One of the main aims of the Portuguese Junta of National Salvation and the first Provisional Government which it set up following the 25 April Lisbon coup was to extricate Portugal from its disastrous wars in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau and find more subtle ways to defend Portuguese and Western interests in the 'overseas provinces'. The new rulers felt that events had proved the impossibility of an outright military victory and that further pursuit of the wars would carry grave risks, both political and economic, for Portuguese capitalism.
The wars had, after all, dragged on—to little avail from the Portuguese point of view—for nearly one and a half decades. They began in Angola, in February 1961, when African farmers in Kasanje rose in rebellion against the Portuguese system of forcing them to grow cotton and sell it at prices well below those fetched on the world market a system which played a decisive role in the construction of Portugal's giant textile industry. On 4 February the Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola (MPLA—Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) staged an unsuccessful raid on Luanda's central prison in the hope of releasing the political prisoners incarcerated within its walls. Five weeks later Northern Angola was swept by a massive peasant uprising, mainly spontaneous, but led to some extent by the Uniao de Populacoes de Angola (UPA—Union of Angolan Peoples), the antecedent of today's Frente Nacional de Libertacao de Angola (FNLA—National Liberation Front of Angola). The 1961 revolt was crushed by the methods of the pogrom. An indiscriminate slaughter of Africans by white settlers and troops left up to 50,000 dead.
Guerrilla warfare began again under MPLA leadership in 1963 in the Angolan enclave of Cabinda, and in the east in 1966. War began in Guinea-Bissau in 1963, and in Mozambique in 1964.
By 1973 the wars had become a quagmire for the Portuguese. Three-quarters of the land area of Guinea-Bissau was under the control of the Partido Africano para a Independencia da Guine e Cabo Verde (PAIGC—African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verdes), and in September 1973 a national assembly elected throughout the liberated zones voted to declare Guinea-Bissau an independent republic. By 25 April, over 80 governments had recognised the new state.
1973 also saw the Mozambican movement FRELIMO (Frente de Libertacao de Mocambique—Mozambique Liberation Front) spreading the liberation war from the northern provinces of Tete, Cabo Delgado and Niassa into the strategic 'white heartlands' of Manica e Sofala, threatening the port of Beira, Mozambique's second biggest city, and the road and rail routes to the landlocked white settler regime in Rhodesia.
Portuguese units were also facing three liberation movements in Angola—the MPLA, the FNLA and a smaller group, UNITA (Uniao Nacional para a independencia Total de Angola—National Union for the Total Independence of Angola).
Some 150,000 Portuguese troops were committed to these wars, morale among the soldiers—young peasants and workers conscripted for a four year spell in the armed forces—was falling fast, and anti-war moods were spreading widely among the Portuguese people, who, despite the repression of the Caetano dictatorship, held demonstrations against the regime's colonialist policies.
The wars were also draining the country dry. Fifty per cent of the government budget was being lavished on military expenditure—a vast proportion for a backward country like Portugal, where 30 per cent of the people were still illiterate, where funds were badly needed to industrialise and modernise the country, and where the lack of jobs had forced 800,000 Portuguese (out of a total population of 9 million) to emigrate to France and other countries in search of employment. At the same time, war spending pushed the inflation rate to 23 per cent in 1973, the third highest in Europe, undermining the ability of Portuguese capitalism to compete in the world market.
But, despite the economic and political overhead costs of the wars, Portugal's post-25 April rulers did not plan to concede immediate, unconditional independence to the peoples of Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, the Cape Verdes, Principe and Sao Tome. Nor did they intend to immediately withdraw their armies. On the contrary, they hoped to maintain Portugal's presence in the African colonies, albeit in a more disguised manner.
In the first few weeks after the coup the junta based its colonial policy on the perspective outlined by General Spinola, the new president, in his book Portugal e o Futuro (Portugal and the Future), which, two months before the coup, had proposed the formation of puppet multiracial governments in the colonies within a 'Lusitanian federation' of Portuguese states, where the decisive powers would remain in Lisbon's hands. Spinola strongly opposed allowing the colonies to have independence. He wrote: 'We are among those who propose the overseas provinces as the essential prerequisite for our survival as a free and independent nation. Without the African territories the country will be reduced to a meaningless thing in a Europe which is assuming the proportions of a giant and without the necessary cards to play within the concert of nations and we will end up by being in existence in a merely formal way within a political framework in which our real independence will be totally compromised.'
