The city of Cuíto is built in the historical heart of the
Ovimbundu kingdom. The ruler of the
Ovimbundu was named Viye and he married a Songo woman named Cahanda. Together they built the city and later the Portuguese would name the
Bié Province after the ruler. The
Ovimbundu were known for selling captives from neighbouring tribes to the European slave traders which made the area an ideal location for the slave business and brought colonists to the area. The Portuguese "founded" the city in 1750. They later called it Silva Porto after
António da Silva Porto who built his home
embala Belmonte in the area. The pleasant climate in the
Bié Province was attractive to Portuguese settlers and many made their home in Silva Porto in the early 1900s when the
Benguela Railway connected the city to the coast. Cuíto had a long history of violence starting with the
African slave trade and tribal warfare. Later in the 1960s the Portuguese used the town of Silva Porto as a training centre for training black
Portuguese Army soldiers to send to Northern
Portuguese Angola in order to fight the nationalist
guerrillas, during the
Portuguese Colonial War. After independence from Portugal in 1975, Cuíto saw its worst times on 6 January 1993 when
UNITA, during the
Angolan Civil War, laid siege of the city for over 9 months and over 30,000 people were killed, both from war effects and starvation. Nobody was permitted to enter or leave the city for 9 months and the city suffered heavy damage.
UNITA was eventually driven from Cuíto and a second attempt was made to capture the city in 1998 using huge artillery and tanks. ==Climate==