I was about 16 when Ryszard Kapuscinski was covering this Cold War era conflict in Angola. Reading this provided me with a more detailed background to my limited knowledge that was based on BBC news reports of the time which mostly concentrated on the role of British mercenaries and the threat of the MPLA as backed by Castro's Cuba. Kapuscinski, though embedded within the MPLA and leaning towards them politically, manages to present a fairly even handed view of the war. It's a pretty short book but the author encapsulates within his pages the tragic colonial slave history of Angola, the development of the armed struggle against the Portuguese, the 1974 fall of the dictatorship in Portugal and the chaos and fear that was unleashed in Angola in the next couple of years as the new Lisbon regime released its grip on its colonies. This is an eye witness account of how the white colonial rulers fled and how various black nationalist factions tried to take over supported and armed by neighbouring countries, the USA and the Soviet bloc with troops on the ground being supplied by both South Africa and Cuba. The initial post colonial civil war only lasted a short time and once it became clear who was going to win that struggle for power, the author returned to his native Poland and this short history therefore ends rather abruptly. His job as a war reporter was done it seems.As a footnote to my review. The Civil War raged on unabated for close to three more decades till 2002. Sadly, as of August 2014, Angola remains an authoritarian state and despite its huge mineral wealth the population is still one of the poorest and least healthy in Africa. The late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski's classic 1976 book about the unraveling of Angola in 1975 is a real treat. Kapuscinski made a career of journeying to troubled African countries under threat of war or revolution and was a first-hand witness to the collapse of Portuguese rule and the beginnings of Angola's long civil war, with factions backed by the United States and South Africa against factions backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba. Great descriptions of the tension of Luanda during those days, with Portuguese colonials packing up everything that wasn't nailed down and leaving the country en masse, leaving devastation behind.
Do You like book Another Day Of Life (1976)?
An amazing document of the Angolan civil war, it's a must read on the absurdity of war.
—Farida
about civil war in a third world country...not written great...good book
—Anne_2
Interesting to read this after having read Andrei Makine's Human Love.
—Elaine
I got this from JGrogs. Dope shit. Wanother winner from the Rza
—kater