There can be little doubt that Spinola, who had been governor and army commander in Guinea-Bissau and deputy chief of staff of the armed forces under the old dictatorship, had every intention, once president, of finding ways to preserve Portuguese interests in Africa. Indeed, he hoped to convince the liberation movements to lay down their arms, sign ceasefires, and participate in Portuguese controlled referendums on the future of their countries, without Portugal having to make any commitment to accepting their independence.
Spinola and the junta calculated that if the liberation movements accepted this scheme, the colonial administrations would gain the time badly needed to cultivate a reliable neocolonial force to whom 'independence' could one day be safely entrusted. In the meantime every encouragement was given to the few African political leaders who had been hostile to the liberation struggles in the hope that they could emerge as powerful rivals to the liberation movements. Typical of these traitors to the national liberation struggle was Joanna Simiao, who founded GUMO (Grupo Unido de Mocambique—United Group of Mozambique) and later became a leader of the Partido da Coalizao Nacional (PCN—National Coalition Party), launched on 24 August by five small parties with the avowed aim of challenging FRELIMO.
The same happened in Angola. On 21 June, for example, there occurred the inaugural meeting of the Uniao Nacionalista Angolana (UNA—Angolan Nationalist Union), led by an old-time collaborator with the Caetano regime, Angelino Alberto. Another such movement, backed by liberal whites and conservative middle-class Africans, was founded in early September—the Frente de Unidade Angolana (FUA—Angolan Unity Front), led by Fernando Falcao, a white businessman who now sits in the Angolan government.
Spinola's colonialist policies were strikingly demonstrated by his choice of General Silveiro Marques, a hard-line Salazarist, as his governor of Angola, and by the failure of the Marques administration to disband the PIDE (secret police). Marques had, in fact, been Salazar's governor of Angola from 1962 to 1966.
Spinola and Marques gave time to the extremist white settler elements to organise themselves—often with the connivance of members of the colonial administration or members of the PIDE—and for mercenaries to be recruited outside the country, particularly in South Africa. As early as July, a Portuguese officer named Mendoca was said to be organising a secret army of up to 20,000 men called the Resistencia Unida de Angola (RUA—United Resistance of Angola).
Savage pogrom-like attacks were launched in July and August against African workers in the Angolan capital, Luanda, by white racialist mobs encouraged by groups like the RUA, the FRA (Frente de Resistencia Angolana—Angolan Resistance Front), the ESINA (Exercito de Salvacao e Intervencao Nacional Angolana—Army of Salvation and National Angolan Intervention) and the Partido Cristao-Democratico Angolana (PCDA—Christian Democratic Party of Angola). The FRA, which compares itself to the Algerian OAS, even went so far as to inform the press on 24 August that it was planning a coup.
Extremist white terror groups and vigilantes were responsible for the killing of hundreds of Africans. In the month of July alone, over 300 were killed in riots in the Luanda suburbs according to the 27 July Observer, and the 9 August issue of the Lisbon daily A Capital reported that about 40,000 Africans had fled the terror in Luanda for the rural areas. On 17 August A Capital reported that 37 had been killed since the beginning of August. In all these massacres the overwhelming majority of victims were black.
Spinola's colonialist policies also aided separatist tendencies in Angola like FLEC (Frente de Libertacao do Enclave de Cabinda—Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda), a tribalist movement founded in 1963 which is out to defend the large imperialist oil interests in Cabinda and threatens Angola with national dismemberment and a repeat of the tragedies of Katanga and Biafra. After 25 April, Spinola reappointed Brigadier Temudo Barata, an old Caetano supporter, to his post as governor of Cabinda and commander of the Portuguese troops there. Barata proceeded to give every assistance he could to the secessionists.
By early July the junta's colonial strategy, which had been faithfully applied by the first provisional government of Prime Minister Palma Carlos, was in ruins. None of the liberation movements had agreed to ceasefires—with the minor exception of UNITA, which laid down its arms on 14 June. FRELIMO, the PAIGC, the MPLA and the FNLA all demanded a clear commitment from Lisbon that it would accept the independence of their countries and repudiated the idea that independence would be subject to the outcome of a referendum.
It seems probable that disputes broke out in the junta, the first provisional government and the Movement of the Armed Forces following the breakdown of the first Portuguese-FRELIMO negotiations in Lusaka in June. FRELIMO had flatly rejected the terms brought to them by Foreign Minister Mario Soares. Jorge Rebelo, head of FRELIMO's Information Department, spelt out the three conditions for a resumption of talks with the Portuguese authorities in an interview published in the 15 August issue of Noticias of Lourenco Marques. 'Our positions', he explained, 'agreed on in Lusaka during the negotiations with the Portuguese government, are based on three fundamental demands: first, the recognition of the right of the Mozambican people to independence; second, the explicit recognition of FRELIMO as the only legitimate representative of the people of Mozambique; and third, the transfer of powers which the Portuguese government still exercises in Mozambique.'
