Menongue
“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”
Blaise Pascal
1623-1662
I think the French say it best, even in the 1600s. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
We were headed north to Menongue, the capital of the province. This was partially expedient to our route but also because Menongue is at a cross roads of the east and west of this region. To the West lay the coast and our ultimate destination, but to the East lay the most notorious, and fiercely contested territory of the Angolan Civil War.
We were planning to expand our education.
The Road North
Photo courtesy of Carmen who hid her camera well!
We set off early for Menongue. The driving is easier when the sand is still cool and we knew it was a 6-8 hour trip for us.
The road remained sandy and corrugated and it was slow going, we left the road frequently to avoid really rough sections and potholes.
En route we had a really strange experience. A bakkie crammed with people was driving parallel to us on a multitrack stretch of road. The guys on the back were waving.
Sonia and Carmen took photos as it is a rather iconic African stereotype. The truck driver sped up and eventually swerved across the road to block Dudley and I. He was incandescent with rage because the girls had photographed him. He tried to take Sonia’s camera and only some quick thinking by Dudley saved the day.
Dudley deleted the photos in front of him and eventually, after a bit of tense negotiation, he drove off although he appeared to shadow us for some kilometers. This left us a bit shaken as we had been met only with friendly curiosity before this.
We thought maybe he was so overloaded he was afraid he would get into trouble with the law, or else he had contraband or other illegal activity going on. Later Stefan told us some of the people in Southern Angola retain a paranoia about white people taking photos of them as they think they are spies. The war still has a long shadow. We were more surreptitious in our photojournalism from then on.
To be fair this was the only less than friendly encounter we had in the whole of Angola so lets not blow it out of proportion
Camping at Villa Menongue.
100 km from town we hit tar but the road edges were eroded and it was potholed so the speed didn't improve much. We continued to pass through small neat villages. More retail and businesses popped up as we drew closer.
We managed to find Stefan’s house on the outskirts of Menongue behind high walls. He had a caretaker who lives on site. The house is a spacious 3 or 4 bedroom bungalow on a large untidy plot. He says he built the house for his wife but she never lived there. His wife and kids live in Luanda now. He certainly covers some impressive mileage. He also drives like a bat out of hell, easily shaving 2 hours off our travel time.
We set up camp in the garden and he opened one of the bedrooms for us to use as a bathroom. National Geographic rent this house from him when they come to film in Angola.
We shared a last night around the fire.
He recommended we travel 400 km east to visit Cuito Cuanavale and the war museum so we decided to do that next day and stay on in Menongue.
We were still out of comms with Vicky and Mike but I sent an email on Stefan’s account to try and arrange a meet in Lubango in 2 days.
We even had a pet albino Guineafowl.
War in Angola
To understand a bit more about this previously war torn region it is worth delving into some southern African history. I will try and make it brief. I hope I have it right. Apologies for any inaccuracies.
After WW1 South Africa was given the mandate to administer South West Africa, later Namibia, by the allies. It was part of a strategy for managing areas previously under German rule. The plan was that countries given this mandate would do so until they were ready for independence but South Africa became fixated on annexing the area, a position increasingly unpopular with the UN.
After WW2 pro-independence groups rose in SWA which devolved into a prolonged armed resistance and gorilla warfare with South Africa.
Support for the resistance movement came from neighbouring Angola and Zambia. At the time Angola was also transitioning towards independence from Portugal. 2 major parties were vying for power in Angola. The MPLA in the north and central areas, which was communist aligned, and the Jonas Savimbi led UNITA in the south. The Russians and Cubans supported MPLA. The US and South Africa, supported UNITA. Basically it was a civil war hijacked as a surrogate for the Cold War conflict between the West and communism.
Southern Angola was the training base for the Namibian independence resistance as well as the military cadre of the ANC. The South African military had a strong presence on the border with Angola, and led incursions inside the country, many of these black ops.
South Africa had compulsory army conscription and many of Dudley’s class and university mates served on this border with life changing consequences. Fighting was vicious, whole villages wiped out and the bodies of our boys shipped home in closed coffins. Families were told they had died in MVAs or random accidents to hide the scope of the warfare. There was lots of disinformation.
The south of Angola became one of the most heavily landmined areas in the world. The Halo Trust has been, and is, busy demining the area. Remember the famous picture of Princess Diana walking the minefield in aid of land mine awareness for the Halo Trust? That was here in Southern Angola. There is a goal to demine the area by 2025. I think they will need another extension.
