Angola

“ Economically, however, Angola does not pay, its finances are like many of its old houses—very unstable and subject to leakage. Walk its streets, visit its families, Government departments or merchants’ houses, and certain it is that every other man you meet will remind you forcibly of Micawber. The Portuguese community in any part of Angola can be roughly classed as the Moneylenders and Borrowers. ”

“ I have hardly alluded to the wonderful safety and absence of all risk or danger in travelling over almost any part of Angola, especially in those parts in the occupation of the Portuguese. The natives are everywhere civil if well treated; and if only good humour exists on the part of the traveller, and due allowance be made for the laziness and procrastination of the negro, no great inconvenience need ever be felt in going anywhere through the country. ”

“ The natives of Angola are tall and strong but, like the rest of the Ethiopians, they are so very lazy and indolent, that although their soil is admirably adapted to the raising of cattle and the production of grain, they allow both to be destroyed by the wild beasts with which the country abounds. ”

“ They are the cleverest natives of Angola, speak and read and write Portuguese best of any, are the greatest cheats of all, and are well described by the Portuguese as the Jews and gipsies of [Pg 103] Angola. They are the greatest traders in the country, and collect and deal in all manner of hides, skins, and other articles, for which they travel great distances and amongst other tribes. They will least of all work at any manual labour; trade and roguery are their forte, and they have often suffered at the hands of other tribes for their cupidity. ”

“ This is the universal manner of greeting in Angola between an inferior and superior of high rank; when the difference is not so great, as children to their parents, slaves to their masters, ordinary natives to their “Macotas,” &c., both clap their hands, but the inferior has to do it first, and both squat down for a moment to do it. A powerful king answers a salute by simply lifting his right hand, and waving his first and second finger only. ”

“ Bom Dios—Bother it, I suppose it is—says Portugal—must do something to smarten up dear Angola. She is over 400 now, and hasn’t had any new frocks since [Pg 284] the slave trade days; perhaps they are right, and it’s time this dear child came out. So Loanda, Angola, was ordered street lamps—stylish things street lamps!—a telephone, and a water supply. Now, say what you please, Loanda is not only the finest, but the only, city in West Africa. “Lagos! you ejaculate—you don’t know Lagos.” ”

“ The King of Angola, jealous of the advantages that he supposed his neighbour the King of Congo derived from his trade and intercourse with the Portuguese, determined to send several of his subjects to Portugal to beg the like friendship for himself. Queen [Pg 2] Catherine, acceding to his request, sent to him Paulo Diaz de Novaes, grandson of the famous Bartolomeo Diaz, who had discovered the greater part of the West Coast and the Cape of Good Hope. ”

“ The Angola negroes are those who most commonly exert themselves to purchase their own freedom. The Congo negroes partake much of the character of the Angolans, being equally tractable; but they are steadier, and are particularly adapted to the regular routine of field labour. They are less quick in their movements than the Angolans, and do not seem to be so spirited and courageous; they obtain in a short period a knowledge of the Portugueze language. ”

“ A knowledge of Portuguese [Pg 314] is of course almost essential, as, with the exception of some places on the River Congo, and as far south of it as Ambriz, where some of the natives speak English, a great number speak only Portuguese besides their own language.
Money of most nations passes in Angola, the English sovereign being perhaps the most useful of any, and at those places where goods of various kinds are principally required for payments of carriers, provisions, &c., they can be readily obtained at moderate rates from the traders. ”

“ It is impossible to reclaim the hordes of savages inhabiting the interior even of Angola from their horrid customs and their disregard for life; the [Pg 70] insalubrity of the country, though it is infinitely superior in this respect to the rest of the West Coast, would be an almost insuperable bar to their improvement; their own progress is still more hopeless. ”

“ The insignia of the Republic of Angola shall be formed by a segment of a cog wheel and sheaves of maize, coffee and cotton, representing respectively the workers and industrial production, the peasants and agricultural production. At the foot of the design, an open book shall represent education and culture, and the rising sun shall represent the new country. ”

“ Millions of these trees cover the whole of Angola, as they do in fact the whole of tropical Africa, sufficient to supply an incalculable amount of paper material for years, but for the indolence of the negro race. I have no doubt, however, that they will in time follow the example of the Ambriz blacks, and a very large trade be developed as in the case of the palm-oil and the india-rubber trade. ”

“ OUR Englishmen are known to have visited Angola towards the close of the sixteenth century, namely, Thomas Turner, Andrew Towres, Anthony Knivet and Andrew Battell. All four were taken by the Portuguese out of English privateers in South-American waters, and spent years of captivity as prisoners of war; happy, no doubt, in having escaped the fate of many of their less fortunate companions, who atoned with their lives for the hazardous proceedings in which they had engaged. ”

“ That the natives of Angola will cultivate large quantities of produce, if they can get moderately well paid for their trouble, is evidenced by the considerable exports from the country from Ambriz to the River Congo, where there are no custom-houses, and also on the River Quanza, where steam navigation enables goods to be sent up the country cheaply, and so to bear [Pg 61] the almost prohibitive duties levied on them at Loanda. ”

“ The Bunda-speaking natives of Angola are extremely indolent: by the better class, such as those who can read and write, it is considered derogatory to perform any manual work whatever. A little trading in wax or other produce is the most they indulge in, and this is principally made the means of obtaining goods or money on credit from the traders, or in some other way imposing [Pg 101] on them. They are specially clever at any little roguery of this kind. ”

“ There is no doubt that the province of Angola is a very rich one. No advantages are held out for merchants to establish here, and thus bring capital into the place, which means more business, the opening up of roads, and the development of industries and agriculture. ”