The liberation movements' rejection of the ceasefire/referendum plan carried grave risks for Portuguese capitalism and the imperialist powers. The Portuguese army in Mozambique was in a virtual state of collapse, with reports coming in of units of Portuguese soldiers refusing to go on combat duty. Guerrillas continued with daily regularity to blow up goods trains and passenger trains on the strategic rail lines between Rhodesia and Beira. Mozambican society was in a state of high tension. The liberation fighters were within miles of Beira. African workers, inspired by the prospect of quick victory in the liberation struggle, staged a wave of strikes in the cities, shutting down railways, docks, iron works, newspapers and public buildings. Reports began to arrive of African peasants seizing and occupying the lands of white farmers.
In these circumstances, the most acute defenders of capitalist interests soon grasped that a new approach should be made to FRELIMO. The leaders of the Movement of the Armed Forces warned that the army was in no state to continue with the war and that the most effective way of retaining stability was to bring FRELIMO directly into the government. The wisdom of this course was recognised, for example, by the millionaire Mozambican capitalist Jorge Jardim, who expressed the following view—somewhat later—in an interview with the Lourenco Marques daily A Tribune on 17 August: 'All the facts at our disposal lead me to have confidence—though not certainty—that a Nationalist government, which would be a government with a FRELIMO majority, would not be an extreme left government, in the sense of a Marxist-Maoist government.'
The First Government Crisis and the Colonies
Pressure on the Spinola regime to pull off a stable neocolonial solution in Mozambique as quickly as possible may also have come at this time from the major imperialist powers with whom Portugal was beginning to hold discussions on aid to the country's crisis-ridden domestic economy and entry into the Common Market. Their concern was with the stability of Mozambique's neighbour, South Africa, an advanced capitalist power whose industrial output is greater than that of the whole of the rest of Africa and where both British and United States investment has been growing at record rates in recent years, attracted by cheap, apartheid-controlled black labour and high profits. The imperialists were worried that if a quick neocolonial solution was not brought off in Mozambique the struggle there might soon inspire a new wave of struggles by the workers of South Africa.
On 11 July, Spinola dismissed Palma Carlos' government after pressure from the junior officers in the Movement of the Armed Forces had blocked the prime minister's plans to postpone the elections slated for the Constituent Assembly in March 1975 and proceed rapidly to presidential elections to strengthen Spinola's authority in the country. Differences over colonial policy played a part in Palma Carlos' departure and the installation of a new, second provisional government, composed heavily of representatives of the Movement of the Armed Forces and presided over by a new prime minister, Colonel Vasco Goncalves.
A commentator writing on the governmental crisis in the 12 July issue of the Lisbon daily Republica stressed the opposition of Palma Carlos to withdrawing from the colonies: ' "I am getting out now so that I won't have to do it later, drenched with blood and mud"—these are the grandiloquent words that Professor Palma Carlos is supposed to have used to explain his resignation to his friends. According to the interpretation that is made of these statements by the former law professor, the blood in question referred to a return to fascism, while the mud symbolised what the right customarily calls "abandoning the overseas provinces".'
The new line was first spelt out in a major speech by Spinola on 27 July. 'The moment has come for the President of the Republic to proclaim, once again and solemnly, the recognition of the right of the peoples of the Portuguese overseas territories to self-determination, including the immediate recognition of their right to independence', This was the first occasion on which Portugal's rulers gave formal recognition of the colonies' right to independence, though 'the immediate recognition of their right to independence' did not mean that all of the colonies were to be conceded immediate independence with no strings attached.
But two significant concessions to the peoples of Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique did soon follow. On 26 August an agreement was signed in Algiers by Soares and Major Pedro Pires, a leader of the PAIGC, which established an immediate ceasefire between Portuguese and PAIGC forces, promised Portuguese recognition of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau on 10 September, and stipulated that all Portuguese troops would be out of the country by 31 October. This concession represented the recognition by Portugal's rulers that there was no point in continuing the war in Guinea-Bissau, which was effectively ruled in most of the country by the rebel government in any case, and which had little strategic or economic value for the West or Portugal.
