The Origins of the Angolan Civil War: Foreign Intervention and Domestic Political Conflict

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The Origins of the Angolan Civil War : Foreign Intervention and Domestic Political Conflict Guimares, Fernando Andresen. Palgrave Macmillan (UK) 0333914805 9780333914809 9780333977668 English Angola--History--Civil War, 1975---Causes. 2001 DT1428.G85 2001eb 967.304 Angola--History--Civil War, 1975---Causes.

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Page i The Origins of the Angolan Civil War

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Page iii The Origins of the Angolan Civil War Foreign Intervention and Domestic Political Conflict Fernando Andresen Guimarães

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Page iv First published in paperback in Great Britain 2001 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0–333–68471–0 hardcover ISBN 0–333–91480–5 paperback First published in paperback in the United States of America 2001 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, LLC, Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 0–312–17512–4 cloth ISBN 0–333–91480–5 paperback The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Guimarães, Fernando Andresen, 1965– The origins of the Angolan civil war : foreign intervention and domestic political conflict / Fernando Andresen Guimarães. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-312-17512-4 (cloth) 1. Angola—History—Civil war, 1975– —Causes. I. Title. DT1428.G85 1997 967.304—dc21 97–9652 CIP   © Fernando Andresen Guimarães 1998, 2001 First edition 1998 Reprinted with new Preface 2001 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. 10      9      8      7      6      5      4      3      2      1 10    09    08    07    06    05    04    03    02    01 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire

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Page v For Sallie

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Page vii Contents List of Tables Preface to the 2000 Edition Preface Abbreviations Introduction

viii ix x xii xiv

Part I    The Internal Sources of Conflict in Angola 1    Portuguese Colonialism in Angola 2    Angolan Anti-Colonialism 3    Exile Politics

3 31 58

Part II    The Externalization of Angolan Conflict 4    The Angolan Civil War 1975–76 5    Zaire and South Africa 6    Cuba and China 7    The Soviet Union and the United States

85 114 136 161

Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

196 202 237 245

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Page viii List of Tables 1.1    Value of total Angolan exports by origin, 1961 and 1962 1.2    Main Angolan export commodities, 1966 1.3    Coffee exports from Angola, 1948–70 1.4    Angolan population by race and ‘civilized’ status, 1950 1.5    Racial composition of Angolan population, 1777–1970 1.6    White population in Angola 1940–73 6.1    Cuban troop strengths in post-independence Angola 1975–76

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Page ix Preface to the 2000 Edition As I write this additional preface to the paperback edition, Angola has descended into conflict. But what is going on now in Angola at the end of the century is not a new armed conflict; it is the continuation of the civil war that erupted fully in 1975. In fact, it is distinctly possible to see the history of independent Angola as a single war. This book addresses the origins of the Angolan civil war of 1975–76 but provides also, I believe, the basis for understanding the fighting that continues in Angola. Today, it has become even clearer that the roots of conflict in Angola are far deeper than a case of outside interference and cold war intrigue. The ‘proxy war’ model simply does not stand up to closer examination. Of course, foreign intervention was a fundamental conditioning force on the Angolan civil war of 1975–76. Then, external actors served to define and intensify the bids for control of post-independence Angola. But even after the end of the cold war, which gradually removed external rivalries from the equation of Angolan hostilities, the parties remained irreconcilable. By 1999, the combined and concerted efforts of the international community towards a peace settlement had been in vain. The fact is that the struggle for power that lay at the heart of the conflict in Angola remains unresolved and while foreign intervention had a significant impact on events in Angola, the actions of outsiders can no more be seen to be the source of conflict than the sufficient condition for peace. This can only emanate from the antagonists themselves. Fernando Andresen Guimarães 1999

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Page x Preface This book is based on my PhD dissertation, which was prepared in the welcoming environment of the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics between September 1987 and December 1991. The transformation from dissertation into book has significantly altered the structure of the text, but the fundamental thesis is the same. When I began my work on the Angolan civil war, the superpowers were still engaged in the cold war. By the time I had finished my dissertation, the Berlin Wall had fallen and an agreement on Angola had brought independence to Namibia and the withdrawal of Cuban troops. Elections in Angola were scheduled for September 1992 and the candidates were precisely those rivals that, as government and rebel movement, had just spent over fifteen years struggling for control of the country. Then, the explanation for conflict in Angola was predominantly seen to be in the intervention of foreign actors. Many claimed that the key to peace, therefore, lay in removing external involvements. And yet, as I write this five years later, after the end of the cold war, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of apartheid in South Africa, peace in Angola is still precarious. As it turned out, the roots of conflict in Angola are much deeper. One of the effects of the cold war on the Angolan conflict was the politicization of much of the academic literature on its modern history. My work has sought to wade through the existing claims and counter-claims and present as clear a picture as possible of what happened in 1975. For the internal power struggle between the Angolans I drew on many sourses, but a special note of recognition is owed to Johm Marcum's two-volume The Angolan Revolution . To this, I also added the personal testimony of participants who provided an eyewitness perspective. I was fortumate enough to be working on mu dissertation at a tine when revelations on the hidden history of the MPLA were emerging for the first tine. These revelations are, of course, included in this book. My appreciation goes out to the Department of International Relations at the LSE which provided me with the academic ‘home’ for the preparation of the dissertation. In particular, Fred Halliday and James Mayall

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Page xi gave me the wise direction I needed, and to them I am grateful. Many others deserve to be credited here, but a special debt is owed to Mark Simpson for encouraging me to undertake the project in the first place and to Spyros Economides for his solid advice and invaluable friendship throughout the writing of the dissertation and more recently of this book. I must also thank other friends and colleagues, in particular, João Cravinho, Hugh Dyer and Leon Mangasarian, whose contributions have clearly enriched my work. However, none of this would have ever been possible without the support of my family, especially that of my father, whose unwavering faith and constant questioning challenged me to go further. To Sallie's patience, devotion and love, I dedicate this book. Fernando Andresen Guimarães

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Page xii Abbreviations ALC African Liberation Committee (OAU) ANC African National Congress (RSA) BOSS Bureau of State Security (RSA) CIA Central Intelligence Agency (US) CONCP Conference of the Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies COPCON Operational Command of the Continent (Portugal) DGS Security Directorate (ex-PIDE) EEC European Economic Community EFTA European Free Trade Association ELNA Army for the National Liberation of Angola (FNLA) EPLA Popular Army for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) FAPLA Popular Armed Forces of the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) FLEC Liberation Front of the Enclave of Cabinda FLN National Liberation Front (Algeria) FNLA National Front of Liberation of Angola FRELIMO Liberation Front of Mozambique GRAE Revolutionary Government of Angola in Exile (FNLA) JSN Committee of National Salvation (Portugal) MFA Movement of Armed Forces (Portugal) MPLA Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NIC Newly industrialized country NSC National Security Council (US) OAU Organization of African Unity PAIGC African Party of the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde PCA Angolan Communist Party PCP Portuguese Communist Party PDA Democratic Party of Angola PIDE International Police for the Defence of the State (Portugal) RSA Republic of South Africa SADF South African Defence Force SWAPO South West Africa People's Organization UNITA National Union for the Total Independence of Angola

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< previous page Page xiii UPA UPNA UN US USSR

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Union of the Angolan Peoples (ex-UPNA) Union of the Peoples of Northern Angola United Nations United States Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

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Page xiv Introduction There is no question of pledging our policy to either of the two blocs dividing the world. The only promise we make to the two blocs is that we will honestly seek to exclude attempts at establishing a cold war climate among the Angolan nationalists and to prevent the implications of international intrigues in the Angola of tomorrow.1 In this manner, the leader of one of the Angolan movements fighting Portuguese colonialism promised in 1962 to keep the cold war out of Angola. As it turned out, his promise was in vain. In 1975, after the collapse of Portuguese colonialism, a civil war broke out between Angolans. Struggling among themselves to determine which movement would take the reins of the newly-independent state, the Angolans brought in external backers. By the time the conflict had come to the general attention of the world in late 1975, early 1976, it had transcended its local origins. The Angolan power struggle at the heart of the conflict was now overshadowed by the involvement of the superpowers. Even today, the Angolan civil war of 1975–6 is still studied as an episode of the cold war, one which seemed to exceed its relative importance to the state of superpower rivalry but which is, nonetheless, a part of the history of the East–West conflict. The Soviet Ambassador to the United States at the time stated Angola was ‘… one of the most acute regional points of confrontation between Moscow and Washington …’,2 which had a negative impact on the process of détente between the superpowers. Most notably, Angola was where thousands of Cuban troops disembarked after crossing the Atlantic Ocean and had a decisive impact on the military outcome of the conflict. Even after the civil war had come to an end in 1976, the general cold war parameters of the conflict did not change and persistently overlaid the Angolan struggle for power. A second, long and wasteful civil war began almost immediately and lasted right into the early 1990s. Throughout that period, both the Soviet Union and the United States continued to view the situation in Angola through the prism of the cold war. During the 1980s, Angola even provided one of the great ironies of the East–West struggle: Cuban troops tasked with the defence of American-owned offshore oil rigs from attacks by American-backed UNITA rebel forces.

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Page xv On the face of it, however, and despite the oft-mentioned mineral wealth of Angola, there seem to have been no intrinsic reasons as to why Angola should have commanded the attention of the two most powerful states in the world for such a long time. This book seeks to unravel that paradox. It looks at how and why the Angolan civil war of 1975–6 was externalized to the extent that it was, and what were the roots of that conflict. The fact is, the cold war did not bring conflict to Angola in 1975. By that time, the roots of the civil war had already been laid. During the preceding decade, a dogged struggle for supremacy had developed between the three main anti-colonial movements. When the authoritarian regime in Portugal was toppled in 1974, the motivation for being the leading anti-colonial movement intensified into an outright bid for power in a soon-to-be independent Angola. Thus, in 1975, a ferocious civil war erupted between the MPLA and the combined forces of its two rivals, the FNLA and UNITA. But it was not purely a war between Angolans. Behind the antagonists now stood an array of international backers, vigorously striving to give their chosen movement the impetus to win the war on the ground. The Soviet Union and Cuba were the main support for the MPLA. According to them, the principal reason for their intervention in the conflict was the fact that the military forces of South Africa had stormed Angola in order to deny the MPLA its legitimate right to govern. For Cuba, the dramatic airlift of troops was an expression of solidarity with the besieged MPLA, which, according to Havana, was the target of a coalition of ‘imperialist’ and ‘racist’ forces. Both Cuba and the Soviet Union claimed their intervention was legitimate. On the other side, the FNLA and UNITA were supported by South Africa, Zaire, China and the United States. Washington took a different perspective of the prevailing situation from that of the MPLA's supporters. For the United States, Soviet and Cuban involvement in Angola was an attempt by Moscow to gain a foothold in Southern Africa and significantly extend the USSR's global reach. Furthermore, these Soviet hegemonic designs were, in Washington's eyes, testing the rules of détente and, therefore, had to be challenged. To counter this perceived threat, Washington intervened covertly in Angola in favour of the MPLA's rivals. One of the main US policy-shapers of the time, Henry Kissinger, remains committed to this perspective of the Angolan civil war. Still convinced that the US was right to resist Soviet adventurism in Angola, Kissinger only rues the fact that Congress forced the Ford Administration

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Page xvi to cease its covert support for the anti-MPLA coalition. Some years later, the Reagan Administration did what Kissinger had wanted to do earlier, though for a quite different set of reasons. All of these views are relevant for an understanding of the origins of the Angolan civil war, and they will be analysed in turn. Furthermore, each international actor had specific interests for intervening which inevitably shaped the decisions made and the action taken. These will also be looked at. However, all of these views fail to take into account the importance of the conflict at the heart of the civil war, the struggle for power between Angolans. The focus of this book is that power struggle, how it emerged, how it developed and how it externalized itself and transcended its localized relevance. In this way, perhaps, the international aspects of the Angolan civil war, which made that relatively insignificant conflict in a far-off corner of the globe an integral part of the history of the cold war, will be explained.

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Page 1 Part I The Internal Sources of Conflict in Angola

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Page 3 1   Portuguese Colonialism in Angola COLONIAL POLICY After the much lamented ‘loss’ of Brazil to independence in 1822, Angola replaced the South American giant at the centre of affections of the idealists of Portuguese grandeur. This very large, under-populated territory in south-west Africa held the aspirations of those who still believed in the possibility of a return to past greatness that, since the seventeenth century, had become more and more elusive for Portu-gal. The wealth and potential of Brazil had been lost, but, by the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, it was being sought in Angola. Actual pursuit of wealth in Angola during the nineteenth century however, fell far short of the achievements claimed by successive regimes in Portugal anxious to impress their more powerful European neighbours. Attempts to conceal the reality of what was going on in Portugal's somewhat disproportionate share of African territory did not simply reflect grandiose delusions of a declining colonial empire, but were an intrinsic part of an astute diplomatic policy aimed at defending Portugal's diminished role in a world of rapacious politics. The workings of the complex European alliances of the end of the nineteenth century often threatened to dismember the Portuguese territories in Africa and distribute the pieces among the major powers. Despite singularly humiliating incidents,1 this diplomacy was largely successful. By acting as a buffer between Britain, France and Germany in Africa, Portugal managed to retain control of Angola and the other overseas territories into the twentieth century.2 When the Berlin conference of 1884–85 sought to determine Euro-pean spheres of influence in Africa, it also established the new rules of imperialism. No longer was colonial rule to be defined simply by historical right. The General Act of the conference, that claimed to define a ‘new colonial public law’,3 determined that only effective occupation constituted colonial sovereignty. The Act was clearly unfavourable to a small and poor colonizer such as Portugal and placed Lisbon under pressure to extend its hitherto largely coastal administration of colonies to the hinterland. Effective occupation had to be established

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Page 4 or Portugal risked losing its colonies altogether. Lacking the necessary funds and the manpower to achieve this objective, the government in Lisbon nevertheless organized a number of expeditions between 1885 and 1890 in an attempt to ‘pacify’ the colonies and meet the conditions set by the ‘imperial club’.4 ‘Pacification’ (the enforcement of both military and economic control of a territory through the establishment of an administrative unit) had not previously been characteristic of Portuguese colonial policy. The greater part of Portuguese dealings with the territories they claimed control over was made up of commercial trade. In Angola, this was secured by the numerous traders based in the coastal ports of Luanda and Benguela. Through intermediaries, they would barter with the African kingdoms of the interior. After the Berlin Conference, the commercial nature of Portuguese interaction in Africa, once informal, became increasingly inserted into a framework of colonial control and administration. Despite centuries of presence in Africa, Portugal only began to establish a colonial state in Angola and other territories towards the end of the nineteenth century, and then only as a result of pressure from the Great Powers which threatened to push the Portuguese off the continent altogether. In Portugal, the pressure to establish full control of its overseas territories and develop colonial state structures, therefore, became part of the political programmes of the day. Even before the overthrow of the monarchy in 1910, colonial reformers were already campaigning for the development of autonomous colonies with a large degree of administrative and financial independence from the metropolis.5 However, such a sophisticated stage of colonial development could not be reached without the establishment of military control over the entire expanse of the colonies' territories. This task of imperial proportions implied enormous expense and the dispatch of large military forces to Africa. Already on shaky ground at home, the monarchy could ill afford this, either financially or politically. With the overthrow of the monarchy in 1910, that reform agenda, in an expanded form, was taken on by the new governments of the republic. In keeping with its modernist and progressive ideology, they called for the rational, colonial exploitation of Portugal's territories. In their view, the potential of the colonies was to be harnessed and developed for Portugal's benefit. This republican model of colonialism envisaged a number of measures that would bring the territories under control. The colonies were to be taxed and viable produce cultivated. The practice of enforced labour was established and legislation on the

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Page 5 status of the colonial population was implemented, separating the ‘civilized’ Europeans from the African ‘natives’.6 While merely a version of the ‘civilizing mission’ of other European colonizers, the republican ideal of colonialism also recognized the role the colonies could play in the development of Portugal itself. Colonial policy under the republic, during the period between 1910 and 1925, can only be described, however, as over-ambitious. Much of the grand legislature that aimed at developing the overseas Portu-guese empire remained on paper. Increasingly decentralized rule in the colonies themselves resulted from difficulties in stabilizing the metropolitan economic and political environments. Acute budget crises and political instability crippled governments in Lisbon, and colonial administrations were given wide powers to administrate their territories almost independently of the metropolis. In Angola, the periods of Norton de Matos's administration characterized the high level of authority increasingly delegated to each colony.7 As the highest government official in the territory, Norton de Matos ruled by decree and could even solicit international loans independently of Lisbon. Supported only by deficit financing, he launched frenetic development projects aimed at setting down hitherto non-existent infrastructures. These projects included the establishment of transportation networks in the country, seeking to attract a settler society that the republicans dreamed would thickly populate their overseas empire. Although the colonies were, during this time, thrown open to foreign investment, the Portuguese Republic was considered a risk liability in an unsympathetic Europe. Consequently, there was precious little incoming investment capital. Levels of colonial trade actually fell during the republican period although this could also be attributed to the crackdown on slavery and the profitable alcohol trade, as well as to the stagnant pace of economic development in Portugal itself.8 But despite political instability in the metropolis and meagre economic development, republican colonial policy and Norton de Matos's projects established the basic pillars on which the Angolan economy later emerged: a significant road and railway network, the encouragement of cash crop production and the contracting of (wage-earning) labour. Furthermore, the minor, but nevertheless increased, levels of capital investment did help to attract a higher number of metropolitan immigrants. The first republican era in Portugal was, however, short-lived. The financial chaos of the country was crippling government after government, and conservative forces had been waiting since the overthrow of

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Page 6 the monarchy for an opportunity to strike back at the republicans. In a climate of political instability,9 bombings, strikes, high inflation and corruption, the republic was an easy prey for the concerted revenge of the dispossessed Catholic Church, landowners fearing the reform of the feudal system they relied upon, monarchists and industrialists alarmed at the radicalization of the working classes. The constant disruptive activity of anarchists and left-wing extremists helped to send the worried urban middle classes (hitherto the backbone of the republican experiment) and the frustrated armed forces into the waiting arms of the right wing. A military coup destroyed the republic on 28 May 1926. The new administration of General Oscar Carmona ran into trouble almost immediately. In the throes of a financial crisis, the government invited a popular right-wing academic, Ant≤nio de Oliveira Salazar, to solve the mounting problem of the budget deficits that gripped Portu-gal and its colonies. Lisbon feared that its near bankruptcy would lead to, among other things, the loss of the colonies.10 Balancing the books was a priority for the new regime and it handed Salazar, the new finance minister, the absolute powers over public spending he demanded as a condition for entering government. Once he had obtained the power of veto over the budgets of every single government department, Salazar implemented his long-standing doctrine of balancing the budget and clearing the deficit. This policy was also applied to the colonies, including Angola where the colonial government had built up chronic deficits.11 His immediate success (the 1928–29 domestic budget showed a surplus, the first for 15 years),12 brought Salazar wide support and allowed him to extend his claim to intervene in other aspects of government beyond the financial sphere. This was the beginning of Salazar's process of regime-building which culminated in what was called the New State (Estado Novo) .13 While the military coup of 1926 had been supported by a number of right-wing factions, monarchist groups and the Church, only the latter saw any significant satisfaction of its desiderata. Salazar managed to allay, yet not meet, the demands for either the restoration of the monarchy or a more dynamic commitment to fascism. The Church, however, saw its role in society restored to that of the pre-republican era. In fact, the Catholic Church became intimately involved with Salazar's regime, playing the role of its spiritual partner in this and the other world. This was partly the result of Salazar's own devout faith which brought him great popularity throughout the country. But there was also another more practical consideration. The Church had been the only ef-

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Page 7 fectively organized political opposition to the republicans, and Salazar owed his own rise to power to his prominence within this circle. When the armed forces moved in to wrench power from the republicans, the choice of Salazar resulted as much from his dominant position as a political actor for the Catholic Church as from his academic prowess and financial acumen. Nevertheless, he stopped short of returning the bishops to direct political power, allowing them instead to dominate social life. The New State regime has been described as an organic socio-political state that directly implemented Salazar's economic directives. The principal pillars of Salazar's authority were the bureaucracy, which ran all the state bodies, and the armed forces, which had established the conditions that brought him to power in the first place. The security of these two groups guaranteed, and were themselves guaranteed by, the survival of the New State. Salazar's authoritarian regime relied on taking over each and every body. Public institutions and government departments, manned by a loyal bureaucracy which imposed mounds of paperwork on the Portuguese, probably did more to suffocate resistance to the regime than the use of outright repressive force. Without a doubt, the security of the regime ultimately lay in the control and repression of dissent, on the mainland as well as in the colonies, through the use of a powerful police force known as the PIDE.14 But the successful control of all information, a steady flow of propaganda and the establishment of state control of any institution in the public domain, even in the economic sphere, played an important part in perpetuating the survival of the regime for nearly fifty years. In the larger sectors of industry, shipping and banking, a few corporations had acquired what amounted to monopoly control. These were the domain of the social and political class that provided much of Salazar's immediate support. The economic power of the country was centralized in the hands of a small number of families and groups that dominated their respective economic sectors. After the Depression, a large amount of bankruptcies led to the additional concentration of capital in an even smaller number of hands, further reinforcing the old system of oligarchic control of the economy which had prevailed under the monarchy. This control in the metropolis, more often than not, resulted in the corresponding supremacy of the respective financial and industrial groups in the colonies as well. Furthermore, the top governmental positions were often held by members of these extended families. Salazar was careful never to challenge the security of these families and corporate groups that dominated Portugal's industrial and financial

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Page 8 sectors. Associations for employers ( Grémios) and syndicates for workers were created in most sectors of private and public enterprise as well as in agricultural production. The resulting effect was the imposition of a centralized economic order. The institutionalization of all sectors of society in this manner under the direct control of Salazar's government ensured authority and stability for the regime. This hold was complemented by governmental economic intervention according to a logic defined centrally. The near total control of the economy by the New State regime was achieved through the use of price controls and production quotas to regulate private enterprise, and by nationalization wherever necessary. In this context, Salazar did not establish a new state as much as he institutionalized socio-economic power relationships that had their roots in Portugal's nineteenth-century political order. The New State seems merely to have re-established the traditional political and economic forces previously dominant under the monarchy and temporarily displaced by the republican experiment.15 Thus, the originality (and, perhaps, durability) of Salazar's New State lay in the systematic process of institutionalizing these social, political and economic relationships. The regime was undoubtedly authoritarian but Portugal under Salazar cannot be considered to have been a fascist state.16 Despite the creation of a one-party political environment – the National Union ( União Nacional) — the activity of a paramilitary organization – the Portu-guese Legion ( Legião Portuguesa ) – and even a nationwide youth movement – the Portuguese Youth ( Mocidade Portuguesa ) – there was little in the way of the creation of a wider fascist movement. Like Mussolini's evocation of the Roman Empire, Salazar did promote a mythology of the Portuguese nation as a timeless colonial empire with global reach. But the order over which Salazar presided was fundamentally a conservative one, both in political and social terms. The Catholic and nationalist bases of the regime's ideology were not compatible with the ideas of national socialism that were being promulgated by other dictatorships in Europe at the time.17 It could be argued that by taking on certain trappings of the totalitarian regimes in Italy and later Germany and Spain, Salazar was trying to ride the wave of authoritarian change that spread through Europe in the inter-war period. This change was welcome to Salazar as, in his view, it warded off liberalism which he believed to be a dangerous precursor to socialism and too weak to defend itself effectively from the greater evil of communism. To Salazar, however, fascism as a total doctrine was far too progressive, too dynamic.18 His political discourse

