The Angolan Civil War is a very strange period of history for me. By all logic it doesn’t make sense that there are not only two large, powerful communist parties but that they were fighting each other - with one even being backed by the West of all people. I’ve heard the division was caused primarily by an ethnic dispute with the two parties representing two different ethnicities.
Is this accurate or was there more to it than that? I’d appreciate any insight anyone has - or at least resources if available - in order to better understand why this war happened.
Lack of political theory and class consciousness are why the 2 sides were fighting.
The leader of UNITA was not a communist he was a political opportunist who used Marxist rhetoric. (There is a reason China cut off funding and supplies once the liberation war ended and the civil war started.) Savimbi was more than happy to be sponsored by the usa to have a civil war instead of working with the MPLA because he was not interested in setting up a socialist state, he was interested in personal power. His followers were focused on ethnic divisions rather than on class divisions. (this was likely widespread on both sides as the literacy rates were abysmal.)
Honestly I think the outcomes of the Angolan anti-colonialist revolution were a big part of the formation of China’s non-interference policy. If the anti-imperialist struggle hadn’t been flooded with money and weapons by USSR and China the struggle for freedom may have been more difficult but it would have possibly made time for the formation of an ideologically sound vanguard party of the working classes which would have avoided the bloodshed during the civil war and the Neo-colonialst recapture.