Savimbi led UNITA in a counterrevolutionary war against the Angolan government and people for more than 25 years. He was killed in a battle with Angolan soldiers. UNITA was long backed and supplied by Washington and, earlier, by the apartheid regime of South Africa.

Angolan government officials said they will maintain military pressure on UNITA until its leadership commits itself to disarmament under the provisions of a peace agreement signed in 1994.

"The Angolan government will speed up the process of the cease-fire provided we get signals from people in the bush," Manuel Augusto, the deputy minister of information, said February 27. He explained that despite the death of Savimbi "the war didn't end. Military pressure will be kept up to tell them that this is the best way to talk."

Following Savimbi's death, Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos, while on a visit to Portugal, had called for a cease-fire with UNITA, saying this would set the stage for the country's first elections since 1992.

The Angolan government had negotiated a peace agreement with UNITA in 1992 when elections were held. When Savimbi lost the first round he resumed military attacks, terrorizing and killing civilians. Two years later, UNITA was on the verge of military defeat, and another treaty was brokered.

Last year Savimbi's mercenaries launched attacks near the capital and planted a mine that destroyed a passenger train, killing more than 100 civilians. UNITA's military assaults forced more than 4 million people from their homes. More than 500,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands wounded.  
 
Decades of colonial domination
As a result of decades of colonial domination, Angola, a nation of some 13 million people with vast wealth in oil, coal, diamonds, and farmland, has one of the world's lowest standards of living. Disease and malnutrition are rampant with life expectancy at 44 years. Nearly one-third of the children die before the age of five.

The imperialist-backed UNITA has sought to wreak havoc in Angola ever since the country gained independence from Portugal, the former colonial master. In 1975 the Angolan fighters defeated the Portuguese military, which withdrew along with 300,000 Portuguese settlers.

Shortly before the country's independence from Portuguese colonial rule was to be formally celebrated, the new government--led by the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA)--was attacked by troops from apartheid South Africa and Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which at the time was ruled by dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. The invading forces were allied with the Angolan National Liberation Front (FNLA) and UNITA.

The MPLA government issued a call for help from around the world. The revolutionary government of Cuba immediately responded by sending thousands of volunteer troops to help defeat the invading racist army of South Africa. When the Cuban volunteers arrived, South African troops had already pushed more than 400 miles into Angolan territory and antigovernment forces had reached the outskirts of the capital city, Luanda. By late March 1976, with the help of the Cuban troops, Angolan soldiers repelled the invading forces over Angola's southern border into Namibia, which at that time was still a colony of South Africa.

Over the next 12 years apartheid troops repeatedly conducted military operations in Angolan territory aided by UNITA, which carried out terrorist operations in the southern part of the country. UNITA raided the railroad and government posts and established itself in the diamond region.

In 1986 Savimbi traveled to Washington seeking military aid and met with former president Ronald Reagan, whose administration provided him with a $15 million bipartisan package of "covert assistance." The following year Angolan troops were lured into a trap by UNITA forces in Cuito Cuanavale where the South African regime intervened and encircled the area with artillery, tanks, planes, and troops.

In the face of this looming assault, the Cuban government made a decision in November 1987 to send thousands of volunteer reinforcements and massive amounts of weaponry and supplies to Angola. By March 1988 the combined forces of the Cuban volunteers, the Angolan army, and fighters from SWAPO (South West African Peoples Organisation) dealt a decisive military defeat to the South African troops at Cuito Cuanavale. The South African invaders were forced to withdraw from Angola and in subsequent negotiations the apartheid regime ceded independence to Namibia, which celebrated the end of racist colonial domination. The people of Namibia established their own government in March 1990.

By 1991 when the last Cuban troops left Angola under an agreement between the Cuban and Angolan governments, more than 300,000 Cuban volunteers had served internationalist missions in Angola.

Following the pullout of Cuban troops, Washington normalized relations with Angola and recognized the MPLA government in 1993. U.S. and other capitalists began increasing their investments in Angola's vast oil fields. Only six countries in the world produce more petroleum than Angola.

"Angola is sub-Saharan Africa's biggest oil producer after Nigeria, and has become an important source of oil for the United States," said an article in the February 25 New York Times. It noted that Chevron Texaco Corporation pumps the largest amount of oil and at the end of last year French imperialist investors from TotalFinaElf began pumping petroleum from a new field that is expected to push the country's daily production over 1 million barrels.

Savimbi, touted in the big-business media as the "darling of Western anti-Communists" who "hobnobbed with American presidents and dignitaries," became a growing liability for the imperialists. UNITA lost important backing with the coming to power of a nonracial government led by Nelson Mandela in South Africa in 1994 and the collapse of the Mobutu dictatorship in 1997. Two years later Angolan troops delivered blows that destroyed a sizable chunk of the UNITA war machine.

With Savimbi's death, the U.S. imperialists are seeking ways to suck more wealth out of the country. They have stepped up their demands that the Angolan government begin rectifying its "'abysmal repayment record" on its foreign debt and cough up payment for hundreds of millions of dollars on high-interest loans it took out last year. Washington recently sent a crew from the International Monetary Fund to Angola to assess the country's "fiscal accountability" and to press the government to pay on its $12 billion foreign debt.  
 
 
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