Angola: A Ghost of Its Former Self

Independence has brought deprivation, disruption—and Cubans

Marxist-ruled Angola poses one of the biggest stumbling blocks to solving the problems that plague southern Africa. Five years of complex negotiations over a U.N. plan to win independence for the South African-controlled territory of Namibia have produced a stalemate over South Africa's demand that, as a quid pro quo, Cuba withdraw its 26,000 troops and advisers stationed in Angola. Yet the Cubans now seem more important than ever to the Angolan government. With the backing of South Africa, Angolan rebels have scored a series of gains in recent months, presenting a serious threat to the Soviet-supported regime of President José Eduardo Dos Santos. Last week TIME'S Tala Skari joined a group of journalists in a visit to embattled Angola, the first Western reporters to tour the country for quite some time. Her report:

"When the Portuguese left in 1975," sighed a resident of the capital of Luanda, "they didn't go gracefully." Indeed, the exodus of some 350,000 Portuguese after independence stripped the country of its only trained personnel and plunged it deeply into civil war. Today the signs of that hasty evacuation are written into Luanda's decay.

With its pastel-colored stucco buildings, palm-lined harbor and sandy beaches, this city nestled in gentle foothills on the Atlantic Coast used to be known as the Rio de Janeiro of Africa. Now, in most respects, Luanda is a ghost of its former self. In the once thriving downtown, at least two-thirds of the stores have closed. Merchants, unable to purchase supplies, have boarded their doors. The few shops that remain open display almost their entire stock in the front window. Prices are inflated: in one showcase, a pair of secondhand children's trousers was marked 500 kwanzas, or roughly $40 at the official exchange rate. But very often merchants refuse even to sell what little they offer, for fear that they will not be able to restock their shelves.

Reminders of a more prosperous past haunt the city. Shells of half-finished high-rises mar the skyline, their struts jutting crazily and their cranes frozen in midair. Hulks of taxis, virtually new trucks, and even public buses rust on roadsides or in overgrown lots because the few spare parts that trickle into Angola are funneled to the army. To its credit, however, the government has managed to maintain a reliable city bus system.

After independence, the population of Luanda more than doubled to 1 million as tribesmen flooded the capital in search of work. In the squalid shantytowns of wooden clapboard, sheet metal and clay adobe that ring the capital, barefoot children share the streets with squealing piglets, chickens and goats. Conditions in the bleak ten-story apartment houses in town are not much better: in front of one building, women and children draw runoff water from an enormous pothole in the street.