The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of the following
individuals, who wrote the 1979 edition of Angola: A Country Study,
edited by Irving Kaplan: H. Mark Roth, "Historical Setting";
Irving Kaplan, "The Society and Its Physical Setting";
Margarita Dobert, "Government and Politics"; Eugene K. Keefe,
"National Security"; and Donald P. Whitaker, "The
Economy." Their work provided the organization and structure of the
present volume, as well as substantial portions of the text.
The authors are grateful to individuals in various government
agencies and private institutions who gave their time, research
materials, and expertise to the production of this book. The authors
also wish to thank members of the Federal Research Division staff who
contributed directly to the production of the manuscript. These people
include Richard F. Nyrop, who reviewed all drafts and served as liaison
with the sponsoring agency, and Marilyn L. Majeska, who managed book
production. Vincent Ercolano and Sharon Schultz edited the chapters, and
Beverly Wolpert performed the final prepublication review. Also involved
in preparing the text were editorial assistants Barbara Edgerton and
Izella Watson. Shirley Kessel compiled the index. Linda Peterson of the
Library of Congress Composing Unit set the type, under the direction of
Peggy Pixley.
Angola - Preface
Like its predecesor, this study is an attempt to treat in a concise
and objective manner the dominant social, political, economic, and
military aspects of Angolan society. Sources of information included
scholarly journals and monographs, official reports of governments and
international organizations, foreign and domestic newspapers, and
numerous periodicals. Up-to-date data from Angolan sources for the most
part were unavailable. Chapter bibliographies appear at the end of the
book; brief comments on some of the more valuable sources suggested as
possible further reading appear at the end of each chapter.
Place-names follow a modified version of the system adopted by the
United States Board on Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on
Geographic Names for British Official Use, known as the BGN/PCGN system.
The modification is a significant one, however, in that diacritical
markings and hyphens have been omitted.
Terminology and spelling sometimes presented problems. For example,
after independence Angola's ruling party was known as the Popular
Movement for the Liberation of Angola (Movimento Popular de Libertação
de Angola -- MPLA). In 1977, however, in asserting its commitment to the
principles of Marxism-Leninism, the MPLA added to its nomenclature
"Partido de Trabalho." The term is translated in this book as
"Workers' Party" but is elsewhere often seen as "Labor
Party." Furthermore, because the spelling of the names of ethnic
groups occasionally varies, in some cases alternate spellings are given
in parentheses. Finally, many Angolan officials who fought in the
liberation struggle against the Portuguese acquired noms de guerre;
these officials are often referred to in press accounts by their
nicknames. When such officials are cited in the text, their noms de
guerre are given in parentheses after their surnames.
Angola - History
IN NOVEMBER 1975, after nearly five centuries as a Portuguese colony,
Angola became an independent state. By late 1988, however, despite
fertile land, large deposits of oil and gas, and great mineral wealth,
Angola had achieved neither prosperity nor peace-- the national economy
was stagnating and warfare was ravaging the countryside. True
independence also remained unrealized as foreign powers continued to
determine Angola's future.
But unattained potential and instability were hardships well known to
the Angolan people. They had suffered the outrage of slavery and the
indignity of forced labor and had experienced years of turmoil going
back to the early days of the indigenous kingdoms.
The ancestors of most present-day Angolans found their way to the
region long before the first Portuguese arrived in the late fifteenth
century. The development of indigenous states, such as the Kongo
Kingdom, was well under way before then. The primary objective of the
first Portuguese settlers in Angola, and the motive behind most of their
explorations, was the establishment of a slave trade. Although several
early Portuguese explorers recognized the economic and strategic
advantages of establishing friendly relations with the leaders of the
kingdoms in the Angolan interior, by the middle of the sixteenth century
the slave trade had engendered an enmity between the Portuguese and the
Africans that persisted until independence.
Most of the Portuguese who settled in Angola through the nineteenth
century were exiled criminals, called degredados, who were actively involved in the slave trade and spread
disorder and corruption throughout the colony. Because of the
unscrupulous behavior of the degredados, most Angolan Africans
soon came to despise and distrust their Portuguese colonizers. Those
Portuguese who settled in Angola in the early twentieth century were
peasants who had fled the poverty of their homeland and who tended to
establish themselves in Angolan towns in search of a means of livelihood
other than agriculture. In the process, they squeezed out the mestiços
(people of mixed African and white descent) and urban
Africans who had hitherto played a part in the urban economy. In
general, these later settlers lacked capital, education, and commitment
to their new homelands.
When in the early 1930s António Salazar established the New State
(Estado Novo) in Portugal, Angola was expected to survive on its own.
Accordingly, Portugal neither maintained an adequate social and economic
infrastructure nor invested directly in longterm development.
Ideologically, Portugal maintained that increasing the density of
white rural settlement in Angola was a means of "civilizing"
the African. Generally, the Portuguese regarded Africans as inferior and
gave them few opportunities to develop either in terms of their own
cultures or in response to the market. The Portuguese also discriminated
politically, socially, and economically against assimilados --those Africans who, by acquiring a certain level of
education and a mode of life similar to that of Europeans, were entitled
to become citizens of Portugal. Those few Portuguese officials and
others who called attention to the mistreatment of Africans were largely
ignored or silenced by the colonial governments.
By the 1950s, African-led or mestiço-led associations with
explicit political goals began to spring up in Angola. The authoritarian
Salazar regime forced these movements and their leaders to operate in
exile. By the early 1960s, however, political groups were sufficiently
organized (if also divided by ethnic loyalties and personal animosities)
to begin their drives for independence. Moreover, at least some segments
of the African population had been so strongly affected by the loss of
land, forced labor, and stresses produced by a declining economy that
they were ready to rebel on their own. The result was a series of
violent events in urban and rural areas that marked the beginning of a
long and often ineffective armed struggle for independence.
To continue its political and economic control over the colony,
Portugal was prepared to use whatever military means were necessary. In
1974 the Portuguese army, tired of warfare not only in Angola but in
Portugal's other African colonies, overthrew the Lisbon regime. The new
regime left Angola to its own devices--in effect, abandoning it to the
three major anticolonial movements.
Ideological differences and rivalry among their leaderships divided
these movements. Immediately following independence in 1975, civil war
erupted between the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola
(Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola -- MPLA) on the one hand
and the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (Frente Nacional de
Libertação de Angola -- FNLA) and the National Union for the Total
Independence of Angola (União Nacional para a Independência Total de
Angola -- UNITA) on the other hand. The MPLA received support from the
Soviet Union and Cuba, while the FNLA turned to the United States.
UNITA, unable to gain more than nominal support from China, turned to
South Africa. Viewing the prospect of a Soviet-sponsored MPLA government
with alarm, South Africa invaded Angola. The Soviet and Cuban reaction
was swift: the former provided the logistical support, and the latter
provided troops. By the end of 1976, the MPLA, under the leadership of
Agostinho Neto, was in firm control of the government. Members of UNITA
retreated to the bush to wage a guerrilla war against the MPLA
government, while the FNLA became increasingly ineffective in the north
in the late 1970s.
The MPLA, which in 1977 had declared itself a Marxist-Leninist
vanguard party, faced the task of restoring the agricultural and
production sectors that nearly had been destroyed with the departure of
the Portuguese. Recognizing that traditional MarxistLeninist policies of
large-scale expropriation and state ownership would undermine
redevelopment efforts, Neto permitted private involvement in commercial
and small-scale industry and developed substantial economic relations
with Western states, especially in connection with Angola's oil
industry.
After Neto's death in 1979, José Eduardo dos Santos inherited
considerable economic difficulties, including the enormous military
costs required to fight UNITA and South African forces. By the end of
1985, the security of the Luanda regime depended almost entirely on
Soviet-supplied weaponry and Cuban troop support. Consequently, in the
late 1980s Luanda's two main priorities were to end the UNITA insurgency
and to make progress toward economic development. By late 1988, a United
States-sponsored peace agreement held out some hope that, given time,
both priorities could be achieved.
Angola - PRECOLONIAL ANGOLA AND THE ARRIVAL OF THE PORTUGUESE
Although the precolonial history of many parts of Africa has been
carefully researched and preserved, there is relatively little
information on the region that forms contemporary Angola as it was
before the arrival of the Europeans in the late 1400s. The colonizers of
Angola, the Portuguese, did not study the area as thoroughly as British,
French, and German scholars researched their colonial empires. The
Portuguese, in fact, were more concerned with recording the past of
their own people in Angola than with the history of the indigenous
populations.
The limited information that is available indicates that the original
inhabitants of present-day Angola were hunters and gatherers. Their
descendants, called Bushmen by the Europeans, still inhabit portions of
southern Africa, and small numbers of them may still be found in
southern Angola. These Khoisan speakers lost their predominance in
southern Africa as a result of the southward expansion of Bantu-speaking
peoples during the first millennium A.D.
The Bantu speakers were a Negroid people, adept at farming, hunting,
and gathering, who probably began their migrations from the rain forest
near what is now the Nigeria-Cameroon border. Bantu expansion was
carried out by small groups that made a series of short relocations over
time in response to economic or political conditions. Some historians
believe that the Khoisan speakers were peacefully assimilated rather
than conquered by the Bantu. Others contend that the Khoisan, because of
their passive nature, simply vacated the area and moved south, away from
the newcomers.
In either case, the Bantu settled in Angola between 1300 and 1600,
and some may have arrived even earlier. The Bantu formed a number of
historically important kingdoms. The earliest and perhaps most important
of these was the Kongo Kingdom, which arose between the mid-1300s and
the mid-1400s in an area overlapping the presentday border between
Angola and Zaire. Other important kingdoms were Ndongo, located to the south of
Kongo; Matamba, Kasanje, and Lunda, located east of Ndongo; Bié,
Bailundu, and Ciyaka, located on the plateau east of Benguela; and
Kwanhama (also spelled Kwanyama), located near what is now the border
between Angola and Namibia. Although they did not develop a strong
central government, the Chokwe (also spelled Cokwe) established a
significant cultural center in the northeast of present-day Angola.
The precolonial kingdoms differed in area and the number of subjects
who owed allegiance, however nominal, to a central authority. The kings
might not directly control more land or people than a local ruler, but
they were generally acknowledged as paramount. Kings were offered
tribute and were believed to possess substantial religious power and
authority. A king's actual secular power, however, was determined as
much by his own personal abilities as by institutional arrangements.
The African kingdoms tended to extend their lines of communication
inland, away from the Atlantic Ocean. Until the arrival of the
Europeans, Africans regarded the sea as a barrier to trade. Although the
sea might supply salt or shells that could be used as currency, the
interior held the promise of better hunting, farming, mining, and trade.
