Jonas Malheiro Savimbi (Portuguese: [ˈʒɔnɐʃ ˈsavĩbi]; 3 August 1934 – 22 February 2002) was an Angolan revolutionary politician and rebel military leader who founded and led the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). UNITA waged a guerrilla war against Portuguese colonial rule from 1966 to 1974, then confronted the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) during the Angolan Civil War. Savimbi was killed in a clash with government troops in 2002.
Savimbi was born in Munhango, Bié Province, a small town on the Benguela Railway, and raised in Chilesso, in the same province. Savimbi's father, Lote, was a stationmaster on Angola's Benguela railway line and a preacher of the Protestant Igreja Evangélica Congregacional de Angola (Evangelical Congregational Church of Angola), founded and maintained by American missionaries. Both his parents were members of the Bieno group of the Ovimbundu, the people who later served as Savimbi's major political base.
In his early years, Savimbi was educated mainly in Protestant schools, but also attended Roman Catholic schools. At the age of 24 he received a scholarship to study in Portugal. There he finished his secondary studies, with the exception of the subject "political organization" that was compulsory during the regime established by António de Oliveira Salazar, so that he was unable to start studying medicine as originally intended.[citation needed]

Return to Jonas Malheiro Savimbi Autograph Profile