ABSTRACT
However, what potential exists for a more powerful and less encumbered Angola to play a constructive role in the region? This is a matter open to considerable debate. Much hinges on the assessment of how well the MPLA3 has
dealt with past constraints.4 Today, the MPLA is rarely lauded for its early Front Line support for independence movements in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia; its unlikely triumph over apartheid forces and covert American interventionism; its dogged determination to bring the war to an end; or sweeping changes to the constitution and progressive legal reforms5 in the early 1990s (SIDA, 1992). Rather, the MPLA is more often equated with corruption, neglect and threat. Reports of human rights abuses are all too common, particularly the curtailing of civil and political rights in Luanda not to mention the unruly and parasitic behavior of the ForQas Armadas de Angola (FAA)6 in the countryside.7