Angola - Kongo Kingdom
In the middle of the fifteenth century, the Kongo Kingdom was the
most powerful of a series of states along Africa's west coast known as
the Middle Atlantic kingdoms. Kongo evolved in the late fourteenth
century when a group of Bakongo (Kongo people) moved south of the Congo
River into northern Angola, conquering the people they found there and
establishing Mbanza Kongo (now spelled Mbanza Congo), the capital of the
kingdom. One of the reasons for the success of the Bakongo was their
willingness to assimilate the inhabitants they conquered rather than to
try to become their overlords. The people of the area thus gradually
became one and were ruled by leaders with both religious and political
authority.
By the middle of the fifteenth century, the manikongo (Kongo
king) ruled the lands of northern Angola and the north bank of the Congo
River (present-day Congo and Zaire). Kongo was the first kingdom on the
west coast of central Africa to come into contact with Europeans. The
earliest such contact occurred in 1483 when the Portuguese explorer
Diogo C o, reached the mouth of the Congo River. After the initial
landing, Portugal and Kongo exchanged emissaries, so that each kingdom
was able to acquire knowledge of the other. Impressed by reports from
his returning subjects, Nzinga Nkuwu, the manikongo, asked the
Portuguese crown for missionaries and technical assistance in exchange
for ivory and other goods.
The ruler who came to power in 1506 took a Christian name, Afonso. He
too admired European culture and science, and he called on Portugal for
support in education, military matters, and the conversion of his
subjects to Christianity. Many historians, in fact, maintain that Afonso
behaved more like a "Christian" than most of his teachers.
Afonso, therefore, soon came into conflict with Portuguese bent on
exploiting Kongo society. The most insidious and lasting aspect of this
exploitation was the slave trade.
Not long after Afonso became king, Portugal began to turn its
attention to the exploration of Asia and the Americas. As Portugal's
interest in another of its colonies, Brazil, increased, its interest in
Africa declined. Over time, the Portuguese crown came to view Kongo
primarily as a source of slaves. Slaves were used first on the sugar
plantations on nearby Portuguese-claimed islands but later were sent
mainly to Brazil. Once Kongo was opened to the slave trade, halting or
limiting it became impossible. Afonso's complaints to the Portuguese
crown about the effects of the trade in his lands were largely ignored.
By the 1520s, most of the missionaries had returned to Portugal, and
most of the remaining whites were slave traders who disregarded the
authority of the manikongo's.
In addition to the slave trade, Kongo faced other challenges in the
sixteenth century. After the death of Afonso in the 1540s, the kingdom
endured a period of instability that culminated in an upheaval in 1568.
This rebellion was long attributed by Portuguese sources and others to
the invasion by a group of unknown origin called the Jaga. Others,
however, believed that the attack was probably launched by a Bakongo
faction opposed to the king that may have been joined or aided by
non-Bakongo seeking to gain control over the Kongo slave trade and other
trading routes. In any case, the assault on the capital (which had been
renamed São Salvador) and its environs drove the king, Alvaro I, into
exile. The Portuguese governor of São Tomé, responding to pleas from
Alvaro I, fought the invaders from 1571 through 1573, finally ousting
them and occupying the area until the mid-1570s.
A few years earlier, Sebastião, the Portuguese king, had granted the
area south of the Bakongo as a proprietary colony to Paulo Dias de
Novais, an associate of Portuguese Jesuits and an experienced explorer
of the West African coast. In 1576, in effective control of the
countryside and facing no organized Kongo opposition, the Portuguese
founded the town of Luanda, in effect establishing the colony of Angola.
Other African leaders, however, continued to resist the Portuguese, and
the Europeans only managed to establish insecure footholds along the
coast. Concerned that African attacks might impede the stream of slaves
to Brazil and Portugal, in 1590 the crown assumed direct control of the
colony.
Alvaro I and his successor, Alvaro II, brought stability to the Kongo
Kingdom by expanding the domain of their royal authority while keeping
at bay encroachment by the Portuguese, whose colony during the late
years of the sixteenth century remained confined to the area south of
Kongo. But after the death of Alvaro II in 1614, conflicts over access
to cultivable land between Kongo and the Portuguese colony of Angola
soured formerly amicable relations, and in 1622 the Portuguese governor
of Angola launched an attack on Kongo. Although not entirely successful
from the Portuguese point of view, the war had a number of lasting
effects. First, the colony captured a large number of slaves, which
demonstrated how rewarding slave raiding could be. Second, the
Portuguese came out of the war convinced of the existence of silver and
gold mines in Kongo, a belief that encouraged a series of conflicts
between the colonists and the Kongo Kingdom for the next half century.
The war also created a xenophobia among the Bakongo of the interior, who
drove away many Portuguese. Because the trading system depended largely
on the Bakongo, commerce was greatly disrupted, with effects on the
Angolan colony as great as those on the Kongo Kingdom.
Adding to Kongo's troubles in the early 1600s was a general
dissatisfaction among the Bakongo with their rulers, some of whom were
greedy and corrupt. Consequently, conflicts arose over succession to the
throne, and more and more sections of the kingdom gained substantial
degrees of autonomy and established local control over the trade that
had so enriched the monarchy in earlier years.
Angola - Ndongo Kingdom
Shortly after Cão made his initial contact with the Kongo Kingdom of
northern Angola in 1483, he established links farther south with
Ndongo--an African state less advanced than Kongo that was made up of
Kimbundu-speaking people. Their ruler, who was tributary to the manikongo,
was called the ngola a kiluanje. It was the first part of the
title, its pronunciation changed to "Angola," by which the
Portuguese referred to the entire area.
Throughout most of the sixteenth century, Portugal's relations with
Ndongo were overshadowed by its dealings with Kongo. Some historians,
citing the disruptions the Portuguese caused in Kongo society, believe
that Ndongo benefited from the lack of Portuguese interest. It was not
until after the founding of Luanda in 1576 that Portugal's exploration
into the area of present-day Angola rivaled its trade and commerce in
Kongo. Furthermore, it was only in the early seventeenth century that
the importance of the colony Portugal established came to exceed that of
Kongo.
Although officially ignored by Lisbon, the Angolan colony was the
center of disputes, usually concerning the slave trade, between local
Portuguese traders and the Mbundu people, who inhabited Ndongo. But by
mid-century, the favorable attention the ngola received from
Portuguese trade or missionary groups angered the manikongo,
who in 1556 sent an army against the Ndongo Kingdom. The forces of the ngola
defeated the Kongo army, encouraging him to declare his independence
from Kongo and appeal to Portugal for military support. In 1560 Lisbon
responded by sending an expedition to Angola, but in the interim the ngola
who had requested Portuguese support had died, and his successor took
captive four members of the expedition. After the hostage taking, Lisbon
routinely employed military force in dealing with the Ndongo Kingdom.
This resulted in a major eastward migration of Mbundu people and the
subsequent establishment of other kingdoms.
Following the founding of Luanda, Paulo Dias carried out a series of
bloody military campaigns that contributed to Ndongo resentment of
Europeans. Dias founded several forts east of Luanda, but--indicative of
Portugal's declining status as a world power--he was unable to gain firm
control of the land around them. Dias died in 1579 without having
conquered the Ndongo Kingdom.
Dias's successors made slow progress up the Cuanza River, meeting
constant African resistance. By 1604 they reached Cambambe, where they
learned that the presumed silver mines did not exist. The failure of the
Portuguese to find mineral wealth changed their outlook on the Angolan
colony. Slave taking, which had been incidental to the quest for the
mines, then became the major economic motivation for expansion and
extension of Portuguese authority. In search of slaves, the Portuguese
pushed farther into Ndongo country, establishing a fort a short distance
from Massangano, itself about 175 kilometers east of Angola's Atlantic
coast. The consequent fighting with the Ndongo generated a stream of
slaves who were shipped to the coast. Following a period of Ndongo
diplomatic initiatives toward Lisbon in the 1620s, relations degenerated
into a state of war.
Angola - The Defeat of Kongo and Ndongo
The Portuguese imposed a peace treaty on the Bakongo. Its conditions,
however, were so harsh that peace was never really achieved, and
hostilities grew during the 1660s. The Portuguese victory over the
Bakongo at the Battle of Mbwila (also spelled Ambuila) on October 29,
1665, marked the end of the Kongo Kingdom as a unified power. By the
eighteenth century, Kongo had been transformed from a unitary state into
a number of smaller entities that recognized the king but for all
practical purposes were independent. Fragmented though they were, these
Kongo states still resisted Portuguese encroachments. Although they were
never again as significant as during Angola's early days, the Bakongo
played an important role in the nationalist and independence struggles
of the twentieth century.
The Ndongo Kingdom suffered a fate similar to that of Kongo. Before
the Dutch captured Luanda in 1641, the Portuguese attempted to control
Ndongo by supporting a pliant king, and during the Dutch occupation,
Ndongo remained loyal to Portugal. But after the retaking of Luanda in
1648, the ngola judged that the Portuguese had not sufficiently
rewarded the kingdom for its allegiance. Consequently, he reasserted
Ndongo independence, an act that angered the colonists. In 1671 Ndongo
intransigence prompted a Portuguese attack and siege on the capital of
Pungu-a-Ndondong (present-day Pungo Andongo). The attackers killed the ngola,
enslaved many of his followers, and built a fort on the site of the
capital. Thus, the Ndongo Kingdom, which had enjoyed only
semi-independent status, now surrendered entirely to Portugal.
Angola - Matamba and Kasanje Kingdoms
As Portugal became preoccupied with the Ndongo Kingdom as a source of
slaves, two inland Mbundu states--Matamba and Kasanje-- prospered.
Little is known of Matamba before the seventeenth century, but in 1621
Nzinga (called Jinga by the Portuguese), the sister of the ngola a
kiluanje, convinced the Portuguese to recognize Ndongo as an
independent monarchy and to help the kingdom expel the Imbangala people
from its territory. Three years later, according to some sources, Nzinga
poisoned her brother and succeeded him as monarch. Unable to negotiate
successfully with a series of Portuguese governors, however, she was
eventually removed. Nzinga and many of her followers traveled east and
forged alliances with several groups. She finally ascended to the throne
of the Matamba Kingdom. From this eastern state, she pursued good
relations with the Dutch during their occupation of the area from 1641
to 1648 and attempted to reconquer Ndongo. After the Dutch expulsion,
Nzinga again allied with the Portuguese. A dynamic and wily ruler,
Nzinga dominated Mbundu politics until she died in 1663. Although she
dealt with the Europeans, in modern times Nzinga has been remembered by
nationalists as an Angolan leader who never accepted Portuguese
sovereignty.
