Rebels and Robbers: Violence in Post-Colonial Angola (review)

Rebels and Robbers is a study of Angola's civil war and its peace since 2003. Unlike other authors who analyze the development of Angola's diamond-and oil-anchored political economy and its relationship to the civil war and postcolonial governance, Assis Malaquias grounds his work in a broad conceptual and historical context. He uses the concept of violence, both physical and structural, to understand Angola from colonialism through the present and to develop his suggestions for how Angola can navigate the "arduous transition from negative to positive peace" (p. 9). He moves easily from close-grained analysis of events and processes to theoretical discussions of the concepts he employs—violence, civil society, ethnicity—and the requirements of sustainable peace. His sources include works on Angolan history, a variety of political science literature (on Angola, Africa, decolonization and development, and peace and conflict), United Nations documents, and newspaper articles. The book is composed of a tightly written introduction, nine detail-rich chapters, and a conclusion. (The inclusion of at least a couple of maps and illustrations would have been helpful.) Malaquias makes a notable contribution to the literature on Angola's civil war and politics by taking a longer view of the conflict and a closer look at the forms of violence Angolans have inflicted and endured.

With Jonas Savimbi's death, in early 2002, and the signing of peace accords in April of that year, Angola officially achieved peace; but, Malaquias warns in the introduction, the end to military hostilities should not be mistaken for long-term political resolution, lasting peace, or justice. Insofar as critical social and political questions that fueled and were exacerbated by the conflict remain pendent (distribution of wealth, governance, political participation), war or permanent conflict will always threaten to return.

The first three chapters provide historical details and analysis of precolonial relations, colonialism, the anticolonial struggle and nationalist movements, and postcolonial geopolitics. Malaquias traces a history of violence to the earliest days of the Portuguese commercial interest in Angola as a key component in the Atlantic slave trade and to the forced labor (contrato) so indelibly associated with Portuguese colonialism. Chapter 3 sheds light on the external interventions—Cuba, South Africa, the United Nations, the United States, the U.S.S.R., Zaire—that helped ignite and fuel the civil war.

Chapter 4 focuses on UNITA's leadership, internal culture, and transformation from anticolonial nationalist movement to rebel group and finally to criminal insurgency. Malaquias shows how the party was built on violence and sowed violence. He argues that while UNITA was the primary perpetrator of physical violence, the MPLA-dominated state was, and is, responsible for the structural violence that pervades postcolonial Angola. Chapter 5 analyzes how this state centralized power and imposed structural violence to ensure its survival during the civil war, but also used it to enrich individuals in power. Given the earlier attention to colonial violence, this reader thought more could be said about corruption before independence. Colonialism was neither democratic nor transparent, and de facto racist rule had more than a few elements that qualify as corrupt. Chapter 6 turns to the ways in which both parties used peace negotiations to their own ends: the state to consolidate hegemony inside and credibility outside, and the rebels to ensure their existence and enable them to rearm. Neither party negotiated in earnest for a new order or a new division of power and resources. With Savimbi's death and the signing of the Luena accords, the state has moved to consolidate elites and coopt, or at least control, the opposition.

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 turn to the possibilities of what Malaquias calls sustainable peace—a peace without physical or structural violence—and the challenges facing Angolan society in reaching it. These chapters range from discussing large social challenges to governance, to changes required in the state–society relationship, and finally to the ways in which Angola's relations with its neighbors...