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Page 9 and personal ethos yearned for a return to a pre-industrial revolution era in both social as well as economic terms. Helped by the Catholic Church, the regime promoted a paternalist ideology of God and nation which sought to hold the mass of the populace to the semi-feudal economic order that Salazar had institutionalized. In this ideology of the New State, the colonies and the images of empire played a central role. Salazar's priority with regard to the colonial territories was to reaf-firm Portugal's ability to run an empire. He held a mistrust of Great Power intentions, a mistrust that may have fed his isolationism and overwhelmingly nationalistic developmental policies for both Portugal and its colonies. According to Salazar's early policies, all colonial territories were to be primarily developed by Portuguese capital. Tight exchange controls were placed on commercial trading, echoing the mercantilism of the monarchy. At the same time, access by foreign capital to Portuguese markets in general was greatly limited, with the exception of those industries such as diamonds and other mining activity in Angola where foreign technological know-how was essential. This development policy was based on strict budgetary controls and sought to utilize, as much as possible, internally generated resources. Within this developmental strategy, Portugal's own economy was not seen in a separate light from that of the colonies. On the contrary, under Salazar's centrally planned economy, all the so-called regions of Portugal (a term which included the colonies) were to be fused into ‘ … an integrated Lusitanian world economy’,19 the central priority of which was, however, to provide for the requirements of Portugal itself. Thus, in Salazar's economic strategy, the colonies, and Angola in particular, played a subsidiary role to the planned semi-autarchic development of Portugal during the interworld-war years. But as well as playing this economic role, the colonies also represented what Duffy has called ‘a living link with the past’.20 Already in the early 1930s, Salazar was expounding his myth of empire, based solidly on the exploits and adventures of the navigators and discoverers of a far-off age. Despite never having personally visited any of the Portuguese colonies throughout his years in power, Salazar gave paramount importance to the notion of empire in the political structure of his regime. According to this concept, the Portuguese ‘nation’ was indivisible and consisted of both continental Portugal as well as all its overseas territories. This contrasted sharply with, for example, the constitutional

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Page 10 detachment of Britain from its own colonial empire. A link was established, therefore, between Portugal's overseas possessions and Salazar's domestic political power, a connection that was cast at the level of historical myth-making. It was woven into the retelling of the very origins of Portuguese independence, characterized heroically by the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This adventurous and worldly image of Portugal was paradoxically espoused by the isolationist New State, contrasting with its nationalist economic and foreign policies. In political discourse, the Portuguese colonies were held to be an integral part of the nation, and tied to the very structure of Salazar's regime. For Salazar and others, the remaining colonial territories, a historical legacy of those seafaring times, were hard evidence that their nation was still great: We must always keep alive in the Portuguese people the dream of the beyond-the-seas [ Ultramar] and the consciousness and pride of empire. Africa is more than a land to be exploited … Africa is for us a moral justification and a ‘raison d'être’ as a power. Without it we would be a small nation; with it we are a great country.21 In this way waxed the editorial of O Mundo Português in 1935, on the occasion of the first of a number of cruises to Angola and the islands of Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe designed to inculcate a sense of duty in the young Portuguese students they carried. The organizer of those cruises was Marcello Caetano, later to succeed Salazar and inherit his state. What played a part in attempts to aggrandize the country's importance on the world stage also underlay the legitimacy of the regime at home. The territories became central to an intensely nationalistic ideology of society based on a spiritual sense of civilizing duty. When confronted with a changing world in which the early grandeur of the country was recalled when reciting at school the epic poem, Os Lusíadas, the New State ideologues clung to the colonial world as an extension of the regime, as its legitimization when proclaiming the existence of a Lusitanian world. This sense of organic nation, in which the ‘country’ of Portugal is treated in abstract to include the widespread colonial territories under its rule, was a central theme of colonial policy under the New State. This ultranationalism became even more emphatic, and perhaps necessary, when the regime came under fire from international public opinion in the post-war world of anti-colonialism. But it had its roots and political justification in the ideology of nation developed by Salazar for his state.

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Page 11 The New State's colonial policy had a number of distinct formulations throughout its lifetime but really only two separate tendencies. The first period, lasting from the late 1920s to the late 1950s, was characterized by a reversal of the republican drive for decentralized autonomy and the firm establishment of the colonies in Lisbon's administrative orbit. Emanating from the central hub of the capital, the needs of the new regime were placed above all else, and the surrounding periphery, the colonies as well as the lessdeveloped mainland regions, were placed at the economic disposal of the centre. The Ministry of the Colonies in Lisbon was given full financial and political authority. The once powerful position of governor was reduced to a role of formal representation stripped of any opportunity for local initiative. Under Salazar, the colonial budgets were to be balanced directly from Lisbon, and any loans were to be procured only by the ministry in Portugal. Colonial policy, like economic policy as a whole, reflected the progress of the regime in the metropolis. With its consolidation of power in overlapping circles of institutionalized public life, colonial policies sought also to achieve the collusion of the colonial state to the metropolitan one, the two becoming one. The legislation and implementation of policy in the colonies thus became centralized in the metropolitan state. The structure of authority in the colonies was clear and simple. In the mid-1950s, the chain of command ran directly from Salazar to the African population;22all the intermediary positions were no more than the bureaucratic administration for the implementation of the directives of the governor-general, who, in turn, had little room for manoeuvre outside that which was approved by the colonial ministry in Lisbon. In the colonial minister lay all powers of legislation, loan procurement and appointments, after final approval by Salazar, of course. Should the governor have exceeded the expenditure authorized by the minister he would have been liable for prosecution. A legislative council in Angola (which included members chosen by an electoral college) had little power beyond passing minor legislation, serving more as a safety-valve for local issues that arose among the European population. In this way, the colonial state as an administrative unit was linked directly to the source of government in the metropolis, with budgetary control, economic policy and practically all legislative authority determined in Lisbon. This structure of state authority was rooted in the legislative promulgations of the government, issued through the powerless National Assembly. In 1930, with an already firm grip over the emerging regime,

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Page 12 Salazar legislated a bill for the colonies, which was later appended to the Constitution of 1933, where the particularities of the first period of colonial policy are evident: the proclamation of the abstract Portu-guese nation including its colonial empire, the primacy of Portu-guese over foreign capital and the use of forced labour.23 This bill was sufficient to sustain colonial policy until after the end of the Second World War. Portugal's economic position after the war improved significantly. During the conflict, Lisbon had profited from its neutrality by trading with both the Allies and the Axis powers; but the post-war boom in commodity prices, for a country that had good access to colonial raw materials, was an even greater windfall. This relative commercial success also made Portuguese capital available for colonial investment and, in a rare display of foresight, the early 1950s saw a legislative accommodation to those changing economic times. In the early 1960s, the emergence of pro-decolonization forces in international fora, particularly in the United Nations, questioned Por-tugal's legitimacy to maintain colonial possessions. Despite such opposition, however, the government in Lisbon refused, to deny Portugal's ‘right’ to hold onto a colonial empire. While Britain and other Euro-pean colonial powers were shedding, albeit under pressure, the economic and political justifications for keeping their own far-flung possessions, the Portuguese closed ranks and claimed their colonial empire was actually one single nation that had many territories spread out around the world. From 1951, the colonies ceased to exist in the public lexicon and the ‘empire’ was replaced by one Portuguese nation made up of both continental and overseas ( ultramar) provinces.24 In the 1960s, a more fundamental shift in the New State's colonial policy became evident. By the beginning of 1962, a radically different colonial policy, involving a greater role for foreign capital, full-scale development plans, the foment of colonialspecific production and a large increase in the settler population, had begun to be implemented. This shift has been explained away as ‘late colonialism’, the reaction of a dying regime to the internal anti-colonial challenge, attempting, in vain, to postpone the inevitable. Because greater development of the colonies began in the 1960s, this has been attributed to the events of February and March 1961 when the anti-colonial war in Angola is considered to have begun. In other words, the colonial development policies were part of a strategy by the Portuguese regime to appeal to the ‘hearts and minds’ of the population and crush the anti-colonial challenge. However, there are both economic and political reasons to

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Page 13 claim that this cannot explain fully that late period of active colonial development in Angola. As Newitt has shown, the shifts in economic policy had already taken place by the mid1950s.25 These new directions were a reaction to the enhanced performance of the Portuguese economy itself which had begun to take off, and could not, therefore, have emerged as a reaction to the anti-colonial challenge of the early 1960s. Newitt argues that Portugal was entering a modern economic phase, with high industrial annual growth rates of 9 per cent in the mid-1960s and expanding international economic relations with Europe, the times were demanding a different approach to the economy, distinct from the self-sufficiency of the first Salazarist period. It was the needs of the expanding Portuguese economy, therefore, that spurred plans for a limited industrialization of the colonies. The anti-colonial challenge in Angola later emphasized the need for change and reinforced this underlying tendency. On the other hand, the New State was already under strong domestic political pressure to change before the Angolan uprising in 1961. Opposition forces in Portugal, effectively quelled during most of Salazar's rule, began to exploit the limited relaxation of authority surrounding the 1958 presidential campaign, expressing both their number and passion. Running against Salazar's candidate was General Humberto Delgado, himself a product of the regime, but who had collected around him a circle of broad support which cut across the political spectrum, from communists to monarchists. Inevitably, Delgado was not elected but his bid for power demonstrated to Salazar that the regime was not unassailable. Increasingly, the call for political modernization was heard. At the end of January 1961, the hijacking of the ocean liner Santa Maria by an anti-Salazarist, Captain Henrique Galvão, attracted world attention and turned the spotlight not only on the authoritarian regime in Lisbon but also on Portuguese colonialism in Africa.26 Also in that year, Salazar was threatened from within the regime when senior military figures, allegedly with support from the elite and the US Embassy in Lisbon, attempted to have him removed.27 While unsuccessful, these incidents reveal the extent of both internal and external pressure to which the New State was increasingly submitted. The anti-colonial revolt in Angola intensified the challenge to Salazar's authority. But, Newitt argues, it may also have, paradoxically, given the regime a reprieve. The February 1961 attacks in Luanda, followed by the March violence in the Northern coffeegrowing areas, marked the start of the war for independence in Angola.28 These incidents,

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Page 14 followed as they were by a military clamp-down and a long period of eclipse for the movements, may actually have prolonged the life of the regime for another 13 years. They allowed the New State, ‘with the perverseness with which cause and effect sometimes appear to operate’,29 to overcome the political threats from within Portugal itself. The wars of independence in the colonies (beginning in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique in 1963 and 1964 respectively) became a crusade for Salazar that may have salvaged his tottering regime and led the Portu-guese to rally around a nationalistic cause. A jingoistic campaign to defend the colonies may have come at the right time to help postpone the downfall of the regime, announced at the end of the 1950s. Beyond performing an important ideological function in the definition of nation for the regime, the colonies may also have played a significant political role in maintaining the authority and control of the state in the metropolis. Of course, there is little evidence that Salazar's early withdrawal from power would have necessarily led to the democratic (and anticolonial) reform of the New State. In fact, as the ailing of Salazar in 1968 showed, the perpetuation of the regime was in-built, and when Marcello Caetano took the reins of government, no change to the colonial status of Angola and the other territories was envisaged. So, while the underlying economic shifts should be recognized as well as the political pressures within Portuguese society, it is impossible to avoid attributing a major part of the responsibility for the increased pace of colonial development in the 1960s to the nationalist revolts of 1961 in Angola. As Heimer has put it, the period of ‘late colonialism’ in Angola: … was originally economic in nature, but became predominantly political within the framework of a colonial ‘counter-insurgency strategy’.30 The New State found itself increasingly under international pressure. In the 1960s, the intransigent Portuguese colonial empire stuck out in a pro-decolonization international environment. Despite this notoriety, at no time did the Portuguese regime ever publicly consider or assume the future possibility of decolonization. Even when faced with faites accomplis , Lisbon was unwilling to accept any changes to this world-view. When it became clear that Portugal would not voluntarily renounce its colonial concerns, some newly independent states began to take matters into their own hands. In 1960, Dahomey demanded that Lisbon give up its sovereignty over the fort on the former's

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Page 15 coastline at São João de Ajudá. It was clear that Portugal could not maintain effective control there, and yet the Portuguese government ignored all calls for a formal handover. The Portuguese governor did finally, if reluctantly, return to Portugal but only after having spitefully set fire to the fort. In India, Portugal had the administration of Goa and two enclaves.31 On 18 December 1961, and after a tense diplomatic confrontation with Portugal, Nehru sent 45,000 troops and 26,000 reservists into Goa against 4,000 poorly-armed Portuguese forces. Twenty-four hours later, and despite Salazar's appeal for martyrdom from the defending forces,32 the conflict was over. However, he never accepted the loss of Goa, always considering it temporarily occupied. A so-called representative for that territory continued to sit in the National Assembly in Lisbon long after it was seized by India. Colonial policy under Salazar and his successor, Caetano, consisted, in its most basic characterization, of maintaining the integrity of Por-tugal's overseas possessions, while all around them others were losing their own. This apparently anachronistic stance was determined by the importance that Angola, in particular, and the Portuguese empire, in general, played in supporting the authoritarian regime established by Salazar. Whereas other colonial powers were, in general, able to withdraw from their dominions without suffering major internal costs, the Salazarist regime, as a result of its political and economic dependence on the colonies, could not have decolonized on the one hand and survived in Portugal on the other. For this regime then, basic colonial policy was always the defence of sovereignty, if necessary to the very end. The loss of the colonies would have signified the end of the New State. This intransigence and inability to accept change must be emphasized as it reflects the structural relationship that existed between the Portuguese regime and its colonial possessions. Salazar believed, perhaps with good reason, that once the principle of decolonization was accepted by Portugal anywhere, for example in the case of Goa, the consequences for the other colonies, as well as for the authority of the New State at home, would have been overwhelming. The regime was built partly on the economic and political pillars of colonial rule and its very authority based on a mythical idea of empire. It was, therefore, inevitable that it would reject the nationalist urge for change and self-determination in Angola and the other colonies. When faced with this intransigent colonial state, the Angolan nationalists could only consider and eventually adopt a violent expression of anti-colonialism.

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Page 16 And as will be shown later, this limitation of political choices to guerrilla warfare had a profound radicalizing effect on the organization and nature of the nationalist movements. THE ECONOMY OF COLONIAL ANGOLA Colonial Angola played an important economic role for Salazar's regime. The economic relationship between Portugal and Angola was, in many ways, central to the New States' own economy. This was especially the case during the early period of Salazarist rule that preceded the onset of what has been called ‘late colonialism’. During this time, the Angolan economy functioned mainly as, on the one hand, an exporter of agricultural and mineral raw materials33 and, on the other, a market for Portuguese products. Angolan importers were actively encouraged to purchase manufactured goods from Portugal, while exporters were enticed into selling to the metropolis by prices that were fixed by the government generally above the average on the world market, as well as by other incentives such as tax rebates (50 to 60 per cent) on sales to Portugal. Colonial exchange funds were created to support Angolan purchases of metropolitan goods. The foreign exchange revenue of local exporters was sunk into this fund and emerged as Portuguese escudos, good only for purchases in the metropolis. This commercial relationship, somewhat typical of that between colonies and their metropolitan rulers (i.e. characterized by the unequal exchange of raw materials for manufactured goods), had as a priority the specific needs of Portugal's domestic economy. The regime used exchange fund restrictions and fixed pricing, as well as obligatory production and purchase quotas to orchestrate this system in accordance with domestic needs, accommodating wherever necessary Portuguese metropolitan industrial and other economic interests.34 While providing a captive market for Portuguese products, Angola supplied raw materials at beneficial prices to a number of industries, which helped to spur growth in the metropolitan economy. These industries would then offer their finished products for sale to the colonies. A case in point was the post-war revival of the metropolitan textile manufacturers. Using cheap raw cotton imported from their African possessions, Portuguese textile firms would spin fabrics and clothing which would then be resold back to the colonies.35 As with other exchanges involving raw materials on the one hand and manufactured

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Page 17 products on the other, this trade did not distribute benefits equally among the producers of the primary products and the manufacturers. The comparative profit levels of Angolan cotton producers and Portuguese textile manufacturers can be seen in the following figures for the period between 1939 and 1949: profits of colonial raw cotton purchased by the metropolis rose by 61 per cent; profits of metropolitan cotton textiles sold in the colonies rose by 224 per cent.36 Even more dependent on sales to the colonies were the wine producers in Portugal. As commercial activity with Brazil was replaced by trade with Portugal's African possessions, the revenue of wine sales to Brazil also fell drastically, threatening to bankrupt the Portuguese viniculturalists. With the help of the government, however, they managed to establish the colonies as exclusive markets for Portuguese wines, inviolable even to local wine producers. The result was a very sizeable export market which helped to support domestic wine production. In 1960, Angola took 53 per cent of all Portugal's exports of wine.37 According to one source, the export of primary commodities in 1957 accounted for 71.1 per cent of Angola's total exports.38 This ratio can be seen in the official figures given in Table 1.1. Table 1.1 shows that nearly two-thirds of Angolan exports were of an agricultural or vegetable origin, making the economy significantly dependent on the fluctuations of world commodity prices. In 1966, the primacy of raw materials in Angolan exports was still maintained as Table 1.2 shows in greater detail. Although the sale of these goods to Portugal was an important part of the latter's supplies of raw materials, it was only a proportion of total Angolan exports. In the early 1960s, only around 20 per cent of Angolan exports were to Portugal.39 However, regardless of their final destination, the sale of Angolan exports was a major revenue earner for Portugal. In 1957, according to one source, Angolan exports accounted for nearly 40 per cent of Portugal's total foreign sales.40 During this period of the New State's colonial rule, local industry in Angola had little opportunity to get off the ground. Attempts to establish a cotton mill in Angola were bitterly resisted by metropolitan competitors until 1943.41 Only those industries that had dominant positions in domestic Portuguese markets would venture into colonial manufacturing. When domestic capital was unavailable (or insufficient), or where technology was inadequate, the largest investments were held by foreign interests, despite a legal stipulation that half an enterprise's capital be of Portuguese origin. The Benguela Railway and Diamang, the diamond extraction giant, were the largest examples of this period.

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Page 18 Table 1.1Value of total Angolan exports by origin, 1961 and 1962 (million escudos)       19611962Product SectorValue%Value%Agricultural or vegetable origin2,28559  2,80265.7Industrial products of agricultural origin2436.32235.2Mineral extraction88222.8  76117.9Fishery products2897.42355.5Animal husbandry571.5511.2Various1173.01924.5Source: Situação Económica de Angola no ano de 1962 [1963], p. 12. Number of Esc$ to US$ between 1950 and 1970, roughly 29 (G. Clarence-Smith, The Third Portuguese Empire: Study in Economic Imperialism, Manchester University Press, 1985, Annex 2, p. 228). Table 1.2Main Angolan export commodities, 1966 (million US$) ProductValuePercentage of totalCoffee107.248.1Diamonds39.417.6Fish products14.15.8Sisal10.54.7Iron ore4.72.0Timber4.32.0Maize4.12.0Cotton fibre3.71.7Other34.816.1Total222.8100  Source: F. Brandenburg, ‘Development, Finance and Trade’, in D.M. Abshire and M.A. Samuels (eds), Portuguese Africa: A Handbook (London: Pall Mall Press, 1969) p. 241. Despite strict controls on the entry of foreign capital, and Salazar's seemingly personal aversion to its promotion, the regime made sure, however, that these and other large enterprises remained happy in the colonies, allowing the repatriation of their profits without too much bother. Furthermore, these and other major ventures were exempt from contributions to the colonial exchange fund. To sum up, the early period of Salazarist colonial rule of the Angolan economy had the following characteristics: Angolan production and export of raw materials was primarily subjugated to metropolitan in-

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Page 19 dustrial and consumer needs; at the same time, Angola also provided a significant proportion of Portugal's foreign exchange earnings. Portuguese colonial rule had vast formative effects on the economic structure of Angola. During almost fifty years of the New State, Portugal imposed, extended and developed a network of economic relationships which went to great extremes in restructuring the economic, and consequently social, character of indigenous Angolan societies. In very general terms, the effects of colonialism on Angolan society were instrumental in establishing certain economic production regimes which were inherently distinct from those of traditional societies. The introduction of wage-earning and of cash-crop production radically changed the rural subsistence lifestyle of the great majority of the population. From very early on, certain indigenous groups in Angola had established economic relationships with the Portuguese through trading, especially in slaves. By the twentieth century, however, economic interaction between the Portuguese and indigenous societies had surpassed its early commercial nature. The cultivation of cotton was an example of the radical change colonialism brought to the rural hinterland. An exploitative system of contract farming was imposed wherein the growth of anything but cotton was prohibited, and the sale of all produce dictated and determined by the Portuguese dealers. This cotton growing system was in force in the Baixa do Cassanje area where a violent anti-colonial disturbance erupted in 1960. The cotton revolt did not appear to be organized nor politically motivated, seeming instead to be a reaction to the extreme conditions of poverty resulting from the effects of that cash-crop economy. In March 1961, similar sentiments of revolt were expressed during widespread violence against settlers in the north. The imposition of contract labour on the indigenous population for the cultivation of cash crops, changed the basic economic structures of many areas. Independent African farmers were cultivating crops beyond subsistence levels in order to sell the extra harvest to the Portuguese, while others were contracted, forcibly or otherwise, as wage labour. These characteristics of the Angolan economy remained in place until after the end of the Second World War. After this, the Angolan economy exploded into growth, partly as a result of the increased cultivation of one single commodity: coffee. According to Paige: … the modern economic history of [Angola] did not begin until the rise of the coffee economy in the 1950s … [that] radically changed

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Page 20 the internal economy of Angola, altered its relationship with the metropolitan and world economies … [and] converted the colony into a mono-cultural export economy.42 The dominant role played by coffee in Angolan exports by 1966 can be seen in Table 1.2, accounting for nearly half of the total value of sales abroad. Between the early 1950s and the early 1960s, Angola experienced a coffee boom, the effects of which laid down the new bases for economic and social development experienced under the period of late colonialism. The neutrality maintained by Portugal throughout the Second World War was a profitable one. With its production and distribution capabilities undisturbed, Portugal continued to supply the world market with raw materials from its colonies at the far higher prices which prevailed during the war. The global shortages of raw materials continued into the period of the Korean War, which helped to sustain a period of generally high commodity prices. Consequently, the value of Angolan sales of coffee, one of the most important commodities in world trade after crude petroleum and grains, multiplied dramatically. Increased revenues from coffee plantations soon attracted metropolitan cultivators wanting to make their fortune, while existing African and European production was vastly expanded with the increased profits. The result was a rocketing of production, quadrupling harvests in the space of 15 years, making Angola by 1967 the third or fourth largest supplier of coffee in the world.43 Table 1.3 shows the expansion of Angolan coffee exports between 1948 and 1970. The steep rise in price between 1948 and 1952 more than doubled the value of the coffee sold abroad, despite the fact that less was sold during that period. The high prices continued until about the end of decade, when they collapsed worldwide. But the effect of a decade of high prices led to an increase in Angolan coffee production which eventually became noticeable in the increased export tonnages of the 1960s. According to van Dongen, coffee production in Angola jumped from under 50,000 tonnes in 1948 to over 200,000 tonnes a year by 1965.44 This increased production of coffee brought a dramatic change to An-gola, especially in its northern regions. Taking the province of Uige as an example, Paige calculated that over 75 per cent of the indigenous male working population in 1958 was involved in the production of coffee.45 The cultivation of coffee is highly labour-intensive, and the boom brought even more of the population into the cash-crop and wage-earning agricultural economy of the colony.

