. I'm tired of war...'

10‘03

sound off music

10‘06

Angola which four times the size of Germany, with all it‘s wealth from natural rersources should have  no problem feeding it‘s 12 million inhabitants.But the sufffering continues.

And today Angola begins it‘s 31st long year into civil war.

Finish time 10:40

Final insert:

Report: Günther Kogler

Camera:  Karl Heinz Riegler

Editing: Richard Stanzl

Speaker: Matthias Euba

AKM: Carlos Burity
 CD: "Massemba"
 Title: Nzumbi dia Papa
 Length: 3 Minutes