After Nzinga's death, a succession struggle ensued, and the new ruler
tried to reduce Portuguese influence. Following their practice with the
Ndongo, the Portuguese forced him out and placed their own candidate,
Kanini, on the throne. Kanini coveted the nearby kingdom of
Kasanje--peopled by Mbundu but ruled by Imbangala--for its role in the
slave trade. Once he had consolidated power, in 1680 Kanini successfully
moved against Kasanje, which was undergoing a succession crisis of its
own. Kanini's defeat of the Kasanje state made his Portuguese
benefactors realize that as his empire expanded, Kanini was increasingly
threatening their own slaving interests. Subsequently, Kanini defeated a
Portuguese military expedition sent against him, although he died soon
after. In 1683 Portugal negotiated with the new Matamba queen to halt
further attempts to conquer Kasanje territory and, because of mounting
competition from other European powers, convinced her to trade
exclusively with Portugal.
Angola - Lunda and Chokwe Kingdoms
The Lunda Kingdom lay east, beyond Matamba and Kasanje. It developed
in the seventeenth century, and its center was in present-day Zaire's
western Shaba Province (formerly Katanga Province). The Lunda Kingdom
expanded by absorbing the chiefs of neighboring groups in the empire,
rather than by deposing them. The Lunda consolidated their state by
adopting an orderly system of succession and by gaining control of the
trade caravans that passed through their kingdom.
The Portuguese hoped to deal directly with the Lunda for slaves and
thus bypass the representatives of the Matamba and Kasanje, who acted as
intermediaries. Apparently entertaining similar ideas, the Lunda
attacked Matamba and Kasanje in the 1760s. The Lunda, however, proved no
more successful than the Portuguese at totally subduing these Mbundu
kingdoms.
The Chokwe, who, according to oral accounts, migrated from either
central Africa or the Upper Kasai region in present-day Zaire,
established themselves as trading intermediaries in eastern Angola in
the middle of the nineteenth century. With guns that they obtained from
the Ovimbundu, they attacked and destroyed the Lunda Kingdom in 1900.
The Chokwe rapidly expanded their influence in the northeast and east,
replacing the Lunda culture with their own language and customs.
Angola - Ovimbundu and Kwanhama Kingdoms
Between 1500 and 1700, the Ovimbundu peoples migrated from the north
and east of Angola to the Benguela Plateau. They did not, however,
consolidate their kingdoms, nor did their kings assert their sovereignty
over the plateau until the eighteenth century, when some twenty-two
kingdoms emerged. Thirteen of the kingdoms, including Bié, Bailundu,
and Ciyaka, emerged as powerful entities, and the Ovimbundu acquired a
reputation as the most successful traders of the Angolan interior. After
the Portuguese conquered most of the Ovimbundu states in the late
nineteenth century, the Portuguese colonial authorities directly or
indirectly appointed Ovimbundu kings.
The Kwanhama, belonging to the Bantu-speaking group, established a
kingdom early in the nineteenth century in the vicinity of the border
with present-day Namibia. Kwanhama kings welcomed trade with Europeans,
especially with Portuguese and German gun dealers. Feared even by the
Portuguese, the well-armed Kwanhama developed a reputation as fierce
warriors. Their kingdom survived until 1915, when a large Portuguese
army invaded and defeated then.
Angola - The Dutch Interregnum, 1641-48
During the first half of the 1600s, when Portugal became involved in
a succession of European religious and dynastic wars at the insistence
of its ally, Spain, the Portuguese colonies were subjected to attacks by
Spain's enemies. Holland, one of Spain's most potent enemies, raided and
harassed the Portuguese territories in Angola. The Dutch also began
pursuing alliances with Africans, including the king of Kongo and Nzinga
of Matamba, who, angered by their treatment at the hands of the
Portuguese, welcomed the opportunity to deal with another European
power.
When it rebelled against Spain in 1640, Portugal hoped to establish
good relations with the Dutch. Instead, the Dutch saw an opportunity to
expand their own colonial holdings and in 1641 captured Luanda and
Benguela, forcing the Portuguese governor to flee with his fellow
refugees inland to Massangano. The Portuguese were unable to dislodge
the Dutch from their coastal beachhead. As the Dutch occupation cut off
the supply of slaves to Brazil, that colony's economy suffered. In
response, Brazilian colonists raised money and organized forces to
launch an expedition aimed at unseating the Dutch from Angola. In May
1648, the Dutch garrison in Luanda surrendered to the Brazilian
detachment, and the Dutch eventually relinquished their other Angolan
conquests. According to some historians, after the retaking of Luanda,
Angola became a de facto colony of Brazil, so driven was the South
American colony's sugar-growing economy by its need for slaves.
Angola - ANGOLA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Slave Trading in the 1700s
Slave trading dominated the Portuguese economy in eighteenthcentury
Angola. Slaves were obtained by agents, called pombeiros, who
roamed the interior, generally following established routes along
rivers. They bought slaves, called peças (pieces), from local
chiefs in exchange for commodities such as cloth and wine. The pombeiros
returned to Luanda or Benguela with chain gangs of several hundred
captives, most of whom were malnourished and in poor condition from the
arduous trip on foot. On the coast, they were better fed and readied for
their sea crossing. Before embarking, they were baptized en masse by
Roman Catholic priests. The Atlantic crossing in the overcrowded,
unsanitary vessels lasted from five weeks to two months. Many captives
died en route.
During the sixteenth century and most of the seventeenth century,
Luanda had been the main slave port of the Portuguese, but toward the
end of the 1600s they turned their attention to Benguela. Although the
first efforts at inland expansion from Benguela failed, the Portuguese
eventually penetrated the Ovimbundu kingdoms and subjected their people
to the same treatment that had earlier befallen the Mbundu. By the end
of the eighteenth century, Benguela rivaled Luanda as a slave port.
According to historian C.R. Boxer, African slaves were more valued in
the Americas than were American Indian slaves because Africans tended to
adjust more easily to slavery and because they were less vulnerable to
the diseases of the white man. Boxer also suggests that Jesuits in the
New World opposed the notion of using Indians as slaves, whereas they
were less resistant to the use of Africans as slaves. Many of these
African slaves were sent to Spanish colonies, where they brought a
higher price than they would have if sold in Brazil.
From the late sixteenth century until 1836, when Portugal abolished
slave trafficking, Angola may have been the source of as many as 2
million slaves for the New World. More than half of these went to
Brazil, nearly a third to the Caribbean, and from 10 to 15 percent to
the Río de la Plata area on the southeastern coast of South America.
Considering the number of slaves that actually arrived, and taking into
account those who died crossing the Atlantic or during transport from
the interior to the coast for shipping, the Angola area may have lost as
many as 4 million people as a result of the slave trade.
By the end of the eighteenth century, it became clear that Lisbon's
dream of establishing a trading monopoly in its colonies had not been
achieved. Competition from foreign powers contributed significantly to
Portugal's inability to control the slave trade, either in Angola's
interior or on the coast. In 1784, for example, the French expelled a
garrison that the Portuguese had established a year earlier in Cabinda.
Portugal was also concerned about the northward expansion of Dutch
settlers from the Cape of Good Hope area. Moreover, at this time the
British, Dutch, and Brazilians, not the Portuguese, were contributing
most of the capital and vessels used in the slave trade. Furthermore,
many of the European goods arriving at Angolan ports were coming from
nations other than Portugal.
Angola - Portuguese Settlers in Angola
The Portuguese authorities and settlers in Angola formed a motley
group. The inhabitants resented the governors, whom they regarded as
outsiders. Indeed, these officials were less concerned with the welfare
of the colony than with the profit they could realize from the slave
trade. But governing the small colony was difficult because any central
administrative authority had to deal with a group of settlers prone to
rebellion. Because Brazil was the jewel of Portugal's overseas
territories, Portuguese who immigrated to Angola were frequently
deserters, degredados, peasants, and others who had been unable
to succeed in Portugal or elsewhere in the Portuguese-speaking world.
Owing principally to the African colony's unsavory reputation in
Portugal and the high regard in which Brazil was held, there was little
emigration to Angola in the 1600s and 1700s. Thus, the white population
of Angola in 1777 was less than 1,600. Of this number, very few whites
were females; one account states that in 1846 the ratio of Portuguese
men to Portuguese women in the colony was eleven to one. A product of
this gender imbalance was miscegenation; for example, the mestiço
population in 1777 was estimated at a little more than 4,000.
Besides exporting them, Europeans in Angola kept slaves as porters,
soldiers, agricultural laborers, and as workers at jobs that the
Portuguese increasingly considered too menial to do themselves. At no
time, however, was domestic slavery more important to the local economy
than the exporting of slaves.
Angola - THE 1800s: TURMOIL, REFORM AND EXPANSION
The abolition of the slave trade coincided with increased Portuguese
expansion in Angola. Expansion began in 1838 with the conquest and
establishment of a fort at Duque de Bragança (renamed Calandula), in an
area east of Luanda. By mid-century the Portuguese had extended their
formal control still farther east to the Kasanje market near the Cuango
River. In 1840 the Portuguese founded the
town of Moçâmedes (present-day Namibe) on the coast south of Benguela.
The Portuguese also attempted to gain control of the coast from Luanda
north to Cabinda through military occupation of the major ports. Because
of British opposition, however, they were unable to complete this
attempt and never gained control of the mouth of the Congo River.
The cost of military operations to secure economically strategic
points led in 1856 to the imposition on Africans of a substantially
increased hut tax, which for the first time had to be paid with currency
or trade goods rather than with slaves. As a result, many Africans
either refused to pay or fled from areas controlled by the Portuguese.
By 1861, therefore, the Portuguese lacked the resources for continued
military expansion or economic development, and most of the interior
remained in the control of African traders and warriors.
From the late 1870s through the early 1890s, Portugal
renewedexpansion into the interior. Part of the impetus came from the
Lisbon Geographical Society, founded in 1875 by a group of
industrialists, scholars, and colonial and military officials. This
society stimulated a popular concern for the colonies in Portugal. In
reaction to the activities of the society and the growing interest among
Europeans in colonial adventure, the Portuguese government allotted
large sums for public works in Africa and encouraged a minor revival of
missionary work.
An advisory commission to Portugal's Ministry of the Navy and
Colonies formed an expedition in the 1870s to link Angola on the
Atlantic coast with Mozambique on the Indian Ocean coast. The Portuguese
government supported this expedition because it aspired to control a
solid strip of territory across the central part of the continent.