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Page 21 Table 1.3    Coffee exports from Angola, 1948–70 YearValue(million Esc$)Weight(000 tonnes)Price(Esc$ per kilo)Percentage ofagric. exportsPercentage oftotal exports1948  459.8  53.4  8.639.630.919521,137.6  47.723.853.341.319551,275.6  60.121.262.845.519581,539.4  79.619.367.541.719611,398.5118.111.857.536.119642,859.1138.720.671.848.719673,546.8196.518.088.351.919703,880.0180.621.561.031.9Source: J. Paige, Agrarian Revolution (New York: Free Press), p. 227. In 1941, African producers accounted for nearly 40 per cent of all coffee producers. By 1958, the expansion of massive European estates, the largest of which employed over 11,000 workers, had reduced the proportion of indigenous producers to 26 per cent.46 One of the effects of this new production regime was to bring undue stress to ethnic divisions among the indigenous population. The high demand for labour to work in the coffee estates was often met by contracting Ovimbundu workers from the south and centre of the country. However, there was a history of intercommunal friction between the northern peoples, of a Bakongo or Mbundu background, and the Ovim-bundu. In March 1961, during the outbreak of anti-colonial violence in the north, a number of sources have noted that, as well as European settlers, Ovimbundu contract workers were also victimized by the Bakongo who revolted. The latter considered that the Ovimbundu profited from and defended colonialism.47 As will be seen in Chapter 2, the rival anti-colonial movements that competed for power in Angola emerged from these ethnic groups. While it is difficult to identify fully the nature of the inter-ethnic facet of the anti-colonial violence of March 1961, it can be claimed, however, that the new coffee production regime resulting from the boom of the 1950s and 1960s artificially in-tensified the economic and social relationship between those different ethnic groups. At the same time as Angola was experiencing a coffee-led boom, Portugal itself was beginning to take a relatively faster track towards industrial development. The war profits, expanded colonial trade and more dynamic development plans had all led to a certain amount of growth by the end of the 1950s. But it was the burgeoning trade with Europe that provided the basis for this economic drive. The increased

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Page 22 economic dynamism provided, in turn, large amounts of investment capital that began to look for opportunities in Africa, and Angola in particular. It was at this time, during the mid-1950s, that the regime began to alter its policies and usher in a new direction in colonial development. Large conglomerates of Portuguese capital were in a position to provide investment capital to finance such a change in economic direction. In the long term, the colonial economy was to move from primary production to industrial development based on import substitution. Theoretically, this transformation was to be achieved by financial support from mainly Portuguese capital sources. State and private capital began to pour into Angola, framed by the ever-present hand of the regime in the form of two five-year plans which ran between 1953–58 and 1959–64. These were the beginnings of the final period of colonial rule under the New State. During late colonialism, a basic reversal of the regime's previous colonial policies occurred. Angola became less and less a subsidiary of the metropolitan economy. From there on, the separate industrial development of the Angolan economy, eventually more widely penetrated by foreign capital,48 was pursued. The Angolan economy was no longer determined primarily by Portugal's necessities but seemed to be following its own path of development, in both the public and the private sectors. The State financed the development of infrastructures such as roads,49 port facilities50 and hydroelectric projects to supply cheap energy.51 Public investment was complemented by the larger corporate conglomerates in Portugal. The opportunities in diversifying, vertical integration, relocation and in supporting this new process of industrialization were looked upon kindly by leading industrialists. With a view to encouraging the major financial-industrial groups to invest in Angola, the State allowed certain firms to hold privileged, and many times monopolistic, positions in both the colonial and metropolitan economies. In general terms, the period of late colonialism from the late 1950s to the early 1970s witnessed a very significant increase in the economic activity of Angola as it attracted greater and greater levels of investment. At the same time, however, Angola was in economic terms becoming less important to Portugal. Increased trade with Europe and the ever-burgeoning remittances of Portuguese emigrants abroad relegated colonial trade to a relatively less important role in the Portu-guese balance of payments. On the one hand, a significant strategy of colonial development, comparable to those of other colonial powers,52

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Page 23 was being implemented in Angola, markedly transforming production regimes and their social frameworks, and linking the Angolan economy more emphatically with diverse markets. But on the other hand, the colonies themselves became, while more profitable, actually less economically necessary for Portugal and its own expanding economy. COLONIAL SOCIETY The proclaimed basis for Portugal's civilizing mission of creating a multi-racial society in Africa was broadly similar to French attempts at assimilation in their own territories. Rather than placing a time limit on colonial tutelage as the British did eventually, this stance envisaged an infinite imperial existence for mainland Portugal and its overseas provinces. In 1933, the Portuguese colonial minister stated: We don't believe that a rapid passage from their African superstitions to our civilization is possible. For us to have arrived where we are presently, hundreds of generations before us fought, suffered and learned, minute by minute, the most intimate secrets in the fountain of life. It is impossible for them to traverse this distance of centuries in a single jump.53 Officially, the Portuguese ‘nation’ was made up of all peoples under its sovereignty. However, the colonial policy behind this multi-cultural fantasy may have had the unintended effect of creating some of the very conditions under which Portuguese sovereignty could subsequently be challenged. Despite its ethnically divisive nature, Portugal's colonial policy in Angola produced an indigenous class that came to both accept and expect the economic and social rewards of joining the central society at the heart of the colonial regime.54 Furthermore, this class also began the process of defining a collective idea of a wider Angolan national identity beyond that of their own ethnic origin. Finally, this process of assimilation contributed to the creation of an intellectual class that was able to interpret and express this latent nationalism and eventually direct it against colonial rule. The process of assimilation as envisaged by the Portuguese regime was fundamentally aimed at the ‘lusofication’ of the indigenous population, that is, ‘making’ them Portuguese. According to the official ideology of the regime, the empire (or, as it had become, Portugal and its overseas provinces) was to be inhabited by a Portuguese population that was defined culturally rather than racially. As was pointed out

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Page 24 earlier, this policy had a political rationale: to ensure the survival of the New State by defending the possession of overseas territories. By declaring the colonies to be an organic part of the ‘nation’, the regime believed they were inseparable from the mainland metropolis. To the heroic image of the timeless Portuguese voyager as the modern colonizer and the definition of Portuguese nationality as not being that of race or territory but as existing on a spiritual plane somewhere between the ends of the earth and heaven itself, another illusion was added and perpetuated by the New State and its apologists. An even more ephemeral quality, that of non-racism, was attributed to the Por-tuguese. This alleged characteristic of the Portuguese people was based on the development of a fanciful theory called lusotropicalism, wherein a historically unique absence of racism in the Portuguese was declared:55 … if one day the Lusotropicology here suggested is developed into a science, one of its main objects of study will be this process of the surpassing of the ethnic condition by the cultural, by virtue of which the blackest of blacks of tropical Africa is considered Portu-guese without having to renounce any of his dearest habits of an ecologically tropical man.56 In 1954, a statute was adopted defining the rights of indigenous colonial populations based on the pursuit of a cultural assimilation policy. In Angola, offspring of mixed African and European parentage, mestiços, could expect citizenry immediately, but the remainder of the indigenous population had to prove themselves deserving of the status. The basic requirements were the ability to read and write, to have paid employment and no criminal record. Even if these conditions were met by any prospective candidate, civilizado status was ultimately only endowed if the vaguely defined qualities of Portuguese civilization were present, making the process of assimilation in Angola largely arbitrary.57 Furthermore, the prerequisites to obtaining full rights before the law were absurd when considering the social reality of Portugal where the official rate of illiteracy in 1950 was 40 per cent of the population. Demanding that an African read and write, have the means to support himself and his family and sport an impeccable civil record before he could even be considered for ‘civilized’ status was farcical when illiterate and unemployed Portuguese with criminal records could move freely about the colony. Even leaving this stark contradiction aside for the moment, this process of assimilation in Angola fell far short of the regime's vision of a multi-cultural society. The colonial ideologues of the New State sought to utilize the policy of assimila-

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Page 25 Table 1.4    Angolan population by race and ‘civilized’ status, 1950 Race Totalpopulation Total‘civilized’ Per cent‘civilized’ Per cent‘civilized’ in 1940African 4,036,689 30,089   0.7   0.7‘Mestiço’      29,648 26,335 88.8 82.9White      78,826 78,826 100    100   Source: G. Bender, Angola under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Reality (London: Heinemann, 1978c) p. 151. tion to further justify the unique character of Portuguese colonialism which they felt should have been considered in a different light than that of its European counterparts. Through this policy, the Portuguese regime affirmed their view of colonial society, not officially defined in racial terms but in equally discriminating cultural ones. Despite the attractions of holding Portuguese citizenship, however, not many ventured forth to apply for such a privileged status. In 1950, out of a total number of over 4 million Africans, only 30,089 (including dependents) were registered as civilizados . One reason for this low number may have been the desire to avoid taxation, one of the perquisites gained by the newly civilized.58 In 1961, Portuguese law was changed and this paternalistic policy of assimilation was dropped in favour of a blanket declaration of citizenship. It is difficult, therefore, to assess the overall impact of this process. However, the very low percentage of ‘civilized’ African population in 1940, which remained the same in 1950 (see Table 1.4), indicates that Angolan society was not exactly on the way to becoming the multi-racial ideal dreamed up by the apologists of lusotropicalism. For the great majority of the Angolan indigenous population, the privileges of colonialism were unknown. Within the mestiço population, however, a sense of participation in and belonging to central colonial society, however limited, did develop. The figures in Table 1.4 show that the regime's policy of assimilation, contrary to its multi-racial aims, led to a divided colonial population by driving a discriminatory wedge between traditional African communities and those who were allowed to join central society. As will be seen in Chapter 2, one of the characteristics of the rivalry that emerged between the two main Angolan anti-colonial movements, the MPLA and the FNLA, was a hostility between, on the one hand, mestiços and assimilados 59 and, on the other, Africans who had not been co-opted by colonial society. Privileged status also brought

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Page 26 access to education which divided Angolans even further. This is how the FNLA saw the MPLA in 1962: [The MPLA] … especially recruited their members from the Angolan population classed as ‘civilized’ by the colonial regime; i.e. the half-castes and the assimilados … But they never got very far in [the regions outside urban centres]. Their lack of support was principally due to the privileged position granted to the half-castes and the assimilados by the colonialists (education, exemption from forced labour, official recognition of property ownership and of liberal professions, existing civil rights, and a standard of living far superior to that of the exploited peasant mass). This ordinance [granting these privileges] dug a social and psychological trench between them and the oppressed peasant mass.60 Critical references to the cultural background of the MPLA's leaders seem to betray a sense of inferiority on the part of the FNLA. Portuguese colonial policy, therefore, served to divide a small elite of Angolans from the majority, a schism that subsequently emerged in Angolan politics and, in particular, in the rivalry between the MPLA and the FNLA. The leader of the third major Angolan anti-colonial movement, Jonas Savimbi, also revealed the importance of this racial issue when he referred to the domination of the MPLA by mestiços: It may sound like racialism, and it is certainly not the way we feel today because we have learned a lot. But it is a fact that it was very difficult at that time for blacks to understand why mestiços should be leading a liberation movement to fight the Portuguese. It was not clear to us that mestiços were suffering in Angola; they were privileged people.61 The racial composition of the population of Angola did not alter significantly until the last two decades of colonial domination. As Table 1.4 shows, no more than a negligible percentage of the African population ever achieved the assimilado status and gained access to central colonial society. This signifies, if we consider the figures for 1960 in Table 1.5, that before the period of late colonialism, no more than 5 per cent of the Angolan population was ever able to obtain direct access to the privileges of colonialism. Until the early 1960s, over 95 per cent of the Angolan population remained outside the hub of colonial life. In the period of ‘late colonialism’, however, Angola experienced an explosion of economic development and social reform, such as the

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Page 27 Table 1.5   Racial composition of Angolan population, 1777–1970 WhiteMestiçoBlackTotalYearNo.%No.%No.%No.%1777    1,581–  4,043––––– 1845    1,8320.03  5,7700.105,378,92399.95,386,5251001900    9,1980.20  3,1120.064,777,63699.74,789,9461001920  20,7000.48  7,5000.184,250,00099.34,278,0001001940  44,0831.2028,0350.753,665,82998.13,737,9471001950  78,8261.9029,6480.724,036,68797.44,145,1611001960172,5293.6053,3921.104,604,36295.34,830,2831001970290,0005.10–––– 5,673,046100Source: G. Bender, Angola under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Reality (London: Heinemann, 1978c) p. 20. abolition of different racial statutes and the extensive development of health and educational services available to African populations. This altered the picture shown above. The growth of the Angolan economy had transformed its requirements. The new industries now needed a semi-skilled, semi-urban mobile workforce. Initially, this new labour force was drawn from the African population, and education, social services and benefits, training, etc., became available to a number of a growing African bourgeoisie. According to a survey carried out by Heimer in 1970, 74 per cent of Luanda slum children aged 6 to 12 were attending or had attended school.62 These centripetal economic forces drew more and more Africans into urban colonial society and began to create a semi-industrial class where a traditional tribal identity was supplemented with a wider sense of community. The 1950s had seen the nationalist challenge grow in the British and French colonies. The emergence of forces of self-determination in neighbouring colonies was not lost on an increasingly aware Angolan bourgeoisie. As the economy provided more benefits and a place in urban colonial life, a sense of Angolan nationality began to emerge without, however, the total dissolution of tribal and racial identifi-cation. According to Heimer: … it is not much of an exaggeration to say that only by the beginning of the seventies had one all-encompassing, though still very loose and highly heterogeneous, Angolan social formation been brought into existence. One of the ideological consequences was that, for the first time, important numbers of Africans in the central society (and not just small segments) had begun to think of themselves as Angolans instead of, or, more frequently, as well as, members of a

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Page 28 given ethnic group … And even in an increasing number of tributary societies, a kind of a ‘secondary identification’ with Angola as a whole had begun to take place.63 The consolidation of a national identity was, therefore, partly rooted in the formative influence of colonial society as well as in the nationalist anti-colonial challenge, as will be seen in Chapter 2. But ‘late colonialism’ did not prevent the challenge to the colonial regime. By the time the Angolan movements had been organized in the early 1960s, they and their leaders already had a basic political character of anti-colonial resistance which had been formed in the 1940s and 1950s. The final period of colonial development came too late to alter this response. The post-war coffee boom in Angola and the growth of the economy did introduce a new factor to this period. While the need for more labour was initially met by the African population, the New State's industrialization programme for Angola included plans to significantly increase white immigration to the colony. To the ideologues of the regime, the settlers represented a second wave of discoverers and navigators, who braved the unfriendly seas (in this case the international tide against colonialism) to live and work in the tropics, once more emphasizing the unique Portuguese way in the world. To the industrialists they represented a workforce, much needed as the Angolan economy expanded. To the colonial developers they represented a settler class ready to spread out over Angola, to continue the unfinished job of ‘pacification’. Despite considerable expense,64 Lisbon considered the immigration a success, at least quantitatively (see Table 1.6). The effects of this increased immigration, however, did not live up to expectations. The great majority of this immigrant population had a very low level of education and training. In the period between 1965 and 1972, over 55 per cent of Portuguese emigrants to Angola over the age of 7 had zero years of education.65 Furthermore, only a few chose to settle in rural areas and attempted agricultural activities. Most had wanted to escape that same life in Portugal and chose instead to settle in the cities and towns. The result was the flooding of the lower end of the urban job market by a workforce with little or no skills. However, the market was racially weighted in their favour. Despite claims of impartiality, it was difficult to see an employer picking an African over a European for most jobs. Despite the availability of opportunities for trained Africans, the predominance of uneducated whites at the lower end of the market began to threaten the newly promised lifestyle opportunities of the African urban population.

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Page 29 Table 1.6    White population in Angola, 1940–73 YearTotal1940  44,0831950  78,8261960172,5291970290,0001973335,000Source:  M. Newitt, Portugal in Africa: The Last Hundred Years (London: C. Hurst, 1981) p. 164. From 1961, there were also increased attempts at establishing multi-racial settlements in Angola by directing emigrants from Portugal and Cape Verde, usually of mixed extraction, into the rural hinterland. Bender has concluded that this policy was a failure:66 from 1961 to 1968, the directed settlement programme cost over US$ 100 million and, out of the original number of settlers less than half remained at the end of this period. Those settlers who abandoned attempts to populate rural Angola, did not, however, leave the country. They moved to the cities and towns and, while basically unskilled and uneducated, added to the already crowded ‘lower strata’ competing with Africans for jobs and living space. According to Heimer, this process had a far-reaching effect as the denial or displacement of privileges anticipated under ‘late colonialism’ may well have proved to be a fertile ground for gathering support for the emerging anti-colonial challenge: The petty bourgeoisie was primarily motivated [to protest] by its frustration over a manque à gagner – an economic ‘upward mobility’ and an equality of social treatment it aspired to, but which it was denied by a racial barrier reinforced by the ongoing immigration of ‘poor whites’.67 Furthermore, the majority of poor whites, perhaps as a result of the competitive job market, tended to wield their racial power to ensure that African challenges to the colonial regime were put down. This was the case in 1961, and on subsequent occasions, when reactionary groups of white vigilantes would carry out terror raids of the slums in Luanda, or when groups of farmers carried out revenge attacks in the north after the March attacks by the FNLA. With a few exceptions, most white sympathizers of Angolan self-determination tended to be

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Page 30 of an educated background. But over 83 per cent of white immigration to Angola in the period between 1965 and 1972 had had less than four years of education.68 This source of anti-African nationalism emerged again and again in the capital, Luanda, even after the New State had been toppled in 1974. In July of that year, over a hundred people were allegedly killed in white–black violence. The Angolan experience of the colonial policy of assimilation seems to have had two major aspects related to the emergence of the political conflict between the anti-colonial movements that led to the civil war in 1975. First, the process of ‘civilization’ created a tiered society in which the privileged centre was separated from and resented by those who remained outside. This segregation of privilege tended to be identified in racial terms. Mestiços and educated Angolans were the object of scorn on the part of other Africans. This division was a facet of the MPLA–FNLA rivalry. Second, the assimilation policy helped to create in the privileged centre not only an acute sense of national identity, as will be shown later, but also the enhanced expectation of material and political benefits. The frustration of those expectations by the white society and by an intransigent regime in Lisbon helped to feed an already growing sense of nationalism and anti-colonialism in Angola.

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Page 31 2   Angolan Anti-Colonialism It is important to recognize that the liberation movements are forming rather than expressing a national consciousness1 The Portuguese colonial regime in Angola went far and deep to determine the parameters within which modern Angolan politics have been carried out. The very concept of an Angolan nation-state and the imposition of economic and authority structures are a legacy of colonialism which shaped domestic political and social forces and set up conflicts between them. Yet modern Angolan nationalism was not a creation of colonialism. It emerged from the political choices made by different groups of people, in different parts of the country, for various reasons but with one single goal: to end Portuguese rule in Angola. The intransigence of the Portuguese colonial regime in denying political expression and representation in Angola was partly behind the choices made by the three main movements, the MPLA, the FNLA and UNITA. The authoritarian nature of the New State precluded the development of nationalist political parties along the lines of those that emerged elsewhere in Africa. Under such circumstances, the resort to clandestinity and, subsequently, guerrilla warfare as the form of challenging Portu-guese rule was inevitable. The repression of Angolan nationalism by colonial authorities, therefore, narrowed the options available to anti-colonialists for political expression. In fact, colonial repression in Angola may have helped to define the radical political character of the anti-colonial movements. The ideological outlook of a nationalist movement may be influenced by the willingness of the colonial regime to accommodate the former's political agenda. To the British, it was apparent that intransigence to nationalist demands would result in a more radical anti-colonial challenge; Sir Andrew Cohen believed that successful co-operation with nationalism would be the best bulwark against communism in Africa. This dynamic was apparent when Algerian nationalists radicalized and resorted to an armed challenge after France showed itself unwilling to consider independence for that territory. Conversely, nationalists in other parts of French Africa achieved independence organized in non-violent political parties. In the case of Angola, the extreme option of resorting to armed force by the anticolonial movements in the early 1960s may have had long-lasting effects to the point of determining the form of conflict

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Page 32 taken in 1975 when civil war broke out among them. Had those movements been able to develop as non-violent political parties of mass appeal, the events of 1975 might well have been altogether different. THE ORIGINS OF ANGOLAN NATIONALISM Colonial authority in Angola emanated from a coastal administration that had been extended inland, mostly during the early twentieth century. The so-called ‘pacification’ of the colonies sought to secure and, therefore, claim their territorial integrity and Portuguese sovereignty, thereby meeting the ‘standards’ of imperialism established at the Congress ofBerlin. As elsewhere, however, colonial boundaries cut across and included within them numerous ethno-linguistic groups and indigenous political communities which would otherwise not have considered themselves one single entity. Despite this fact, however, a current of Angolan nationalism did emerge out of these heterogeneous ethnic societies, upholding a common political goal of self-determination for Angola and its people as a whole. While formed by the colonial experience, the national integrity of the Angolan state, both in territorial and demographic terms, was eventually accepted and promoted by all three anti-colonial movements. An MPLA programme, published in the early 1960s, stated that the ‘;… sovereignty of the Angolan state will belong entirely and solely to the Angolan people, without distinction as to the ethnic origin, class, sex, age, political leanings, religious beliefs or philosophical convictions.’2 The FNLA emerged from the Union of the Peoples of Angola (UPA),3 whose motto was: ‘For the national, territorial and social liberation of Angola’.4 Finally, UNITA too framed its political identity and goals in a national idea of Angola. According to a later UNITA publication: The peculiar social situation of Angola calls for harmonious co-existence of all ethnic groups and races that are the components of the Angolan nation.5 Despite this almost universal6 acceptance of one Angolan nation and state, the origins of these three movements are set in that ‘peculiar social situation of Angola’ referred to in the UNITA document. The origins of the MPLA, the FNLA and UNITA emerge not only from the political consequences of challenging colonialism but also from specific ethnic and social circumstances.

