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Angola STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY
The most pervasive influences on the structure of
Angolan
society in the late 1980s were the Marxist-Leninist
policies of the
government and increased militarization to counter the
UNITA
insurgency. Based on the principle that the party, the
working
class, and the worker-peasant alliance played a leading
role in
society, Marxist-Leninist policies were applied in the
late 1970s
to every sector of society and the economy, affecting the
lives of
urban and rural inhabitants alike. Direct military actions
had the
greatest effect on those living in the central and
southern
provinces, causing large displacements of whole groups of
people
and the creation of a substantial refugee population in
Zambia and
Zaire. Moreover, thousands of young men and women were
conscripted
into the Angolan armed forces, while many thousands of
older
citizens served in militias and civil defense units
(see War and the Role of the Armed Forces in Society
, ch. 5). In regard
to the
direct effects of war, press reports in 1988 estimated
that since
1975 the insurgency had claimed from 60,000 to 90,000
lives and had
orphaned an estimated 10,000 children. The U.S. Committee
for
Refugees reported that by 1988 about 20,000 Angolans,
mostly women
and children, had been crippled by mines buried in rural
fields and
roads.
Data as of February 1989
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