Nonetheless, Portugal was unable to gain control of the hinterland.
Aware of French and Belgian activities on the lower Congo River, in
1883 the Portuguese occupied Cabinda and Massabi north of the Congo
River, towns that Portugal had long claimed. In the same year, Portugal
annexed the region of the old Kongo Kingdom. Seeking to uphold these
claims against French and Belgian advances in the Congo River Basin,
Portugal negotiated a treaty with Britain in 1884; the other European
powers, however, rejected it. Portugal's subsequent demands for an
international conference on the Congo fell on deaf ears until German
chancellor Otto von Bismarck seized on the idea as an opportunity to
diminish French and British power.
At the Berlin Conference of 1884, the participants established in
principle the limits of Portugal's claims to Angola, and in later years,
treaties with the colonial powers that controlled the neighboring
territories delineated Angola's boundaries. But because other, more
powerful European states of the nineteenth century had explored central
Africa, they, not Portugal, determined Angola's boundaries. The west
coast territory Portugal acquired included the left bank of the Congo
River and the Cabinda enclave, an acquisition whose value to the state
was demonstrated in later years by the discovery there of oil. Britain,
however, forced Portugal to withdraw from Nyasaland (present-day Malawi)
and Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia).
Portugal and Belgium concluded several agreements between 1891 and
1927, establishing a complex border generally following natural
frontiers. Cabinda's boundaries with the French Congo and the Belgian
Congo were delimited in 1886 and 1894, respectively, and by the end of
the nineteenth century, Portugal had staked out most of its claims in
Angola.
As far as Europe was concerned, Angola was in the Portuguese sphere
of influence, and its status was not subject to further deliberations.
Considering its diminished stature in relation to other European powers,
Portugal had done well to hold onto as much territory as it had. But the
fact that Angola was recognized as a Portuguese possession did not mean
that it was under Portuguese control. The work of conquest took the
better part of twenty-five years, and in some remote areas even longer.
Angola - SETTLEMENT, CONQUEST, AND DEVELOPMENT
The Demographic Situation
As the spheres of interest in the African interior became clarified,
European nations turned to fulfilling the obligation imposed by the
Berlin Conference of effectively occupying all territories claimed. For
Portugal, meeting this obligation involved not only the conquest of the
independent African kingdoms of the interior but also an attempt to
settle Portuguese farmers.
Immigration in the late nineteenth century was discouraged by the
same conditions that had deterred it earlier: a difficult climate and a
lack of economic development. Although there were less than 10,000
whites in Angola in 1900 (most of whom were degredados), there
was a substantial increase in white female immigration; the
male-to-female ratio that year was a bit more than two to one.
Concomitantly, there was a drop in the ratio of mestiços to
whites; whereas mestiços had outnumbered whites in 1845 by
more than three to one, in 1900 this ratio was reversed. Africans still
constituted more than 99 percent of the population in 1900. Their
numbers reportedly declined from an estimated 5.4 million in 1845 to
about 4.8 million in 1900, although scholars dispute these figures.
Whites were concentrated in the coastal cities of Luanda and Benguela.
In addition to farming and fishing, Europeans engaged in merchant
activities in the towns and trade in the bush. In the south, colonies of
farmers who had settled earlier in the century had dwindled into small
outposts, as many settlers returned to Luanda.
In the late nineteenth century, Africans controlled trade in the
plateaus of the interior, despite Portuguese expansion. The Ovimbundu
proved highly successful intermediaries on the southern trade route that
ran from the Bié Plateau to Benguela. The Ovimbundu were more
competitive than the sertanejos (people of the frontier, as
Europeans and their representatives in the rural areas were called), who
often had to pay tribute and fines to African chiefs through whose
territory they traveled. By the mid1880s , the Ovimbundu by and large
had replaced the sertanejos. The Chokwe and Imbangala also took
advantage of their positions in the interior to extend their control
over the region's trade. Nonetheless, by the late 1800s Portuguese
encroachments and the imposition of European rule limited the political
freedom of these Africans and diminished their prosperity.
Angola - Military Campaigns
Portuguese colonial policies toward civil administration were first
formulated in Mozambique, where in the 1890s António Enés, former
minister of colonies, advocated close control and full use of African
labor, administrative reorganization, and colonization schemes. In 1899
Paiva Couceiro, who had been with Enés in Mozambique, published a
volume in which he advocated white colonization, decentralization of
administration from Lisbon, and the necessity of inculcating in the
Africans the "habit of work." As governor general of Angola
between 1907 and 1910, Couceiro prepared the basis of civil
administration in the colony. Military officers were to oversee
administrative divisions, and through them European civilization was to
be brought to the Africans. Many of Couceiro's reforms were incorporated
in legislation in 1914 that brought, at least in theory, financial and
administrative autonomy to the colony.
There was considerable progress toward the development of an economic
infrastructure during the first quarter of the twentieth century. New
towns sprang up in the interior, and road construction advanced. The key
to development, however, was the Benguela Railway, which would become
Angola's largest employer and which linked the mines of the Belgian
Congo's Katanga Province (in present-day Shaba Province in Zaire) to the
Angolan port at Lobito.
In the 1920s, the Diamond Company of Angola (Companhia de Diamantes
de Angola -- Diamang), an exclusive concessionaire in Angola until the
1960s, initiated diamond mining. As the employer of more Africans than
any other industry, Diamang deeply affected the lives of its 18,000
African workers through extensive investment and the provision of social
services.
The Portuguese, however, were generally unable to provide Angola with
adequate development capital or with settlers. Trade had fallen off
sharply when the rubber boom ended just before World War I, and the war
itself produced only a brief revival of foreign trade. At the end of
what is commonly referred to as Portugal's republican era (1910-26), the
finances of the colony were in serious difficulty.
Angola - THE SALAZAR REGIME
Angola under the New State
The right-wing Portuguese military coup of May 1926, which ended the
republican era, led to the installation of a one-party regime in
Portugal and the establishment of what came to be known as the New
State. A young professor of economics, António Salazar, became minister
of finance in 1928, and by 1930 he was one of the most prominent members
of the government. He held the post of prime minister from 1932 until
1968, when he was incapacitated by a stroke. During his tenure in
office, he left a lasting impression on events in Angola.
The most important changes introduced into Angola by the new regime
were embodied in the Colonial Act of 1930. This act brought Angola's
economy into line with economic policies that the new regime was
implementing at home. But Portugal's application of strict financial
controls over the colony also halted the drift toward political autonomy
in Angola.
Portugal's policies toward Angola in the 1930s and 1940s were based
on the principle of national integration. Economically, socially, and
politically, Angola was to become an integral part of the Portuguese
nation. In line with these policies, Portugal renamed African towns,
usually after Portuguese heroes. Still later, in the early 1950s,
Portugal withdrew the currency, known as the angolar, and
replaced it with the Portuguese escudo.
Portugal integrated its economy with that of Angola by erecting
protective trade tariffs and discouraging foreign investment capital,
except in the construction of the Benguela Railway and in the
exploitation of diamonds. In this way, Portugal sought to make Angola
self-supporting and, at the same time, to turn it into a market for
Portuguese goods. But despite a certain degree of success, Angola
enjoyed no real prosperity until after World War II, when higher coffee
prices brought enormous profits to Angolan producers. The consequent
economic success of the coffee plantations, owned primarily by newly
arrived Portuguese settlers attracted by the colony's increasing wealth,
continued until independence in 1975, when the Portuguese exodus and
civil war severely disrupted the Angolan economy.
Angola - Salazar's Racial Politics
Until 1940 Portuguese constituted less than 1 percent of Angola's
population, and it was not until 1950 that their proportion approached 2
percent. This increase in the number of Europeans and the continuation
of forced labor (not abolished until 1962) and other labor abuses led to
an intensification of racial conflict. Before 1900 mestiços
had been engaged in a variety of commercial and governmental roles, but
as the white population came to outnumber them, the status of mestiços
declined. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, laws and
regulations requiring a certain level of education to hold some
government positions effectively excluded mestiços from access
to them. In 1921 the colonial administration divided the civil service
into European and African branches and assigned mestiços and
the very few African assimilados to the latter, thereby
limiting their chances of rising in the bureaucratic hierarchy. In 1929
statutes limited the bureaucratic level to which mestiços and assimilados
could rise to that of first clerk, established different pay scales for
Europeans and non-Europeans in both public and private sectors, and
restricted competition between them for jobs in the bureaucracy. Given
this legal framework, the immigration of increasing numbers of
Portuguese led to considerable disaffection among mestiços,
who had hitherto tended to identify with whites rather than with
Africans.
Beginning in the 1940s, the system of forced labor came under renewed
criticism. One particularly outspoken critic, Captain Henrique Galvão,
who had served for more than two decades in an official capacity in
Angola, chronicled abuses committed against the African population. The
Salazar government responded by arresting Galvão for treason and
banning his report. Despite the introduction of some labor reforms from
the late 1940s through the late 1950s, forced labor continued.
Legislation that was passed in Portugal between 1926 and 1933 was
based on a new conception of Africans. Whereas Portugal previously had
assumed that Africans would somehow naturally be assimilated into
European society, the New State established definite standards Africans
had to meet to qualify for rights. The new legislation defined Africans
as a separate element in the population, referred to as indígenas. Those who learned to speak Portuguese, who took jobs in
commerce or industry, and who behaved as Portuguese citizens were
classified as assimilados. In accepting the rights of
citizenship, assimilados took on the same tax obligations as
the European citizens. Male indígenas were required to pay a
head tax. If they could not raise the money, they were obligated to work
for the government for half of each year without wages.
The colonial administration stringently applied the requirements for
assimilation. In 1950, of an estimated African population of 4 million
in Angola (according to an official census that probably provided more
accurate figures than previous estimates), there were less than 31,000 assimilados.
But instead of elevating the status of Africans, the policy of
assimilation maintained them in a degraded status. The colonial
administration required indígenas to carry identification
cards, of major importance psychologically to the Africans and
politically to the Portuguese, who were thus more easily able to control
the African population.
The authoritarian Salazar regime frequently used African informants
to ferret out signs of political dissidence. Censorship, border control,
police action, and control of education all retarded the development of
African leadership. Africans studying in Portugal--and therefore exposed
to "progressive" ideas--were sometimes prevented from
returning home. Political offenses brought severe penalties, and the
colonial administration viewed African organizations with extreme
disfavor.