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Page 33 The main thrust of Portuguese colonial subjugation destroyed beyond recognition the Ndongo kingdom, the principal pre-colonial Mbundu political organization. The Mbundu people, numbering about 700,000 in the 1960s,7 were generally located around the Kuanza river, in an area that runs inland from Luanda to the Cassanje highlands in the north-east.8 The Mbundu had had the longest contact with the Portu-guese, as the area they occupied was the most geographically propitious corridor linking the interior to the coast. This made it principally, but not exclusively, the main trading route for slaves. To the north of the Mbundu area is the Bakongo homeland which extends ethnically over the border into Zaire, and to the Cabinda enclave, which is separated from Angola by Zairean territory.9 This was the area of the ancient Kongo kingdom which, unlike the Ndongo kingdom, retained some of its structures of authority throughout Portu-guese colonial rule. A Kongo king, Pedro VIII, was enthroned in 1962. These institutions were, of course, strictly controlled by the Portuguese but remained, nevertheless, a focus for Bakongo political life. In the 1960s, the Bakongo population numbered approximately half a million.10 The Ovimbundu, numbering over 1,700,000 at the time, are the largest ethno-linguistic group in Angola, and occupy mainly the plateau highlands south of Luanda. In the north-eastern and central parts of Angola, are the Lunda-Chokwe who, like the Ovimbundu, are primarily migratory peoples. These major ethno-linguistic groups in Angola are generally seen to be the main streams from which emerged the nationalist movements. Marcum's important work on the Angolan movements constructed their political constituency and historical significance from their ethno-linguistic origins.11 Under this approach, the MPLA is seen as primarily a Luanda-based Mbundu movement which established links with historical Mbundu resistance against colonialism. Similarly, UPA, and its later incarnation, the FNLA, established itself around the modern embodiment of the Kongo kingdom. Lastly, UNITA was seen as representing the interests of the Ovimbundu and the LundaChokwe. While they are undoubtedly crucial to tracing the origins of each movement, their ethno-linguistic foundations should not be seen as a primary determinant in the political conflict that emerged. This is to say that while the movements do have different ethnic origins, the civil war between them did not break out because of these differences. Certainly in other Portuguese colonies, in Mozambique for instance, one unified nationalist pan-tribal movement managed to emerge despite the country's stratification along different ethnic lines.

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Page 34 Furthermore, there was political travelling between the Angolan movements by major figures, casting further doubt over a solely ethnic explanation to the civil war. The leader of UNITA himself, Jonas Savimbi, of Ovimbundu origin, was a leading member of the UPA and the FNLA before returning to the south of Angola and establishing UNITA. Similarly, Daniel Chipenda, an Ovimbundu, was a prominent military leader in the MPLA before defecting to the FNLA in 1975. Both of these examples of many such cases support the argument against an overwhelming reliance on the ethnic factor as a determinant in Angolan politics. While undoubtedly present in the Angolan conflict, especially in pinpointing the identity of the rival constituencies and when used to draw upon loyalty, ethnicity does not seem to be able to completely explain the origins of the conflict. That is to say, Angolan ethnicity may have been exploited by movements and personalities in their political conflicts but the latter do not emerge solely from the differences between the ethnic groups. The concurrent development of Angolan anti-colonialism and nationalism within two separate social and political communities, the Bakongo and the Mbundu, gave rise to two well-rooted movements, the FNLA and the MPLA. But the conflict between them cannot be seen to have emerged solely or even mainly from their ethnic differences. Other equally important influences such as race, education, personality clashes and basic political choices must be looked at to understand the roots of the civil war. The origins of modern Angolan nationalism are set in two interrelated streams of protest, one pre-colonial, the other colonial. The history of pre-colonial Angola and especially of resistance to Portuguese military conquest played an important symbolic role in the anti-colonial war. For example, the resistance of Queen Jinga in the seventeenth century and of the warriors of the Dembos became part of the military and political ethos of the MPLA guerrilla groups of that area. This historical link between modern anti-colonialists and African resistance to the Portuguese was referred to by the leader of the MPLA, Agostinho Neto, who set the two different eras, past and present, within the same continuous framework of resistance to colonialism: For Angolans, clandestine action means the resumption of a long battle against Portuguese domination. From the time of Portuguese penetration, our history has been marked by great feats of resistance.12 Similarly, the restoration of the glory days of the Kongo kingdom played an important historical role for the political constitution and

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Page 35 military ethos of the FNLA. But such an image initially implied a separatist aim since only northern Angola was included in the territory of the old Kongo kingdom. During the mid to late 1950s, the restoration of the Kongo kingdom was clearly the focus of Bakongo politics in which the Union of the Peoples of Northern Angola (UPNA),13 a precursor to the FNLA, was heavily involved. As well as drawing upon references to historical resistance against Portuguese rule, the anti-colonial movements were also able to mine a more recent body of protest that had emerged in Angola during what Wheeler has called the ‘stirrings’ phase of Angolan nationalism.14 During this time, an active political life developed that was a direct precursor to the anti-colonial movements of the 1960s. This political activity coincided with an era of relatively free press from the 1880s to the end of the republic in 1926, and was expressed most emphatically by the assimilado and mestiço sectors within colonial society, particularly in the urban port areas of Luanda and Benguela. These two urban and commercial centres were the focus of colonial trade for most of the period of Portuguese presence in Angola. Despite the low number of white settlers in the colony as a whole, Luanda and Benguela were bustling cities where trade was centred. Before the early twentieth century, a low level of white female immigration to Angola had helped to create a mestiço class, one that generally tended to fill the economic space between the Portuguese and the Africans. Accorded a higher status in colonial society, this mestiço class was often educated and helped to man some of the levels of colonial administration and the trading structure with the interior, often acting as intermediaries. Trading success and the benefits of colonial society gave mestiços, along with established assimilado African families, a relatively significant social and economic niche in the coastal societies of Luanda and Benguela. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this urban mestiço and assimilated class had developed a modest, if moderate, level of political expression, most accentuated during the republican interregnum, between 1910 and 1925. Associations, such as the Angolan League (1912)15 among perhaps a dozen,16 and a free press environment permitted a brief flourish of political expression during this period. According to Wheeler, the goals of the Angolan League were: (i) to fight for the general interests of Angola; (ii) to further African education; (iii) to defend the interests of their members and protect their rights; and (iv) to establish physical education classes.17

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Page 36 Although some members were more radical than others, their general approach was not anti-colonial but co-operative and even supportive of the republican cause in Portugal. The League mainly sought to advance the lot of the assimilado within colonial society. Access to white collar jobs by mestiços and assimilados was being challenged by increased white immigration, and this early twentieth-century political protest in the form of such associations and publishing focused on the increasing frustration felt by the mestiços and assimilados in being pushed away from the promised rewards of colonial society.18 Despite this sectional interest, however, it should be noted that the first goal of the League, ‘to fight for the general interests of Angola’, reflects the presence of a concept of the Angolan nation in this early political activism. African political activity also emerged at this time in Lisbon, predating the anticolonialists of the 1940s and 1950s who met, organized and developed their challenges to colonial rule from within the heart of the regime. The African League,19 established in 1919, and the African National Party (PNA),20 in 1921, were self-proclaimed nonviolent lobbying groups with an assimilado membership which sought to represent ‘… the progress, rights and interests of the masses of Africans …’21 in the Portuguese colonies as a whole. These groups become linked to the wider streams of panAfricanism and pan-Negroism that were emerging at the time. W.E.B. Du Bois held the second session of the Third Pan-African Congress in Lisbon in 1923.22 This assimilado political activity in both Angola and Portugal was generally nonconfrontational23 and survived throughout the republican period. However, once the New State began to emerge after the coup in 1926, the official life of these associations was rapidly snuffed out. Nevertheless, these associations, and their more sterile successors under the New State, such as the Angolan National League (LNA),24 played an important role in the development of Angolan nationalism and anti-colonialism. They provided a forum for an exchange of views and an expression of dissatisfaction with colonial society and the Por-tuguese regime. They were built on and helped to develop a form of protest, which took as its subject and victim the African Angolan. For example, the issue of race and its exploitation was brought to the fore during the last decades of the nineteenth century in the protest writings of José de Fontes Pereira and in a collection of Luandan press articles titled ‘The voice of Angola crying out in the desert’.25 This issue subsequently became central to the political expression of the anticolonialists in the late 1940s and 1950s. Both these protest writings and the political activism of the associations further reinforced

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Page 37 the idea of an Angolan nation which remained firmly planted in the field of Angolan nationalism. In this context, it is worth mentioning the existence of European opposition in Angola to mainland regimes. On the one hand, there was a reactionary class of settlers and traders that had developed in the coastal towns which lived mainly off the commercial links established directly with Brazil. Their political complexion was often antimetropolitan, and autonomy for Angola a common goal. But they were, of course, very much against African self-determination. A number of these groups even threatened to secede from Portugal, but were never sufficiently organized to bring this about. This stream of Angolan settler nationalism was somewhat reinforced throughout the twentieth century especially as a result of increased poor white immigration. In 1961, and later in 1974, it emerged violently against the anti-colonial movements and the African population in general. At the same time, there developed within European colonial society a radical body of opposition to the colonial regime, especially among the white, liberal, professional and semi-professional classes. After the end of the Second World War, literature on fascism and Marxism was brought into Angola, especially from Brazil,26 and was particularly prevalent in white anti-Salazarist circles which were active in the main urban areas of Luanda and Benguela. By the end of the 1940s, there was a significant level of political interaction between these white opponents of the regime and the assimilado and mestiço activists who were becoming increasingly radical. URBAN RADICALISM AND THE MPLA By the late 1940s, small clandestine groups of opposition to colonialism had begun to form in the urban centres of Luanda and Benguela. The composition of these groups was mainly of mestiço and assimilado origin: educated Angolans with a place in colonial society. The issues focused on by their political criticism were long-standing ones within Angolan nationalism: race, exploitation and colonialism. But mere reform was no longer the main political goal. Increasingly, a radical anti-colonial programme was developed, one that was couched in the political language of Marxism, and which sought the end of Portu-guese rule, by force if necessary. This more radical political framework set these groups apart from previous generations of Angolan nationalists that had mainly sought to develop a non-violent dialogue

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Page 38 with the Portuguese on those questions. The new generation of Angolan nationalists did not differ from previous generations in their social and racial background. In fact, many urban radicals came from families whose previous generations had also been active politically. They continued, furthermore, the development of an Angolan African national identity, attempting to break out of the Portuguese rationalization of colonial assimilation policies. But by the early 1960s their anti-colonial challenge, as expressed in the programme and policies of the MPLA, had become violent in method and revolutionary in intent. The intellectual starting point of this new radicalism was the idea of Angola and the Angolan. The clandestine protest literature assumed and continued to stimulate a national identity. In 1948, a group of Luandans linked to an authorized association, the Regional Association of the Angolan-born (ANANGOLA),27 published a literary review called Mensagem , with the motto ‘Let Us Discover Angola’. In its poetry and prose, young assimilados and mestiços expressed outrage and bitterness at the submissive status of the colonized. They focused on bringing to the fore a sense of the ‘Africanness’ of Angolans. As in other colonies on the continent at the time, their literature sought to assert an identity, one that was both African in race and Angolan in nationality. Despite the fact that only two issues of Mensagem were published (it was banned by the authorities in 1950), it is seen, particularly by the MPLA, as a formative stage in the development of modern Angolan anti-colonialism. Its editor was Viriato da Cruz, a young mestiço intellectual who played a crucial role in the development of a Marxist tendency within the MPLA. According to Marcum: They featured poetry that not only invoked Angola's African heritage but called upon Angolan poets to create an ‘Angolan language’ … [Viriato da Cruz's] work reflected what a leading commentator on Portuguese Negro poetry, Alfredo Margarido, has termed a ‘new awareness of the motives behind the exclusion of the Negro from colonial society’. Such poetry produced a new internal freedom that was, Margarido predicted [in 1962], ‘bound to be externalised eventually by means of revolt against the established order’.28 Between the late 1940s and the mid-1950s a flurry of clandestine political activity was experienced in main urban centres. Small groups of intellectuals and students met secretly and discussed colonialism and its violent demise. They exchanged smuggled radical literature, produced their own, named and renamed their discussion groups, but little else was done. According to Van Dunem:

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Page 39 They believed that to fight against Portuguese colonialism all that was needed was a conspiracy on the part of intellectuals. They believed that all people needed to do was get together in somebody's house one day, and, the next day, colonialism would collapse.29 The most pervasive political influence during this time was undoubtedly Marxism, and, despite the claims of Viriato da Cruz that ‘the Communist Party of Portugal … had no appreciable influence in either the preparation or the launching of the Angolan revolutionary movement’30, it seems very likely that Portuguese communists were an important element in establishing its prominence among Luandan anti-colonialists. The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) was the only anti-Salazarist opposition that was active throughout the period of the New State. According to Pelissier, the PCP succeeded in infiltrating authorized colonial associations, the Angolan National League (LNA) and the ANANGOLA. In 1961, a prominent MPLA leader, Mário de Andrade, in an article published in Pravda ,31 seemed to confirm this penetration by Portuguese communists when he referred to the ‘revolutionary character’ of the LNA, the ANANGOLA and a third group, the African Association of Southern Angola (AASA).32 One of the first overtly Marxist groups to be constituted was the Angolan Committee of the Portuguese Communist Party, established sometime in 1948. The links between the PCP and the MPLA are clearly long-standing. Indeed, some of the current members of the PCP are originally from that group of anti-Salazarist whites in Angola.33 From this group of Angolan nationalists and people linked to the Portuguese Communist Party, the Angolan Communist Party (PCA) emerged in 1954.34According to Van Dunem, the party was formed by ‘ … four or five people …’, among whom was Ilídio Machado, ‘… the thinker in the PCA’.35Ilídio Machado is considered to be one of the founding members of the MPLA. Yet according to Van Dunem, Machado himself denied this. Even if this was the case, his influence on Viriato da Cruz and others who subsequently became members of the MPLA makes it possible to consider the PCA a precursor to that movement. Subsequent MPLA historiography, however, omits any reference to the PCA, probably in the interests of appearing to be a broader political movement and thereby appealing to a wider range of internal and external support.36 It is important to point out that the mestiço and assimilated semi-middle classes were not universally developing a Marxist challenge to

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Page 40 Portuguese colonialism. On the contrary, the young intellectuals espousing Marxism must certainly have been a thorn in the side of the more conservative elements, many times within their own families, who had achieved a significant position of social and economic importance within Luandan and Benguelan societies and, consequently, were not particularly receptive to an ideology that called for an end to private property, even if it did promise the demise of colonialism. In parallel to the clandestine activity in Luanda, Angolan nationalists were also organizing in Lisbon, the destination for those Angolans who wanted to obtain university degrees. A small number of mestiço and assimilados went to Portugal to study. There, they came into contact with underground political opposition, mostly led by the PCP, as well as with students from other Portuguese African colonies. Among those Angolans studying in Lisbon and Coimbra during the mid-1950s were Mário Pinto de Andrade (the founder of the MPLA), Agostinho Neto (the leader of the MPLA and first Angolan president), Lúcio Lara (the MPLA ideologue) and Jonas Savimbi (the leader of UNITA). From Mozambique, there was Marcelino dos Santos (FRELIMO) and from Guinea-Bissau, Amílcar Cabral (PAIGC). Later, these latter contacts would prove to be very useful to the MPLA leaders when deep in their conflict with the FNLA. Through interterritorial organizations such as the Conference of the Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies (CONCP),37 the MPLA benefited internationally from its links to the PAIGC and FRELIMO, whose own positions were unassailable. While each pursued their own studies, the nationalists congregated in places such as the Home for Students from the Empire,38 an official hall of residence for colonial students. While Mário Pinto de Andrade39 and Lúcio Lara tended to concentrate more on the intellectual facet of the anti-colonial challenge, Agostinho Neto was more active. He was a member of MUD Juvenil (the youth section of a movement very close to the PCP), and was arrested a few times. Neto established close links with an association of Angolan sailors as well as with other students. The regular voyages of Angolan sailors on merchant ships back and forth between Portugal and Angola provided a makeshift transmission belt that informed Angolans in Lisbon and in Luanda of what the others were doing.40 According to Van Dunem: The axis was, therefore: Mário Pinto de Andrade (students in Lis-bon), Agostinho Neto (sailors), Ilídio Machado and Viriato da Cruz (Luanda).41

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Page 41 This axis was not so much a formal structure of organization as a network of exchange that carried news and ideas about anti-colonial stirrings. Yet it was also the skeleton of what later became the MPLA. The clear increase in nationalist activity, even if limited and clandestine, was rapidly picked up on by the colonial authorities. In 1957, a section of the regime's political police, the PIDE, was established in Angola.42 To all accounts, the PIDE set up a good underground network of informants that managed to penetrate many of the Luandan groups. However it was done, the results were spectacular. A wave of arrests in 1959 decimated the clandestine nationalist network,43 depleting it of its most prominent leaders either by imprisonment or by pushing them underground or into exile. By 1960, Ilídio Machado and Agostinho Neto, among many others, were in prison.44 Mário Pinto de Andrade and Lúcio Lara had left Lisbon and were in Paris. The regime made it perfectly clear that it would not tolerate nationalist political activity. During this time, the military presence of the colonial power was significantly stepped up. In March 1959, the air force transferred a district base to Angola, marking their arrival with a bombastic air drop of paratroopers over Luanda. A few weeks later, an additional 2,000 infantrymen reinforced the already 20,000-strong army stationed in Angola.45 A year later, in April 1960, the navy positioned warships off the Angolan coast.46 The clamp-down by colonial authorities on the nationalists was as much a reaction to the increase in opposition locally as it was a reflec-tion of the New State's preoccupation with the changing map of Africa. To some extent, it was influenced by the events in the neighbouring Belgian Congo where anti-colonial agitation had broken out in Janu-ary 1959. Rioting in the capital, Leopoldville, led quickly to a decision by Belgium to grant independence in June 1960. Notwithstanding, Belgium attempted to maintain a strong military and administrative presence but rapidly lost control of the situation and the newly independent Congo descended into civil war. The 1950s had been a period of relatively secure European colonial control, but nationalist politics in Africa were about to reach boiling point. Before 1960, only ten African countries were independent and only two (not including South Africa) of these were below the Sahara.47 It was at the turn of the decade that the full force of the decolonization process was delivered. In 1960 alone, 17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa became independent. The effect of this process in general, and of events in the Belgian Congo in particular, on the Por-tuguese authorities was to deepen fears of a nationalist challenge to their own colonial rule.

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Page 42 It was clear that Portugal was alarmed by the possibility of an anticolonial challenge, particularly in Angola where they believed it would come from across its borders. In 1960, official Portuguese documents, smuggled out of the country and leaked to the New York Times, described the putting down of an armed rebellion in Angola. Those documents were, in all probability, ‘instructional wargames’ as claimed by the colonial authorities.48 However, such training materials revealed that the Portuguese did fear a nationalist uprising and indicated that the regime expected a nationalist threat to come from across Angola's borders and not from within. In fact, the Portuguese government insisted that no separatist movements existed in their territories except those that were fomented from the outside.49 In particular, to the Por-tuguese, the ethnic commonality that linked the Bakongo people across the Angola–Congo border made it dangerously permeable. Following the wave of repression at the end of the 1950s, most of the urban nationalists were either in prison or abroad in exile. The intransigence and efficiency of the colonial authorities had made staying in Angola an impossible option. Harassed by the PIDE, Viriato da Cruz had left Angola and joined Mário de Andrade and Lúcio Lara abroad. These three Angolan intellectuals (the first two were mestiços and Lúcio Lara is white) worked from Paris, from where they attempted to further the cause of anticolonialism. Working under a general denomination, the Anti-Colonial Movement (MAC),50 they, and other leading nationalists from Portuguese colonies such as Amílcar Cabral and Marcelino dos Santos, were active in left-wing political and literary circles of Western Europe. From them emerged the MPLA. The creation of the MPLA is a subject of controversy.51 At the heart of the dispute lies the question of the historical legitimacy of the movement, an issue that played an important role in the subsequent internationalization of the Angolan conflict. Here, the two competing versions will be summarized. The ‘official’ version, which has been written into much of the material relating to the MPLA, contends that the MPLA was founded on 10 December 1956 by Ilídio Machado (PCA), Viriato da Cruz ( Mensagem ), Matias Migueis, Higino Aires and André Franco de Sousa. In 1990, this version was vigorously reaffirmed in an open letter by the single surviving member of this group, André Franco de Sousa.52 According to Franco de Sousa, the founding members met in Luanda at Ilídio Machado's house where a manifesto of political action was drawn up and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola ( Movimento Popular para a Libertação de Angola ) was born. From here, the MPLA

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Page 43 expanded inside the country only to run afoul of the colonial backlash at the end of the 1950s. Still according to this version, the MPLA then moved abroad, first to Guinea and later to Leopoldville in the newly independent Congo. Then, on 4 February 1961, the remaining activists who were neither in prison nor in exile, mounted an attack on the gaols of Luanda, that, although unsuccessful, is considered to mark the beginning of the MPLA's anti-colonial war against the Portuguese. But this account of the foundation of the MPLA is now openly challenged by a number of people, including Joaquim Pinto de Andrade, the brother of Mário Pinto de Andrade and an early honorary president of the MPLA. According to him there was no movement known as the MPLA as such at that time. He told Expresso that ‘before 1960 there was no document that referred to the MPLA’.53 Joaquim Pinto de Andrade claims that in 1956 he had read a manifesto drawn up by Viriato da Cruz but stresses that it had only been a declaration of intent to form a movement and not the actual foundation itself. During that period, he claims that: … there were countless groups of 3–4 people [in Luanda] that would emit pamphlets abroad, to seem like many. There was the PLUA, MIA, MINA, MNA54 … But these were all acronyms without programmes, without founders.55 But those who stick to the original version maintain that the MPLA was not known nor referred to at this time because it was secret. According to André Franco de Sousa, after the foundation of the MPLA, it was decided that this acronym would be kept secret and reserved for later use. In the meantime, they would call themselves the Movement for the Independence of Angola (MIA). Joaquim Pinto de Andrade rejects this outright: ‘ … at the time, the MPLA did not exist, even secretly’. ‘If it had existed’, he went on, ‘he would have known of it, since he was active in MIA, the very same cell in which André Franco de Sousa was’.56 The revised history of the foundation of the MPLA, as claimed by Joaquim Pinto de Andrade, an unnamed source in the Expresso article and others,57 can be summarized in the following manner. Having left Luanda under pressure, Viriato da Cruz joined Mário Pinto de Andrade and Lúcio Lara in Paris in 1957. In Angola, small cells remained which were active but dispersed. The exiles in Paris discussed the need for one broad movement to unify anti-colonial efforts in Angola, and,

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Page 44 according to one source,58 it was only at the end of 1958 at the All-African Conference held in Accra that this core in exile decided to create the MPLA. Subsequently, Viriato da Cruz drew up the statutes and programme of the movement allegedly based on those of the Viet-namese National Liberation Front. The movement was to be named according to a phrase with which Viriato da Cruz had ended his 1956 document calling for ‘the creation of a broad popular movement for the liberation of Angola’.59 Establishing themselves in Conakry,60 sometime in 1959 or 1960, the MPLA had yet to act but now had at least a structure of leadership. The Directing Committee was made up of Mário Pinto de Andrade (President), Viriato da Cruz (Secretary-General), Lúcio Lara, Azevedo Júnior, Matias Migueis, Eduardo dos Santos and Hugo de Menezes.61 This revisionist version claims that far from being conspired by the MPLA, the attack on 4 February 1961 was, in fact, a spontaneous, somewhat suicidal, action carried out by anti-colonial elements at the time unconnected to the MPLA. However, after that spontaneous attack took place, the newly constituted MPLA in exile claimed it for themselves. According to the words of Mário de Andrade, conveyed by his brother: I arrived at the MPLA office and I come across Lúcio Lara, who was permanently listening for news, and he told me that there had been an uprising in Luanda. I was amazed; I considered it for a while and then I turned to Viriato Cruz and told him: ‘Viriato. Write. We have to claim that act.’ And so he wrote: ‘On the morning of 4 February, the Angolan patriots, led by the MPLA …’62 According to Lima: … when the attack on the prisons takes place, the exiles have to admit that the people are moving faster than they are. We were intellectuals, students, moving in environments outside the country, while inside the country, people felt the necessity to turn to action. In order not to be left behind, it was necessary to transform that spontaneous movement and give it a voice, and a direction.63 Subsequently, the movement backdated its origins in order to situate its birth earlier, in 1956, and inside the country. This was done in order to legitimize its constitution and shore up its credibility. They feared that any movement led by mestiços in exile, and only hurriedly exposed after a suicidal attack on Luandan gaols which had left many dead, would not have been accepted, either externally or, more importantly, internally as a legitimate representative of Angolan anti-colonialism.