A few days before the Algiers agreement a Portuguese negotiating team flew to Dar es Salaam for a new series of talks with FRELIMO. The talks broke up after three days and were reconvened in the first week of September in Lusaka. On 7 September FRELIMO and the Portuguese delegation signed an agreement which called an immediate ceasefire and promised independence for Mozambique on 25 June, 1975, the anniversary of the founding of FRELIMO.
These concessions did not, however, signal the end of Portuguese colonial involvement in Africa. The Portuguese government refused, for example, to concede immediate independence to the Cape Verde Islands, an archipelago off the West African coast which has had close historical and cultural ties with mainland Guinea-Bissau for many decades. Spinola and Soares stipulated that the islands would not be granted independence until after the election of a National Assembly, a move that hinted at Portuguese hopes to buy time to safeguard Western interests in the strategically located colony. NATO, eyeing the excellent airport facilities on the island of Sal, is well aware that the island could be an invaluable launching pad for imperialist intervention in continental Africa. The Lajes airbase in the Portuguese Azores played a similar role for the United States in October 1973, when thousands of tons of war equipment were flown by the US airforce to Israel in the middle of the war in the Arab East, using Lajes as a stop-off refuelling point.
The Lusaka accords, too, included many concessions from the liberation fighters. The new 'transitional government' has nine members, six appointed by FRELIMO and three by the Portuguese government. Defence and foreign affairs are not included and remain in Lisbon's hands. The new administration is headed by a Portuguese high commissioner, Rear Admiral Vitor Crespo, and a FRELIMO prime minister, Joaquim Chissano. A joint military commission, composed of equal numbers of representatives of the Portuguese armed forces and FRELIMO, has been established to supervise the implementation of the ceasefire.
Until the new government establishes a new police force, the present colonial police will continue to function. They are under the control of the Portuguese high commissioner, who is also empowered to take control of the other security forces 'in the event of disorder'.
At a news conference in Lusaka on 5 September, Soares announced that Portuguese troops would remain in the country, under Portuguese command, at least until independence. Soares also stated that the Portuguese government would not allow Mozambique to aid the Zimbabwean liberation struggle by offering continued use of Mozambican territory for the liberation movements, and that Mozambique would not apply sanctions against either Rhodesia or South Africa. The Mozambican government is being forced, at least until independence, to continue to supply over 100,000 contract workers annually for South Africa's gold mines, to proceed with plans to sell power to South Africa from the giant Cabora Bassa dam, and to maintain the port of Lourenco Marques as a major trade outlet for South African industries.
Several actions and statements by FRELIMO leaders indicate that FRELIMO, now in the Mozambican government in coalition with the Portuguese colonialists, may be willing to play the 'stabilising' role expected by the Portuguese authorities. Samora Machel, the movement's president, sent a message from Tanzania (where the movement still maintains its headquarters) to the inauguration ceremony of the 'transitional government' on 20 September, calling for an end to the wave of strike actions, occupations and [illegible] concessions as it has. Machel said that 'an increase in salaries would only bring an increase in prices'. He warned that 'in this situation and phase of the life of our country, strikes will not take place', and called for 'stepping up austerity and very hard work'.
Machel's approach can only result in the grave problems of the Mozambican economy being tackled in the interests of the capitalists and at the expense of the Mozambican masses. The only real solution to the problems of inflation, unemployment and underdevelopment facing the people of Mozambique after decades of colonial superexploitation is the nationalisation of the major capitalist holdings and the launching of a planned economy to develop the country in the interests of the workers and peasants.
Nor have FRELIMO leaders indicated that they will strive to mobilise the masses and resources of Mozambique to aid the liberation struggles in South Africa and Rhodesia. This is the only way to defend Mozambique from South African, Rhodesian or mercenary intervention and, in the long run, by tapping the huge industrial power of South Africa, to lay the basis for real socialist development in Southern Africa as a whole, including Mozambique. Discussing FRELIMO's attitude to South Africa at a press conference on 17 September, Chissano said: 'We do not pretend to be the saviours of the world. We will not be saviours or the reformers of South Africa. That belongs to the people of South Africa.'
FRELIMO has also dropped demands for the immediate withdrawal of Portugal's troops from Mozambique. The dangers that flow from this stance were well illustrated by the events surrounding the white settler uprising immediately following the 7 September Lusaka accords, events which proved that the Mozambican people cannot rely on the Portuguese colonial army for protection. Portuguese troops and police did little or nothing to put down the settler putsch. No resistance was given to the racialists' seizure of the Lourenco Marques' radio station or their freeing of 200 ex-PIDE agents from the Machava prison. As Antonio de Figueiredo and Peter Niesewand put it in the 9 September Guardian: 'It is apparent that—at key stages—police and soldiers stood by and allowed the takeover.'