Angola - RISE OF AFRICAN NATIONALISM
In the 1940s and 1950s, African acquiescence to Portuguese
colonization began to weaken, particularly in the provinces bordering
the Belgian Congo and in Luanda, where far-reaching changes in world
politics influenced a small number of Africans. The associations they
formed and the aspirations they shared paved the way for the liberation
movements of the 1960s.
The colonial system had created a dichotomy among the African
population that corresponded to that of the Portuguese social
structure--the elite versus the masses. Within the context of the
burgeoning nationalist struggle, competition developed between the
small, multiracial class of educated and semi-educated town inhabitants
and the rural, uneducated black peasantry that formed the majority of
Angola's population. At the same time, black Angolans identified
strongly with their precolonial ethnic and regional origins. By the
1950s, the influence of class and ethnicity had resulted in three major
sources of Angolan nationalism. The first, the Mbundu, who inhabited
Luanda and the surrounding regions, had a predominantly urban, elite
leadership, while the Bakongo and Ovimbundu peoples had rural, peasant
orientations. The major nationalist movements that emerged from these
three groups--the MPLA, the FNLA, and UNITA--each claimed to represent
the entire Angolan population. Before long, these movements became
bitter rivals as the personal ambitions of their leaders, in addition to
differences in political ideology and competition for foreign aid, added
to their ethnic differences.
Angola - Roots of Discontent
Portugal's assimilationist policy had produced a small group of
educated Africans who considered themselves Portuguese. But as this
group recognized that it was not fully respected by the Portuguese and
as it became increasingly aware of its alienation from its traditional
origins, some members began to articulate resentment, both of their own
ambiguous social and cultural situations and of the plight of the
nonassimilated majority of Africans. From among their ranks emerged most
of the first generation of liberation movement leaders.
The influx of rural Africans to towns also bred anticolonial
resentment. In the 1950s, the population of Luanda almost doubled, and
most of the growth was among Africans. Lured by the expectation of work,
Africans in towns became aware of the inequality of opportunities
between Europeans and Africans. The compulsory labor system that many
had experienced in rural areas was regarded as the most onerous aspect
of Portuguese rule. More than any other factor, this system, which was
not abolished until 1962, united many Africans in resentment of
Portuguese rule.
The Salazar government's settlement policies contributed to the
spread of anticolonial resentment, especially after 1945. These policies
resulted in increased competition for employment and growing racial
friction. Between 1955 and 1960, for example, the government brought
from Portugal and the Cape Verde Islands more than 55,000 whites.
Induced to emigrate by government promises of money and free houses,
these peasants settled on colonatos (large agricultural
communities). Many immigrants to the colonatos were unskilled
at farming, often lacked an elementary education, or were too old for
vigorous manual labor. Consequently, many of them were unsuccessful on
the colonatos and, after a time, moved to towns where they
competed with Africans, often successfully, for skilled and unskilled
jobs. The Portuguese who held jobs of lower social status often felt it
all the more necessary to claim social superiority over the Africans.
External events also played a role in the development of the
independence movements. While most European powers were preparing to
grant independence to their African colonies, the Salazar regime was
seeking to reassert its grasp on its colonies, as witnessed by the
effort it expended in the ill-fated colonatos system.
There were two basic patterns in the rise of nationalism in Angola.
In one case, African assimilados and other urban Africans with
some education joined urban mestiços and whites in
associations based on the assumption that their interests were different
from, and perhaps in competition with, those of the majority of the
African population still attached to their rural communities. Angolans
also formed organizations based on ethnic or religious groupings that
encompassed or at least sought to include rural Africans, although the
leaders of these organizations often had some education and urban
experience.
Angola - African Associations
The beginnings of African associations, to which the liberation
movement traced its roots, remained obscure in 1988. Luanda was known to
have had recreational societies, burial clubs, and other mutual aid
associations in the early 1900s. After the Portuguese republican
constitution of 1911 increased freedoms of the press, opinion, and
association in the African colonies, a number of African associations
were formed, including the Lisbon-based African League in 1919.
Sponsored and financed by the Portuguese government, partly in response
to pressure from the League of Nations with which African League leaders
had established contacts, the African League was a federation of all
African associations from Portuguese Africa. Its avowed purpose was to
point out to the Portuguese government injustices or harsh laws that
ought to be repealed. In 1923 the African League organized the second
session of the Third Pan-African Congress in Lisbon.
Assimilados (mestiço and African) dominated most
associations, and their membership seldom included uneducated Africans.
Because the associations were under close Portuguese control, their
members were unable to express the full extent of their discontent with
the colonial system. As a result, extralegal, politically oriented
African associations began to appear in the 1950s. Far-reaching economic
and social changes, the growth of the white settler population,
increased urbanization of Africans, and the beginnings of nationalist
movements in other parts of Africa contributed to the growth of
anticolonial feeling. In 1952 some 500 Angolan Africans appealed to the
United Nations (UN) in a petition protesting what they called the
injustices of Portuguese policy and requesting that steps be taken to
end Portuguese rule.
Angola - The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola
The earliest anticolonialist political group in Angola, founded about
1953, was the Party of the United Struggle of Africans of Angola
(Partido da Luta Unida dos Africanos de Angola -- PLUA). In December
1956, the PLUA combined with other organizations in Luanda to form the
MPLA, whose aim was to achieve independence for Angola by means of a
united front of all African interests. After many of its leaders were
arrested in March 1959, the party moved its headquarters to Conakry,
Guinea. The MPLA's first leader, Mário de Andrade, an educated mestiço
and a poet, gave the party a reputation for representing primarily the
interests of urban intellectuals rather than the indigenous masses.
The MPLA traces its Marxist-Leninist origins to its ties with the
clandestine Portuguese Communist Party (Partido Comunista Português--PCP).
The initial MPLA manifesto called for an end to colonialism and the
building of a modern society free of prejudice, a goal that could be
realized only after a lengthy period of political preparation followed
by a revolutionary struggle. The MPLA leadership sought a definite
direction and a set of objectives for the independence struggle, in
contrast with the broad nationalist approach of its greatest rival for
supremacy in the struggle, the FNLA. Thus, the MPLA's program, outlined
in a policy document in the 1960s, avoided a stated commitment to
socialism or Marxism-Leninism, but it clearly alluded to the movement's
adherence to Marxist-Leninist principles and the Nonaligned Movement.
The organization's leftist orientation attracted the support of the
Soviet Union and China, both of which envisioned prospects for a
foothold in Africa provided by a ruling MarxistLeninist vanguard party.
Angola - The National Front for the Liberation of Angola
The Angolan African organizations active before 1961 weredisorganized
and lacked resources, membership, and strong leadership. There were a
number of reasons for these weaknesses. First, their members were not
prepared for either a political or a military struggle during the 1950s,
however attractive they may have found nationalist ideals. Second, they
were divided socially as well as ethnically. There were gulfs between
the mestiços and the assimilados, on the one hand,
and the indígenas, on the other hand, that frequently resulted
in the pursuit of different goals. Third, although a substantial
proportion of the white community also wanted Angola to break away from
Portuguese domination, it hoped to perpetuate the colonial regime in
every aspect except its control by Lisbon.
Finally, there was a critical lack of capable black leaders in the
1950s. The newly developing elite was not large enough to run a
nationalist movement, and traditional leaders, focused on ethnic issues,
were not prepared to lead such a movement. Church leaders, who might
have been capable as national movement leaders, did not enter the
struggle unless disaffected or until they became targets of police
repression.
Angola - Beginning of Revolution
After 1959, as several African states won their independence,
anticolonial sentiment intensified in Portugal's overseas territories.
The Portuguese met this sentiment with stiffening opposition
characterized by increasing surveillance and frequent arrests. In
December 1959, the Portuguese secret political police, the International
Police for the Defense of the State (Polícia Internacional de Defesa de
Estado--PIDE), arrested fifty-seven persons in Luanda who were suspected
of being involved in antigovernment political activities. Among those
arrested were a few Europeans, assimilados, and other Africans.
After this incident, the Portuguese military in Angola reinforced its
position, particularly in the northwestern provinces, and became
increasingly repressive.
In the first months of 1961, tensions came to a head. A group of
alleged MPLA members attacked police stations and prisons in an attempt
to free African political prisoners. Then, a group of disgruntled cotton
workers in Malanje Province attacked government officials and buildings
and a Catholic mission. In the wake of further sporadic violence, many
wealthy Portuguese repatriated. They left behind them the poor whites
who were unable to leave on short notice but who were ready to take the
law into their own hands.
The violence spread to the northwest, where over the course of two
days Bakongo (thought by some to have been UPA members) in Uíge
Province attacked isolated farmsteads and towns in a series of forty
coordinated raids, killing hundreds of Europeans. Also involved in the
rural uprisings were non-Bakongo in parts of Cuanza Norte Province.
During the next few months, violencespread northward toward the border
with the former Belgian Congo as the Portuguese put pressure on the
rebels. Although it had not begun that way, as time passed the
composition of the rebel groups became almost exclusively Bakongo.
The Portuguese reacted to the uprising with violence. Settlers
organized into vigilante committees, and reprisals for the rebellion
went uncontrolled by civilian and military authorities. The whites'
treatment of Africans was as brutal and as arbitrary as had been that of
the Africans toward them. Fear pervaded the country, driving an even
deeper wedge between the races.
The loss of Africans as a result of the 1961 uprisings has been
estimated as high as 40,000, many of whom died from disease or because
of famine; about 400 Europeans were killed, as well as many assimilados
and Africans deemed sympathetic to colonial authorities. By summer the
Portuguese had reduced the area controlled by the rebels to one-half its
original extent, but major pockets of resistance remained. Portuguese
forces, relying heavily on air power, attacked many villages. The result
was the mass exodus of Africans toward what is now Zaire.
In an effort to head off future violence, in the early 1960s the
Salazar regime initiated a program to develop Angola's economic
infrastructure. The Portuguese government increased the paved road
network by 500 percent, stimulated the development of domestic air
routes, provided emergency aid to the coffee producers, and abolished
compulsory cotton cultivation. To reestablish confidence among Africans
and among those who had been subject to reprisals by white settlers, the
military initiated a campaign under which it resettled African refugees
into village compounds and provided them with medical, recreational, and
some educational facilities.
The uprisings attracted worldwide attention. In mid-1961 the UN
General Assembly appointed a subcommittee to investigate the situation
in Angola, and it produced a report unfavorable to Portuguese rule. The
events also helped mobilize the various liberation groups to renewed
action.
Angola - ANGOLAN INSURGENCY
The rebels who had coordinated the 1961 uprisings later began to
undertake effective military organization. The several nationalist
organizations set up training camps and attracted external military aid.
