Content area
Full text
Karl Maier, Angola Promises and Lies (Serif, London, 1996), 224 pp., 12.99 pbk, ISBN 1897959-22-2.
Each of Angola's great political crises has attracted at least one sharp-eyed observer to disentangle the welter of mendacity and propaganda that cocoons a civil war. In 1961, the level-headed analysis was provided by John Marcum. In 1975 the grass-roots perspective was given by Ryszard Kapuscinski. Now the war of the 1990s, has been written up with clarity and humanity by Karl Maier. No other book has attempted to explain the third Angolan civil war as dispassionately as this one. Few journalists have got so near the long-suffering people on the road-side. Few have been able to observe the machinations of the politicians and their puppet-masters at such close quarters. The author knows Angola intimately and loves its people, but his book, subtitled `promises and lies', brooks no deviation from the truth as he perceives it. The result is elegant, compelling, tragic. It is a tour de force.
Maier's treatment of the politicians of Unita and MPLA as they sacrificed their people with all the inhuman cruelty of military commanders at the battle of the Somme is chilling but even-handed. Comparing the Brezhnev-backed MPLA with the Reagan-backed UNITA, he says wryly: `However much it tries, and no matter how much training its young agents once received from the likes of the East German secret police, the MPLA has never had either...