FRELIMO broadcast appeals to the black population of Lourenco Marques advising them not to mobilise themselves against the white racialists. But after watching the Portuguese troops do nothing against the putschists for two days, the black masses mobilised themselves spontaneously despite the FRELIMO leaders' appeals. They built barricades, searched for arms destined for the white racialists and blocked roads from South Africa to prevent aid reaching the reactionaries from that quarter. 'At one roadblock', Niesewand reported in the 11 September Guardian, 'thousands of blacks stopped cars to search them for Portuguese flags and arms'.
The real role of the Portuguese troops in Mozambique was revealed very soon after the black revolt. Troops were sent into the black shanty-towns to put down the African workers by force. Niesewand reported that 'commanders guarding the perimeters [of the black areas] said they recognised the sound of automatic weapons used by Portuguese troops' and that helicopters flew over the shanty-towns, while the Portuguese military high command met in emergency session. Nearly 100 were killed, almost all of them blacks. The white reactionaries, by contrast, were not militarily suppressed but allowed to leave the buildings they had seized quite freely in the wake of the black uprising.
[illegible] and Angola
The dangers posed by the depth of the liberation struggle and the social crisis in Mozambique forced the junta and the second provisional government of Vasco Goncalves to opt for a 'FRELIMO solution' in that country as the best way of defending imperialism's essential interests there and in neighbouring South Africa.
In Angola the comparative weakness and divisions of the liberation movements encouraged the Goncalves/Spinola regime to attempt to hold off independence for several years. The only immediate effect of the 11 July changes in the Lisbon government was the replacement of Governor Silveiro Marques with a more 'liberal' officer, Rear-Admiral Rosa Coutinho, who was appointed president of a new Governing Junta of Angola.
In Angola, the stakes are really high. The country is fabulously wealthy, a huge store of potential profits for the imperialist monopolies. Producing 160,000 barrels of crude oil a day, Angola is the second largest oil producer in Africa south of the Sahara. The main interests here are held by Cabinda Gulf Oil Company, a subsidiary of Gulf Oil Corporation of the United States, which first struck oil in Cabinda in 1966. Portuguese, South African, French, Belgian and United States capital is involved in six other oil companies now operating in Angola. Both the corporations themselves and the colonial Portuguese government benefit —the latter in the form of huge royalties and revenues from the oil companies. Gulf, for example, paid 400 million dollars to the government last year alone.
Crude oil exports have jumped in recent years from 1½ million tons in 1969 to over 7 million in 1973. Even before the boom in oil prices had had its real effects Angola's crude oil export earnings in 1973 were 62.8 per cent up on the year before. With reserves in Gulf's Cabinda oilfields alone estimated at over 300 million tons, and with over 20 more companies in addition to those presently operating in Angola queuing up for oil exploration rights and concessions, the major imperialist powers will take every precaution to prevent this wealth slipping from their clasp.
The Angolan economy is one of the fastest growing in Africa. There is a very wide range of British capitalist interests in the country, extending into nearly every area of the economy from railways to iron ore, and Angola's exports of raw materials are experiencing a real boom. Export earnings from diamonds, for example, in which British capital has large investments through DIAMANG and CONDIAMA, rose by 26.3 per cent last year from their level in 1972. It was a similar story for iron ore exports, whose value rose 19.7 per cent from 1972 to 1973. The fourth largest coffee producer in the world—after Brazil, Colombia and the Ivory Coast—Angola is also bringing in huge increases in coffee export earnings. Last year the country's coffee exports rose 34.6 per cent in value and in the first five months of 1974 coffee export earnings were a further 25 per cent above their level in the same period of 1973.
The imperialists' stake in Angola is well illustrated by the massive trade surplus achieved in recent years by the colony on account of the imperialists' exploitation of its raw materials. Angola's exports rose to a record 19,136.8 million escudos (£320 million) in 1973, 37.4 per cent more than the year before. The trade balance improved by 83.4 per cent to a staggering 5,860.8 million escudos (£100 million).
