The current political regime in Angola is presidentialism, in which the President of the Republic is also head of state and government; it is advised by a Council of Ministers, which together with the President form the national executive power. Legislative power rests with the 220 parliamentarians elected to the National Assembly. The President of the Republic, together with the parliament, appoints the majority of the members of the two highest bodies of the judiciary, that is, the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court. The judiciary is still made up of the Court of Auditors and the Supreme Military Court.
Angola was first settled by San hunter-gatherer societies before the northern domains came under the rule of Bantu states such as Kongo and Ndongo. In the 15th century, Portuguese colonists began trading, and a settlement was established at Luanda during the 16th century. Portugal annexed territories in the region which were ruled as a colony from 1655, and Angola was incorporated as an overseas province of Portugal in 1951. After the Angolan War of Independence, which ended in 1974 with an army mutiny and leftist coup in Lisbon, Angola achieved independence in 1975 through the Alvor Agreement. After independence, Angola entered a long period of civil war that lasted until 2002.
The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola is the second-largest political party in Angola. Founded in 1966, UNITA fought alongside the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the Angolan War for Independence (1961–1975) and then against the MPLA in the ensuing civil war (1975–2002). The war was one of the most prominent Cold War proxy wars, with UNITA receiving military aid initially from the People's Republic of China from 1966 until October 1975 and later from the United States and apartheid South Africa while the MPLA received support from the Soviet Union and its allies, especially Cuba.
Jonas Malheiro Savimbi was an Angolan revolutionary, politician, and rebel military leader who founded and led the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). UNITA was one of several groups which waged a guerrilla war against Portuguese colonial rule from 1966 to 1974. Once independence was achieved, it then became an anti-communist group which confronted the ruling People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) during the Angolan Civil War. Savimbi had extensive contact with anti-communist activists in the United States, including Jack Abramoff and was one of the leading anti-communist voices in the world. Savimbi was killed in a clash with government troops in 2002.
José Eduardo dos Santos was the president of Angola from 1979 to 2017. As president, dos Santos was also the commander-in-chief of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) and president of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the party that has ruled Angola since it won independence in 1975. By the time he stepped down in 2017, he was the second-longest-serving president in Africa, surpassed only by Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea.
Bié is a province of Angola located on the Bié Plateau in central part of country. Its capital is Kuito, which was called Silva Porto until independence from Portugal in 1975. The province has an area of 70,314 square kilometres (27,148 sq mi) and a population of 1,455,255 in 2014. The current governor of Bié is José Amaro Tati.
Cuando Cubango is a province of Angola and it has an area of 199,049km2 and a population of 534,002 in 2014. Menongue is the capital of the province. The governor of the province is José Martins, who was appointed governor in November 2021.
Cunene is a province of Angola. It has an area of 87,342 km2 and a population of 990,087 in 2014.
Huambo, formerly Nova Lisboa, is the third-most populous city in Angola, after the capital city Luanda and Lubango, with a population of 595,304 in the city and a population of 713,134 in the municipality of Huambo. The city is the capital of the province of Huambo and is located about 220 km E from Benguela and 600 km SE from Luanda. Huambo is a main hub on the Caminho de Ferro de Benguela (CFB), which runs from the port of Lobito to the Democratic Republic of the Congo's southernmost province, Katanga. Huambo is served by the Albano Machado Airport.
Moxico or Moshiko is the largest province of Angola. It has an area of 223,023 square kilometres (86,110 sq mi), and covers 18% of the landmass of Angola. The province has a population of 758,568 and a population density of approximately 3.4 residents per km², making it one of the most sparsely populated areas of Angola. The population of the province is in flux; displaced residents have slowly returned to Moxico since the end of the Angolan Civil War in 2002. The war left Moxico as one of the most landmine-contaminated places in the world. The governor of the province is Gonçalves Manuel Muandumba.
Isaías Henrique Ngola Samakuva is an Angolan politician who was the President of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) from June 2003 to November 2019.
The Angolan Civil War was a civil war in Angola, beginning in 1975 and continuing, with interludes, until 2002. The war began immediately after Angola became independent from Portugal in November 1975. It was a power struggle between two former anti-colonial guerrilla movements, the communist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the anti-communist National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).
Léua is a city and municipality in Angola of the Moxico province. The municipal headquarters are 62 km east of the provincial capital, Luena. The municipality had a population of 32,457 in 2014.
Juventude Atlético do Moxico, simply known Juventude do Moxico, and formerly known as Inter do Moxico is a football (soccer) club from Luena, Moxico province, Angola. The club was relegated from the Angolan Premier Division, Girabola in the end of the 2007 championship.
Bailundo is a municipality, with a population of 294,494 (2014), and a town, with a population of 70,481 (2014), in the province of Huambo, Angola.
The 2000s in Angola saw the end of a 27-year-long civil war (1975–2002) and economic growth as foreign nations began to invest in Angola's untapped petroleum reserves. The government continues to resettle internally displaced persons as its economy recovers and expands.
In the 1980s in Angola, fighting spread outward from the southeast, where most of the fighting had taken place in the 1970s, as the African National Congress (ANC) and SWAPO increased their activity. The South African government responded by sending troops back into Angola, intervening in the war from 1981 to 1987, prompting the Soviet Union to deliver massive amounts of military aid from 1981 to 1986. The USSR gave the Angolan government over US$2 billion in aid in 1984. In 1981, newly elected United States President Ronald Reagan's U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Chester Crocker, developed a linkage policy, tying Namibian independence to Cuban withdrawal and peace in Angola.
Relations between Angola and South Africa in the post-apartheid era are quite strong as the ruling parties in both states, the African National Congress in South Africa and the MPLA in Angola, fought together during the Angolan Civil War and South African Border War. They fought against UNITA rebels, based in Angola, and the apartheid-era government in South Africa which supported them. Nelson Mandela mediated between the MPLA and UNITA during the final years of the Angolan Civil War. Although South Africa was preponderant in terms of relative capabilities during the late twentieth century, the recent growth of Angola has led to a more balanced relation.
In the 1990s in Angola, the last decade of the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002), the Angolan government transitioned from a nominally communist state to a nominally democratic one, a move made possible by political changes abroad and military victories at home. Namibia's declaration of independence, internationally recognized on April 1, eliminated the southwestern front of combat as South African forces withdrew to the east. The MPLA abolished the one-party system in June and rejected Marxist-Leninism at the MPLA's third Congress in December, formally changing the party's name from the MPLA-PT to the MPLA. The National Assembly passed law 12/91 in May 1991, coinciding with the withdrawal of the last Cuban troops, defining Angola as a "democratic state based on the rule of law" with a multi-party system.
Florbela Catarina "Bela" Malaquias is an Angolan journalist, lawyer and politician who is leader of the Humanist Party of Angola.
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