Portuguese authorities arrested the king of Bailundo after an Ovimbundu celebration in which natives consumed Portuguese rum, allegedly without paying.
Paiva Couceiro arrived in the area of Teixeira da Silva around January 1890, with a contingent of 40 Mozambican soldiers, armed with Snider-Enfield breech-loading rifles, which worried the chief of Bié.
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Nevertheless, Paiva Couceiro remained in the area until April, at which the chief (encouraged by threats to the Portuguese by the English) decided to send an ultimatum to the Captain-major in Teixeira da Silva: Couceiro and his troops should leave Bié by the morning of the following day.
In the 1990s, Bailundo was the location of the headquarters of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi.
Bailundo |
As Huambo and other major towns in the Plateau were being shelled from Bailundo and other positions still in possession of UNITA, two C-130 Hercules aircraft chartered by the United Nations with 23 people on board were shot down over Vila Nova (Dec. 26, 1998 and Jan. 2, 1999), as they were trying to evacuate to Luanda the last remains of the UNAVEM III mission in Huambo.