To defend the imperialist holdings in Angola, the Portuguese government and junta have moved slowly and cautiously to build up a neocolonialist government in the colony. On 9 August the junta issued a communique which laid out a timetable for 'decolonisation' —a process which would keep Portuguese troops and rule in the country for two to three years. The statement demanded that the liberation movements lay down their arms and open negotiations with the Portuguese——as if the Portuguese had any right to negotiate anything with the Angolan people! 'Once a ceasefire is agreed to', the junta announced, 'the Portuguese government will immediately set up a provisional coalition government, in which all the liberation movements will be represented along with the most representative ethnic groups in Angola, including the white population'.
The junta's statement indicated that the main task of the provisional government would be to work out an electoral law. Then, 'in about two years, the provisional government should see to the election by direct, secret and universal ballot of a Constituent Assembly, whose task will be to work out the Constitution of the new nation, and define what relationship it wants to have with Portugal.'
The statement went on to explain that Portugal would refuse to allow Angolan independence until after the Constituent Assembly had finished writing a new Constitution and elections had been held to a new Legislative Assembly.
The Portuguese colonialists have no right whatever to lay down such conditions for independence to the Angolan people, who have the right to determine their own affairs and choose their own form of government without Portuguese interference. The only course consistent with the right of self-determination is that the Portuguese colonialists leave Angola now and unconditionally.
Six days after the junta announced its colonial plans for Angola, supporters of the MPLA held a rally in central Lisbon to protest against the junta's communique. The rally was banned by the government and units of the Public Security Police opened fire on the demonstrators, killing a passer-by.
A statement was issued the following day by the provisional government and the chief of the general staff of the armed forces justifying the banning of the demonstration on the grounds that actions in support of the MPLA were unpatriotic. 'The MPLA', the communique stated, 'has so far rejected all the peace offers of the provisional government and declared its intention to continue the struggle indefinitely in Angola, thus showing disrespect for the desires of the Angolan peoples. The soldiers of Portugal will be obliged to remain on guard to defend themselves in Angola. The government and the general staff cannot permit support for the MPLA to be expressed on the Portuguese homefront while this organisation maintains its warlike attitude.'
At the same time Spinola continued to back the small [African leaders hostile to] the liberation movements. On 27 September he welcomed 23 Angolan 'leaders of thought', none of them representing the liberation movements, to a round of talks in Lisbon on Angola's future.
Spinola also hoped to enlist the aid of pro-US President Mobutu of Zaire in selling the junta's plans to the Kinshasa-based leaders of the FNLA. On 15 September he flew to the Island of Sal for talks with Mobutu, the FNLA's leader Holden Roberto and UNITA president Jonas Savimbi. Spinola, apparently overruled at the time by more farsighted representatives of the capitalist order on the Council of State, now hinted that he considered too many concessions had been granted FRELIMO. On 16 September he publicly announced that he would take direct personal control over the negotiations on Angola's future.
The Downfall of Spinola and Costa Gomes' Pacts with the MPLA and the FNLA
Spinola's personal handling of the Angolan negotiations threatened—from the capitalist point of view—to be as dangerous as the first provisional government's colonial strategy nearly became in Mozambique. The defeat of the extreme reactionaries as a result of the massive mobilisation of the workers of Portugal on 28 September, and the subsequent resignation of Spinola, brought a more flexible Angola policy from Portugal's rulers.
The new president, General Costa Gomes, repudiated Spinola's colonial line in his inauguration speech, warning Spinola supporters that 'we must not let ourselves be bound by rigid and preconceived plans'. Costa Gomes understood that the liberation movements, particularly the MPLA, had mass African backing and could not be ignored any longer; and that the Angolan tinderbox might soon explode if a rapid, peaceful transfer of governmental powers was not soon set in motion. Costa Gomes and Coutinho embarked on a new round of negotiations with the liberation movements in the hope that they would participate in a coalition government which could restore political stability and end the deepening crisis in the country.
The colonialist frame of mind could scarcely have been better expressed! Except, perhaps, by Prime Minister Vasco Goncalves, who had this to say in an interview with the French magazine Nouvel Observateur published in its 6 October issue: 'We intend to decolonise with the agreement of the white population, Nothing will be done without the agreement of the white population there.' So Angola's independence was to be conditional on the agreement of the privileged white minority, a minority of 500,000 out of a total population of 5½ million and a minority which has real material reasons to oppose African majority rule!
Indeed, its privileges over the black population are enormous, as an article in the 4 October issue of the French journal Marches Tropicaux detailed: a minority of 10 per cent of the Angolan population, which includes the great bulk of the white population, earn over 35,200 escudos (£600) a year, while 90 per cent—almost all blacks—earn less than 2,200 escudos (£38) a year.
