Unita supporters head home

Former Unita soldiers went to the camps in April

By Justin Pearce BBC, Cuando Cubango, south-eastern Angola

In Angola, Unita rebel fighters and their families have started going back to their home areas after living for six months in the reception centres where they were told to assemble following the peace accord signed in April.

On Thursday, this gigantic project started when the first group of 150 former Unita soldiers and their family members went home.

All of them were from the capital, Luanda, or from towns in the neighbouring province of Bengo, and had been living since the end of the war in so-called reception centres in Bengo province.

And they represent only a fraction of more than 300,000 ex-Unita men and their relatives who are still waiting for resettlement in camps around the country.

Plans delayed

Most of them are concentrated in remote areas far from their original homes and they have no means of making a living once they return.

The original plan was to close the reception centres this month; but it is now acknowledged that resettling so many people will take much longer than was anticipated.

Particularly in the remote east and south-east of the country, the reception centres include people from all over Angola, forcibly removed by Unita during successive waves of fighting.

The camps were set up under the peace accord

People have lost touch with their home areas; farmland and villages have long since been abandoned and a whole generation has grown up a long way away from the places which they still regard as their ancestral homes.

In south-eastern Cuando Cubango province this week, people told me that they wanted to go home, but were reluctant to move until they knew that they had the means to make a living in the places they were going to.

Humanitarian agencies, who have been bringing food to the camps, know that it will be impractical to keep delivering emergency supplies once people have dispersed across the country.

The national government has said that no one will be forced to move unless they can be guaranteed basic minimum living conditions in their home areas; but there is still fear that the provincial authorities may go ahead and move people before adequate preparations have been made.