We saw a fair number of amputees on our travels. In Luengue-Luiana many elephants were maimed and injured by landmines and game was all but wiped out in the area by the prolonged warfare. Rumour has it South Africa funded some of its military operations by wholesale ivory poaching.
Jonas Savimbe had his headquarters in Jamba so it was often the centre of action until his death and eventual peace in Angola in 2002. This area bore the brunt of the Angolan war.
Cuito Cuarnavale
“War doesn’t make boys men, it makes men dead.”
Ken Gillespie
Cuito Cuanavale is a small and unimpressive little town but its claim to fame is as the scene of the battle, or siege, of Cuito Cuanavale , between 1987 and 1988. This battle was the largest engagement of the Angolan conflict and the biggest conventional battle on the African continent since World War II. Both sides claimed victory.
The South Koreans have erected an impressive monument to Angolan victory at Cuito Cuanavale .
South Africa withdrew from Angola shortly after the battle, but it was a politically strategic withdrawal because the Cold War ended, not because they had lost the war.
Well whoever won or lost it has to be considered a victory for Angola because the conflict deescalated, although civil war continued to break out for another 14 years, until the death of Jonas Savimbe and eventual peace in 2002.
We bowled along a good tar road to Cuito and found the memorial and war museum in the centre.
There is a massive statue of an AK47 covered in the Angolan flag and also a statue of 2 soldiers raising the victory wreath.
A massive frieze tells the story of the struggle, beautifully carved.
It is quite moving, but also smacks of some serious visual propaganda.
Across the road are all the surviving armaments, helicopters, tanks, 2 mig aircrafts. All a bit neglected but impressive none the less. Most of the armaments were Soviet.
We wandered amongst them squinting at the immense machine of war. Something I, for one, have no desire to see outside of a museum. It reminded me of Ukraine and Palestine and the pain and suffering we inflict as a race on each other. Pride and victory were not the predominant emotions.
Apparently the red stars stand for kills.
A young woman approached us, telling us she was a guide for the museum.
I used the magic word ‘Stefan’ and she immediately lit up and proceeded to give us the official version of events. Her narrative had all the hallmarks of a verbatum propaganda speech but she was very friendly.
We then went looking for 3 tanks left behind by the South Africans in a river bed but came up against the end of the road and a choice of 5 deep sand roads and warnings for mines. Of the 94,000 mines removed by Halo in Angola to date, a third came from Cuito. This felt like a bit too close for comfort. It was time to turn around and head for home.
Around Town
Next day we were up early ready to leave but first we wanted to go around town and explore the sights. After all this was the first city we had encountered in our Angola trip and we needed to start to understand the people and the day to day life here.
Menongue is the capital of Cubango province and a transport hub.
There are around half a million people living in Menongue so it is no small place.
Menongue municipal building
The Cuebe river, a tributary of the Okavango/Cubango river runs through Menongue.
King Tchinhama Mwene Vunongue, chief of the Nganguela people. He is celebrated as a fighter against Portuguese colonialism in the 1800s.
Some areas were a bit less pristine. We could not decide if this building had received a mortar hit, an earthquake or just really really bad maintenance!
The town was just waking up, vespas and people emerging en route for school and work. We passed many schools. School uniform seems to be white lab coats, occasionally different colours like yellow. Not all that practical perhaps.
The schools were a relief after their absence in the rural areas. However, when we researched it they say the only compulsory schooling is 4 years of primary education. Only 7% of Angolans go to University. Room for improvement.
A few students on the way to school in their white coats. Seeing all the white coats around made made it look like the town was full of doctors or chemists.
Below is the school with yellow lab coats. A bit brighter!
Solar lighting in the streets. Now that's cool!
It was time to fuel up and we found a real petrol station. The cost was a ridiculous R5 a litre for petrol and R6 for diesel. What a gift. Angola is an oil and gas producer but it exports it, there are no processing plants here. Fuel is imported from Europe. I guess it tells you how much tax most countries slap on.
We found a Deposito do Pao and loaded up with the delicious local bread and we were ready for the next destination Lubango. We still had no comms with Vicky and Mike and I just hoped they had received my last message via Stefan.
Fingers crossed.
Perhaps this was why we had no comms!
We tried to buy more airtime but nothing seemed to work and the guy in the shop just shrugged his shoulders irritably. Google translate could have been speaking in Klingon for all the good it did. Oh well, time to hit the road once more. Destination Lubango.