“ After a considerable amount of friction owing to the encroachments of Major Serpa Pinto, the limits of Portuguese Angola on the west coast were then determined, being bounded on the east by the Congo Free State and British Central Africa; and at the same time Portuguese East Africa was settled in its relation both to British Central Africa on the west and German East Africa on the north. ”

“ In the interior this country was then almost unknown. Few travelers had dared to venture there. A pernicious climate, warm and damp lands, which engender fevers, barbarous natives, some of whom are still cannibals, a permanent state of war between tribes, the slave-traders' suspicion of every stranger who seeks to discover the secrets of their infamous commerce; such are the difficulties to surmount, the dangers to overcome in this province of Angola, one of the most dangerous of equatorial Africa. ”

“ These Moors do circumcise their children, and give them their names, as we do when we baptize.
Angola may very easily be taken, for the Portugals have no forts to defend it of any strength.
The King285 of Congo is the greatest King in all Ethiopia; [Pg 98] and doth keep in the field continually sixty thousand soldiers, that do war against the King of Vangala,286 and the King of Angola; this King is a Christian, and his brother-in-law of arms with the King of Spain. His servants of his house are most of them all Portugals, and he doth favour them very much. ”

“ The coast-line is some 900 m. long. On the north the Congo forms for 80 m. the boundary separating Angola from the Congo Free State. The frontier thence (in 5° 52′ S.) goes due east to the Kwango river. The eastern boundary—dividing the Portuguese possessions from the Congo State and Barotseland (N.W. Rhodesia) —is a highly irregular line. On the south Angola borders German South-West Africa, the frontier being drawn somewhat S. of the 17th degree of S. latitude. The area of the province is about 480,000 sq. m. The population is estimated (1906) at 4,119,000. ”

“ Portuguese West Africa is generally called the Province of Angola. It is divided from north to south into five districts. Each district has its chief town corresponding to it in name.
In former times the slave trade was the main traffic of this coast. Since the cessation of that traffic the ivory trade has also declined. The groundnut is now largely cultivated for the oil it yields. Coffee grows wild, cotton is cultivated, and palm oil is brought down the Kuanza River in considerable quantity. ”

“ Routes of the Chief Explorers in Angola. time enables the inhabitants of each to migrate freely from one to the other without suffering much inconvenience from the change of climate. If Brazil has been enabled to develop a mixed white, Negro, and Indian population of over 4 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. twelve millions, there is uothing to prevent the territory of Angola from also becoming the home of a numerous people with a strong sentiment of national cohesion, instead of being occupied as at present by a few colonial groups almost lost amid the surrounding hostile populations. ”

“ Ambriz, seen from the sea, consists of a high rocky cliff or promontory, with a fine bay sweeping with a level beach northward nearly to the next promontory, on which stand the trading factories forming the place called Quissembo, or Kinsembo of the English.
In the bay the little River Loge has its mouth, and marks the northern limit of the Portuguese possession of Angola. The country beyond, described in the last chapter, is in the hands of the natives, under their own laws, and owing no allegiance or obedience to any white power. ”

“ The natives have not been spoilt as yet by contact with the evils of an ignorant and oppressive occupation, as in Portuguese Angola, or, as on the British West Coast on the other hand, by having been preached by a dozen opposed and rival sects into a muddled state of assumed and insolent equality with the white race, whom they hate in their inmost hearts, from the consciousness of their infinite inferiority. ”

“ Introduction Angola
Background:
Angola is slowly rebuilding its country after the end of a 27-year
civil war in 2002. Fighting between the Popular Movement for the
Liberation of Angola (MPLA) , led by Jose Eduardo DOS SANTOS, and the
National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) , led by
Jonas SAVIMBI, followed independence from Portugal in 1975. Peace
seemed imminent in 1992 when Angola held national elections, but
UNITA renewed fighting after being beaten by the MPLA at the polls. ”

“ The African coastlands having thus been depopulated for the benefit of the New World, it is not surprising that Angola has been so greatly distanced in material progress by the vast Brazilian empire. The number of blacks transporte 1 from Angola since the beginning of the sixteenth century has been estimated at about one million at least ”

“ They are not physically equal to the European Portuguese, but possess considerable ability; and it is said that half-castes, in the course of a few generations, return to the black color of the maternal ancestor. The black population of Angola has become much deteriorated. They are not so strongly formed as the independent tribes. A large quantity of aguardiente, an inferior kind of spirit, is imported into the country, which is most injurious in its effects. ”

“ Not more than about four thousand of the inhabitants are of European origin, and even of these nearly all have come with the intention of one day returning to the mother country. The Portuguese and other whites settled in Angola are either traders and artisans who hope to make rapid fortunes, or else Government ofiicials and soldiers, whose service in this remote colony entitles them to a double rate of promotion. Hence, it is not surprising that the territories comprised between " coast and coast," that is between the Congo and Zambese estuaries, are still for the most part an unknown region. ”

“ Angola And Bizerta Angola poses a particular problem for us Africans who would now take into our own hands the determination of our own fate and the shaping of our own future. Again, We are confident that within the four walls of the United Nations. Africans will secure the means whereby the people of Angola will be enabled to stand among us as free people, and the Angola problem will be expunged from the list of items which vex the conscience of the nations of the world. ”

“ Towards a lake called Aquelunda219 lieth a country called Quizama, the inhabitants whereof being governed after the manner of a commonwealth, have showed themselves friendly to the Portugals, and helped them in their wars against Angola. The houses in Angola are made in fashion like a bee-hive. ”