In the summer of 1961, for example, the UPA, which had strong support
among the Bakongo, formed the National Liberation Army of Angola (Exército
de Libertação Nacional de Angola -- ELNA), a force of about 5,000
untrained and poorly armed troops. Subsequently, groups of Angolans went
to Morocco and Tunisia to train with Algerian forces, then fighting for
their own nation's independence. After winning its independence in 1962,
Algeria supplied the ELNA with arms and ammunition.
In March 1962, the UPA joined with another small Kongo nationalist
group, the Democratic Party of Angola (Partido Democrático de Angola --
PDA) to form the FNLA. The FNLA immediately proclaimed the Revolutionary
Government of Angola in Exile (Govêrno Revolucionário de Angola no Exílo--GRAE).
The president of the FNLA/GRAE, Holden Roberto, declared his
organization to be the sole authority in charge of anti-Portuguese
military operations inside Angola. Consequently, he repeatedly refused
to merge his organization with any other budding nationalist movement,
preferring to build the FNLA/GRAE into an all-Angolan mass movement over
which he would preside.
By 1963, with training and arms from Algeria, bases in Zaire, and
funds from the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the FNLA/GRAE
military and political organization was becoming formidable. Still, it
made no significant territorial gains.
Meanwhile, the MPLA, which had been behind the initial uprisings in
Luanda in February 1961, had suffered a great deal from Portuguese
reprisals, with many of its militant leaders dead or in prison. The
rebuilding of the MPLA was substantially aided in 1962 by the arrival of
Agostinho Neto, an assimilated Mbundu physician who had spent several
years in jail for expressing his political views and had recently
escaped from detention in Portugal. Neto attempted to bring together the
MPLA and Roberto's FNLA/GRAE, but his efforts were thwarted by Roberto's
insistence that his organization represented all Angolans.
Initially based in Kinshasa, as was the FNLA/GRAE, in 1963 the MPLA
shifted its headquarters to Brazzaville (in present-day Congo) because
of Roberto's close ties to Zairian president Mobutu Sese Seko. From
Brazzaville, the MPLA launched small guerrilla operations in Cabinda,
but the movement was militarily far weaker than the FNLA. Moreover, it
lacked an operations base from which it could reach the densely
populated north and center of Angola.
As it dragged on into 1964 and 1965, the conflict became stalemated.
Hampered by insufficient financial assistance, the insurgents were
unable to maintain offensive operations against a fully equipped
Portuguese military force that had increased to a strength of more than
40,000. The FNLA settled into a mountain stronghold straddling the
border of Uíge and Zaire provinces and continued to carry on guerrilla
activities. The insurgents found it increasingly difficult to sustain
the cohesion they had achieved after 1961 and 1962. Between 1963 and
1965, differences in leadership, programs, and following between the
FNLA and the MPLA led to open hostilities that seriously weakened each
group's strength and effectiveness.
Angola - Ascendancy of the MPLA
In 1964 the MPLA reorganized and increased its efforts to reinforce
its units fighting in the Dembos areas. The improved efficiency of the
movement's political and military operations attracted support from
other African countries, the OAU, and several non-African countries, all
of which had previously scorned the MPLA because of its internal
problems.
The growing military success of the MPLA in the mid-1960s was largely
the product of support from the governments of Tanzania and Zambia,
which permitted the organization to open offices in their capitals. More
important, Tanzania and Zambia allowed the transport of Chinese and
Soviet weapons across their territories to the Angolan border. Because
of the influx of weapons, in 1965 the MPLA was able to open a military
front in eastern Angola, from which it launched a major offensive the
following year. By this time, the MPLA had become a greater threat to
Portugal's colonial rule than the FNLA.
In June 1966, the MPLA supported an unsuccessful coup against
President Marien Ngouabi of Congo, whereupon activities of all guerrilla
groups in Brazzaville were curtailed. After the MPLA moved its
headquarters to Lusaka, Zambia, in 1968, it conducted intensive
guerrilla warfare in the Angolan provinces of Moxico and Cuando Cubango.
Beginning in 1969, attacks in Lunda and Bié provinces forced the
Portuguese to resettle many inhabitants of these areas in fortified
villages. Wherever MPLA guerrillas were in control, they created new
political structures, mainly village action committees. Politically
indoctrinated MPLA guerrillas, some of whom had received military
training in Eastern Europe, ranged all over eastern Angola. By 1968 the
MPLA was able to hold regional party conferences inside the country.
The MPLA had a political advantage over the FNLA because of the links
of MPLA leaders to the international ideological left. Its multiracial,
Marxist-Leninist, and nationalist (versus ethnic or regional) views
appealed to liberals in Europe and North America. Because of his radical
orientation, however, Neto failed to get help from the United States.
During the mid-1960s, the MPLA's ties to the communist world intensified
as MPLA military cadres traveled to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia,
and Bulgaria. Beginning in 1965, the MPLA began to receive training from
Cuban forces.
Angola - Emergence of UNITA
The MPLA and FNLA faced a third competitor beginning in 1966 with the
emergence of UNITA. UNITA first came to international attention when, in
December 1966, a group of its guerrillas attacked the town of Teixeira
de Sousa (renamed Luau), succeeding in interrupting the Benguela Railway
and stopping Zambian and Zairian copper shipments for a week. The new
organization was formed by Jonas Savimbi, the former foreign minister
and main representative of the Ovimbundu within the FNLA/GRAE, whose
disagreements with Roberto over policy issues led to Savimbi's
resignation in July 1964. Savimbi had traveled to China in 1965, where
he and several of his followers received four months of military
training and became disciples of Maoism. Perhaps the strongest impact of
Maoism on UNITA has been Savimbi's insistence on self-sufficiency and
maintenance of the organization's leadership within Angolan borders.
Upon his return to Angola in 1966, Savimbi turned down an invitation
from the MPLA to join its organization as a rank-and-file member and
moved UNITA into the bush, where the organization began its guerrilla
war with a small amount of Chinese military aid transported via Tanzania
and Zambia.
Although UNITA lacked educated cadres and arms, it attracted the
largest following of the three movements from the Ovimbundu, who
comprised 31 percent of the population. And, unlike the MPLA and FNLA,
UNITA enjoyed the benefits of a unified and unchallenged leadership
directed by Savimbi. Moreover, in contrast to the mestiço-dominated,
urban-based MPLA, Savimbi presented UNITA as the representative of black
peasants. UNITA's constitution proclaimed that the movement would strive
for a government proportionally representative of all ethnic groups,
clans, and classes. His Maoist-oriented philosophy led Savimbi to
concentrate on raising the political consciousness of the peasants, most
of whom were illiterate and widely dispersed. Savimbi preached
selfreliance and founded cooperatives for food production and village
self-defense units. He set up a pyramidal structure of elected councils
grouping up to sixteen villages that--at least in theory-- articulated
demands through a political commissar to a central committee, whose
thirty-five members were to be chosen every four years at a congress.
In the early 1970s, UNITA began infiltrating the major population
centers, slowly expanding its area of influence westward beyond Bié.
There, however, it collided with the eastward thrust of the MPLA, which
was sending Soviet-trained political cadres to work among the Ovimbundu
and specifically with the Chokwe, Lwena, Luchazi, and Lunda, exploiting
potential ethnic antagonisms.
On the eve of independence, UNITA controlled many of the rich,
food-producing central and southern provinces and was therefore able to
regulate the flow of food to the rest of the country. At the time, it
claimed the allegiance of about 40 percent of the population.
Angola - Liberation Movements in Cabinda
Several movements advocating a separate status for Cabinda were
founded in the early 1960s, all of them basing their claims on their own
interpretation of Cabindan history. The most important of these was the
Movement for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (Mouvement pour la
Libération de l'Enclave de Cabinda--MLEC), led by Luis Ranque Franque,
which had evolved out of various émigré associations in Brazzaville.
In December 1961, a faction of the MLEC headed by Henriques Tiago Nzita
seceded to form the Action Committee for the National Union of Cabindans
(Comité d'Action d'Union Nationale des Cabindais--CAUNC). A third
group, Alliance of Mayombe (Alliance de Mayombe--Alliama), led by António
Eduardo Sozinho, represented the Mayombe (also spelled Maiombe), the
ethnic minority of the enclave's interior. The three groups resolved
their differences and united in 1963 as the Front for the Liberation of
the Enclave of Cabinda (Frente para a Libertação do Enclave de
Cabinda--FLEC). When the MPLA began its military incursions into Cabinda
in 1964, it encountered hostility not only from coastal members of FLEC
who were living in and near the town of Cabinda but also from Mayombe
peasants, whose region near the Congo frontier MPLA guerrillas had to
cross.
Emulating the FNLA, FLEC created a government in exile on January 10,
1967, in the border town of Tshela in Zaire. Reflecting earlier
divisions, however, the faction headed by Nzita established the
Revolutionary Cabindan Committee (Comité Révolutionnaire Cabindais) in
the Congolese town of Pointe Noire.
Angola - Portuguese Economic Interests and Resistance to Angolan Independence
Portugal's motivation to fight Angolan nationalism was based on
economic factors. Salazar had instituted an economic system in 1935 that
was designed to exploit the colonies for the benefit of Portugal by
excluding or strictly limiting foreign investments. But by April 1965,
Portugal faced increasing defense expenditures in order to resist the
growing military strength of the nationalist movements, the MPLA in
particular. This turn of events forced Salazar to permit the influx of
foreign capital, which resulted in rapid economic growth in Angola.
One of the most lucrative foreign investments was made by the Cabinda
Gulf Oil Company (Cabgoc), a subsidiary of the United States-based
company Gulf Oil (now Chevron), which found oil in the waters off
Cabinda. Other economic concerns included iron, diamonds, and the
manufacturing sector, all of which experienced an enormous increase in
production from the mid-1960s to 1974. By this time, Angola had become
far more valuable economically to Portugal than Mozambique or any of its
other colonies. Consequently, Angola's economic growth reinforced
Portugal's determination to refuse Angolan independence.
One of the most far-reaching and damaging features of the Portuguese
counterinsurgency was the implementation of a resettlement program in
1967. By grouping dispersed Africans into large villages organized by
the military in eastern and northwestern Angola, the Portuguese hoped to
achieve organized local defense against guerrilla attacks and to prevent
insurgent infiltration and mobilization among peasants. Outside the
fighting zones, the Portuguese used resettlement villages to promote
economic and social development as a means of winning African support.
The Portuguese further controlled the African population by establishing
a network of spies and informers in each resettlement village.
