'Daniel Chipenda' (died on
February 28, 1996) fought in the
Angolan War of Independence, serving as the
Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola's (MPLA) field commander in the Eastern Front before founding and leading the
Eastern Revolt. He later joined the
National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA),
[1] but left, rejoined the MPLA, and left again in July 1992.
[2] He is an
Ovimbundu.
[3]
Chipenda, then a member of the MPLA, established the Eastern Front, significantly expanding the MPLA's reach, in May 1966. When the EF collapsed, Chipenda and MPLA leader
Agostinho Neto each blamed the other's factions. In 1972 the
Soviet Union allied with Chipenda's faction, giving him aid. Following the
Carnation Revolution in
Portugal in 1974,
Joachim Pinto de Andrade, the President of the MPLA, organized an MPLA congress in
Lusaka. Neto and Chipenda attended with 165 delegates respectively and
Mário Andrade's
Active Revolt faction had 70 delegates present. After several days of negotiations Neto's faction quit the congress, splitting the MPLA into three separate organizations.
[4] Chipenda left the MPLA, although he arguably left it before the coup in Portugal,
[5] founding the Eastern Revolt with 1,500 former MPLA followers.
[6] He opposed the MPLA's
mestizo-leadership and was wary of the Soviet Union, despite its support.
In 1973 the government of the Soviet Union invited Neto to
Moscow and told him Chipenda planned to assassinate him.
The USSR resumed aid to the MPLA, Neto again firmly in control, in 1974. In September Chipenda joined the FNLA.
References
1. Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola-Workers' Party Country-data
2. Kalley, Jacqueline Audrey. ''Southern African Political History: A Chronology of Key Political Events from Independence to Mid-1997'', 1999. Page 59.
3. Bennett, Andrew. ''Condemned to Repetition?: The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism'', 1999. Page 152.
4. Stewart Lloyd-Jones and António Costa Pinto. ''The Last Empire: Thirty Years of Portuguese Decolonisation'', 2003. Page 27.
5. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja and Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein. ''The Crisis in Zaire'', 1986. Page 193.
6. George, Edward. ''The Cuban Intervention In Angola, 1965-1991: from Che Guevara to Cuito Cuanavale'', 2005. Page 46.