Military

DATE=10/27/00

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE=ANGOLA YOUTH

NUMBER=5-47261

BYLINE=CHALLISS McDONOUGH

DATELINE=LUANDA

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Next month, Angola celebrates the 25th anniversary of its independence. It has spent almost all of that time engulfed by war - an entire generation has grown up knowing almost nothing else. As V-O-A Southern Africa Correspondent Challiss McDonough reports, some young people in Angola's capital, Luanda, are pessimistic about their country's future - and their own.

TEXT: Like many young people in Luanda, 20-year-old Rosa likes to spend the weekends dancing at one of the city's many nightclubs.

/// ROSA ACT 1 - IN PORTUGUESE - FADE UNDER ///

She says it gives her a chance to relax, meet some friends and enjoy the music.

/// MUSIC ACT - FADE UNDER ///

The thriving nightlife in Luanda comes as a surprise to many outsiders, who may expect to find a capital city depressed by years of war. But life must go on, and in Luanda, it does. The discos are jammed on weekends, and if you don't feel like dancing, there are plenty of all-night parties to go to - often carrying on until six or seven the next morning.

/// MUSIC ACT - FADE UP AND OUT ///

But during the week, Rosa's life is a lot more sedate. She works until six or seven each evening in a cafe in downtown Luanda, a job she says she likes because it provides her with two good meals a day. Then she goes home and maybe watches a little television - if the electricity is on - before she goes to bed.

A typical middle-class apartment in Luanda might have a stereo and a television, maybe even a satellite dish. But on a typical evening, there is no electricity to run them, and a typical Angolan cannot afford a generator.

/// ROSA ACT 2 - IN PORTUGUESE - FADE UNDER ///

Rosa says the power cuts are a big problem, but besides that there other problems here as well. She says there are a lot of bandits and armed robbers. And also, she says, there is never any water.

/// NAT SOUND - WATER POURING ///

Take a walk through the streets of downtown Luanda, and you see what she means. Early in the mornings, people begin scooping water from gutters or holes in the sidewalk, where another water main has broken. This is how many people get water to wash with, or even to drink. I actually saw one man taking a bath in a storm drain by the side of the road.

Almost nothing in Luanda works. The city's infrastructure is suffering, not so much from the effects of war, but from 25 years of neglect. Most Angolans cannot remember a time when it was any better.

This is a young country. Angola has roughly 12-million people, more than half of them under the age of 18.

In many ways, Rosa is typical of Angola's younger generation. She was born five years after Angola won its independence from Portugal in 1975. By then, the country was engulfed in the civil war that still continues today. Rosa has never really known peace.

/// ROSA ACT 3 - FADE UNDER ///

She says she has lived all her life with that war going on, seeing those images on television and hearing about it on the radio. She says a lot of her relatives have died in this war.

Rosa's family came to Luanda when she was five, to escape the fighting in her hometown, Malanje. She does not believe the war will end anytime soon.

/// ROSA ACT 4 - FADE UNDER ///

She says every year they say the same thing, that the war is almost over. But it goes on and on. And our brothers and sisters are being killed every day.

The average life expectancy here is only 47 years, one of the lowest in the world. Partly, it is because of war. Partly, it is because of poor health care, poor nutrition, and sheer poverty.

More than one-quarter of all children born in Angola never see their fifth birthdays. At the age of 20, Rosa has already had three children. Only one of them, a four-year-old, is still alive.

/// ROSA ACT 5 - FADE UNDER ///

Rosa says life in Angola is not so bad for businessmen and rich people. But she says, for the rest of us, life is very hard, very hard indeed.

And Rosa holds little hope that the future will be any better. When asked what she thinks her life will be like in five years, she says it will probably be even worse than it is now. (Signed)

NEB/CEM/KL/JWH