By 1974 more than 1 million peasants had been moved into resettlement
villages. The widespread disruption in rural Angola caused by the
resettlement program, which failed to stop the insurgency, had profound
and long-term effects on the rural population. The breakdown in the
agricultural sector in particular was so pervasive that rural
reconstruction and development in independent Angola had, as of 1988,
never really succeeded. The Portuguese armed forces gained an advantage
over the insurgents by the end of 1973 through the use of napalm and
defoliants. The MPLA suffered the most from counterinsurgency
operations, which were concentrated in the east, where the MPLA had its
greatest strength. The MPLA's military failures also caused further
conflicts between its political and military wings, as guerrilla
commanders blamed the MPLA political leadership for the organization's
declining military fortunes. In addition, the Soviet Union's support for
Neto was never wholehearted.
The FNLA, which fought from Zairian bases, made little progress
inside Angola. Furthermore, the Kinshasa government, reacting to a 1969
Portuguese raid on a Zairian border village that the FNLA used as a
staging base, shut down three border camps, making it even more
difficult for the FNLA to launch actions into Angola. Moreover, internal
dissent among FNLA troops exploded into a mutiny in 1972; Mobutu sent
Zairian troops to suppress the mutiny and save his friend Roberto from
being overthrown. Although the Zairian army reorganized, retrained, and
equipped FNLA guerrillas in the aftermath of the mutiny, the FNLA never
posed a serious threat to the Portuguese.
UNITA was also suffering from a variety of problems by the end of
1973. Militarily it was the weakest nationalist movement. The
organization's military arm lacked sufficient weaponry. Many of its
Chokwe members, who did not have the ethnic loyalty to the organization
felt by the Ovimbundu, went over to the better-armed FNLA and MPLA.
Angola - The Portuguese Coup d'Etat and the End of the Colonial Era
During the early 1970s, its African wars--including fierce
nationalist struggles in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau--were draining
Portugal's resources. By 1974 the Portuguese had lost 11,000 military
personnel in Africa. On April 25, 1974, a group of disillusioned
military officers, led by the former governor and commander in
Guinea-Bissau, General António de Spínola, overthrew the Lisbon
government.
On July 14, Spínola acceded to the wishes of officers who favored
independence for the Portuguese territories in Africa and promised to
take steps toward their freedom. At the end of July, Spínola appointed
Admiral Rosa Coutinho as head of a military council formed to oversee
Angola's independence. Also during this time, UNITA and the MPLA signed
cease-fire agreements with Portugal; the FNLA initially moved military
units into northern Angola, but later it too signed a cease-fire. The
liberation movements set up offices in the major population centers of
the country, eager to mobilize support and gain political control.
The approximately 335,000 whites in Angola, who had no political
experience and organization under years of Portuguese authoritarian
rule, were unable to assert a unilateral independence. In addition,
their security was severely threatened as the new Spínola government
began releasing political prisoners and authorized Angolans to organize,
assemble, and speak freely. In July 1974, white frustration exploded
into violence as Luandan whites rioted, pillaged, and massacred African
slum dwellers. The Portuguese army quickly suppressed the riot, but when
the Portuguese government announced that it intended to form a
provisional Angolan government that would include representatives of
both the nationalist movements and the white population, further rioting
by whites erupted in Luanda.
Angola - COALITION, THE TRANSITIONAL GOVERNMENT, AND CIVIL WAR
In the wake of the coup in Portugal, there remained a wide split in
the Angolan nationalist movement. Lisbon was anxious to relinquish power
to a unified government and took an active role in bringing about a
reconciliation of the three liberation movements. In addition, at the
urgings of the OAU, Neto, Roberto, and Savimbi made several attempts to
form a common front. At a meeting in Kenya in early January 1975, they
recognized their parties as independent entities with equal rights and
responsibilities, agreed that a period of transition was necessary
before independence could be achieved (during which they would work with
the Portuguese to lay the foundation for an independent Angola), and
pledged to maintain Angolan territorial integrity. They also agreed that
only their three organizations would be included in a unity government.
FLEC, with its goal of a Cabindan secession, did not support territorial
integrity and was excluded. In addition, an MPLA splinter group led by
Daniel Chipenda was not considered a legitimate nationalist movement,
and it too was excluded.
Meeting in Alvor, Portugal, on January 10, the Lisbon government and
the nationalist movements produced an agreement setting independence for
November 11, 1975. Under the Alvor Agreement, a transitional government
headed by a Portuguese high commissioner was formed; it included the
MPLA, UNITA, and the FNLA.
One factor that influenced these agreements was the role of Admiral
Coutinho. His pro-MPLA proclivities threatened the delicate balance that
the liberation movements had achieved. Angered by his activities, Spínola
removed him at the end of January 1975.
On January 31, 1975, the transitional government was sworn in, but
the coalition, based on a fragile truce, had serious difficulties, as
the leaders of its three member organizations bickered over a number of
issues, including personal power. Within days, localized conflicts
between MPLA and FNLA forces were renewed. Moreover, on February 13 the
MPLA attacked the Luanda office of Chipenda's faction, after which
Chipenda joined the FNLA and became its assistant secretary general.
Angola - Foreign Intervention
During the transition period, foreign powers were becoming
increasingly involved as the situation in Angola rapidly expanded into
an East-West power struggle. In late January, a high-level United States
government policy-making body authorized a grant of US$300,000 to the
pro-Western FNLA, which at the time seemed to be the strongest of the
three movements. In March the Soviet Union countered by increasing arms
deliveries to the MPLA, and by midJuly that group had become appreciably
stronger militarily. Alarmed, the United States increased funding to the
FNLA and, for the first time, funded UNITA. Cuba, which had been aiding
the MPLA since the mid-1960s, sent military instructors in the late
spring of 1975. By early October, more Cuban military personnel had
arrived, this time primarily combat troops; their total then probably
reached between 1,100 and 1,500.
In April the presidents of Zambia, Tanzania, and Botswana decided to
support Savimbi as leader of an Angolan government of national unity,
believing that UNITA attracted the widest popular support in Angola.
Savimbi also had the support of some francophone states and of Nigeria
and Ghana. Some of these countries later withdrew that support when the
OAU pleaded for reconciliation and adherence to the Alvor Agreement.
Angola - Collapse of the Transitional Government
Inevitably, the delicate coalition came apart as the leaders of the
three movements failed to resolve fundamental policy disagreements or
control their competition for personal power. Although the OAU brought
Neto, Roberto, and Savimbi together in June 1975 for negotiations that
produced a draft constitution, heavy fighting broke out in early July
and spread swiftly throughout the country. Within a week, the MPLA had
forced the FNLA out of Luanda, while the FNLA had eliminated all
remaining MPLA presence in the northern towns of Uíge and Zaire
provinces. UNITA formally declared war on the MPLA on August 1, 1975. A
year earlier, the MPLA had created its military wing, the People's Armed
Forces for the Liberation of Angola (Forças Armadas Populares de
Libertação de Angola -- FAPLA), which became the core of the
postindependence army. The FNLA and UNITA, recognizing that their
separate military forces were not strong enough to fight the MPLA,
formed an alliance and withdrew their ministers from the provisional
government in Luanda, heralding full-scale civil war. The United States
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), meanwhile, initiated a covert program
to have American and European mercenaries fight with the FNLA.
On August 14, 1975, the transitional government collapsed. Portugal
ordered the dissolution of the coalition government and announced the
assumption of all executive powers by the acting Portuguese high
commissioner in Angola. In reality, MPLA officials filled those
ministries abandoned by the FNLA and UNITA, thereby allowing the MPLA to
extend its political control throughout the Luanda government.
Angola - South African Intervention
South Africa's interest in Angolan affairs began during the
Portuguese colonial period, especially after 1966 when the insurgency
spread to the east. South Africa's military and intelligence services
cooperated closely with those of Portugal. South Africa and Portugal
opened a joint command center in Cuito Cuanavale in southeast Angola in
1968, and from there South African troops participated in actions
against Angolan nationalist guerrillas as well as against southern
Angola-based guerrillas of the South West Africa People's Organization
(SWAPO), the Namibian group fighting for independence from South African
rule.
The collapse of Portugal's empire and the prospect of black rule in
Angola (and Mozambique) caused enormous concern in Pretoria. Especially
troubling to the South African government was the leftist orientation of
several of these nationalist movements. Thus, in August 1975 South
African military forces came to the aid of the FNLA-UNITA alliance and
occupied the Ruacaná hydroelectric complex and other installations on
the Cunene River. On October 23, a force of 300 South African troops,
assisted by about 3,000 South African-trained Angolans, invaded Angola.
They advanced rapidly north for nearly 1,000 kilometers and came within
100 kilometers of Luanda. This force was later increased to as many as
10,000, but most of these troops were Angolans under South Africa's
military command.
The South African invasion had several international consequences. It
prompted a massive increase in the flow of Soviet military supplies to
the MPLA and caused Cuba to send thousands of men to Angola in defense
of the government. Moreover, because the United States was supporting
the same factions as the South African regime, the United States
involvement drew harsh criticism from the international community.
Furthermore, many African countries that until then had opposed the
MPLA, including Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana, and Sudan, reversed themselves
and recognized the MPLA government.
Angola - INDEPENDENCE AND THE RISE OF THE MPLA GOVERNMENT
Unlike Portugal's other African possessions, which had made
relatively peaceful transitions to independence months earlier, by
November 11, 1975, Angola was in chaos. In the absence of a central
government to which Portuguese officials could relinquish control,
Portugal refused to recognize any faction; instead, it ceded
independence to the people of Angola. The MPLA subsequently announced
the establishment of its government in Luanda and called the territory
it controlled the People's Republic of Angola.
The FNLA and UNITA announced a separate regime with headquarters in
the southern city of Huambo and called their territory the Democratic
People's Republic of Angola. But because of continuing hostility between
them, the FNLA and UNITA did not set up a government until December
1975, nor did they attempt to fuse their armies. Moreover, the
FNLA-UNITA alliance received no formal recognition from other states,
mostly because of its South African support. In general, the
international community, particularly other African states, viewed South
African involvement in favor of the FNLA and UNITA as a legitimization
of Soviet and Cuban support for the MPLA.
By January 1976, with the support of some 10,000 to 12,000 Cuban
troops and Soviet arms worth US$200 million, it was clear that the MPLA
had emerged as the dominant military power. By February 1976, the FNLA
and its mercenaries had been defeated in northern Angola; under
international pressure, South African troops had withdrawn into Namibia;
and the MPLA was in control in Cabinda. Furthermore, United States
assistance to the FNLA and UNITA ceased following the passage by the
United States Senate of the Clark Amendment, which prohibited all direct
and indirect military or paramilitary assistance to any Angolan group.