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Page 45 If this new version is indeed accurate, then the establishment of the MPLA took place outside Angola and not inside, and three, perhaps four, years later than it has hitherto been claimed. In fact, a press report of statements made in July 1962 by Jonas Savimbi in London while still in the UPA seem to support this revised version of the MPLA's origins: ‘The MPLA are a party of students and intellectuals in exile: their movement was started in Paris.’64 This revision of its origins challenges the legitimacy of the MPLA's claim to have launched the anti-colonial war, and makes the 4 Febru-ary incident a spontaneous act carried out by desperate people. According to Mendes de Carvalho, who was one of the prisoners the revolters sought to release, the men who attacked the prison knew nothing of the MPLA and were shouting the name of another, rival movement, ‘UPA … UPA!’65 At the time, and as will be seen below, the UPA was the most prominent Angolan movement and the precursor to the FNLA. What this reveals is that already at the birth of the MPLA, the competitive pressures of legitimization wielded an overwhelming influence. These pressures to endow the movement with an internal and external validity are also the driving force behind subsequent alliances made by the movement, not only to help it fight colonialism, but also to legitimize its identity vis-à-vis its rivals. Although this controversy has emerged, and it becomes important to document the origins of the MPLA as accurately as possible, the fact is that by claiming the act of 4 February for itself and by giving it the symbolic value it has hitherto maintained, the MPLA has, in effect, assumed the responsibility of the act to itself even if, in reality, it had nothing to do with it. It signified that Neto could claim in 1964 that: Incontestably, that date marked the first phase of armed fighting against Portuguese colonialism.66 An attempt to pinpoint the ideological influences on the MPLA leads indisputably to two main currents: nationalism and Marxism. The general aspects of Angolan nationalism have already been outlined above, and the idea of Angolan nationality was undoubtedly part of the literature and political lexicon of the MPLA. On the other hand, Marxism in the MPLA takes on a similar hue as it does in other anti-colonial situations where revolutionary Marxism is allied with anti-colonial nationalism. Marcum believes that it may have been a natural consequence of their mestiço origins that a political prism such as Marxism was favoured by the leaders of the MPLA, as it was an ideology that

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Page 46 focused on class rather than racial conflict.67 The Ottaways support this conclusion: [The racial] characteristics of the MPLA help explain why Marx-ism held a special appeal for its leaders. By stressing class con-flict over all others, it provided the urban mestiços and assimilados with an ideology that transcended race and allowed co-operation between them and the black workers and lumpenproletariat of the musseques .68 Such a conclusion would apply equally to the case of assimilated Af-ricans who were also caught, socially and culturally, between two worlds. It is not orthodox Marxism, as a theory of class struggle, that forms the ideological backdrop for the MPLA before 1975 but the wider doctrine and practice known as national liberation. After the end of the Second World War, anti-colonialism began to emerge as the dominant political goal in the developing world. The politics of the end of colonial rule and self-determination swept through the European overseas dominions for a number of reasons that actually derived from the course of that war. The same colonial powers that claimed the war was a struggle against authoritarianism and for freedom could not very well argue that those ideals did not also apply to their colonial subjects. Furthermore, the early defeat in Asia of the European powers at the hands of the Japanese helped to crack the myth of the invincibility of the white man. Finally, the post-war international scene saw the emergence, at opposing poles, of two superpowers both of which defended anti-colonial positions, albeit from different perspectives. These factors, among others, brought anti-colonialism to the forefront of political discourse throughout the developing world, including Africa. While influenced by events and thinking from abroad, self-determination as a goal emerges principally from the reaction of the colonized to the experience of domination. According to an MPLA leader: ‘We are humiliated as individuals and as a people.’69 The desire for independence became a common goal of anti-colonial movements throughout the continent although some new governments did defend a more radical approach than merely striving for sovereignty.70 This was the ‘first wave’ of decolonization. The goal of independence was merely the starting point for the doctrine of national liberation which emerged in the anti-colonial conflicts of the 1960s and 1970s. Among those anti-colonial movements which took up this doctrine is the MPLA. In ideological terms, national lib-

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Page 47 eration is where Marxism, as an interpretive and political instrument, enters the anticolonial stream, leading to a far broader definition of colonial domination. In particular, the experience of the Chinese communists was an influential factor on the development of revolutionary anti-colonialism. Aspects of Maoism, ironically developed in a noncolonial context, are at the core of the ideology of national liberation. By advocating revolutionary transformation anywhere and not just in industrial societies, Maoism seemed to be more applicable to the experience of the developing world. To selfdetermination as a goal of anti-colonialism, Marxist doctrine added economic independence. No longer was the end of colonial authority a sufficient objective; the economic structure established by it also had to be overturned, or else colonial control would not be terminated. What had to be confronted, the Maoists claimed, was ‘the double-edged sword of imperialism’.71 In its declarations the MPLA clearly saw themselves through a similar prism: The MPLA is a revolutionary movement. The MPLA plan aims at the complete destruction of the colonial machinery and of all forms of domination.72 Thus, in the Third World, Marxism as an ideology had been further altered and ‘ … had … march[ed] from a theory of the self emancipation of the industrial working class to a voluntaristic recipe for rural insurrection followed by state planning and capital accumulation.’73 Therefore, liberation movements, in adopting revolutionary socialism as a model of anti-colonial conflict and economic development, ignored the supposed succession of historical stages determined by orthodox Marxism.74 According to White, national liberation became ‘a vehicle for radical nationalism in non-industrial societies’.75 National liberation was more than a modified Marxist doctrine for anti-colonial conflict and development in the Third World. The experience of those movements that adhered to it created a world-wide stream of revolutionary anti-colonialism, to which the MPLA, like other movements, turned and felt part of:76 We know that victory in the righteous struggle of our people is not far off now … Guaranteeing this is the unswerving desire of the Angolan people for freedom, the powerful national liberation movement (and) the support of all progressive humanity.77 In its anti-colonial war in Angola, the MPLA turned to the experience of like-minded movements in other so-called national liberation

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Page 48 wars, such as those in Algeria and Vietnam which were held up as examples to emulate. According to Lúcio Lara, the principal ideologue of the MPLA: The Vietnamese armed struggle was very human, a blend of political and military action which became our model. In drawing up our MPLA programme, we were strongly influenced by the Vietnamese experience. Obviously we also studied their military tactics, their concepts of people's war.78 The ideological complexion of the MPLA placed it firmly in the socialist camp, a conditioning factor of undeniable importance which determined the external links the movement would establish throughout its conflict against Portuguese colonialism and its struggle for power in Angola. THE FNLA, HOLDEN ROBERTO AND BAKONGO NATIONALISM A particular feature of modern Angolan politics was the role played by nationalists based in the neighbouring Congo (Leopoldville). Out of the Bakongo ethnic group that straddles the border between the two countries there developed a strand of Angolan nationalism which produced one of the major anti-colonial movements in Angola, the FNLA. Precisely because of its strong tribal base, the FNLA has often been subjected to criticism which cast doubt on its claim to represent An-gola and not just one part of it. But, throughout the anti-colonial war it was the MPLA's strongest rival and, after the collapse of Portu-guese rule in 1974, the FNLA was determined to contest power in Angola. After the Congo became independent of Belgium in 1960, there were as many as 58 Angolan nationalist organizations working out of Leopoldville.79 Among the Angolan expatriate population, these groups jockeyed for position while manoeuvring for official Congolese backing and independent African support. One of those groups, the Union of the Peoples of Angola (UPA), formed the core of what was to become the FNLA. As we have seen, the UPA was the most prominent Angolan anti-colonial movement at the beginning of the conflict with the Portuguese in 1961. For a while, the UPA, representing the Kikongo-speaking peoples, and its leader, Holden Roberto, were the best-known face of Angolan nationalism.

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Page 49 Despite the fact that he was born in Angola, Holden Roberto was raised in Leopoldville and was, according to all accounts, very much at home in that city's political scene. His rise to prominence within the UPA occurred under the protective wing of his uncle, Barros Necaca. Originally, the group was known as the Union of the Peoples of Northern Angola (UPNA), and Barros Necaca was its president. Their political constituency was the Baxikongo tribe, whose leaders were Baptists and Kongo royalists.80 The UPNA organized around their professed aim of restoring the ancient kingdom of the Kongo to full independence. The constitution of a separate Bakongo state would have changed Angola's borders. On 20 May 1956, Roberto was one of the young Baxikongo who co-signed a letter to a visiting US State Department official emphasizing the separate nature of the Kongo and calling for an end to Portuguese rule in that kingdom. A year later, the restoration of the independent Kongo kingdom was invoked in a letter to the UN Secretary-General.81 As he ascended within UPNA, Roberto was chosen to represent the group at the first All-African conference that was held in Accra, Ghana, in December of 1958. At that conference, where there was, according to Marcum, an ‘exuberant pan-African spirit’,82 Roberto established contacts with other African nationalists such as Franz Fanon, Kenneth Kaunda, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore and Sekou Touré. It was in the light of exchanges with those major anticolonial figures that Roberto is said to have decided that the separatist nature of the UPNA should be cast aside in favour of a total Angolan identity. In Accra, Roberto became convinced that the organization should be modernized and drop the ‘tribal anachronism’ of its restorational aims.83 The name of the group was changed to UPA, and the reference to ‘northern’ peoples dropped in order to impart a broader appeal. A manifesto in the name of UPA calling for the liberation of all Angola made its first appearance at the Accra conference in 1958. During the following two years, Roberto toured international circles and published damning articles on Portuguese colonialism, steadily increasing the profile of his own movement. He visited Accra, Conakry, Brazzaville, Tunis, Monrovia and New York. In August of 1959, he attended a foreign minister's Conference of Independent African States held in Monrovia. In September 1959, attached to the Guinean Mission to the United Nations, Roberto argued that Portugal's African territories should be assigned to UN tutelage. While in New York, he established a wide range of American contacts with the help of the American Committee on Africa (ACOA). Further reinforcing

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Page 50 his prominence among African nationalists, Roberto took part as an observer in the second Conference of Independent African States which was held in Addis Ababa in June 1960.84 By the beginning of the 1960s, while the leadership of what would become the MPLA was dispersed and barely organized, Roberto was a well-known figure in the international African political arena and had already established good links in the US. While this active international canvassing by Roberto was good strategy, it mainly resulted from the fact that the Belgian colonial authorities had clamped down hard on Angolan nationalists following the Bakongo-led riots in Leopoldville of January 1959. Taking advantage of the belief that Angolan émigrés had participated in the rioting, the Portuguese pressured the Belgian police to arrest several hundred Angolans suspected of anti-colonial activity. The arrests led to the repatriation of those alleged nationalists to Angola. Unwittingly, this may have had a negative effect from the perspective of the Portuguese colonial regime. The reintegration of ex-émigrés who, on the one hand, brought with them nationalist ideas and, on the other hand, talked of higher wages over the border was not what the Portuguese wanted during such a volatile time. The UPA later claimed that these extraditions enabled them to infiltrate the colony with ‘cells’ which were credited with preparing the groundwork for the uprising of 15 March 1961.85 In July 1960, after the Congo became independent, Roberto returned to Leopoldville where he was warmly received. His international prestige had helped to make this a period of expansion in the fortunes of the UPA. It was also a time during which Roberto consolidated his own dominance of the movement. In the heady summer months of Lumumba's rule, Roberto disseminated the cause of the UPA and challenged Portuguese colonial administration through writings and broadcasts. He was already working with those who would form his very personalized structure of command. Most prominent among these were José Manuel Peterson and Johnny Edouard, son of Eduardo Pinock, a veteran of the Protestant challenge to the Kongo succession. Roberto's rising star was momentarily eclipsed, however, by the dismissal of Patrice Lumumba by President Kasavubu, in September 1960. His past association with Lumumba allowed his political opponents in the Congo to accuse him of being a communist. Roberto fled to Ghana (where he was spurned by Nkrumah's government and accused of being ‘in the pay of America’),86 and from there to New York where he attended the 15th session of the UN General Assembly. While in New York, a situation developed which might have marked

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Page 51 an end to Roberto's rise to power within the UPA and, consequently, changed the course of Angolan politics. While Roberto was in the United States, the UPA Steering Committee had committed the movement to a loose coalition of Angolan parties, known as the Common Front of the Political Parties of Angola.87 The other parties involved were the following: an MPLA group led by a Bakongo, António Josias; ALIAZO, an association representing the Bazombo tribes; and a Cabindan group, the AREC.88 The figures in the UPA that had committed the group to the Front also planned to hold elections for the leadership in November while Roberto was away from Leopoldville. Roberto hastened back from New York to see the challenge off. The ensuing power struggle resulted in a major split within the UPA: 17 out of the 20 members of the UPA Steering Committee resigned, including Roberto's uncle and initial patron, Barros Necaca. From this point onwards, Holden Roberto became the uncontested leader of the UPA. His first act was to withdraw the UPA from the Front, and the latter subsequently collapsed.89 This challenge to Roberto's leadership has been written off as a conservative reaction to his tendency to move increasingly away from non-violence towards direct action against colonialism. On the other hand, it may also have represented the first of what were to be many dissensions from Roberto's allegedly autocratic style of leadership. What was later revealed through the many abandonments of the FNLA was that Roberto was unwilling to dilute his own power at the head of the movement. Other Angolan nationalist groups, unless dissolved within his structure of authority, represented an unacceptable threat to Roberto. According to the US State Department, Roberto was ‘inflexible, resolute, anti-communist and incapable of delegating authority’.90 By the beginning of 1961, Roberto was very much in control of the UPA. He had firmly established himself at the centre of power and placed members of his own tribe and family in the most important executive posts. Under Roberto, the UPA's internal and external pro-file became pronounced, and was, at the time, the best known Angolan nationalist group. In early 1960, the second All-African People's Conference was held in Tunis, and marks a watershed in the paths chosen by the Angolan nationalist movements in the anticolonial challenge. Until that time, self-determination was considered an objective to be negotiated with the Portuguese:

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Page 52 … the UPA, aware of the responsibilities it is assuming toward the Angolan people, toward Africa and toward history, makes a solemn appeal to the Portuguese government and people to agree to negotiate as soon as possible on ending the colonial regime and recognizing national Angolan sovereignty.91 Meanwhile, the MPLA nucleus in exile had been busy making contacts and putting across the case against colonialism in Angola. But this movement too, saw the end of colonialism as coming from a negotiated process. At that time, only a war of communiqués and newspaper replies marked the confrontation with the Portuguese colonial authorities. Peaceful self-determination, however, was increasingly put in doubt as the determination of the Salazar regime to refuse even to address the issue of selfgovernment became patently clear. In reply, the nationalists began to warn of the responsibility the Portuguese government would bear for the ‘bloody conflict’ that would ensue from that intransigence.92 But even as late as 1960, the resort to armed action did not seem inevitable. According to the first military leader of the MPLA: … Mário de Andrade himself hesitated considerably before taking the option of armed struggle. When this was talked about in terms of political speculation, I remember Mário de Andrade until 1960. … was very hesitant.93 According to Marcum,94 this perspective began to change at the All-African meeting in Tunis, where both the MPLA and the UPA were present. With the Algerian war of independence in full flow, Franz Fanon cast an authoritative shadow over the workings of the conference. Among others, he called for the peaceful option to be cast aside in favour of direct action. In Tunis, the call for an Angolan war of independence was being heard by the UPA. But this vision was challenged by Mário de Andrade who held that war was not necessarily essential for the anti-colonial process.95 This resistance by the MPLA to Fanon's calls for a war may explain the support that was subsequently given to Holden Roberto's UPA by the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN).96 By 1961, the MPLA and the UPA seemed to be going in opposite directions. The latter, internally cohesive under Roberto's leadership, was considering launching direct military action against Portuguese colonialism. The former was still attempting to consolidate its organization. But then early that year, an event of paramount importance

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Page 53 changed this situation. The 4 February attack on the Luanda gaols brought the MPLA out of relative obscurity and established it as a major force of anti-colonialism in Angola. While the movement's direction of the attack has been placed in doubt, the effect of that action, after the MPLA claimed it for itself, was overwhelming. The attack forced the movement's hand in opting for a military strategy. But by claiming to have played a part in the beginning of armed conflict against the Portuguese, the MPLA placed itself at the forefront of the nationalist conflict against the Portuguese, a role it shared with the UPA, especially after the latter unleashed the violent attacks in northern Angola on 15 March 1961. The combined impact of the February and March anti-colonial violence propelled Angolan nationalism towards a significantly increased level of international attention. The sheer violence of the UPA attacks and of the far more vicious colonial backlash marked a new phase in nationalist anti-colonialism. Reprisals by the Portuguese during the eight month long uprising resulted in thousands of deaths, the final total being placed variously by sources at 8,000, 25,000 and 50,000.97 Furthermore, the attacks coincided with a UN Security Council debate on Portuguese colonialism. News that a revolt had begun in Angola sharpened the debate and helped to push the tide against the Portuguese. During the course of 1961, both the desperate bid for selfdetermination in Angola and the intransigent nature of the Portuguese colonial regime were revealed to the watching world. At first, Roberto denied that the UPA had been involved in the attacks.98 Subsequently, however, they claimed responsibility for them, and the attacks entered the historiography of the UPA/FNLA, and even of Angolan nationalism as a whole, as the beginning of the end of Portuguese colonialism. Roberto believed that an Angolan uprising would isolate Portuguese colonialism internationally: ‘Portugal will have no support, for its colonial system is known for being one of the most retrograde.’99 According to claims, the attacks were aimed at creating a situation of extreme terror and violence in Angola which would bring negative international attention to Portuguese colonialism. Under pressure from the international community, Lisbon would renounce sovereignty while the violence would impel the European settler population to give up and leave Angola. This scenario seems to have been modelled closely on what occurred in the Belgian Congo. A witness to the rapid demise of Belgian colonialism, Roberto seems to have believed that the experience could be repeated in Angola. However, the nature of Portuguese colonialism produced an entirely different result.

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Page 54 The 1961 anti-colonial actions did not drive Portuguese colonialism out. Instead, the regime in Lisbon sent more troops into Angola,100 while reaffirming its determination to hold on to its colonies. Even diplomatic isolation did not seem to bother the Portuguese regime. When the Kennedy administration reversed the US policy of not supporting anti-Portuguese positions at the United Nations and approved a Security Council resolution condemning the repression of nationalist action in Angola,101 the United States embassy in Lisbon was stoned.102 This seemed merely to reinforce the regime's resolve to resist change. The Portuguese representative at the UN accused the US of courting the Third World vote, and Salazar told the National Assembly: The United States is pursuing in Africa, although with other intentions, a policy which is parallel to that of Russia … [one that is] incompatible with what she is trying to achieve through the North Atlantic Treaty.103 By this time, the effects of ‘late colonialism’ were beginning to emerge, and colonial development policies designed to bring Angola and Por-tugal even closer were implemented. After the actions by nationalists in 1961, particularly those of the UPA in the north of the country, Portuguese colonial resolve became even more deeply entrenched. Shortly following the March action, Roberto and the UPA's privileged position in Leopoldville became momentarily threatened. Con-golese fears of Portuguese retaliation led President Kasavubu to consider expelling Roberto and his movement from Leopoldville. Kasavubu was a leader of the Congolese Abako party which shared the UPA's political constituency among the Bakongo and was thus in direct competition with Roberto's movement. By putting pressure on Roberto to please the Portuguese, the Congolese president was killing two birds with one stone.104 By that summer, and despite the rivalry with Abako and outright antipathy from Kasavubu in the presidency, the Congolese political climate changed once again, this time significantly in favour of Roberto. In July 1961, his old friend and fellow footballer, Cyrille Adoula, was appointed Prime Minister, an appointment which gave the UPA a very secure political footing in Leopoldville. The Adoula–Roberto link provided the UPA (and later the FNLA) with a secure base across the border from Angola. Furthermore, Adoula favoured the UPA in its bids to gain the allegiance of the Angolan émigrés of Leopoldville, the numbers of which had swollen considerably as people fled the 1961 violence in Angola.105

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Page 55 After the March attacks, the UPA attempted to throw off further its tribal identity and expand into an all-encompassing Angolan nationalist force. During that year, the UPA expanded beyond its Bakongo base with the appointment of Jonas Savimbi as Secretary-General of the union. The appointment of Savimbi, an Ovimbundu, was an influential factor particularly in leading other Angolan students in Europe to join the UPA. The inclusion of Rosário Neto, a Luanda-Mbundu, in the UPA leadership was a further attempt to transcend the Bakongo image of the party. The political legitimacy gained by launching an armed conflict against a colonial power allowed the UPA to grow. The prestige of military action and the broadening of the ethnic make-up of the UPA leadership established the strength of the party and, consequently, that of Roberto at its core. In early 1962, the UPA was a founding member of a front that in effect replaced it as the vehicle for Holden Roberto's political power. On 27 March 1962, the National Front of the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) was formally established. Although the movement was based on a political union between the UPA and another large Kikongo-speaking movement, the ALIAZO, the FNLA's political structure was completely dominated by Roberto's own personal power network. The ALIAZO was little more than a tribal association to further the interests of the Bazombo. It had protest roots in the Simão Toco sect, an anti-colonial but somewhat obscurantist group active in 1949–50. But, like UPNA before it, ALIAZO broadened its political horizons and renamed itself the Democratic Party of Angola (PDA).106 Within the FNLA decision-making structure, the PDA retained the right of veto. This was, however, meaningless, as Roberto avoided using due processes and wielded almost absolute power within the FNLA.107 The FNLA was created to fulfil a very clear objective. While Roberto believed he could maintain his group's predominance within the Bakongo ethnic constituency, the creation of a front, uniting more than just a single movement or party, allowed him to claim that the FNLA represented an attempt to unite anti-colonial Angolans. The following are the first two decisions of the FNLA: 1) To unite our forces in one national liberation front to hasten the independence of the country. 2) To group in an Angolan national liberation front, all organizations truly representative of the Angolan people who accept the general policies of the front.108 On 5 April 1962, after barely a week in existence, the FNLA formed

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Page 56 a so-called Angolan revolutionary government-in-exile (GRAE).109 Undoubtedly taking inspiration from the success of the Algerian FLN's experience with its own governmentin-exile, the establishment of the GRAE was a useful strategy for bringing attention to the conflict against Portuguese colonialism. But it also served another purpose, in that it helped the FNLA gain ascendancy within Angolan nationalism. The Algerian government-in-exile had bestowed authority and legitimacy on the FLN, and the FNLA sought the same effect with the creation of the GRAE. The ideological orientation of Holden Roberto and the FNLA seems patently obvious. In the early stages of the anti-colonial war, the predominant political currents in this movement were anti-communism and African nationalism. Like the MPLA, the FNLA claimed its objective to be the liberation of the Angolan land and people from colonialism. But unlike the MPLA, it also peppered its public pronouncements with liberal amounts of anti-communism.110 It is common, on the other hand, for some colonists to try to prove to the African people that nationalism and the fight for dignity are identified with Communism. They even went so far as to make this convincing to certain Africans, who thus let themselves be seduced by Marxist and Communist ideology. In some places, many of those brother Africans say they would prefer this to colonialism. But the great majority of those who fight for the liberty of their country have no ideology save that of human dignity. It is universally accepted that Africa is imprisoned by its land and its religion, whatever it may be. It knows no other ideology other than patriotism – and it is this which the West calls nationalism. Let all who want to safeguard their friendship with the peoples of Africa – with the people of Angola – know that we are determined to be not only Africans but also masters of our destinies and lands, and that we will not allow ourselves to be seduced by any foreign propaganda.111 While placing itself clearly outside the socialist bloc, the FNLA did attempt to identify itself with the prevailing strain of African anticolonialism. It referred often to the national liberation struggle, and even ventured to propose a somewhat progressive programme, although a suitably vague one. The declaration of the FNLA's constitution claimed that ‘agrarian reform’ and ‘a planned economy’ would be established by a ‘democratic regime’ that would replace colonialism.112 According to one report in 1963, Roberto affirmed that he envisaged a one-party

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Page 57 state for Angola after the rebel war.113 In the early 1960s, Roberto and the FNLA tried to stand, as much as possible, in the anti-colonial camp without, however, compromising its appeal to anti-communist circles, particularly those in the US. Like all anti-colonial movements, the survival of the movement itself was the FNLA's primary objective, which led it sometimes to compromise its ideological posture in favour of pragmatism. This resulted, on occasion, in a shift of allegiance. In early 1964, Roberto announced that the GRAE would ‘accept aid from Communist China and other Communist countries’. According to Roberto: Until now we have kept out of the cold war and within the framework of African politics (but) we are now at a point where a radical change of policy is imperative for us to make headway in our struggle.114 In early 1962, Roberto's movement, the FNLA, was acting as a government-in-exile for the Angolan people, and had, for a year, been locked in guerrilla warfare against the Portuguese colonial regime. It had a significant international profile and was the Angolan nationalist movement most favoured by the Leopoldville government. At the time, its prospects looked good. By the end of 1962, a confident MPLA arrived in Leopoldville ready to begin its first major period of anti-colonial activity. Buoyed, in turn, by the effect of the 4 February attack, the MPLA believed it would be the movement to lead Angolans to independence. It was increasingly clear that a rivalry was emerging in Angolan nationalism, one that would dominate the anti-colonial war and beyond.

