SUMMARY
UNITA (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola, National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) was an Angolan rebel group. It was founded by Jonas Savimbi in March 1966 in Muangai, in Angola's eastern province Moxico. Savimbi was a former member of the FNLA (Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola; National Front for the Liberation of Angola), an Angolan pro-independence movement. Disagreements with the FNLA leadership and the other pro-independence group MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola, Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) prompted him to leave the movement and found UNITA.
Savimbi was influenced by the Maoist ideology, which formed the basis for his political and organizational doctrines. He belonged to the Ovimbundu, the largest ethnic group in Angola like most second rank UNITA leaders.
UNITA launched an extra-state conflict against the Portuguese colonial power until independence was achieved in 1975. It then turned against the MPLA-dominated Angolan government. In this intrastate conflict the group received support from a number of states. During the Cold War, the USA and China (to a limited extent) backed UNITA militarily. Moreover, in the 1970s and 1980s, South Africa provided military and logistical support to the rebels. In the 1990s, regional powers as DR Congo (Zaire), Togo, Morocco and Congo-Brazzaville became UNITA’s main sponsors and among other things supplied the rebels with arms, refuges and military training.
Jonas Savimbi was UNITA’s founder and head throughout the years until he was killed by government troops in 2002. Savimbi’s leadership was challenged in 1998, when a group calling itself UNITA-Renovada (UNITA-Renewed) suspended him and became the self-declared legitimate leadership of UNITA. The Angolan authorities and the Southern African Development Community recognized UNITA-Renovada as the new official UNITA representatives. Another UNITA faction emerged under the leadership of Abel Chivukuvuku the same year. In 2002, Savimbi was succeeded by Antonio Dembo, who was wounded in the same attack as Savimbi and died shortly after him. Thereafter a peace agreement was signed with the Angolan government, the three UNITA factions reunified, and UNITA transformed itself into a political party. Isaias Samakuva was elected president of UNITA in June 2003.
UNITA has been involved in the intra-state and one-sided categories of UCDP organized violence.
