Angola - From Out of the Pit

“I have a Kimbundu name. Manzumba. It means power – spiritual power.” José Manzumba da Silva goes by Zecão.

“My name comes from my grandfather. He was a soba, a traditional leader. If we had lived in a normal situation and my commune in Malanje Province was still intact, I could go back to my birthplace, present my name and probably become a soba. But everything has changed because of the war…”

“I’m Angolan. That’s what I tell them.”

Zecão’s life certainly did. At age 17, he was recruited into the military, which became his life for the next 12 years. His hands - strong, curved and with some scars - indicate that much lies behind his calm but intense expression.

“I was a commando – trained to intercept and destroy. I directed troops. I also fought, killed and saw people being killed.” Zecão speaks about it without apparent emotion. The silence that follows is full.

“Of course, it affected me.”

“We were prepared to fight – the revolution for independence against Portugal obliged us to do so… We believed in what we were fighting for, though in hindsight I can say that we didn’t understand it very well. We were manipulated – that is the only right word – manipulated to kill. I didn’t have the opportunity to reflect or consider the other side. For me there was only one side to be on, and I was on it.”

In 1992, Zecão was sent to Uíge Province with the Angolan Armed Forces. “We were caught by UNITA… We were taken deep into the bush, tied up and thrown in jail. UNITA’s jails are called copos, or cups. They are deep pits in the ground, so deep that you can’t climb out. You do everything down there – eat, sleep, urinate, everything. When you are in the pit, you feel very alone.”

Zecão spent nearly two years in the copo. He was poorly fed, beaten and his bones were broken on several occasions. Two of the men from his team were eventually killed. Survival could well have been a matter of chance, though Zecão did his best to turn it into a strategy.

“I couldn’t afford to get depressed or let anger and fear get to me. I had nothing left but my wit and a degree of hope. My only chance was to connect with the guys who were above ground – even the ones who beat me and killed my friends.” Listening to his captors prompted questions which developed into conversations. “I heard them discuss why they were fighting. Much of what they said made sense. They had their own logic and I began to understand it… If I had not been in the pit, I probably never would have known who and what UNITA is. And, in the end, I guess I never would have known what the war was all about, what I was really fighting against.”

On 16 November 1994, Uíge fell back under government control. Zecão managed to escape from the captivity of his enemy-friends the same day. After this ordeal, Zecão was released from military service and spent several months in hospital in Luanda.

“I had to start everything all over, to reorient myself and my life. A lot of guys go crazy at this point… But I was fortunate. I went to university and studied psychology. One thing led to another and I got a job with the Christian Children’s Fund (CCF). They sent me through extensive training on trauma healing. It was as if the program was designed just for me - it was exactly what I needed. It cured me.”

Looking back, “my time in the pit was both a curse and a blessing. The curse was the pain and the miserable two years in the pit. The blessing - well, I was able to understand. I am no longer on one side or the other. I am somewhere in between. As a man, I had to find the middle ground to survive. As Angolans we have to do the same.”

Moved by this conviction, Zecão joined the Centre for Common Ground in Angola. As the Program Coordinator for Peace and Security, Zecão works with police officers, local authorities and military personnel on conflict resolution issues. The most challenging – and rewarding – part of his job is spending time with other commandos as they try to reorient their lives after the war and focus on non-violent solutions to conflict.

“Traditionally, we have cultural ways of promoting peace and reintegrating people with traumatic experiences back into community life. Maybe what I do now is a modern form of traditional healing. I suppose I wasn’t named Manzumba for nothing…”

by Gillian Huebner