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Spanish rule in Nuevo Reino de Granada (Colombia),
brought independence without the existence of one
nation and one strong emerging government-inwaiting.
At the time of Colombia's independence
wars (1810±1819), the principle of self-determination
was largely absent from the state formation debate.
However, as the following paragraph indicates, a
certain level of similarity with the case of Angola is
evident (Pearce 1990:14±15; Keen 1996:503).
As Buzan (1991:98) notes, the apparent surge of
violent nationalism, justified by growing international
recognition of the (Angolan) people's right to selfdetermination,
was not the positive unity of a
coherent group with one national identity, but a
negative one of common opposition to repressive and
exploitative colonial rule. In the case of Angola, the
Portuguese had to leave in a hurry, following a coup
d'eÂtat in Lisbon in 1974 (against the Caetano regime)
(Somerville 1997:14). Apart from plundering what
was left of the state apparatus, there was no
opportunity to gradually transfer, inter alia, state
institutional capacity (bureaucracy) and resources
(economic infrastructure) to the new Angolan government.
France managed to facilitate this in a number
of its own Third World colonies (e.g. Coà te D' Ivoire),
but Portugal was too poor and too weak a state and
power itself to accomplish transfer of power and
resources stability. Then again, apart from a reasonably
developed agriculturally based economy and
infrastructure, serving the needs of the colonial state,
there wasn't much to inherit in terms of industrial
development. The Portuguese deliberately held back
industrialization to protect national industries in
Portugal. The MPLA, winning the race for Luanda
(1974±75), established political control over a state
lacking strong empirical statehood in the sense of
European states, whereby the latter, over a long and
violent period of time, first secured domestic trade
resources, territorial control, strong institutional capacity,
nation building and undisputed (sole) legitimacy
over the use of power and resources, before establishing
the nation-state (Zacarias 1999:124). Furthermore,
in the absence of one nation, but merely a
constellation of urban-based Creole mestizos and
rural-based sub-ethnic tribes, the national liberation
movements (MPLA, UNITA and FNLA) were unable
to act in an integrating state and nation building
capacity. None of them represented the whole of the
Angolan territory as one nation, inclusive of all the
different sub-ethnic nationalities living within Angola.
Similarly to Colombia, Angola had no single government-in-waiting,
but three armed movements all
claiming sole legitimacy. Today, the MPLA and
UNITA are still fighting each other over this matter ±
an aspect that is elaborated in the next part (Messiant
1998:148; Van Benthem van den Bergh; 1998:12).
The Angolan experience differs from Colombia
when it comes to the role of Cold War rivalry and
superpower competition in shaping the domestic
order of newly independent ex-colonial states. While,
in Colombia, Marxist ideology, Soviet and Cuban
communism strongly influenced small opposition
parties (e.g. the PCC) and guerrilla movements, with
a closed bipartisan system limiting its influence on
central government, the MPLA government introduced
Marxist-based one party rule (Fituni 1995:143±
144). Central government's political and military
survival, and escape from total state collapse, depended
on sustained Soviet and Cuban aid, amidst a
significant diplomatic and military challenge posed by
UNITA aided by the United States and South Africa.
The Cold War superpowers set the rules for engagement.
Both the MPLA and UNITA could do little to
change them. When Angola lost its strategic significance
as an apparent proxy in a war, following the
Soviet Union's collapse in 1989, limited successes in
state formation, such as institutional and infrastructural
capacity building and control over territory, were
now endangered by the superpowers' withdrawal of
interest and resources. This process acted as a catalyst
for near state collapse. The Angolan people remained
deeply divided along political, cultural, ideological
and ethnic lines. Soviet and Cuban withdrawal left
behind a weak state and government, acting from a
severely restricted territorial base. In the absence of
legal controls, uncontrolled predatory activities by
e lite groups (once protected by Cold War patrons),
also increased, resulting in the capture, control and
exploitation of Angola's mineral wealth. Realizing that
the prolonged protracted civil war and failure of peace
initiatives (e.g. the Bicesse Accords of May 1991), left
little time to work out new favourable political and
economic accommodation terms, powerful and corrupt
MPLA e lite, army generals, UNITA leadership,
and local warlords opted for lucrative resourcegrabbing
to secure their privileged positions (Part 4
refers) (Messiant 1998:156±157). Uncontrolled proliferation
of small conventional arms in and around
Angola also continued, fuelling further destruction
and human suffering (Woodward 1998:2; 4).
Cases of contemporary Third World state failure can
also be attributed to a sustained decline and deterioration
in the state's relative position in trade,
investment, production and consumption vis-aÁ-vis
other states or regions of the world. A dependency on
primary commodity exports, particularly agricultural
exports, is a key variable in this. The world prices of
these commodities have been depressed since the
mid-1970s. Suffering a sharp decline in foreign export
earnings, these states have been largely unable to
generate sufficient economic growth and investment
to diversify their economies towards higher value
added goods. Under these conditions, their marginalization
from the terms of global trade, favouring
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