UNITA, the largest opposition party that the MPLA still allows in Angola, did not confirm the veracity of the remains of its leaders that were handed over by the Angolan Government, because “Angola needs to reconcile”, but admitted flaws in the process. Believing in the hyena dressed as a sheep without confirming the “identity” does not help reconciliation. On the contrary. It only postpones the carnage. But…
A he statements by Adalberto da Costa Júnior, president of UNITA, come a day after orphans of the May 27, 1977 massacres, ordered by Agostinho Neto, (M27 Association), denounced that the bones given to them do not match the DNA of their relatives, killed in the repression that followed the genocide of May 27, 1977, where thousands and thousands of Angolans were killed – by order of the MPLA president.
The UNITA leader underlined that the matter has been followed “with a lot of involvement” over the years and indicated that the Reconciliation Plan in Memory of the Victims of Political Conflicts was mainly aimed at the 27th of May, a “subject that burns the hands of the MPLA [Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola]who never had the courage to come and render public accounts”.
He also added that there had already been talk of the possibility that some of these bones did not correspond to the victims: “Some of those involved had brought us this problem that we had seen with great concern, insofar as, if confirmed, it jeopardizes transparency of this act. Ourselves [familiares de vítimas da UNITA] We were at a given moment in a situation close to this one”.
In November 2021, the Angolan Government delivered the remains of two UNITA leaders – Salupeto Pena and Alicerces Mango – murdered in the 1992 post-electoral conflicts in Luanda, an act that for family members and political leaders symbolized reconciliation.
UNITA and MPLA, party in power since 1975, fought a long civil war that lasted almost 30 years.
“UNITA did not go to verify the veracity of the bones it received. We had a very large debate around this matter and we came to the conclusion that it was better to embrace the gesture, the act, even if this involved the risk of the bones not corresponding, because what was at stake was much broader, it is in fact also we can demonstrate that Angola needs to reconcile”, said Adalberto da Costa Júnior.
The leader admitted that “there will not always be the total, effective, transparent truth”, but stressed that UNITA wanted to give “its share” and that the families also aligned in this purpose.
“It’s not worth going looking for this issue, it’s more suffering (…) it’s better to pass over this matter”, justified Adalberto da Costa Júnior, thus admitting that for UNITA lies have interests that the truth ignores. You forget that the truth hurts, but that only it heals.
To excuse the inexcusable, the UNITA leader nevertheless left some criticisms of the way the process took place.
“It was not doctors who made the delivery, it was people from the intelligence services”, he said, stressing that it should go through other State institutions and not be “always the State security structures involved where it does not concern them”.
“We will learn from these practices and do better in the future. The country’s reconciliation is an effective need and we need to give our share, our contribution, but without being naive, we know the country we have”, she stressed. Do you know? Hmm! Those who know would not accept crying next to the grave where someone we think is our father lies but who, after all, may just be a stranger.
In a “letter to Angola”, the orphans of the 27th of May denounced, on Thursday, the “propaganda machine” of the Angolan Government and CIVICOP – Commission for Reconciliation in Memory of the Victims of Political Conflicts, when carrying out funeral ceremonies and delivering bodies “in widely televised public ceremonies on the eve of presidential elections”.
Last year, the Angolan Government held funerals for Alves Bernardo Batista “Nito Alves”, Jacob Caetano João “Monstro Imortal”, Arsénio Lourenço Mesquita “Sihanouk” and Ilídio Ramalhete, victims of the massacres on 27 May 1977.
In the place where these bones were found, those of José Van-Dunem and Sita Vales, a young couple of MPLA leaders, who were murdered during the genocide, but their relatives demanded new forensic examinations, having traveled to Luanda a team of Portuguese specialists, led by the former president of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Coimbra, Duarte Nuno Vieira.
According to the orphans, “it was with astonishment and pain” that “after carrying out the tests, it was concluded that none of the samples correspond to the corpses of the parents”.
In April 2019, President João Lourenço staged the creation of a commission (the CIVICOP), to draw up a general plan to honor the victims of the political conflicts that took place in Angola between November 11, 1975 and April 4, 2002 (end of the civil war).
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