When is Peace Day?
Peace Day is a national holiday in Angola on April 4th each year.
Día da Paz, the Day of Peace and Reconciliation commemorates the end of the Angolan Civil War on this day in 2002.
History of Peace Day
Independence from Portugal came to Angola in 1975. Two guerrilla groups had been instrumental in the armed struggle against the Portuguese colonisation - the communist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Almost immediately after independence, a power struggle between the two groups led to the Angolan Civil War. The MPLA seized power in the capital Luanda.
With only a few interludes in the fighting, the war was to last 27 years. The conflict is estimated to have cost the lives of more than 500,000 civilians with over a million being displaced and the damage to the country's infrastructure suppressing economic growth for decades.
The war was seen as a proxy conflict for the Cold War, with MPLA being supported by the Soviet Union, with UNITA siding with the USA. Though while the thawing of the Cold War in the early 1990s saw MPLA reject some of its Communist ideology, the war was to continue for another decade.
In February 2002, government troops killed the leader of UNITA, Jonas Savimbi. This prompted the government to stop its military operations. This brought the combatants to the negotiating table.
The war finally came to an end with the signing of a peace agreement between the armed forces of Angola and the armed faction of the UNITA party on April 4th 2002.