Another side to the plans of the junta and the second provisional government came to light ten days after the junta's 9 August communique: the Angolan paper Provincia reported that the 1974 Angolan military budget was to be increased by 20 million dollars. Indeed, the war was still not over. Neither the FNLA nor the MPLA had accepted the 9 August plan. They had refused therefore to call ceasefires and the Portuguese press continued to report lists of combat deaths from the Angolan war. In this context, the extremist settler forces and mercenary groups also continued to flourish.
The crisis was certainly deep. Both the FNLA and the MPLA had rejected Lisbon's two-to-three year timetable and had calculated that the junta's plan to include formal representation from 'ethnic groups' was designed to bolster right-wing groups like PUA and UNA whose leaders had opposed the liberation struggle during the Salazar and Caetano years.
Even UNITA, which had signed a ceasefire in June, nearly two months before the junta's 9 August statement, and which appeared to be willing to co-operate, refused to join a provisional government which did not include members of the FNLA and the MPLA—out of fear that it would lose African support.
Strikes also began to sweep the country. On 22 October, for example, Luanda's dock workers went on strike, holding up banana exports, and workers in the financial administration offices walked out. It took a 64 per cent wage increase for employees with two years' service—and a 44 per cent raise for the rest—to get the dockers back to work on 27 October.
On 4 November 700 workers at the tyre factory, Mabor, struck for wage increases and the firing of fascist managers. Two days later, water and electricity workers in Luanda walked out demanding a minimum salary of 5,500 escudos (£94) a month and the removal of 41 reactionary officials accused of collaborating with the PIDE. Health [workers came out on] strike the same day.
Thousands of blacks were also arming themselves in the cities as a defensive measure against the racialist mobs of settlers who had continually carried out attacks against the black areas since July. Typical was the response to the discovery of a murdered white taxi driver on 3 November. Three cars, driven by whites, drove into the Cazenga suburb of Luanda and let off a hail of bullets, killing ten blacks. The widespread defensive arming of the black population in Luanda caused grave concern to the Portuguese authorities, who saw the liberation movements as the only force to keep the independent mobilisation of the African workers in check.
Signs of peasant uprisings proved equally threatening to the Portuguese colonialists. The 4 November issue of Diario de Noticias, Lisbon's leading bourgeois daily, reported one such rebellion: 'Groups of Africans invaded and destroyed houses and public buildings in Duque de Braganca, in the district of Malanje, around 425 kilometers to the east of the capital, Provincia de Angola reported today. The paper stated that various estates and plantations had been set on fire and destroyed and others had been abandoned, while parachutists were en route there to help the police "control" the agitation carried out by the black population in the past three weeks.'
In this more and more explosive atmosphere, the Portuguese authorities took steps in October and November to come to a deal with the leaderships of the Angolan liberation movements.
On 10 October a five-man delegation led by General Fontes Pereira de Melo arrived in Kinshasa for a series of meetings with Mobutu, Roberto and the FNLA leadership, and Daniel Chipenda, vice-president of the MPLA and leader of its 'Eastern Revolt' faction, one of the movement's three public factions. On 14 October the Portuguese delegation signed an agreement with the FNLA leadership in Kinshasa, setting an immediate ceasefire and allowing the FNLA to open legal offices in Luanda. On 30 October a 94-member delegation led by Henrik Vaal Neto, the FNLA's information minister, arrived in the Angolan capital to open the Front's new permanent offices.
An agreement with the MPLA followed soon after the Kinshasa accords. On 20 October Captain Leonel Cardoso, a key man in Coutinho's Angolan administration, flew to Luso, in the east of the country, to meet Neto himself. Two days later, in a village some 40 miles from the Zambian border, Neto and Cardoso signed an official ceasefire agreement, which allowed the MPLA to open legal political centres throughout the country.
With speculation now rife that the announcement of the long-awaited coalition government was imminent, Coutinho flew to Lisbon to give a progress report to the Decolonisation Commission on 28 October. 'Important steps have been taken during the last few weeks in the process underway in Angola', Coutinho told reporters outside the meeting in Lisbon's Belem Palace. 'We have achieved the cessation of hostilities with all the movements, first with UNITA, afterwards with the FNLA, and finally with the MPLA after talks in Angolan territory. This has been a very important step, because, from now on, with delegations of the liberation movements present in Luanda, contacts will be made easier and their co-operation in the development of the process can be more effective.' Coutinho said that he was 'pleased with the way in which things are going'.
