Menongue - The Angolan military victory in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale made it possible, among other things, to scupper the plan of some internal and external forces to divide the country into two regions, north and south, according to university lecturer Isaac Canjengo.
Speaking to ANGOP recently, in Menongue, on the occasion of 23 March as Liberation Day for Southern Africa, the academic said that the event in question aborted a strategy aimed at controlling the entire southern region of Angola by the South African apartheid regime.
This claim was part of the actions that would be implemented in the event of a victory for Pieter Botha's South African forces, he said.
According to the academic, it was a strategy whose implementation would fulfil the dream nurtured at the time by the liberation movements that had previously proclaimed the independence of South Angola
He said that from a geostrategic and geopolitical point of view, if the South African army had triumphed by taking Cuito Cuanavale, it would very quickly have advanced to Menongue, the capital of Cuando Cubango, and on "without any opposition" to Cuito, the seat of the neighbouring province of Bié, in the centre of the country.
The next step, he continued, would be to move on to the provinces of Benguela, Huambo, Huíla and Namibe, thus finalising the plan for the territorial division of Angola and consolidating control of the southern part.
"With that, they would have realised the strategic and military plan of dividing Angola into two regions," he stressed, adding that once the municipality of Cuito Cuanavale, in Cuando Cubango, was passed, the indivisibility of the national territory would be called into question.
He continued, the slogan of Angola's first president, Agostinho Neto, that "From Cabinda to Cunene, one people and one nation" would also be jeopardised.
For this reason, Isaac Canjengo insisted that the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was decisive not only for the integrity of the countries closest to Angola, but also for the geopolitics and geostrategic of the entire African continent.
In this regard, he recalled that the New York Peace Accords of 22 December 1988, resulting from the end of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, served as a "springboard" for the proclamation of Namibia's independence with the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 435/78.
The same New York Accords, signed by the governments of Angola, South Africa and Cuba, also determined the withdrawal of all foreign troops from national territory and led to the end of the racial segregation regime that was then in force in South Africa, he added.
According to the academic, this makes it pertinent to commemorate 23 March in all SADC countries, given the regional impact of the Cuito Cuanavale victory, which this year marked its 36th anniversary.
Isaak Canjengo is therefore of the opinion that it makes perfect sense to elevate the Memorial to the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale to World Heritage status, as it "constitutes a historic milestone" in the recording of military items and a set of reasons for studying military strategy, geopolitics and geo-strategy.
He also believes that raising the symbol of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale to World Heritage status would be tantamount to eternalising and praising the great heroes who fought for the liberation of the region's peoples.
"The young men and women who attend the military academies will find reasons to reflect there and carry out in-depth studies of geopolitics and geostrategy. It's our history, achieved with a lot of sacrifice," he said.
The genesis of political reform in Angola
Domestically, the historic victory of the Popular Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) also has its "fingerprints" on the genesis of political reform in Angola, according to some observers.
The end of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale on 23 March 1988 is considered to have prepared the ground for the start of the reforms that led to Angola's transition from one-party rule to multi-party democracy.
The fall of the Berlin Wall the following year was a precursor to the end of the Cold War (1947-1991), which fuelled the Angolan civil war through the confrontation between the then Soviet Union (now Russia) and the United States, the two sponsors of the two opposing sides of the Angolan conflict.
In between came the New York Accords, which served as an antechamber to the negotiations between the Angolan government and Jonas Savimbi's UNITA that culminated in the signing of the Bicesse Accords on 31 May 1991 in Portugal.
Sealed with the historic handshake between Jonas Savimbi and President José Eduardo dos Santos, the Bicesse Accords put an end to the one-party regime and determined a constitutional revision to enshrine multi-party rule.
As a result of these agreements, Angola held its first multiparty general elections the following year, after UNITA was transformed from a rebel movement into a political party.
For the first time in their history, Angolans went to the polls on 29-30 September 1992 to elect the President of the Republic and members of the National Assembly (Parliament), putting an end to almost two decades of single-party rule. MSM/FF/IZ/DAN/DOJ
