Between 1985 and 1993, when I was based in Lisbon as a foreign correspondent I travelled regularly to cover events in Portugal’s former colony of Angola. People who knew Angola at that time found it to be one of the most desperate places on earth, a country rich in diamonds and oil, but wracked by violence after its 1975 independence from Portugal. The common Angolan people  were desperately poor and in fear of those who governed them. Under the Movimento Popúlar de Libertação de Angola (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola/MPLA) led by José Eduardo dos Santos, Angolan citizens were subject to arbitrary imprisonment, torture and execution. Principal opposition came from the equally ruthless South African-backed UNITA movement. I found the kindness of ordinary people to be in inverse proportion to the cruelty of the leaders on both sides.

At the time, Angola was so militarised it was hard to see how there could be a way back. Everybody had guns, which were used not only by UNITA and fAPLA to kill each other in ordinary military conflicts,1 but also by individuals and gangs in the city and the countryside to carry out robberies and to settle personal feuds. Violence was the normal way to solve disputes, and nobody noticed any more because the fighting hadn’t stopped since 1961. Residents of Luanda lived in fear of the gangs armed with Kalashnikovs that roamed the suburbs robbing and killing. They had names such as ‘The Empty Coffin’, ‘Lampião’, ‘Zé António’s Boys’ and many of them were deserters from FAPLA. It was impossible to tell the difference between FAPLA and the gangs, or between them and the security police. They could have even been UNITA. Nobody knew who was who.