Death in africa - ColdType

FRED BRIDGLAND
Victoria Chitata begged the crowd to save her small son who
was dragged to the bonfire with her. No one moved and she
and her son died together in the flames.
Aurora Katalayo was a paediatrician and haematologist who
had trained as a doctor in Switzerland. She was also the
widow of a popular and outspoken guerrilla commander,
Mateus Katalayo, who had been executed by Savimbi three
years earlier. Aurora had resolutely refused Savimbi’s invitations
to sleep with him either before or after Mateus’s death.
Aurora, by several accounts, cursed Savimbi’s soul aloud,
called him a criminal and warned he would never win as she
was next frogmarched from the crowd with her four-year-old
son Michel. Mother and son were pitched into the fire. Tito said
the proof Savimbi gave of Aurora’s witchcraft was the
“Swissification” of Michel and his 12-year-old sister M’Bimbi –
but, said Tito, she died because of her resistance to Savimbi’s
sexual advances. One man, João Kalitangi, died on the pyre
with the women. Kalitangi, a male nurse, had for many years
cared for Savimbi’s mother. Kalitangi’s wife and children,
including a mentally handicapped daughter, were also burned.
Tony Fernandes, a senior Politburo member who in
December 1964 wrote the UNITA constitution in the Swiss Alps
with Savimbi, witnessed the burnings. He has described them
as the most horrific events he has ever experienced. Fernandes
defected in 1992 from the organisation he had jointly founded.
He later became Angola’s Ambassador to Britain.
Ahalt was called after 13 victims had been consumed by
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