Many of these farmers, mostly Kikongo-speaking members of the Bakongo ethnic group, fled to neighboring Zaire, where they flourished as small-scale commercial coffee farmers.  As successful small entrepreneurs, many of the Bakongo diaspora in Zaire would be wary of the socialist policies of the MPLA, and would instead choose to support the ostensibly more business-friendly FNLA, which was also led by Bakongo and based in Zaire.  After living in francophone Zaire for several generations, most of the Bakongo refugees adopted French, further dividing them from the mostly Portuguese-speaking groups in Angola.