Founding
Jonas Savimbi and Antonio da Costa Fernandes founded UNITA on March 13, 1966 in Muangai in Angola's Moxico province, in Portuguese Angola (during the Estado Novo regime). UNITA launched its first attack on Portuguese colonial authorities on December 25 that same year. 200 other delegates were present in the event.
Savimbi was originally affiliated with Holden Roberto's FNLA. UNITA later moved to Jamba in Angola's southeastern province of Cuando Cubango. UNITA's leadership was drawn heavily from Angola's majority Ovimbundu ethnic group and its policies were originally somewhat Maoist, perhaps influenced by Savimbi's early training in China. They aimed at rural rights and recognized ethnic divisions. In later years, however, UNITA would become more aligned with the United States espousing support for democracy and free market political and economic change in Angola.
Read more about this topic: UNITA
Famous quotes containing the word founding:
“... there is no way of measuring the damage to a society when a whole texture of humanity is kept from realizing its own power, when the woman architect who might have reinvented our cities sits barely literate in a semilegal sweatshop on the Texas- Mexican border, when women who should be founding colleges must work their entire lives as domestics ...”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The responsible business men of this country put their shoulders to the wheel. It is in response to this universal demand that we are founding today, All-American Airways.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)