Staff Reporter
AFTER months of bickering, boycotts and pressure from non-governmental organisations, especially the Church, Angolan President Joao Lourenço has finally announced that all three liberation struggle leaders — António Agostinho Neto of the MPLA, Holden Roberto of the FNLA, and UNITA’s Jonas Savimbi — will be decorated with the 50th Independence Commemoration Medals.
When proposed earlier, mostly by UNITA parliamentarians, the idea of including Roberto and Savimbi was vehemently rejected, leaving Agostinho Neto as the sole recipient among the three leaders who signed the Alvor Accords in Portugal in January 1975.
Lourenço’s reconciliatory gesture comes days before the National Reconciliation Congress organised by the Catholic Church, which will take place in Luanda this month.
Ongoing decoration ceremonies in different categories, as part of the Golden Jubilee of Angolan independence, were marred by boycotts, with some prominent personalities refusing to be decorated for as long as Roberto and Savimbi were excluded.
Agostinho Neto became Angola’s founding president in November 1975 and died in Moscow in September 1979. Savimbi, who conducted a brutal rebellion since 1975, died in combat in February 2002, while Roberto spent years in exile but returned home in 1991, revived his FNLA party, and died in August 2007.
Jonas Savimbi, Agostinho Neto and Holden Roberto pictured together in Portugal in 1975.
