COLUMN ONE : Ruins of War, Taste of Peace : Savaged by 30 years of back-to-back wars, Angola is emerging with hope. A nation littered with land mines prepares for its first free and democratic elections next year.

Sixteen years of civil war, central planning, corruption and salt air have turned this seaside capital of 2.5 million into Africa’s most awesome ruins.

Water taps often run dry. Sewage overflows into street gutters. Power outages are endemic. And tens of thousands of the destitute and hopeless camp in crumbling, abandoned buildings and beg for food.

But a new spirit is beginning to emerge in this scarred city, in the bombed-out towns of the provinces and on the verdant fields still planted with land mines. For the first time since the Portuguese colonizers left in 1975, Angola’s warring citizens have reason to hope that the future will be better than the past.

Cuban and South African troops have departed, the U.S.-backed rebels have opened an office in the capital, the once-Marxist president has come hat in hand to talk to President Bush and a fragile peace has finally taken hold in one of Africa’s richest but most destitute countries.

“We have to forget the past and begin to think of a new country,” Joaqim Frederico, a 26-year-old teacher in Luanda, said recently, reflecting the feelings of growing numbers of his compatriots.

Frederico spent four years in the government army of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), fighting the rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).

But a T-shirt that Frederico was wearing the other day showed just how much has changed in the four months since the MPLA’s Jose Eduardo dos Santos and UNITA’s Jonas Savimbi agreed to peace and free elections. On the T-shirt was the image of Savimbi, Frederico’s former enemy, and the slogan “UNITA Paz. “ UNITA Peace.

“You can’t go around saying, ‘You killed my brother,’ ” Frederico said. “If we don’t forgive, we’ll have another war.”

The pluralist tide that washed through the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has begun to flood much of Africa. Ethiopia’s civil war ended in May when Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Marxist regime was toppled. A Marxist government in war-torn Mozambique has opened talks with right-wing rebels and promised to end one-party politics.

Impoverished Zambia is preparing for its first-ever multi-party elections on Oct. 31. A mutiny by soldiers last month has forced Zaire’s dictator to decide between compromise or an unceremonious ouster. And even South Africa appears on the verge of talks that could usher in its first truly democratic government.

Angola, a mineral-rich land three times the size of California on the Atlantic Coast of Africa, has been savaged by back-to-back wars--a 14-year war for independence followed by a 16-year civil war.

The civil war, which began within weeks of independence, pitted UNITA rebels backed by the United States and South Africa against a government backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba. Most experts estimate the toll at 320,000 killed, 80,000 maimed, tens of thousands orphaned and 1 million of Angola’s 9 million people forced from their homes.

But now Angola appears to have turned its back completely on its bloody past. And Angolans are preparing for the country’s first free and democratic elections, to be held between September and November, 1992.

“The cease-fire has now established itself,” said Neil van Heerden, South Africa’s director general of foreign affairs and a key figure in the Angolan peace process. “I’m just hopeful that they will get to elections in a manner that will not burn the house down.”

To nearly everyone’s surprise, the emotional scars of the bitter war already have begun to heal. Relief workers and Western diplomats have been amazed to see former enemy soldiers embracing and even inviting each other to parties.

“The Angolans’ capacity to reconcile is amazing,” said Ibrahima D. Fall, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative in Luanda. “This is a family that was torn apart, and now it is together again.”

Tome Pedro Kizomba, a 30-year-old former government soldier, typifies the new thinking. He lost his leg in 1985 when he stepped on a UNITA land mine, becoming one of 45,000 Angolans to lose an arm or leg in the civil war.

Kizomba still thinks of UNITA as the enemy. But “we are all Angolans and we must forget the war,” he said in Luanda recently. “I’m glad Savimbi is talking to Dos Santos. It is the only way to resolve the country’s problems.”

Adolfo Avelino Spalanga, a UNITA supporter, also lost a leg to a land mine--one planted by the MPLA’s army.

“I’m very, very happy this war is over,” said Spalanga, a 36-year-old father of four in Luanda. And he is looking forward to a peaceful future for his children.

“My wish for them is that they will have enough food, that they can get an education and that they will have no enemies,” Spalanga said.

The most immediate threat to Angola’s budding peace is the mass of idled soldiers from both sides. Under their agreement, the MPLA and UNITA will each contribute 20,000 soldiers to a new national military force. But that leaves about 200,000 soldiers who must be disarmed and returned to society.