To accomplish the emerging deal with the leaderships of the liberation movement, Coutinho was forced, belatedly, to take some measures against the extreme right-wing forces which his and Marques' policies had previously encouraged. On 27 October he announced that several right-wing leaders —who had 'aimed at stopping the decolonisation process and at imposing a Rhodesia-type independence'—had been arrested, including Antonio Navarro, president of the PCDA. In a similar development on 4 November, the Decolonisation Commission in Lisbon fired Temudo Barata, the pro-separatist governor of Cabinda, after riots had broken out in the Cabindan capital between supporters of FLEC and MPLA.
The clearest indications of the plans of the junta and the provisional government came to light on 20 November —when Major Melo Antunes, a top leader of the Movement of the Armed Forces and minister without portfolio in the provisional government, arrived in Algiers to open secret talks with Neto on the establishment of a coalition government.
The same day in Luanda, Captain Vasco Lourenco, leader of a Movement of the Armed Forces' delegation to Angola, explained that his delegation was looking for a 'united front' of the liberation movements 'to constitute a provisional government with the aim of it being able to get going definitively with the process of decolonisation'.
The Portuguese government and the junta expect that the MPLA and the FNLA leaders will play a moderating role over their rank-and-file supporters once they are in the government. Indeed, already, these leaders have indicated their willingness to co-operate only too well. The Diario de Noticias report on the peasant uprisings in Duque de Braganca, for example, noted that the Governing Junta of Angola had sent African intermediaries to the area, 'having asked the liberation movements represented in Luanda to help calm emotions and restore public order'.
One of the most explicit indications of the MPLA's political line came at a press conference addressed by MPLA leader Lucio Lara in Luanda on 13 November. The 14 November issue of the Lisbon paper O Seculo carried this report of Lara's denunciations of Africans who had armed themselves and organised the self-defence of the black areas of the city against the white racialists. 'He agreed that many of those responsible had signs or emblems of the MPLA and carried the organisation's banners, believing in fact that some were sympathisers of the organisation. Nevertheless he made an appeal to the intelligence of people not to believe that the leadership of the MPLA would have in any way supported or given its approval to the wave of violence.'
O Seculo noted that 'Lara deplored, as well, the recent wave of strikes and, energetically, repudiated accusations that the MPLA was responsible for organising them. 'In the second place, he declared, his movement only supported strikes which had been previously authorised by the unions, regretting those egoistic persons who do not work for the good of the people and who are seeking to prejudice the Angolan economy.'
It is this moderating role which the Portuguese ruling class now hopes to use to bring a stable, neocolonial solution to success in Angola.
This neocolonial strategy has won public praise from United States imperialism. For example, Donald Easum, the United States Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, told the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on 10 October that 'patience and good judgment' had 'so far characterised the process of decolonisation' and that the United States was adopting a 'hopeful and helpful attitude' towards 'these new and encouraging developments'. He announced that the US government was seeking 'meaningful dialogues' with the liberation movements.
The Way Forward
Portugal's rulers, in seeking a stable neocolonial solution in Angola, Mozambique and the Cape Verdes, have sought to play for time. They have refused to withdraw all Portuguese troops at once and to concede immediate, unconditional independence in order to organise the construction of reliable, neocolonial governments which will defend the imperialists' key interests.
The primary responsibility of socialists and supporters of the liberation struggle of the peoples of Mozambique, Angola and the Cape Verdes is to demand the immediate, unconditional independence of the colonies and withdrawal of the troops. This is the only course which is consistent with the right of self-determination of the peoples of these countries, i.e. their right to determine their own affairs without another day of Portuguese interference.
Nowhere is this task more urgent than in Portugal itself, where the Communist and Socialist Parties, instead of building a mass movement against the colonial policies of the junta and the government, have done everything in their power to cover up for the actions of the government in which they themselves sit.
It is our responsibility too, here in Britain, to build a powerful movement in solidarity with the liberation struggle and to fight all forms of collaboration by the British government with Portuguese colonialism and the racialist regimes in South Africa and Rhodesia. A movement against British government collaboration with South Africa is of particular importance in view of the dangers that South Africa might intervene militarily in Angola or Mozambique if the revolutions in those countries threaten to spill over into South Africa. As the recent naval exercises carried out jointly by the British and South African navies reveal the British Labour Government stands foursquare behind the deep commitment of British capitalism to defend its giant holdings in Southern Africa, mainly in South Africa itself, but also in Angola. Our job must be to campaign vigorously to force the Labour Government to break off this collaboration with the racialists in Southern Africa and solidarise with the national liberation struggles of its oppressed peoples.