unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org (unitex) (09/23/89)
ANGOLA: Embattled Railway Struggles On Despite Renewed War
Luanda, September 21, 1989 (AIA) -- The 90-year-old Benguela
Railroad is still operating and pursuing reconstruction
programmes despite the past month's peace-shattering battles
between MPLA government forces and rebel UNITA guerrillas.
The battles have occurred in areas to the north and south of
the line as it approaches the Zaire border at the 1,301-
kilometre mark. The fire fights ended a fragile three-month
cease-fire signalled by a handshake between Angolan President
Jose Eduardo dos Santos and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi
during peace talks in the north-eastern Zaire village of
Gbadolite with most Southern African heads of state in
attendance.
The renewed war is a blow to MPLA planners who were hoping
that peace would mean an escalation of a series of port and
railway rebuilding projects sponsored by nations backing the
Southern Africa Development Coordinating Conference (SADCC).
In a special preliminary meeting before this past February's
annual SADCC get-together for donor nations, the European
Economic Community (EEC) and Nordic states matched an
existing Canadian commitment by pledging money for the
rebuilding of the line.
Canada has been financing construction of satellite
communications along the line from the Atlantic port of
Lobito for three years.
But recent donor interest does not mean the railroad has been
at a standstill since independence in 1975.
While the nation's resources went to fight the South African
backed war of destabilisation, the railway reorganised staff
and rolling stock to provide a near constant service between
the populous central plateau province of Bie and the coast.
It has been an heroic struggle. Between 1975 and 1987, 193
railway workers were killed, 398 were wounded and 200 went
missing while making sure the trains got through. One cruel
irony typical of the long simmering war which puts the
strategic rail line at the centre of UNITA's destabilisation
is the fact that Jonas Savimbi's own father was a clerk on
the line and would have known the families of many of the
dead through his extracurricular work as a lay preacher with
the Evangelical Congregational Church of Angola.
At independence 11,200 people worked on the railroad. But
1,500 Portuguese occupying top management and middle level
technical positions fled. As in other sectors the mass
exodus was accompanied by wide-scale sabotage. The railway's
operational capacity was crippled. The Portuguese had never
instituted a staff training programme. Remaining workers,
many semi-literate, had to start from scratch, teaching each
other as they went along.
Yet the trains never stopped running. A training center was
established and more than 1,000 workers had been upgraded by
1976. The system they manage is based on the railway
technologies of the first third of this century. Finished 1n
1929, the route was financed by sale of shares in a
Portuguese-based company on the London stock exchange. Most
of the line was designed by English and Scottish engineers
overseeing thousands of Angolans working under conditions of
forced labour.
The result rivalled celebrated colonial road beds in India
and Latin America. Today it is a railway hobbyist's dream.
Benguela railroad officials say they are still maintaining
at least two wood-burning steam locomotives not known to
exist anywhere else in the world. But the real steam-driven
workhorses are 12 "Garratt" locomotives of pre-World War II
design, much prized by engine officianados.
Each locomotive has seen action in the war of sabotage and
has been painstakingly reconstructed and maintained.
The engines pull passenger (more than four million
travellers in 1986) and freight cars 627 kilometres to Bie
city along a route that snakes up through the dry mountains
separating eastern Benguela province and Huambo province from
the bustling Lobito port. For many villages the slow-moving
trains are still a welcome sign of news and imports from the
outside world as well as an essential means of transport.
Train stations echo Victorian and art deco styles of
Portuguese colonialism. Their staid and class conscious
designs are now euphorically over-run by a democratic use of
space ushered in with the revolution. Some, like the pink
and white "cottage style" station at Kaala, 37 kilometre east
of Huambo, have been partially destroyed by UNITA bombs but
still ship vital foreign currency earning ores like
manganese and zinc.
Attempts to expand the capacity of the railroad got underway
during April 1987 when Southern African government ministers
from Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Zaire joined
officials from SADCC's Southern Africa Transportation and
Communications Conference (SATCC) and the railway's Belgian-
based operating company to form a reconstruction committee.
The aim has been to attract development assistance.
To date about a billion US dollars have been pledged for
training, port rehabilitation at Lobito or actual line
restructuring throughout the system.
Most observers are now waiting to see if the promised aid
will materialise, in spite of war, to contribute to
assisting those thousands of Angolans who have kept the
railroad alive against all odds.
---
* Origin: AlterNet, Node1 (Opus 1:163/113)
---
Patt Haring | United Nations | FAX: 212-787-1726
patth@sci.ccny.cuny.edu | Information | BBS: 201-795-0733
patth@ccnysci.BITNET | Transfer Exchange | (3/12/24/9600 Baud)
-=- Every child smiles in the same language. -=-