Every Friday afternoon, hundreds of Angolans gather near this city’s Independence Circle to participate in a hugely popular reality TV show that was launched two months ago. But this is no Survivor or Temptation Island. It is a mournful gathering of families who arrive clutching faded black-and-white snapshots, ID cards or careworn letters to make televised appeals about the whereabouts of their loved ones, many of them missing for a quarter of a century during this country’s civil war.Armando Quicassa, 60, came here on Friday with only the memory of his daughter Esperaca, who was abducted by rebel soldiers 17 years ago in Malange Province. ‘‘I am an old man now, but I cannot forget my daughter,’’ he said, his eyes moistening in despair. Titled Nacao Coragem — Courageous Nation in Portuguese, the language of Angola’s colonial ruler — the TV show was launched soon after a peace agreement was signed between the Angolan government and the rebels following the February 22 death of guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi.Until the early 1990s, Angola was one of the largest battlegrounds between the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Angolan government’s scorched-earth military policy of removing the population from contested areas, in addition to the rebels’ brutality against civilians, has left thousands dead and four million Angolans refugees in their own country.Nacao Coragem has produced 50 reunions so far, but that doesn’t deter the people who turn up every week hoping for a miracle. ‘‘I am tired of seeing my parents cry,’’ said Antonio Andre Jose, 35, whose brother, Simon, disappeared 14 years ago.The show’s heart-rending moments of reunion broadcast on TV have riveted the nation. Some mothers reunited with their children faint.The TV program has turned reporter Luiz Domingos into one of the country’s most recognizable faces. His most dramatic reunion — carried on three weekly episodes — covered the story of Gilberto ‘‘Paizinho’’ Alves, a street urchin who was born in the provincial city of Huambo.The boy was sent to Luanda by his family during intense fighting that emptied Huambo of half its 700,000 residents. Returned to Huambo by the TV crew after he showed up at Independence Circle and told them his story, Paizinho was recognized immediately by neighbours and told that both his mother and father had died in the fighting. The eight-year-old found his grandmother, but she said she was too poor to take care of him. (LATWP)
