HuÃla Province
Huíla is a province of the African nation of Angola. It lies in the southwest of the country on the Huíla plateau, comprises 75,002 km ² and has about one million inhabitants.
The provincial capital is Lubango, more cities are Caluquembe and Caconda. Better known communities ( município ) are Chipindo, Humpata and Quilengues.
The original inhabitants of the area were Khoisan, of which only a few exist residual groups. Displaces they were shepherds and herdsmen peasant peoples that exist today in the form of various ethnicities. Most pastoral farmers in the province represented that run under the collective name Nyaneka - Khumbi, but according to their self-understanding, language, etc. are distinguished and do not form a whole. The most numerous among these ethnic groups are the Mwila, of whose names are the names of the highlands and the province derived. The pure pastoralists fall demographically less important; the most important of them are the Herero associated Kuval. Favored by the relatively mild climate, there was a relatively strong colonization by Portuguese immigrants who partially work mixed with the native population. This led to expansion and diversification of agriculture, at the same time but also to a growth of cities and towns ..
From a political and military struggle for the independence of Angola and the civil war in Angola Huíla was directly affected only during relatively short periods of time. These shocks brought it but with that a considerable number of Ovimbundu settled on the run from the war events in the central highlands in the province of Huíla, particularly in the city of Lubango. There is now also a ( much smaller ) contingent of the Bakongo who had been " assimilated " in Congo - Kinshasa and scattered upon their return to Angola over the country.
The post-colonial development in Angola is reflected in the province of Huíla various kinds of low. On the one hand, these experienced a growth that on indicators such as the construction of two universities in Lubango, the State Universidade Mandume (named after a leader of the Ovambo people in the struggle against the occupation by the Portuguese ) and a campus of the Universidade Privada de Angola) and the slow emergence of a Lodge - tourism, where there is also white entrepreneurs from Namibia to participate. On the other hand, it comes in some areas for land theft on a grand scale ( including the appropriation of scarce water resources ) in favor of high military and political leaders of the regime and ( generally unsuccessful ) which now finds resistance tests of the affected population the protection of the Catholic Church.
Bibliography
Carlos Estermann, The Ethnography of Southwest Angola, 3 vols, Gibson & Africana Publishing, New York & London, 1976
Bengo | Benguela | Bié | Cabinda | Cuando Cubango | Cuanza Norte | Cuanza Sul | Cunene | Huambo | Huíla | Luanda | Lunda Norte | Lunda Sul | Malanje | Moxico | Namibe | Uige | Zaire