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Page 58 3   Exile Politics THE CONGO YEARS It could be argued that the Angolan civil war of 1975 began in Leopoldville in 1962. By that time, the two principal protagonists of that war, the MPLA and the FNLA, were already engaged in the beginnings of a political rivalry that came to dominate the Angolan anticolonial effort and determine the course of Angolan independence. After Mário de Andrade claimed responsibility for the 4 February attack on the Luandan gaols, the MPLA was ready to move into action. Leaving Conakry, Guinea, where its Directing Committee had been set up, the MPLA established its first major headquarters in Leopoldville some time in late 1961 or early 1962.1 In the Congolese capital, the MPLA also received its first military force, put together by Manuel Santos Lima and trained in Morocco.2 The proximity of the Angolan border, an independent African government and the presence of a large Angolan refugee community3 made Leopoldville the logical choice for the MPLA to establish an external base from which to launch its own armed anti-colonial challenge. But from the very beginning, the MPLA ran up against a number of difficulties that resulted from the fact that the UPA/FNLA was already far better rooted in Leopold-ville's political circles. According to one account, there had been an earlier attempt to establish a group in Leopoldville linked to the Luandan intellectuals. In June 1960, Mário de Andrade apparently approached Rosário Neto, a prominent Mbundu active in Leopoldville, with this in mind. But Rosário Neto turned down the offer of association and joined the UPA instead. Another local group, led by a Bakongo, António Josias, also had links with the MPLA intellectuals. The ethnic origin of Josias helped this group gain access to the mainly Bakongo community in Leopoldville. This established an important foothold for the MPLA among the Angolan refugees. When the MPLA leadership came to Leopoldville, Josias was cast aside and the local structure taken over.4 The MPLA's move to Leopoldville came after a period of international exile during which the movement consolidated a certain amount of support, particularly in Western Europe, but also in African capitals such as Conakry and Accra. Mário de Andrade's links to French intel-

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Page 59 lectual and political circles helped give the MPLA an authoritative profile as representatives of a progressive Angolan nationalism. At the same time, groups of Angolan students, in Belgium, Brazil, Italy, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, the UK and both West and East Germany,5 campaigned for the cause of Angolan anti-colonialism, as interpreted by the MPLA. In Africa, the leaders of the movement found general sympathy in those countries of the Casablanca bloc: Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Morocco, Algeria and Egypt. The MPLA also found favour in Senegal, as a result of a personal relationship between Mário de Andrade and Léopold Senghor that had its origins in the work both had done in Paris for the publication Présence Africaine . The central core that established the MPLA in exile and took it to Leopoldville at the end of 1961 was made up of Mário de Andrade, Lúcio Lara and Viriato da Cruz. But by May 1962, however, Viriato da Cruz had been ousted from the post of secretary-general, and by December, Mário de Andrade had ceded the presidency of the movement to Agostinho Neto. A split occurred between Viriato da Cruz, the initial intellectual driving force of what became the MPLA, and Agostinho Neto, subsequently the movement's long-time leader and the first President of an independent Angola. This was the first of many divisions which broke out within the MPLA, affecting the fortunes of that movement as well as the wider course of Angolan politics. Agostinho Neto had no links to the MPLA per se until he escaped from prison in 1962.6 But since he was one of the better known Angolan nationalists, Mário de Andrade was intent on having Neto as the movement's leader. The latter's stints in prison and his poetry had created a mythological figure that was popular among Angolans as well as among his international sympathizers.7 Neto's arrival in Leopoldville was held in great expectation by many other Angolans. Many felt that it would signal the unification of all Angolan nationalists.8 However, Neto's initial performance at the head of the movement was more noticeable for its lack of experience than for any vision. According to Van Dunem, Neto constantly, if covertly, sought the aid of Viriato da Cruz in the day-to-day running of the movement.9 Despite this, Viriato da Cruz was moving further and further away from the centre of the MPLA's power structure. During the first three days of December 1962, the MPLA held a conference the main outcome of which was the consolidation of Agostinho Neto's leadership of the movement. The restructuring of the leadership at the Conference in favour of Neto effectively cast aside Viriato da Cruz from the central hub of the MPLA, which he had been

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Page 60 instrumental in creating. Viriato da Cruz considered that the MPLA had been taken over: The representatives of the new arguments and tactics finally took over the effective domination of the organization, seizing the funds of the MPLA and legalizing their new situations at the national conference held in Leopoldville in December 1962.10 Power in the movement now lay in the overlapping Steering and Politico-Military Committees. The Steering Committee had ten members; the Politico-Military Committee only six. This was the inner circle of the MPLA.11 A larger council of 70 delegates was formed for the purposes of the conference but was never to meet again. The MPLA was now effectively under Neto's control. At the conference, a new era began for the MPLA, and the future priorities of the movement were laid down. Although mostly an exercise in ideological definition, this process of ‘restructuring’ addressed, ironically, some of the very problems which would subsequently emerge from Angolan rivalry in exile.12 In his speech to the delegates, Neto stressed that the movement should now consider launching military activity inside Angola as a major priority over and above the previously predominant activity of canvassing for external support. This was to remain one of the MPLA's major problems during the anticolonial conflict. More adept at political rather than military work, the MPLA never managed to mount a serious military challenge to the Portuguese. Nevertheless, in accordance with this new priority, the newly formed military wing of the movement, the Popular Army of the Liberation of Angola (EPLA),13 with a core of about 300 soldiers trained in Ghana and in Morocco on Algerian bases,14 was given the task of opening a military front in the Cabindan enclave.15 Despite this emphasis on the importance of armed action within Angola, the first few months of 1963 saw Neto undertake an international tour of the United States, North Africa and Europe. The ostensible aims of this tour were to disseminate the cause of the new MPLA under Neto. In the US, the main objective of visits to New York and Washington seemed to have been to counter charges that the MPLA was a procommunist movement. By that time, the MPLA was already characterized as a Marxist movement. The links established by Mário de Andrade, Lúcio Lara and Viriato da Cruz with both the Portuguese and the French Communist parties were well known. However, during this period up to 1964, at which time a concrete link was established with Moscow, the lead-

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Page 61 ership of the MPLA tried to play down its radical nature in order to appeal to a broader international audience. The US was viewed as an important source of anti-colonial support. Criticized for supporting the Salazar regime, particularly through NATO, Washington was nevertheless a major stop-over for nationalist movements when touring the globe for support. But when campaigning for official or private US aid, anti-colonial movements found that one credential was valued above all others: anti-communism. The MPLA, as yet untied to a major source of backing, sought to meet the needs of its anti-colonial effort, even if this meant concealing its true ideological nature. The US was, however, Roberto's constituency. Since 1959, yearly visits by the UPA leader had given the American public and press a face of Angolan nationalism. It was difficult for Neto to break this familiarity. Furthermore, Roberto's links with the US administration,16 and some private organizations,17 which will be looked at later in greater detail, gave the UPA an advantage in the US. And to these sources of support, Roberto's attraction was undoubtedly his strong anti-communist stance. Despite the distinct advantage held there by the UPA leader, Neto's 1963 trip to the US was reasonably successful. After stopping by the UN, Neto travelled to Washington accompanied by a Methodist bishop, Ralph Dodge, who gave Neto access to Protestant circles where he could raise funds for Angolan refugees.18 During this tour, Neto also travelled to some European capitals to reinforce his links of authority with pro-MPLA student groups in those cities.19 From Europe, Neto then proceeded to Algeria to open an MPLA office and attempt to swing the allegiance of Algiers towards the MPLA. During the Algerian war of independence, the National Liberation Front (FLN) had been a guest of both the Moroccan and Tunisian governments. While there, the Algerian FLN assisted both the MPLA and the UPA, both diplomatically and by providing military training for the war commanders of both movements. The UPA was trained by the Boumedienne-led group in Tunisia while Ben Bella's faction trained the MPLA cadres in Morocco. In this way, the matrix of Angolan rivalry was superimposed on an Algerian one. When Algeria became independent in July 1962, competition between the two Angolan movements was stepped up in order to gain exclusive favour with the new regime in Algiers. Mário de Andrade's close ties to Ben Bella, the new leader of independent Algeria, seemed to tip the balance in favour of the MPLA. At this time, however, the advantage held by the

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Page 62 MPLA was small. The emerging rivalry between the Angolan nationalists was becoming a wider continental issue and official Algerian policy was to pressure both the MPLA and the FNLA to form a common front of Angolan nationalists. The formation of the so-called government-in-exile (GRAE) by the FNLA in 1962 was politically damaging for the MPLA. Since the GRAE was formed by the FNLA, which unlike the MPLA was, at least theoretically, a front made up of more than one party, this only added to the appearance that it was the MPLA that was being stubborn and not joining other Angolan nationalists in the FNLA and the GRAE. With the FNLA in operation, Roberto was able to argue that the united front of Angolan nationalists already existed: it was the FNLA. His replies always stressed the fact that the Angolan common front already existed and that it was, therefore, up to the MPLA to join it. From here on, even to sympathetic ears, the logic of the MPLA's calls for a common front was severely weakened. The MPLA did try to react to the creation of the GRAE. The movement circulated an 18page memorandum to African states setting out the MPLA's case against what it considered to be an unrepresentative, personalized political vehicle for tribalist interests.20 In this document, the MPLA referred to the short-lived front it created in April 1961, while Roberto was in New York, as an example of its commitment to unity, and demanded that the GRAE declaration be considered no more than ‘a diversionary manoeuvre’ which threatened Angolan anti-colonialism.21 This protest led nowhere, however. Attempts were made at this time to unite the MPLA and the FNLA. Publicly, Mário de Andrade stressed the MPLA's commitment to form a united front of Angolan nationalists.22 But judging by an exchange of personal letters between Roberto and Neto, a peaceful merger of the two movements, at least while they were leaders, was out of the question. In August 1962, Roberto answered Neto: It is regrettable that one day after contact had been made between the FNLA and your party, the MPLA, a letter indirectly taking up again the serious, calumnious and biased accusations that have always kept us apart should come to me, thus destroying the hope that had arisen from our first meeting, in which it had been decided to establish a committee to study the eventual collaboration of our respective parties … in the light of the insulting terms of your letter, allow me to tell you that the invitation you sent to me is, at the very least, inopportune for the time being.23

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Page 63 It is difficult to find only one reason for the failure of Angolan nationalist movements to form a common front. Perhaps, it was due to personalities: both Neto and Roberto were strong leaders and may not have wished to share power. On the other hand, the FNLA was so well placed in Leopoldville, and the anti-colonial effort as associated to that movement well under way, that it may have seen no reason to doubt that it could survive or even succeed without the MPLA. Furthermore, despite attempts by the MPLA to play down its radical profile, ideology remained an important factor in keeping the two movements apart. In an article published on 5 February 1962, a PDA leader, Matumona, charged that the UPA had been receiving nearly all its material and financial support from the American Committee on Africa and that a condition for this support was that it in no way ally itself with the ‘pro-communist’ MPLA.24 The MPLA accused the UPA of blocking tactics which hampered efforts to form a common front, and criticized Roberto's personal ambition. The MPLA's criticisms focused on a charge that, since he was so much at home in the Congo, Roberto was not really an Angolan, an accusation often made by the Portuguese.25 Many of the unfriendly exchanges between the MPLA and the FNLA dwelt on the question of race. Pointing to the FNLA's characterization of it as a movement dominated by mestiços, the MPLA in turn accused Roberto's front of being racist. The MPLA would focus on the Bakongo origins of the UPA and charge that it was a uni-racialist and, therefore, unrepresentative movement. As 1962 progressed it became clear that a common front between the MPLA and the FNLA was out of the question. The irreconcilability of their differences should have been apparent. Yet if the MPLA wanted to open a serious military challenge against the Portuguese, it was important for the movement to at least come to terms with the FNLA. The reason for this lay in the fact that the FNLA operated in Leopoldville under very favourable conditions. As has been shown, the FNLA was well connected within Congo-lese political circles. It was fundamentally a Leopoldville movement, far more at home in, and influenced by, political life in the Congolese capital than in Angola. The constituency of the movement were the Bakongo, an ethnic group that straddled the border and played an important political role in the Congo. The Congolese government favoured Roberto and the FNLA largely as a result of the personal friendship that existed between the Angolan leader and the Congolese Prime Minister, Cyrille Adoula. According to accounts, they played football together and had had a long-standing association. One of the consequences of this favour was the FNLA being granted all-important

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Page 64 unfettered access to the Angolan border. Because of this access, the movement could infiltrate its units into Angola, support focuses of resistance and claim to the world that it was engaged in an anti-colonial military uprising against the Portuguese. The FNLA's claims that it operated inside Angola were followed up with well-publicized trips to selected bases.26 In August 1962, the Congolese government placed at the FNLA's disposal a military training camp at Kinkuzu, south of Leopoldville on the way to the Angolan border.27 The FNLA manned it with a new officer cadre trained in Tunisia by the Algerians, which had returned to Leopoldville in June. These FLN-trained guerrillas formed the core of the Army of the National Liberation of Angola (ELNA),28 which, according to reports, blossomed into a 25,000-strong military force at the disposal of the FNLA.29 Up to this point, the dispute between the FNLA and the MPLA had been largely at the political level. As their rivalry became more acute, however, the expression of differences became more violent. When the MPLA attempted to conduct military operations, the likelihood of failure was increased by the multiple risks its units had to take. They had to contend with an unsympathetic Congolese army, outrightly hostile FNLA units as well as, of course, the Portuguese army. During this period there were a number of incidents between rival partisans inside Angola that became central to the rivalry between the MPLA and the FNLA. Direct fighting between MPLA and UPA units was common and their political rivalry developed into overt aggression. One early incident, in late 1961, allegedly involved the interception, imprisonment and execution of a 20-man MPLA squad by the UPA. The MPLA unit was led by Tomás Ferreira who had been sent into Angola to reinforce the pro-MPLA leadership of a resistance group in the Dembos.30 According to one analysis of the incident cited by Marcum, the presence of mestiços in the MPLA unit had been the provocative factor for the Africans in the UPA squad.31 When accused of the interception and the killings, the UPA denied any involvement in the incident, but added condescendingly that it had been foolish of the MPLA, in the first place, to have sent a unit unannounced into a zone of military action. Typically, the UPA made much of its advantageous access to Angolan territory and tended to publicly treat the Angolan war as an exclusively UPA operation. It was later revealed, however, that the author of the above denial, Rosário Neto, had not been aware that the UPA had, in fact, been responsible for the elimination of the Ferreira mission. The UPA chief-of-staff, Marcos Kassanga, on his resignation

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Page 65 on 3 March 1962, added to accusations that Roberto had personally ordered the extermination of MPLA units.32 Later, Roberto indeed con-firmed that instructions had been given for the interception and destruction of MPLA units.33 The Ferreira incident characterized the military and political facets of the Angolan nationalists' shared exile in Leopoldville: on the one hand, the FNLA's advantage in access to Angola, which gave it the upper hand militarily, and on the other, the irreconcilability of the FNLA–MPLA rivalry that was increasingly expressed with violence. Notwithstanding the authorities' distinct favouritism for the FNLA, the MPLA was not completely without friends in the Congo. The Lower Congo province was administrated by the Congolese Bakongo party, ABAKO. Because of their common ethnic constituency, the ABAKO and the FNLA were rivals. Consequently, when able to choose, ABAKO favoured the MPLA. In return, the MPLA extended its refugee relief service to the ABAKO community.34 Another MPLA success was being granted the broadcasts to Angola on Radio Leopoldville, a privilege plucked from under the nose of the expectant FNLA (while Roberto was outside the country) by exploiting differences within the Congo-lese government.35 But by early 1963, barely 12 months after establishing in Leopoldville its first base in exile, the MPLA was heading for its first major confrontation with the FNLA, one which it would lose. CONFLICT AND RECOGNITION In August 1963, the African Liberation Committee (ALC) of the Organization of African Unity recommended to the assembled Council of Ministers in Dakar that the GRAE (FNLA)36 be recognized as the sole legitimate organization fighting for Angolan national self-determination, and that all funds destined for the support of the nationalist movements in Angola be directed exclusively towards Holden Roberto's ‘government-inexile’. The ALC37 based its recommendation on the conclusions reached by a factfinding mission to Leopoldville in July which had met with all the concerned parties, including the GRAE and the MPLA. Initially unexpected, this wholehearted backing of the GRAE by the recently formed OAU38 dealt a violent blow to the fortunes of the MPLA both in its rivalry with the FNLA and its anticolonial effort against the Portuguese. The recognition of the GRAE by the OAU in 1963 marked the beginning of the worst period the

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Page 66 MPLA was to experience. By November, it had been chased out of Leopoldville towards an expected oblivion. Barely a year later, however, the MPLA was accepted by that same OAU committee. In 1964, the ALC accepted the MPLA as a legitimate movement and from 1966 onwards was giving it preferential aid. By 1967, yet another committee of the OAU, the Conciliation Committee, recommended that the organization withdraw its recognition from the GRAE. The decline and rise of the MPLA during this period is a revealing portrait of the course of Angolan rivalry. The decline began in August 1963 when the ALC mission to Leopoldville recommended the recognition of the GRAE as the sole Angolan liberation movement. The committee came to its conclusions in an environment that was singularly disadvantageous for the MPLA. Despite having representatives on the ALC mission from countries that would theoretically have supported the MPLA, a number of negative factors, some of them occurring on almost the very day of the mission's visit, combined to swing the ALC towards the GRAE. The visit by the OAU committee was held in great expectation by both Angolan movements. A favourable ruling by the ALC would mean that significant diplomatic and financial support for their anti-colonial cause would ensue. If an assessment was made of which movement had the better chance, this might have concluded that the MPLA held a slight advantage. Out of the nine African states represented on the ALC, the MPLA could have, under reasonable circumstances, counted on the support of five: Algeria, Egypt, Guinea, Senegal and Tanzania. The other four members of the ALC, the Congo (Leopoldville), Ethio-pia, Nigeria and Uganda would have been expected to support the FNLA. However, a number of circumstances altered this expected outcome. Tensions between the FNLA and the MPLA reached a high point during the first months of 1963. In March, an MPLA support unit was allegedly attacked by FNLA forces who killed 13 of its number.39 Despite MPLA protests over this attack, and a subsequent incident in April on the Loge River, the FNLA remained adamant that no MPLA forces were active inside Angola. To them, therefore, it followed logically that the attacks on the MPLA could not have taken place. The FNLA's ‘home advantage’ proved to be crucial in conveying an image of effectiveness. On top of that, the Congolese government decided to recognize the GRAE officially as the legitimate representative of Angolan nationalism just a few weeks before the ALC was expected in Leopoldville. While this diplomatic act formed the basis for the decision of the ALC, it was not the only factor.

