(Last Updated on January 15, 2016 by Editor)
ZIMBABWE – Following reports that the family of former Unita rebel leader Jonas Savimbi are suing over his “outrageous” portrayal in a video game (see 12:18 post), we’ve taken a closer look at his role in Call of Duty: Black Ops II.
Savimbi features in a level of the game called “Pyrrhic victory”, where he leads Unita forces in a fictional battle against MPLA fighters in 1986.
In the game, Savimbi urges his men forward on the battlefield, shouting:
“Here they come. Here they come my brothers… Fight my brothers. Death to the MPLA!”
At the end of the level, Savimbi’s character can be heard laughing and boasting about how many MPLA fighters have been killed.
The game uses the real-life historical involvement of the CIA in Angola, who supported Savimbi’s rebels, as a premise for its own fictional universe.
Etienne Kowalski, a lawyer for the game’s publisher Activision Blizzard, said Savimbi is represented “for who he was… a character of Angolan history, a guerrilla chief who fought the MPLA”, AFP news agency reports.
Mr Kowalski said the video game shows Savimbi in a “rather favourable light” as a “good guy who comes to help the heroes”.