Holden Roberto

Holden Álvaro Roberto (born 12 January 1923 in São Salvador do Congo, past and present M'banza Congo, Angola, † August 2, 2007 in Luanda ) was an Angolan politician and guerrilla leader. He founded in 1962 the Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola ( FNLA ) and led it until 1999.

Family and Youth

As the son of García Diasiwa Roberto and his wife Joana Lala Nekaka he moved with his family in 1925, according to Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo ( now the Democratic Republic of Congo). In 1940, he obtained a degree at a mission school of the Baptists. He then worked for eight years for the Belgian Ministry of Finance in Leopoldville, Bukavu and Stanleyville. In 1951 he traveled to Angola, where he witnessed as Portuguese officials an old man abused. This event meant that he wanted to become a politician.

Career as a politician

With Barros Necaca he founded on July 14, 1956, the União do Norte de Angola, the Populações, later renamed the União Populações de Angola ( UPA). As president of the UPNA he represented Angola at the All - African Peoples Congress of Ghana in December 1958 in Accra, Ghana, where he took part in secret.

There he met Patrice Lumumba, who later became Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenneth Kaunda, who later became President of Zambia, and the nationalist Tom Mboya from Kenya. He holds a passport of Guinea and visited the United Nations.

Jonas Savimbi, who later became leader of UNITA, the UPA joined in February 1961 because he was urged by Mboya and the Prime Minister of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, do so. In the second half of 1961, Roberto was the Secretary General of the UPA at Jonas Savimbi.

The National Security Council (NSC ) of the U.S. government supported Roberto in the fifties, where he received $ 6,000 annually until 1962. When he provided information for the U.S. Secret Service, the annual payment was increased from NSC to $ 10,000.

Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola ( FNLA )

After the visit of the UN, he returned to Kinshasa and Bas -Congo built in a militia. From there, it triggers on March 15, 1961 a rebellion in the north- west Angola, which was worn by the local Bakongo. This raided operated by White coffee plantations, the government outpost and trading centers, killing everyone they encountered. At least 1000 whites and a much larger number of Ovimbundu contract laborers were killed.

With the U.S. President John F. Kennedy Roberto met on 25 April 1961. When he tried to help in the same year by the government of Ghana, President Kwame Nkrumah refused on the grounds that he would yet been paid by the U.S. government.

Roberto graduated in March 1962, the UPA with the Partido Democrático de Angola together to form the FNLA. Shortly thereafter, he built on 27 March, the " Angolan revolutionary government in exile " ( Governo Revolucionario Angolano no Exilio, GRAE ) and Savimbi appointed as Foreign Minister. Roberto joined with the President of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, a political alliance, in connection with which he divorced and married Mobutu's sister in law.

The Prime Minister of China, Zhou Enlai, invited in 1964 Roberto on a visit to the People's Republic. As Moise Tshombe, President of Katanga, announced to him that he could not re-enter into the Congo after his visit to China, he said the visit. Jonas Savimbi, the Ovimbundu associated member of the leadership group of the FNLA, joined in 1964 from from this movement and founded in 1966, UNITA, as Roberto refused to lead the Angolan independence struggle outside the settlement area of the Bakongo.

In the sixties, Roberto visited Israel and received in the years 1963-1969 support by the Israeli government. Doubts as to whether its revolutionary orientation eluded the " Liberation Committee " of the Organization of African Unity (OAU ) in July 1968 Holden exile government 's trust and support.

Roberto and Agostinho Neto pursued for an independent Angola a similar policy, but both received from various international support page. Neto, who joined his nationalist course with left rhetoric, could be expected to give some guidance on the part of the Soviet Union, Sweden and various African countries. Roberto, however, received the support of the U.S. and other countries. Roberto turned strongly against the plan Netos to unite the Angolan resistance groups against Portugal because he feared the takeover of the FNLA by the MPLA. The FNLA disabled the MPLA, wherever you this was possible; so she took on several members of the MPLA captured and deported them to Kinshasa, where they were killed.

Under pressure from the OAU in 1972, the FNLA, MPLA and UNITA allied to a united front, but on reaching the independence of Angola in 1975, this alliance broke apart again. Together FNLA and UNITA tried to oust the MPLA from the transitional government. While the MPLA in Luanda reigned, FNLA and UNITA in Huambo formed a rival government and began an offensive against the capital. In 1976, the MPLA defeated the FNLA before Luanda, so that the FNLA retreated to Zaire and (unlike the UNITA) sank into insignificance.

In 1991, the FNLA and the MPLA agreed the Agreement Bicesse, which among other things Roberto 's return to Angola enabled. When he ran for the presidency, he received only 2.1 percent of the vote. The FNLA won five seats in parliament, but refused to join the government.

Roberto died on 2 August 2007 at the age of 84 after a heart attack at his residence in Luanda.

Roberto was a descendant of the monarchs of the Kingdom of Kongo.