The OAU finally recognized the MPLA regime as Angola's official
government, as did the UN and Portugal and more than eighty other
nations.
Angola - Transformation into a Marxist-Leninist Party and Internal Dissent
Although Marxist influences were evident before independence,
Marxism-Leninism had not been the MPLA's stated ideology. But during a
plenum of the MPLA Central Committee in October 1976, the party formally
adopted Marxism-Leninism. The plenum also resulted in several major
organizational decisions, including the creation of a secretariat, a
commission to direct and control the Department of Political
Orientation, and the Department of Information and Propaganda. The
National Party School, founded in February 1977, trained party cadres to
fill national and provincial party positions, and at the First Party
Congress in December 1977, the MPLA transformed itself into a vanguard
Marxist-Leninist party to be called the Popular Movement for the
Liberation of AngolaWorkers ' Party (Movimento Popular de Libertação
de Angola-Partido de Trabalho--MPLA-PT).
The estimated 110,000 members of the MPLA-PT had widely diverse
backgrounds and political ideas, which made factionalism inevitable. The
Neto regime soon faced problems generated by independent left-wing
organizations and militant workers. Neto made the first public reference
to internal dissent on February 6, 1976, when he denounced a
demonstration that had protested the termination of a popular radio
program that had been critical of the new government and that had
demanded rule by workers and peasants. The government arrested some of
the demonstrators and launched a major crackdown on opposition elements.
One of these was the so-called Active Revolt, a faction founded in 1973
that comprised intellectuals of varying political orientation
andincluded the MPLA's first president, Mário de Andrade, and other
prominent MPLA leaders. Another opposition element was the Organization
of Angolan Communists (Organização dos Comunistas de Angola -- OCA), a
Maoist movement founded in 1975 that attacked the MPLA as a bourgeois
party, condemned Soviet imperialism, and called for the withdrawal of
all Cuban forces.
Angola - Shaba Invasion and the Nitista Plot
Several incidents in the mid- to late 1970s contributed to the MPLA
regime's reliance on Soviet military aid and the presence of Cuban
troops. The first incident occurred on March 8, 1977, when the National
Front for the Liberation of the Congo (Front National pour la Libération
du Congo--FNLC), a political opposition group hostile to Zaire's
President Mobutu, launched an attack from Angola on Zaire's economically
vital Shaba Province. Although the Zaire government halted the invasion
with the aid of Moroccan troops, Mobutu accused the MPLA of having
instigated the attack. In return, Neto charged Mobutu with harboring and
militarily supporting both the FNLA and FLEC. The MPLA government, faced
with continuing border violations and engaged in recriminations with the
Mobutu regime, requested and received an increase in the number of Cuban
troops.
Another incident brought factionalism in the MPLA leadership into
sharp focus. Two ultraleftists, minister of interior and Central
Committee member Nito Alves and Central Committee member José Van Dúnem,
had become critical of the government's economic policies, which both
men considered too moderate. They also criticized the government
leadership for its heavy representation of whites and mestiços.
In October 1976, the MPLA condemned Alves for factionalism and abolished
his ministry. The government set up a commission of inquiry that
investigated reports that Van Dúnem and Alves had purposely caused food
shortages to stir up discontent. The commission found the men guilty and
expelled them from the Central Committee in May 1977. Later that month,
Alves and Van Dúnem led an uprising in the capital and called for mass
demonstrations outside the presidential palace. The uprising failed, but
Alves, Van Dúnem, and their followers seized a number of senior
government leaders, whom they later killed.
The Neto regime, already alarmed by party factionalism and the number
of members who did not actively support the party's MarxistLeninist
objectives, conducted a massive purge. It reorganized the party and the
mass organizations, many of which had supported Alves and Van Dúnem.
The commissars and directing committees in eight provinces, appointed by
Alves when he had been minister of interior, were removed. Thousands of
Alves supporters, referred to as Nitistas, were dismissed from their
positions and detained. All mass organizations were made subordinate to
the MPLA. Finally, to achieve these changes, national and provincial
restructuring committees were set up. By December 1980, the party had
shrunk from 110,000 members to about 32,000 members.
Angola - Strengthening Ties with the Soviet Union and Its Allies
The Nitista plot shook the Neto regime severely and was a stark
reminder of the young government's vulnerability in the face of internal
factionalism and South African destabilization efforts. In the aftermath
of the failed coup attempt, the government came to the realization that
its survival depended on continued support from the Soviet Union and its
allies. Consequently, the government's reliance on Soviet and Cuban
military support increased, as did its commitment to Marxist-Leninist
ideology.
A new phase of Angola's formal relationship with the Soviet Union had
already begun in October 1976, when Neto signed the Treaty of Friendship
and Cooperation with the Soviet Union pledging both signatories to
mutual military cooperation. The treaty was significant in global terms
in that it gave the Soviet Union the right to use Angolan airports and
Luanda harbor for military purposes, enabling the Soviet Union to
project its forces throughout the South Atlantic region.
For the Soviet Union, its intervention in Angola was a major foreign
policy coup. Soviet leaders correctly judged that the United States,
because of its recent Vietnam experience, would be reluctant to
intervene heavily in a distant, low-priority area. Conditions would thus
be created in which the Soviet Union could exert its influence and gain
a firm foothold in southern Africa. In addition, South African
involvement in Angola convinced most members of the OAU that Soviet
support for the Angolan government was a necessary counterweight to
South African destabilization efforts. Furthermore, United States
support for UNITA during the civil war had tainted the United States in
the eyes of the OAU and many Western governments, which perceived a
South African-American link.
Beginning in 1978, periodic South African incursions into southern
Angola, coupled with UNITA's northward expansion in the east, forced the
Angolan government to increase expenditures on Soviet military aid and
to depend even more on military personnel from the Soviet Union, the
German Democratic Republic (East Germany), and Cuba.
The Angolan government's relationships with the Soviet Union and Cuba
were linked in some ways but distinct in other respects. Clearly, the
Soviets and Cubans were both attracted to the Angolan government's
Marxist-Leninist orientation, and Cuba generally followed the Soviet
Union's lead in the latter's quest for international influence.
Nonetheless, Cuba had its own agenda in Angola, where Cuban leader Fidel
Castro believed that by supporting an ideologically compatible
revolutionary movement he could acquire international status independent
of the Soviet Union.
Although Soviet and Cuban interests in Angola usually converged,
there were also disagreements, mostly because of the factionalism within
the MPLA-PT. On the one hand, the Soviet Union seemed to have favored
Minister of Interior Alves's more radical viewpoints over those of Neto
and probably supported the Nitista coup attempt in 1977. The Cubans, on
the other hand, played an active military role in foiling the coup
attempt and increased their troop presence in Angola shortly thereafter
in support of the Neto regime.
Angola - Economic Problems and the Implementation of Socialist Policies
One of the priorities of the Neto regime after independence was to
repair the country's infrastructure, which had been shattered by the
liberation struggle and the civil war. There had been extensive damage
to bridges, roads, and transport vehicles, and most undamaged vehicles
had been taken out of the country by the Portuguese. With no means of
transporting food and other essential supplies to many areas of the
country, the distribution system collapsed. Furthermore, a good part of
the economy disintegrated when most of the Portuguese settlers,
including skilled workers and government and economic development
administrators, left the country at independence.
Perhaps more in response to the economic emergency than as a result
of the party's long-term commitment to a planned socialist economy, the
government created a large state sector as stipulated in a resolution
passed during the October 1976 party plenum. Earlier that year, the
government allowed state intervention in the management of private
companies that had suffered most from the Portuguese withdrawal and
passed the Law on State Intervention in March 1976, which provided for
the formal nationalization of private companies. As a result, a large
part of the economy, including abandoned commercial farms, the mining
industry, and the banking sector, became publicly owned. The government,
however, acknowledging the massive reconstruction task it faced,
continued to encourage and support the private sector and to welcome
foreign investment.
The MPLA leadership gave urgent priority to the revival of the
agricultural sector, which employed about 75 percent of the economically
active population. But the government's rejection of market incentives,
the massive dislocations caused by warfare, the disorganization of the
new bureaucracy, and hostility among the peasants to imposed
collectivization of their land doomed most government efforts. Once a
food exporter, Angola was forced to import an ever-increasing amount of
food.
Although the agricultural sector barely continued to produce, the
Angolan economy survived because of the oil produced by and sold to
Western private enterprise. The honest and straightforward approach of
the Angolan government toward its Western investors earned it the
admiration of its partners and resulted in the inflow of capital not
only in the oil industry but also in mining and fishing.
Angola - The UNITA Insurgency and the South African Threat
In addition to severe economic disruptions, in the late 1970s the
Angolan government was also challenged by the UNITA insurgency. UNITA
was able to survive after the war for independence, first, because of
the continued loyalty of some of its traditional Ovimbundu supporters,
but, more important, because of military and logistical support from
South Africa. Pretoria established its relationship with UNITA for
several reasons. Vehemently anticommunist, South Africa felt threatened
by the MPLA's turn toward the Soviet Union and its allies. The South
Africans also wished to retaliate for Luanda's support of SWAPO.
Furthermore, by helping UNITA shut down the Benguela Railway, which
linked the mining areas of Zaire and Zambia to Atlantic ports, Pretoria
made these two countries more dependent on South Africa's transportation
system and thus more responsive to South African wishes.
In support of UNITA leader Savimbi, the South African Defense Force
(SADF) set up bases in Cuando Cubango Province in southeastern Angola.
Savimbi established his headquarters in Jamba and enjoyed air cover
provided by the South African air force from bases in Namibia. The SADF
also trained UNITA guerrillas in Namibia and provided UNITA with arms,
fuel, and food. On occasion, South African ground forces provided direct
support during UNITA battles with FAPLA.
Damaging though the UNITA assaults were, the greatest threat to
Angola's security in the late 1970s was posed by the SADF. Following its
withdrawal from Angola in mid-1976 after its involvement in the war for
independence, the SADF routinely launched small-scale incursions from
Namibia into southern Angola in pursuit of SWAPO guerrillas. The first
large-scale South African incursion into Angola took place in May 1978,
when the SADF raided a Namibian refugee camp at Cassinga and killed
hundreds of people. By the end of 1979, following the SADF bombing of
Lubango, the capital of Huíla Province, an undeclared border war
between South Africa and Angola was in full force.
Angola - The Final Days of the Neto Regime
