The Cold War Guerrilla: Jonas Savimbi, the U.S. Media and the Angolan War

by Elaine Windrich

Overview

This is the first book on U.S. policy in Angola during the 1980s. Elaine Windrich shows how the Reagan administration and U.S. media inflated the importance of Jonas Savimbi and helped inflame the civil war in Angola. Pinpointing media strengths and weaknesses in shaping and in reporting on a major crisis in Africa, this ground-breaking work analyzes Savimbi as a cold war guerrilla, the role of different media segments in the dirty war in Angola, and the right-wing influence of the Reagan and Bush administrations into the 1990s. This moving and well-researched account, providing insights into how the U.S. media covers African and Third World issues, is a good text for foreign correspondents and for courses dealing with U.S. foreign policy, jourbanalism and communications, and with Africa.

The image of the Angolan rebel leader as a freedom fighter is shown to be a product largely of the U.S. media and the collaboration of right-wing lobby groups closely linked to the Reagan and Bush administrations. The resurrection of Savimbi, who represented a lost cause after his defeat in the Angolan civil war in 1976, but who was kept alive by South African support, was due to his adoption by the Reagan administration as an ally in the crusade against Third World governments supported by the Soviet Union. The study shows how the mainstream media tended to follow the administration's agenda and right-wing views in portraying Savimbi as an ally. Windrich also explains how the Bush administration and the media have continued to support Savimbi and his rebel movement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313279898
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/30/1992
Series:	Contributions to the Study of Mass Media and Communications , #31
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

ELAINE WINDRICH is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University. She is the author of The Mass Media and the Struggle for Zimbabwe (1981), Britain and the Politics of Rhodesian Independence (1978), and British Labour's Foreign Policy (Greenwood Press, 1971), and other works on Africa. She has served as an advisor to the Commonwealth Group of the Parliamentary Labour Party in Britain and a consultant on the media to the Mass Media Trust in Zimbabwe.

Table of Contents

Preface
"Meet Jonas Savimbi"
The Road to Jamba—and Washington
The Cult of the "Freedom Fighter"
The Savimbi Lobby
War Propaganda: Hot and Cold
"A Place for Savimbi"
Poison Gas Propaganda
Lobbying against Human Rights
Lobbying against Peace
"End of the Affair"?
Saving Savimbi
Peace through War
Winning the Peace
Bibliographical Essay
Index