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Page 67 The MPLA was not completely a victim of circumstances. In the course of the events that led to the OAU recognition of the GRAE there were also internal factors which played an equally important role in those developments. At the same time as it was placed under the glaring lights of public scrutiny, the MPLA suffered its first major split. The schism between Neto and Viriato da Cruz had been brewing and when it finally emerged into the open, a mere three days before the OAU committee's visit, it severely handicapped the movement at a time when it should have been showing itself to be an internally cohesive and effective body. After the MPLA conference in December 1962, which finalized his exclusion from the inner circle of the movement, Viriato da Cruz went abroad.40 When he returned to Leopoldville, he conspired with Matias Migueis, Manuel Santos Lima41 and about fifty other disaffected members of the MPLA, to undermine the Neto leadership and carry the rump of the movement, including its name, into the FNLA and GRAE. Two days after Viriato da Cruz's defection on 5 July, he proposed in a meeting of the movement that a leadership contest be held. Neto challenged the legitimacy of this and fighting broke out between supporters of Viriato da Cruz and those of the MPLA Steering Committee (the Neto leadership).42 The Congolese police intervened and the meeting was broken up. At the same time, between 50 and 60 soldiers of the MPLA's army (EPLA) allegedly turned against their officers in sympathy with the dissidents.43 It was a major split in the movement, with five ex-members of the Steering Committee exiting with Viriato da Cruz. A look at the defection of Viriato da Cruz provides a glimpse of patterns which run consistently through the history of Angolan rivalry. In a document published after his defection, Viriato da Cruz set out the reasons for his abandonment of the movement he created.44 His principal criticisms focused on the ‘disintegration’ of the MPLA as a result of the internal conflicts between different ‘social’ blocs within the movement. Other reasons, however, may have been behind the split. Recent testimony has attributed Viriato's marginalization in the MPLA to a question of race. Mário de Andrade and Viriato da Cruz were both mestiços and it was believed that the leader of the movement should be an African; somebody who could circumvent the allegation that the MPLA was a movement of mestiços. ‘Therefore,’ stated Van Dunem, ‘[Neto] came to the front of the movement. Viriato da Cruz's handicap was that he was a mulatto [ mestiço ], and Neto was black’.45

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Page 68 Marcum also considers the split to have been an expression of the black/populist versus mestiço /intellectual split in Angolan politics that seems to be one of the roots of the rivalry between the FNLA and the MPLA. Viriato da Cruz himself refers to the ‘panic’ felt by the MPLA's intellectuals in the face of the ‘racist excesses’ of the UPA. Another explanation given for Viriato da Cruz's defection is ideology. Manuel dos Santos Lima considers that the split was a ‘… re-flection of the ideological cleavage between China and the Soviet Union’.46 As will be seen later, Viriato da Cruz's ties to China were strong, but it is difficult to assess how important this was over other considerations in the split. This view is challenged by an unnamed ‘founder’ of the MPLA cited in Expresso: The [MPLA] Directing Committee was influenced by the struggle against the cult of personality of the XXth Congress of the CPSU and abolished the position of secretarygeneral. Viriato resisted and there came the rupture. There were no problems of ideology but of methods.47 According to another view, Viriato da Cruz, an avowed Marxist,48 fell victim to attempts to create the image of a non-communist MPLA.49 The US considered Viriato to be one of the ‘genuine communists in the MPLA’.50 After he abandoned the movement in 1963, Washington seemed to believe that the radical ideology of the movement had left with him. The following memorandum set down US policy on the Angolan movements in July 1963: US has been under impression GRAE and Roberto represented a pro-Western stand in resistance movement … MPLA has received Communist support and has some Communist sympathizers in it. However in the last ten months, some extreme leftists have been removed. Recent expulsion da Cruz and Migueis and Neto visit US and Western Europe last year indicate MPLA seeking contacts with West. US policy is rpt [ sic] not to discourage MPLA (Neto-Andrade faction) move toward West and not to choose between these movements.51 As well as providing an unwelcome picture of disunity, the defection of Viriato da Cruz was made worse for Neto by his subsequent application for membership of the FNLA. Of course this could only serve to enhance further the status of Roberto's movement. Not content with this, Viriato da Cruz also made embarrassing revelations with regard to the ineffectiveness of the MPLA's military strength, all of which combined to damage Neto's credibility with the ALC. The ALC

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Page 69 was looking for a militarily effective movement as well as one that was representative of Angolan nationalism. When Viriato da Cruz defected he rubbished the MPLA's boast of having a 10,000-strong army, claiming instead that the real figure was a paltry 250.52 According to Viriato da Cruz, the MPLA deliberately overstated its military strength in order to attract support, especially from the West.53 Adding to these negative factors, the MPLA was further discredited before the ALC when it carried out a poorly calculated political manoeuvre. At the beginning of July, the MPLA announced that, with a number of other movements in exile, it was forming a common front for Angolan anti-colonialists called the Democratic Front of the Liberation of Angola (FDLA).54 Leopoldville abounded with an array of political, cultural and ethnic groups vying to carve out a place for themselves in the pantheon of Angolan anticolonialism. By forming an alliance with other movements, including those that sought to represent the Bakongo community, the MPLA was hoping to challenge the threat posed to it by the creation of the GRAE and its recognition by the Congolese government as the representative of Angolan nationalists. This initiative by the MPLA was supported by the government of Fulbert Youlou in the neighbouring Congo (Brazzaville). A rivalry existed between Leopoldville and Brazzaville. By backing the MPLA's initiative, Youlou was dealing himself into the game of influence in Angolan nationalism which was to be played by the two Congolese governments. However, the FDLA lacked credibility from the very beginning. Rather than emanating broad representativity and ethnic appeal, the FDLA actually smacked of MPLA domination. Furthermore, two of the parties that joined the front were suspected of collaborating with the Por-tuguese.55 Overall, the creation of the front did not inspire confidence and only served to further discredit the MPLA. It was at this time also, perhaps as a reaction of protest at the creation of the FDLA, that Mário de Andrade, founder and first president of the MPLA, resigned from the movement. One of the strongest political and intellectual fig-ures in the Neto faction, his abandonment also damaged the image of the MPLA. When the ALC mission arrived in Leopoldville on 10 July, the MPLA had just been torn apart by a major internal split, discredited by Viriato da Cruz's parting shots on the feebleness of its military strengths, and to top it all off, had formed a totally unconvincing front with groups suspected of collaboration with the Portuguese. It was not the best of pictures to give to the incoming ALC mission that was seeking to unite effective and cohesive Angolan anti-colonial organizations.

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Page 70 In contrast, a number of factors combined to give a very favourable image of the FNLA at the committee hearings. From the beginning, the host country's favour was very valuable, especially since the ALC had determined that the evaluation and opinion of the adjacent countries hosting anti-colonial movements was a clear guide to the strengths and weaknesses of those movements. The recognition of the FNLA's government-in-exile by the Leopoldville authorities was a clear indication to the ALC of where the Congo (Leopoldville) stood on this matter. Another favourable result of the FNLA's close ties with the Congo-lese government was the privileged access its units had to the border with Angola. The well-trumpeted military operations the FNLA carried out gave a strong picture of military activity while the MPLA had little to show in this sphere. The MPLA did not have direct links to its partisans inside Angola and the FNLA insisted that no other movement was militarily active in Angola. Combined with the revelations that the MPLA was deliberately overstating its military strengths, these factors made that movement a poor match for the FNLA. The ALC was also given a contrasting picture of the internal organization of each movement. During this period at least, the FNLA appeared to be an effective and cohesive group under Roberto's leadership.56 The fact that the FNLA was already a front gave added weight to its claims that it was up to the MPLA to join them and not the other way around. Furthermore, by giving the prominent role of GRAE ‘Foreign Minister’ to Jonas Savimbi, an Ovimbundu and one of the more popular and active of Angolan nationalists, the FNLA was able to deny credibly that it was merely a tribalist vehicle for the secessionist ambitions of the Bakongo. When the committee hearings were finally held, the situation did not augur well for the MPLA. Unfortunately for them, it only worsened. Chaired by Jaja Wachuku, the Nigerian foreign minister and close friend of Roberto,57 the hearings went very favourably for the FNLA. The Neto faction, essentially on the defensive from the start, was unable to present a credible picture of military activity. Confirming the movement's essentially exile character, ‘Neto himself was brought to agree that the MPLA had no political structure inside Angola.’58 Apparently, Neto's request to plead his case in Portuguese was refused by Wachuku. And when Neto placed a request for a second hearing in order to better build the MPLA's case, he was denied and instead Viriato da Cruz was heard. The defector censured the leadership, poured scorn on its claims of military strength and activity and proclaimed

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Page 71 his faction's intention to join the FNLA and the GRAE. Viriato da Cruz's defection was in itself a harsh blow for the MPLA, but when used against Neto during the ALC hearings, it proved to be crushing. The Committee terminated their hearings and left Leopoldville. Contrary to the initial predisposition to vote in favour of the MPLA, the ALC mission unanimously decided that due to the FNLA's superior fighting force, its ‘effective’ leadership of the Angolan anticolonial struggle should continue and be supported by the OAU. The chairman's report stressed that in making its decision, the mission had relied ‘… heavily on the local knowledge and experience of contiguous states’.59 The results of the ALC mission were reported to the OAU Council of Ministers meeting held in Dakar in August 1963. The Council accepted the Committee's recommendation and officially recognized the GRAE as the sole Angolan nationalist movement. From that moment on, the GRAE became entitled to all funds destined to support self-determination in Angola and OAU member states were requested not to support any other Angolan movement. The GRAE was then recognized by most African states, Algeria being one of the first to do so. The OAU recognition dealt a massive blow to the already reeling MPLA. Internally debilitated, the movement was then forced to contend with complete alienation from the mainstream of African international politics. Marked by an unhelpful and fratricidal rivalry, the year of activity in the Congo (Leopoldville) had threatened to stamp out the MPLA politically, if not physically. In November 1963, supported by the OAU decision, the pro-Roberto Adoula government ordered the closure of the MPLA offices in the Congolese capital. The leadership and its remaining supporters were literally run out of town. By the end of 1963 nothing remained of the MPLA in Leopoldville. In contrast, the GRAE was riding high on its new exclusive status. With one, albeit cruel, blow the OAU hoped to banish divisive rivalry from Angolan nationalism. Press reports at the time reflected this con-fidence in the unification of Angolan anticolonialism.60 For the MPLA, however, it was a policy that came devastatingly close to bringing about its extinction. Observers could be forgiven for sounding its death knell. Basil Davidson, an enthusiastic supporter of the MPLA, prematurely discounted the survival of this movement: ‘Initially the more influential of the two big nationalist movements, the MPLA has fractured, split and reduced itself to a nullity. With Roberto Holden's [ sic] UPA steadily gathering strength and allies, the MPLA has ceased to count.’ The judgement was my own …

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Page 72 and it was singularly wrong. But that is what things looked like at the time.61 Despite the very real weaknesses of the MPLA, the Congo's political patronage of the FNLA directly influenced the ALC's decision, and thus the OAU's recognition, beyond a simple evaluation of the strengths of each movement. The use of this external link with the Congo by the FNLA to gain international legitimacy was merely the first of many subsequent occasions during the struggle for power in Angola in which Angolan rivalry was internationalized. It was made clear that strong backing and the right image could give a movement a favourable edge over its opponent. The MPLA did survive, however, and by 1971 it was considered the strongest and most effective Angolan movement fighting the Portu-guese. In contrast, the GRAE, but not the FNLA, had had its official recognition withdrawn by the OAU in the same year. Since 1966, the MPLA had been receiving the greater share of the OAU funds destined for Angolan nationalists, while the FNLA had managed to all but alienate itself from continental political support. An almost mirror reflection of what occurred in 1963 began to occur once the MPLA was able to give a credible image of being an effective military organization, based in a friendly African state and able to count on an array of external diplomatic support. The diplomatic advantage that the MPLA did not have in 1963 it subsequently gained through its relationship with the Congo (Brazzaville) and as a result of the firm commitment to stand in the socialist camp that it finally made in 1964. After being kicked out of Leopoldville, Neto and the MPLA found a haven across the Congo River in Brazzaville. There, the Youlou government had fallen and been replaced by that of Massemba-Debat, who established a radical Marxist regime. From 1964, the MPLA began to assume a far more openly Marxist posture, breaking with its past attempts to appeal to a broader political spectrum of external support. The MPLA's ties to the previous government of Fulbert Youlou had resulted from the requirements of the rivalry between the two Congos. When this national interest was combined with an ideological fraternity with the Massemba-Debat regime, the MPLA found in the Congo (Brazzaville) its own avid supporter comparable to what the Leopoldville government was for the FNLA. In Brazzaville, Neto was able to establish an unchallenged structure of leadership which set about the task of constituting the organizational and military capacity of the movement. While the MPLA had

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Page 73 lost Mário de Andrade and Viriato da Cruz, both part of the intellectual backbone of the movement, Neto retained the loyalty of Lúcio Lara, who helped him create an authority structure for the movement based on the political domination of its military forces. The movement's new structure and programme were established and implemented at a conference ( Conferência de Quadros ) held in Brazzaville in Gain-any 1964. On the military front, things also changed dramatically for the MPLA. In contrast to its clearly catastrophic attempts to run military sorties into Angola from Leopoldville, the movement now had unrestricted access to the Congo (Brazzaville) border with the Angolan enclave of Cabinda. In July 1964, the Brazzaville government authorized the delivery of a shipment of arms to the movement.62 Starting with small guerrilla strikes out of a military base at Dolisie, the movement built up a certain history of military activity. Reported by The Times as early as November 1963,63 increased military activity in the Cabindan enclave became an important factor in the MPLA's recovery. By October 1964, barely a year after the MPLA had been run out of Leopoldville, Mário de Andrade had returned to the movement from Rabat, where he had been since abandoning the MPLA in mid-1963. His return in 1964 was a reflection of the changing fortunes of the MPLA. The very good relationship with the Massemba-Debat regime was also instrumental in the establishment of the MPLA's principal sources of external support that would help it emerge as one of the principal anti-colonial movements in Angola and a contender for power in 1975. As will be seen later, it was during this period of calm that the MPLA was able to establish strong links with both the Soviet Union and Cuba.64 The new relationships with the Soviet Union and Cuba gave the MPLA a markedly different international profile. At the ‘Tricontinental’ conference held in Havana in January 1966, Neto and the MPLA were the sole representatives of Angolan nationalism. At that left-wing international forum, the MPLA consolidated its more radical posture that would bring it important political and material benefits. It identified itself effectively with the increasingly predominant stream of national liberation, its relationship with Moscow helping to reinforce a radicalization that mirrored the wider shift to the left in Third World politics. The Soviet Union had become the more credible of the superpowers in the anti-colonial efforts. By contrast, the US, which had attempted to court anti-colonial forces in the early 1960s, had become characterized increasingly as part of the neo-colonial threat. The MPLA that emerged

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Page 74 from Brazzaville in 1964 was much more clearly oriented towards the socialist bloc and the national liberation movements in the Third World. By associating itself unambiguously with Marxism, the MPLA had discovered a niche from where it could translate international influence into domestic political advantage and vice versa. An important factor that helped to bring the MPLA this important connection was its activity within the CONCP, a group that brought together the anti-colonial organizations of the Portuguese colonies. They included FRELIMO and the PAIGC, the leading movements in Mo-zambique and Guinea-Bissau/Cape Verde. In both those anti-colonial conflicts, nationalists had been able to congregate around one single movement. Both FRELIMO and the PAIGC were socialist-oriented. As a result of the personal contacts established when students in Lis-bon, the leaders of those movements and of the MPLA were very close, both personally and politically. Mário de Andrade, Amílcar Cabral (PAIGC) and Marcelino Santos (FRELIMO) all knew each other very well. As FRELIMO, and especially the PAIGC, were well-established in international circles as the sole representatives of the anti-colonial wars in their respective countries, the MPLA, by virtue of its association with these movements through the CONCP, began to receive a similar level of attention. From the mid-1960s, through the CONCP, the AAPSO65 conferences and ceaseless campaigning in regional and international fora, the MPLA began to emerge as the radical voice of Angolan nationalism. As the MPLA gained confidence, it submitted a petition to the OAU summit in Cairo on 16 July 1964 appealing for the reversal of the sole recognition of GRAE. The document stressed that, among other things, the MPLA's ‘truly national origin’ made it essential for the OAU to give it the freedom to act. The MPLA did not forget to pay homage to its new host and patron: … because of the understanding of the people and of the government of the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville), the MPLA has been able to endure all these difficulties and continue to maintain itself as a nationalist movement committed to the attainment of national liberation.66 The summit did not reverse its decision but did establish a committee entrusted with the task of conciliating the Angolan movements. For the MPLA, barely a year after the ALC mission to Leopoldville had decided not to acknowledge its right to exist, this was the beginning of the road to recognition. The Conciliation Committee, made up of

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Page 75 the host country, i.e. the Congo (Brazzaville), Egypt and Ghana, visited the MPLA's new base and returned with very favourable testimony: The MPLA is a serious movement, active and capable of leading an effective campaign. Therefore, it deserves aid and assistance from the Committee of Co-ordination [ALC].67 The tables had been turned. It was the MPLA that, through the favourable patronage and support of its host, was now reaching an international level of legitimacy. By November of that year, the ALC had formally recognized the MPLA which began to receive material and technical support. From here on, the MPLA gained ground in the OAU. By the next OAU summit in 1965, the MPLA was being allocated a third of ALC funds destined for Angola. By 1968, the FNLA was no longer receiving any funds from the ALC and in 1971 the OAU formally withdrew its recognition of the GRAE, although it continued to recognize the legitimacy of the FNLA. As the MPLA's recovery proceeded, there was a concurrent decline of favour for the FNLA. Unable to capitalize on the windfall that had resulted from the OAU recognition in 1963, Roberto's movement dithered as it suffered from military inertia and internal political conflicts. Seeming to repeat the misfortunes of the MPLA in 1963, the FNLA's weaknesses were exposed one by one. From Leopoldville, the reports on the GRAE's activity were not encouraging. Various revolts within the undisciplined ELNA army cast a disappointing light over the previous year's enthusiasm about the military effectiveness of the GRAE. Furthermore, the FNLA lost the major factor for its success hitherto. From July 1964, the Congolese government changed hands and Moise Tshombe, who was not sympathetic towards Roberto, took control. In place of the benevolence of the Adoula government, Roberto began to feel pressure from Tshombe as the international profile of the FNLA began to decline. Tshombe allowed two FNLA defectors to establish their rival organization in Leopoldville. Divisions within the movement also began to show. Defection followed defection and, at one point, even an attempted coup sought to topple Roberto.68 This internal break-up, the fall of Adoula and the consequent decline of the FNLA's international prestige threatened to extinguish the movement just as a similar débâcle had threatened the MPLA barely more than a year before. The FNLA's passage into oblivion was avoided only by the takeover of the Congolese regime in Leopoldville on 24 November 1965 by a close friend of Roberto, the army strongman Lieutenant-General Joseph Desiré Mobutu.

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Page 76 Another event in 1964, which contributed significantly to the temporary decline of the FNLA, prefaced the establishment of a third rival Angolan movement. The dramatic resignation of Jonas Savimbi from the post of GRAE Foreign Minister during the 1964 OAU summit in Cairo not only caused serious damage to the FNLA in its rivalry with the MPLA but also opened the way for that central figure of modern Angolan politics to seek his own independent path in the search for power. SAVIMBI AND UNITA After the anti-colonial war against the Portuguese had begun in the early 1960s, the Kikongo and Kimbundu speaking peoples could claim that, through the FNLA and the MPLA respectively, their ethnic group was represented in Angolan nationalism. Despite the fact that both the FNLA and the MPLA espoused a total Angolan nationalism, and that the MPLA was led by detribalized mestiços, both movements had a particular geographical and ethnic implantation. But the largest ethnic group in Angola, the Ovimbundu, could not make a similar claim. Outside the major urban centres and the northern part of the country, it is true to say that there was no anti-colonial representation. In 1966, UNITA arrived to fill this gap among the Ovimbundu and draw this largest ethnic group into the mainstream of Angolan anticolonialism. The leadership of UNITA and the FNLA shared a characteristic in being based around a very personalized power structure. In the case of UNITA, this revolved around Jonas Savimbi. By origin an Ovimbundu from the Huambo area along the Benguela railway, Savimbi had what Marcum has called a ‘… latent political appeal among Angolans from central and southern areas’.69 This ethnic and regional commonality gave Savimbi an opportunity to organize and gather support for his movement, UNITA, in these largely unrepresented areas of Angola. According to Bridgland, ‘… Savimbi used his fluent traditional Umbundu to court and win chiefs and elders’.70 In 1958, Savimbi managed to obtain a scholarship to continue his studies in Portugal where, like other Angolans, he quickly came into contact with anti-colonial nationalists and anti-Salazarist communists. According to Savimbi himself, he arrived in Lisbon after having read ‘… books on Marxism and by Marcus Garvey’.71 His clandestine political activities quickly brought him to the attention of the PIDE political police, leading Savimbi to smuggle himself out of Portugal. But

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Page 77 not before he had met Agostinho Neto, who was by the late 1950s a prominent figure among the African student nationalists. According to Bridgland, Savimbi did not sympathize with Neto: … Neto made a mistake which would contribute to an eventual estrangement from the young Ovimbundu and grow into an epic enmity. The assumption of many Kimbundu people, like Neto, from Luanda and its hinterland was that the Africans of central and southern Angola were comparatively backward: they also regarded them as collaborators with the Portuguese because the Ovimbundu formed the majority of contract labourers on the coffee plantations of the north. When Savimbi said he came from near Nova Lisboa, Neto said it was impossible that a militant as bright and brave as he could have emerged from the south: surely his family originally came from the north? Savimbi was hurt by these remarks of Neto …72 According to the same account, Savimbi's sympathies were initially with the MPLA. Apparently unimpressed by Roberto, he stated that he found the MPLA's ‘… philosophy attractive and saw nothing in it to support Roberto's allegation that the MPLA were Communists.’73 Despite an invitation to do so, Savimbi did not, however, join the MPLA. Instead, he subsequently cast aside his reservations over the ideological vacuum of Roberto's movement, and joined the UPA. Savimbi did this apparently after some urging on the part of two Kenyans, Tom Mboya and Jomo Kenyatta. Savimbi recalled Mboya's argument for joining the UPA: The MPLA are mestiços and Communists, so you cannot play any useful role there; the UPA is the organization for black people, so that's the one you should join.74 A meeting with Kenyatta supposedly reinforced this inclination towards the UPA: I protested that Roberto had no programme and seemed to be a very ignorant man. ‘OK,’ Kenyatta said, ‘that's one very good reason to join because you have ideas and can produce a programme.’ That's when I decided to join the UPA. That's how it was.75 In February 1961, one month before the March attacks against the Portuguese, Savimbi flew to Leopoldville where he joined the UPA. Appointed secretary-general of the movement, he was responsible for the reorganization of its administration. According to his own testimony, Savimbi believed that the March armed revolt against Portuguese

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Page 78 colonialism was sufficiently important for him to disregard the fact that Ovimbundus were also targeted by the UPA. Allegedly instrumental in the creation of the FNLA, Savimbi did argue, however, against the establishment of the GRAE ‘government-inexile’ because, Bridgland believes ‘… he thought it important first to step up the fighting and begin moving leaders into Angola rather than take on the trappings of government in a foreign land.’76 Nevertheless, he became the GRAE's ‘foreign minister’ and was important in giving it the credibility and image of strength which led to its recognition by the OAU in 1963. Relations between Roberto and Savimbi deteriorated and the latter began to distance himself from both the FNLA and the GRAE. Finally, at the OAU heads-of-state summit in Cairo on 16 July 1964, Savimbi announced his resignation from the GRAE and the FNLA. In a resignation speech that emphasized the need for unity among Angolan nationalists, Savimbi reproached the ineffectiveness of the GRAE.77 Subsequently, Savimbi provided an explanation of his reasons for leaving the FNLA, which ranged from charges of ‘American imperialism within the UPA and the GRAE’, to the military failures of the FNLA, and to the nepotism and despotism of Roberto's leadership.78 Following his dramatic resignation in Cairo, Savimbi flew from Cairo to Brazzaville to see the MPLA. While there, Neto allegedly offered Savimbi responsibility for the MPLA's foreign affairs. This post had been vacant since Mário de Andrade left the movement in July 1962 and did not return to the MPLA until October 1964. However, Savimbi did not accept the offer. According to Bridgland, Savimbi visited the MPLA base at Dolisie and returned disillusioned with their military capacity: The MPLA had only 30 men there, and between five and ten of them might go into Cabinda at a time … There was no real fighting going on and Daniel Chipenda was drinking too much and so were all his men.79 Also in 1964, Savimbi visited Algeria, China, North Vietnam, North Korea and Eastern Europe. The ‘Far East’ tour achieved little of substance. As a fundraiser it was largely unsuccessful, nor did it obtain any firm support for the new Angolan nationalist movement which Savimbi later claimed he already had in mind. However, Peking did agree to train him and a small number of his supporters in the art of guerrilla warfare. Later invoking the example of George Washington, Savimbi believed the return from exile into Angola was the only possible course of action then open to nationalists.80 According to accounts, Savimbi lost

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Page 79 confidence in the ability of both the FNLA and the MPLA to develop the anti-colonial military challenge against the Portuguese. The only solution, in his view, was the establishment of an anti-colonial movement inside the country. With a small military cadre known as the ‘Chinese Eleven’ already receiving training at the Nanking Academy in China, Savimbi felt ready to launch his own movement. By 1966, he had brought together in Lusaka the three strands of supporters that were to form UNITA. The first group emerged from the GRAE offices in Lusaka. After Zambian independence, Roberto had attempted to establish a GRAE delegation in Lusaka. However, this initiative subsequently collapsed due to the centralized nature of Roberto's leadership. Consistently spurned by the leadership in Leopoldville, the group's frustration made it a fertile ground for recruitment by Savimbi. The other two initial pillars of UNITA were Savimbi's supporters in Brazzaville81 and Angolan students abroad, especially in the National Union of Angolan Students (UNEA)82 which he had established while secretary-general of the UPA. The leader of UNEA, Jorge Valentim, joined Savimbi and others in Zambia, where in January 1966, they formed a so-called Preparatory Committee for Direct Action (CPAD)83 whose function was to prepare and carry out the formal foundation of UNITA inside Angola. A conditioning factor in the creation of UNITA was the behaviour of the authorities in Zambia which had become independent in 1964. Initially, the new government prohibited the use of Zambian territory for guerrilla operations against neighbouring countries. Zambia's extreme economic dependence on export routes, such as the Benguela railway to the Angolan coast, made it necessary not to offend the Portuguese. This forced Savimbi to make a virtue out of a necessity and spurn the relative luxury of exile in favour of the austerity and risk of an internal base. Allegedly due to friendships with certain Zambian governmental ministers,84 Savimbi was, however, allowed to prepare for the launch of UNITA. This occurred on 15 March 1966, at Muangai, 250 kilometres inside the country.85 According to one account, Savimbi himself was not present at the foundation and did not enter Angola until 26 October 1966. However, a UNITA publication later claimed that he entered Angola in March and founded the movement himself.86 It was principally a symbolic act since the ‘Chinese Eleven’ did not enter Angola until October. Barely off the ground, and without a military force, UNITA was nevertheless inside Angola where it intended to develop an armed challenge to Portuguese colonialism.