Soldiers from both sides now are reporting to 50 assembly points, where they are registered by joint MPLA-UNITA teams. And relief agencies, mindful of recent army mutinies in Zaire and Togo, are urgently soliciting $30 million to feed the soldiers and their families for the next six months.

“Those soldiers are the first potential threat to the peace process,” said Fall, the UNICEF representative. “You can’t imagine what people will do without food.”

But the soldiers are only one of the pressing problems facing Angola. U.N. agencies say that nearly one in three Angolans needs some form of aid, and many living in rural areas have gone years without access to relief workers.

“We’re just discovering places that are horrible, much worse than we had been told,” Fall said. “In those areas, UNITA didn’t have the resources to do more than wage war.”

Another long-term threat in the countryside is the tens of thousands of land mines that remain planted in the fields. Although MPLA-UNITA teams are working with maps to dig up the mines, large tracts of Angola are the most heavily mined of any land in the world. And the mines will pose a threat to Angolans for decades.

But, with the fighting over, the country has become preoccupied with the coming elections. Political banners have appeared in most of the major cities, and two dozen new parties have surfaced in recent months.

No one knows for sure who will win, but UNITA and the MPLA remain the top contenders. At the moment, both sides seem to be on the same side of the ideological fence, supporting multi-party democracy and free-market solutions to the country’s economic ills.

But both parties suffer from their links to the past--the MPLA for a governmental system that has impoverished most of the country and UNITA for the guerrilla war that cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Dissatisfaction with the two main players is evident in Luanda, where a message scrawled on a wall reads: “MPLA Gatunos, UNITA Assassinos.” MPLA are thieves, UNITA assassins.

Political analysts say the election may come down to the sharply different personalities of Savimbi and Dos Santos.

Savimbi is a charismatic guerrilla leader with a flair for the dramatic. When he returned to Luanda to launch his political campaign last month, he stepped off the plane in full military uniform with a pearl-handled walking stick in his hand and a large revolver in his belt.

At the same time, the 57-year-old Savimbi is something of an enigma. He studied medicine and law in Switzerland and learned guerrilla warfare in China. But he has publicly rejected Communist economic policies and earned the strong support of American conservatives.

Savimbi is said to be a proud Africanist and an opponent of South Africa’s apartheid, yet he confounded some supporters by accepting substantial military assistance from Pretoria’s white rulers, who shared his desire to rid southern Africa of Cuban and Soviet troops.

Dos Santos, the 49-year-old Angolan president, has none of Savimbi’s mass appeal. He is a quiet, introspective man a Western diplomat describes as “sincere, hard-working, dedicated, but somewhat dour.”

A Soviet-trained petroleum engineer, Dos Santos accepted Cuban and Soviet support during the war and created a strong, centrally controlled Marxist economy that has brought untold hardship to his country.

But two years ago, Dos Santos began a program to liberalize his country’s economy, and his agreement to turn the country over to a democratically elected government has won him praise from many Angolans.

When he returned to Luanda after signing the peace accord, more than 100,000 Angolans turned out to welcome him home. UNITA has accepted him as the country’s interim president, but being the incumbent may make it difficult to win an election. And if Dos Santos follows through on his promise to restructure the economy, the resulting short-term hardships may cost him much of his popularity.

When Savimbi returned to Luanda, about 30,000 people showed up to hear him address a rally. Although UNITA was disappointed in the turnout, it was still a remarkable showing from a city filled with victims of UNITA attacks.

“We have heard the name of Mr. Savimbi,” said Luis Cambalanga, 30, who brought his son to the rally. “And this little guy wanted to see him.”

No matter who wins Angola’s election, the country’s climb up from economic disaster probably will be difficult.

Angola’s best hope for recovery is its mineral wealth, which analysts say could attract substantial foreign investment. The country already earns about $2 billion a year from oil exports, mostly to the United States. It also has large diamond reserves.

But the economy remains heavily state-controlled, the civil service is bloated and corrupt, and the country has yet to make up for the mass exodus of trained Portuguese managers who left at independence.

While many analysts welcome Dos Santos’ reform efforts, they worry that his government lacks the will to take the unpopular steps necessary to fix the economy--especially if it hopes to win next year’s election.

Attempts to liberalize Marxist economies elsewhere in Africa have generally improved conditions for farmers but caused misery for city dwellers. Goods have suddenly appeared on store shelves, but at prices that are out of reach of all but the wealthiest people.

“There’s a will on the part of the people here to change, but they don’t realize the sacrifices,” Fawundu said. “They have a naive belief that it is easy to return to the way it was in 1975, when everything worked.”

Special correspondent Vicki Finkel contributed to this article.