Daniel Chipenda

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Daniel Chipenda (died on February 28, 1996) fought in the Angolan War of Independence, serving as the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola's (MPLA) field commander in the Eastern Front before founding and leading the Eastern Revolt. He later joined the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA),[1] but left, rejoined the MPLA, and left again in July 1992.[2] He is an Ovimbundu.[3]

Chipenda, then a member of the MPLA, established the Eastern Front, significantly expanding the MPLA's reach, in May 1966. When the EF collapsed, Chipenda and MPLA leader Agostinho Neto each blamed the other's factions. In 1972 the Soviet Union allied with Chipenda's faction, giving him aid. Following the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974, Joaquim Pinto de Andrade, the President of the MPLA, organized an MPLA congress in Lusaka. Neto and Chipenda attended with 165 delegates respectively and Mário Pinto de Andrade's Active Revolt faction had 70 delegates present. After several days of negotiations Neto's faction quit the congress, splitting the MPLA into three separate organizations.[4] Chipenda left the MPLA, although he arguably left it before the coup in Portugal,[5] founding the Eastern Revolt with 1,500 former MPLA followers.[4] He opposed the MPLA's mestizo-leadership and was wary of the Soviet Union, despite its support.[1]

In 1973 the government of the Soviet Union invited Neto to Moscow and told him Chipenda planned to assassinate him.[4] The USSR resumed aid to the MPLA, Neto again firmly in control, in 1974. In September Chipenda joined the FNLA.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola-Workers' Party Country-data
  2. ^ Kalley, Jacqueline Audrey. Southern African Political History: A Chronology of Key Political Events from Independence to Mid-1997, 1999. Page 59.
  3. ^ a b Bennett, Andrew. Condemned to Repetition?: The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1999. Page 152.
  4. ^ a b c Stewart Lloyd-Jones and António Costa Pinto. The Last Empire: Thirty Years of Portuguese Decolonisation, 2003. Page 27.
  5. ^ Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja and Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein. The Crisis in Zaire, 1986. Page 193.