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Page 80 At the end of 1966, Savimbi went into Angola where he remained for a few months. The new movement mounted a number of attacks at Cassamba and Teixeira de Sousa on the eastern border with Zaire and along the Benguela railway. Although largely unsuccessful, they were a measure of the determination of the movement to break the mould of Angolan nationalist politics: John Edlin of the Zambia News cited Savimbi as an example to those freedom fighters in Lusaka who did ‘little else than produce dozens of pamphlets condemning the regimes of Portugal, South Africa or Rhodesia’. He told them: ‘Go into your country and see for yourself what is happening. Then fight. Others will follow.’87 What the operation of UNITA inside Angola did was to change the priorities of all the Angolan nationalist movements. It hastened the rush to change the priorities of each of the major movements from those of a political exile group to those of a guerrilla movement, working inside the country. Two months after UNITA's foundation, the MPLA also moved to establish its presence inside eastern Angola.88 In October 1966, Lusaka did lift its restriction on the operation of liberation movements on its territory. But Zambian benevolence did not last. When Savimbi emerged from Angola in February 1967, UNITA's profile had been enhanced by its internal activity. The Zambian government, however, was preoccupied with the effects of UNITA's raids on the Benguela railway. It could ill afford the disruption of the transportation route of its copper exports. Although Savimbi had agreed to comply with Lusaka's request to refrain from disrupting the railway, the line was attacked twice by UNITA during his absence in Cairo.89 When Savimbi returned to the Zambian capital in July 1967, he was arrested and UNITA banned. After six days of detention, the leader of the new Angolan movement which extolled the virtues of internal bases was on his way to Cairo for another stint in exile. Only returning to Angola in June 1968, Savimbi proceeded to build on the core of the movement which had survived. Again with more emphasis on internal rather than external structures, UNITA developed into the third major force of Angolan anti-colonialism. The issue of race emerges once again when the political nature of UNITA is looked at. The presence of mestiços and assimilados in the MPLA was censured by both Roberto and Savimbi, who argued that those elements were the principal beneficiaries of colonialism and could thus not fully interpret nor lead the anti-colonial effort. Race, perhaps more than ethnic differences, was used as an instrument of political

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Page 81 mobilization by both the FNLA and UNITA. The MPLA emphasized a multiracial view of Angolan nationalism. UNITA did exploit the ethnic commonality of its leaders with that of the Ovimbundu in the central and southern areas of Angola, who had hitherto felt somewhat unrepresented in the anti-colonial conflict. Nevertheless, UNITA emphasized that it sought a national expression and, like the FNLA and the MPLA, did not challenge the territorial definition of colonial Angola. Furthermore, it tried to broaden its regional identity by giving prominent posts to non-Ovimbundus, such as Miguel N'Zau Puna, a Cabindan, who was secretary-general of UNITA and the general political commissar of its military forces. The ideological characteristics of UNITA are hard to assess but seem to have developed partly within the context of the Sino-Soviet dispute of the 1960s. In terms of external support, Savimbi and UNITA had a number of sympathetic ears but no firm source of hard military or financial contributions. The fundraising route to the two major poles of the East–West conflict was being travelled by UNITA's rivals, while in Africa, this pattern tended to be repeated. To maintain an identity and seek external support, UNITA had to tread a thin, ambiguous line that divided nationalist politics into two camps. On the one hand, UNITA claimed to be an anti-communist movement; but the realities of anticolonial politics in the mid-1960s made some radicalism necessary. Savimbi also took another route. His attempts to establish links with China preyed on Peking's motivations in supporting a movement whose main rival was supported by Moscow. So, in an ideological hotchpotch, UNITA would rail against the ‘revisionism’ and ‘social imperialism’ of the Soviet Union, while placing itself in the anti-communist camp. It praised the virtues of Maoism, the teachings of which it claimed to be applying directly in an Angolan context. Rather deftly, Savimbi turned the reality of UNITA's somewhat isolated position into a defiant image wherein UNITA was seen to be implementing a doctrine of self-reliance. Far more than the other two movements, UNITA focused its political programme on the rural population, which it believed would have to be mobilized against colonialism and form the basis of a future independent Angola. On these basic postures, the movement used a loose mixture of terms such as ‘socialism’, ‘liberation’ and ‘freedom’ that betrayed a rather broad ideological scope somewhat lacking any cohesiveness. In sum, UNITA placed a greater value on the achievement of its aims than on the means by which these were achieved. The movement has been accused of collaborating with the Portuguese during the

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Page 82 anti-colonial war. In the so-called ‘Timber’ affair, Savimbi and the Portuguese military allegedly came to an agreement which permitted the shaky UNITA forces to remain unharassed in the Eastern military zone in exchange for information on its rivals.90 In an interview given later in 1988, Costa Gomes, the top military official in the Caetano regime, claimed that since ‘the danger did not come from UNITA's forces but from those of the MPLA’, the Portuguese Army struck a ‘non-hostility’ deal with Savimbi.91 Following one deal with UNITA, the Portuguese authorities released Savimbi's father from prison. These allegations have been rejected by Savimbi and UNITA. By the mid to late 1960s, Angolan nationalism had crystallized into three rival anticolonial movements fighting the Portuguese regime. They all drew upon certain common values of historical anti-colonial experience in Angola as well as from separate streams of ethnic political expression. They all emerged from a reaction to Portuguese colonialism, a reaction which rejected the right of Lisbon to rule in Angola. They all had the same goal, independence for Angola. Furthermore, the intransigence of the Salazarist regime in not accepting any change to its absolute authority had influenced the methods adopted by the movements since it limited all expressions of selfdetermination to armed conflict. Three movements, the MPLA, the FNLA and UNITA, were locked in an anti-colonial conflict against the Portuguese; their similarities seemed to outweigh any possible differences which existed in their respective ideologies and political programmes. At the same time, however, all three movements had experienced deeply the consequences of the rivalry that emerged between them. Whether this animosity emerged from personal, ethnic or political reasons, or maybe a combination of these, cannot be stated for sure. What is clear is that it had taken root. In certain cases, the rivalry even seemed to take precedence over the fight against the Portuguese. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising, once the regime in Lisbon collapsed and Portugal decided to withdraw from its colonial empire, that that rivalry would once again ignite between the movements and frame their struggle for power in postindependence Angola.

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Page 83 Part II The Externalization of Angolan Conflict

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Page 85 4   The Angolan Civil War 1975–76 THE COLLAPSE OF PORTUGUESE COLONIALISM The overthrow of the authoritarian regime in Portugal, on 25 April 1974, was the beginning of the end of colonialism in Angola. Over ten years of anti-colonial warfare against the Portuguese had not brought independence to Angola. It took a military coup, carried out by junior officers of the same armed forces that were fighting the insurgencies in Portuguese Africa, to bring about the end of the New State and the abandonment of a five-hundred-year-old colonial empire. Despite the long and draining colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, the Portuguese regime had not appeared to be threatened with extinction. As late as 1970, a US National Security Council study on Southern Africa peremptorily ruled out the possibility of a collapse of Portuguese authority in Africa.1 The military ineffectiveness of the anti-colonial movements was considered partly to blame for the stagnation of the anti-colonial war in Angola. According to an ex-member of the MPLA, the military weakness of that movement was more than apparent in the face of Portu-guese counter-insurgency operations.2 Despite the fact that its units were operating on Angolan soil, there is little evidence to support the MPLA's claims that there existed ‘liberated’ territory. The Portuguese army controlled the borders and was free to move anywhere in the country. The other movements, UNITA and the FNLA, did not fare any better. Through the deployment of its armed forces, the Portu-guese regime managed to retain effective as well as formal control of the colony in spite of the anti-colonial challenge. All this changed on 25 April 1974. Political and economic forces within Portugal had outgrown the structures of authority erected and maintained by Salazar for forty years. His successor, Marcello Caetano, had promised change but did not (or could not) deliver it fast enough. The coup de grâce was delivered by a malcontent junior officer class, the ‘captains' movement’, but it had been long in coming. The anachronistic nature of the New State itself did not allow the regime to change in order to meet the new expectations which had been created

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Page 86 within Portuguese society. It was the collapse of the Portuguese regime from within that brought Angola to the brink of independence in 1974. The implications of the April coup for Angola were soon apparent to the Angolan movements which had spent 13 years fighting a colonial and authoritarian regime that stubbornly refused to accept the changes which had already taken place elsewhere on the African continent. Almost overnight, the enemies in Lisbon and Luanda were replaced by friends. In particular, many in the MPLA leadership saw old friends and companions from exile emerge at the head of the many political parties that sprang to life after the overthrow of the regime. In the dawn of 25 April, rebel units of the Portuguese Armed Forces moved quickly to establish control in Lisbon and around the country. In turned out to be a relatively bloodless coup as the regime put up no resistance. The exile of Marcello Caetano was quickly negotiated and the years of Salazarist authoritarian rule came quickly and almost painlessly to an end.3 The following day, General António de Spínola emerged at the head of a Junta of National Salvation (JSN)4 charged with governing the country during the transitional period. The mainly junior officers that had carried out the coup were centred around a political grouping which eventually called itself the Movement of the Armed Forces (MFA).5 Both the MFA and the JSN were subsequently represented on another body designed to be the ultimate consultative organ of government: the Council of State ( Conselho do Estado ). Spínola, a well-known and somewhat flamboyant figure, had been a top ranking military leader in the New State regime. He was elevated to the coup leadership by the young officers as a result of his popularity and prestige among the armed forces and the wider public. Immediately before the coup, Spínola had been fired from his post of Deputy Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces6 following the publication of his book, Portugal and the Future ,7 in which he openly challenged the decade-long official policy of finding a military solution to the anti-colonial challenge in Africa: … as it is utopian to imagine that those powers would refuse their support as long as the masses prove themselves willing to fight, there remains only one way to end the conflict – and that an eminently political one. We can, therefore, come to the conclusion that, in any war of this type, a purely military victory is not possible.8 The effects of Spínola's book are said to have been ground-breaking. In the words of one naval officer quoted by Porch:

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Page 87 Spínola had been the first general to say that the solution to the wars was political and not military. This had impressed many officers. When he was dismissed, we were indignant.9 The formative influence of Spínola's book on the ‘captains' movement’ is not, however, universally recognized. Major Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, the military commander of the coup and one of the most prominent members of the MFA, claimed that: The book had no influence on the course of the Armed Forces Movement … That was already a developing force. There are many who cite General Spínola as a catalyst of the movement, but this is not true. Besides, many of us were not happy that the book was published at this time … The process leading to the 25 April [coup] was already underway.10 The principal effect of the book, and its challenge to the regime's policies from one of its own, was in accentuating the weakness of Caetano's hold on power and in building up the prestige of General Spínola. The MFA chose to back Spínola in the early days of the coup in order to capitalize on his appeal. Subsequently, an ever-widening gap opened up between Spínola and the radicals in the MFA. Spínola had recognized that the regime's colonial policies were untenable, but in more general political terms he was anything but a radical. On the other hand, the MFA was developing a comprehensive left-wing political programme which they sought to implement after their revolt against the regime. On 14 May 1974, Spínola was proclaimed President of the Portu-guese Republic and a provisional coalition government, under the centrist Palma Carlos, was sworn in the next day. However, it soon became clear that Spínola was not in complete control. His freedom of action was discernibly limited by the co-ordinating committee (CCP)11 of the MFA. Barely a month after his appointment, Spínola and the MFA were already on a collision course. On the one side stood Spínola, the more moderate elements in the armed forces and the more moderate of the newly emerged political parties. Opposing them were the increasingly more influential left-wing officers in the MFA backed by a plethora of small radical political groups, including the communist party.12 The power of the MFA was further reinforced with the creation of the COPCON,13 an organ authorized to deploy military units, at will, anywhere in the country. This effectively placed military power at the direct disposal of the MFA, bypassing the main hierarchy of the armed

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Page 88 forces and creating a parallel structure of authority – what has been called a state within a state.14 At the head of COPCON was Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, the operational leader of the coup. Otelo was a leading figure in the MFA and a hero of what was being called ‘the revolution’. His appointment to the COPCON tilted the balance of power in favour of the MFA radicals. At the beginning of July, the final collapse of the deadlocked provisional government gave Spínola an opportunity to try to gain ascendancy over the MFA. But the latter had been reinforced in the Council of State and now wielded a majority in that body. Under pressure, Spinola nominated a second provisional government on 18 July under a prominent member of the MFA, Vasco Gonçalves, who had ties to the communist party. Including Vasco Gonçalves as prime minister, the MFA had five members in this second government, as opposed to none in the first. This reflects clearly the sharp move towards the left that occurred in Lisbon at this stage and, more specifically, the ascendancy within government of the military revolutionaries. Following this, the MFA became increasingly more powerful as well as more radical in its programme, and, as the summer ended, was more and more involved in governing Portugal. At the end of September, there was one final confrontation between Spínola and the MFA radicals. A famous public argument between Spínola and Vasco Gonçalves at a bullfight personified the wider power clash between moderates and radicals. In this confrontation, it was the latter that were successful. Spínola lacked confidence in the appeals he made to the silent majority to come out in support of his resistance to the radicalization occurring in Portuguese government. Eventually, he gave way. With no discernible political allies and no military backing, he resigned on 30 September. The moderates had, for now, lost the power struggle and Portugal moved left. In many respects, Portugal's colonies were intimately tied, on the one hand, to the collapse of authoritarianism in Lisbon and, on the other, to the subsequent power struggle between moderates and radicals. The relationship between the anti-colonial wars in Africa and the April coup has often been the subject of attention, leading some to claim that the consequences of fighting the African wars had an overwhelming influence on the military officers that overthrew Caetano. Certain factors do seem to have been significant in influencing the military in the run-up to the coup. First, the strengthening of the armed forces to fight the insurgents and enforce colonial authority, a task which led to serious problems of

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Page 89 morale, was tantamount to building up the very instrument that would lead to the collapse of the regime. Secondly, the immediate catalyst for the April coup was a widespread dissatisfaction in the army with a governmental decree that sought to improve the status of conscripted officers for military service. This decree gave conscripted officers the same route to promotion and pay rises as that of their volunteer service counterparts. It was designed to attract support for military service in the colonies and reverse the flagging numbers of conscripts. This was, however, a source of resentment for the incumbent officer class and it allowed the coup organizers to expand their base of support within the armed forces by focusing on this sense of frustration. Thirdly, it has been claimed that the radical orientation of the MFA officers resulted partly from having been exposed to the ideology of the anti-colonial movements, such as the MPLA and the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau. For example, Chabal believes that Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, when serving as an officer in Guinea-Bissau, was directly influenced by the revolutionary theory of Amílcar Cabral, the leader of the PAIGC.15 According to another member of the MFA, Carlos Fabião, ‘the longer a subversive war lasts the more one assimilates the ideas of the enemy, the oppressed.’16 As well as this alleged ideological influence, the anti-colonial wars in Africa are also credited with the demise of the Caetano regime. Certainly the morale of the armed forces was severely under strain after 13 years of grinding hostilities. This warweariness was, of course, reflected in wider Portuguese society. But so was an underlying desire for political and economic modernization and for change in the direction of Western European democracy. Furthermore, the economic effects of the war and of late industrialization resulted in rapid growth and the accumulation of wealth. This process of growth placed the inflexible corporate economic system established by Salazar under strain. The overall result was an emerging spirit in favour of change, given some vent during a period of liberalization by Caetano but which turned out to be a false spring. Although the colonial wars became the touchstone of politics in the last days of the New State, the underlying pressures for change made the collapse of the regime inevitable. Newitt wrote that: Although Portugal's position in the 1970s cannot be isolated from its African wars, it is possible to analyze the revolt of 1974 in such a way that … Africa plays only a peripheral role. What is

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Page 90 incontestable, however, is that the revolution in Lisbon had the most profound effect on Africa.17 In Angola, the period following the coup was complicated and tense. On the one hand, expectations of imminent independence were high, especially among Angolan nationalists. On the other hand, a large European settler population, at the very least fearing a loss of privileged status if not actually believing the old regime's propaganda about the impending massacre of whites, was not very receptive to talk of an independent Angola under the anti-colonial movements. Fighting between Portuguese forces and the movements did not come to an immediate end following the April coup. According to official reports, in May 21 soldiers and 33 guerrillas were killed in fighting, and in July a further 18 Portuguese soldiers lost their lives.18 Initially, the Portuguese insisted on holding a referendum on the future of Angola only after cease-fires had been signed, a proposal that was rejected by all three movements. The MPLA, FNLA and UNITA demanded that Portugal affirm an unconditional right to independence before any other steps were taken. In May, a tacit cease-fire was agreed between the Portuguese and the MPLA, which became an official cessation of hostilities on 21 October. Under criticism from the other two movements, UNITA had signed a cease-fire earlier on 14 June, while the FNLA eventually signed on 12 October. In general terms, however, hostilities were over by the end of May. Increasingly, parts of the Portuguese army showed themselves unwilling to keep fighting. During the early summer, a rash of strikes broke out in Luanda, adding to the tension felt in the city over the uncertainty of what lay ahead. In July, an incident involving a white man triggered a brutal night of violence as European vigilantes took the law into their own hands and entered the African musseques, slums on the periphery of Luanda. Riots followed, leading Lisbon to recall the first post-coup governor-general. The situation was extremely volatile and susceptible to the twists and turns of the rivalry between radicals and moderates in Lisbon. The decolonization of the African territories underlay the power struggle that followed the April coup. In the words of Admiral Rosa Coutinho, a member of the MFA, ‘all the crises up to 25 November [coup in 1975 that displaced the radical MFA] had, as a background, the decolonization problem.’19 In the immediate aftermath of the coup, full independence for the colonies was not a foregone conclusion. Spínola maintained a prefer-

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Page 91 ence for his somewhat utopian concept of a global Portuguese community of federal states: Our theory is that our future is only possible in a wider context or plurality in a community which remains together as parts of a Por-tuguese whole, in accordance with political statutes. This is our creed and on this basis we define our objective: that is the country that will become the Portuguese united nation.20 Clearly still out of step with the movements' concept of full independence, Spínola's federative view foresaw an autonomous development of the colonies towards some form of self-rule by the existing settler societies within a global Portuguese community. He favoured a parallel but linked development of liberal quasi-democracies in both Portugal and its African colonies. While this would certainly have been an unorthodox position to take before the collapse of the regime, it took on a decidedly neo-colonial pallor in the pervasive socialist atmosphere that dominated Portuguese politics after the coup. Moreover, with the radical, mostly Marxist, movements poised to succeed Portuguese rule in all of its African colonies, this policy option verged on fantasy. Opposing Spínola were the MFA and all the political parties on the left, including the Socialist Party,21 whose leader, Mário Soares, was Foreign Minister in Vasco Gonçalves' government. In contrast to Spínola, they sought to grant full independence to Portugal's overseas possessions. In fact, the more radical elements in the MFA did not conceal their preference for handing over sovereignty in each colony directly to the corresponding left-wing nationalist movements: to the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau and to FRELIMO in Mozambique, both of which were indisputably poised to inherit the mantle of government in those colonies. But in Angola, the MFA's support for the MPLA was not unopposed. The MPLA's rivals also had backers within the Portuguese leadership as well as among the local settler community. The anti-communist FNLA was favoured by the Spínolists, while UNITA found some support among Europeans in colonial society. Furthermore, none of the three movements was in a sufficiently dominant position that would justify its being chosen over the others. Negotiations to reach cease-fire agreements with the nationalist movements were carried out while Spínola was still in the presidency. As one observer has pointed out, these were not so much negotiations as celebrations, as Soares and the accompanying MFA officers reached agreements with the PAIGC and FRELIMO directly, placing anything

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Page 92 but the complete hand-over of power to those movements out of the question.22 Under these circumstances, Spínola conceded that full independence for the colonies was inevitable. On 27 July 1974, Spínola announced on television that Portugal's overseas territories would be granted total independence. This reversal was partly precipitated by Major Carlos Fabião, whom Spínola had appointed governor of Guinea-Bissau. Instead of following Spínola's directives, however, Fabião hastened the process of full independence in Guinea-Bissau by making what amounted to a unilateral commitment to hand power over to the PAIGC. By September, Guinea-Bissau had become independent, a development of historic significance which, incidentally, helped to incline public opinion in Portugal in favour of the nationalist movements associated with the PAIGC in the other colonies. In Angola, this was the MPLA. In Mozambique, there was a similar turn of events. FRELIMO was granted control of the transitional government, which effectively gave it complete sovereignty by the time the country became independent. In Angola, Spínola's first envoy, General Silvino Marques, was not welcome to the movements. A governor-general under Salazar between 1962 and 1966, Silvino Marques was not the most diplomatic of choices. Furthermore, he attempted to motivate local European and African elites to challenge the nationalist movements politically. In particular, he sought to outflank the MPLA by establishing links with the FNLA through the Zairean president, Mobutu Sese Seko. But his term did not last long. The wave of strikes, riots and European–African violence in Luanda coincided with the resignation of Palma Carlos from the provisional government in Lisbon. These events weakened Spínola's position and allowed the MFA officers to press for the replacement of Marques in Angola. On 25 July, he was replaced by Admiral Rosa Coutinho who occupied the new role of High Commissioner. This appointment marked the beginning of a new stage as the MFA gained the ability to influence the political process directly in post-coup Angola. Rosa Coutinho and his aides did not conceal their preference for Agostinho Neto's MPLA. He ‘… openly sympathized with Neto's MPLA as a ‘‘left-leaning” movement of “progressive ideas”’.23 According to Soares, ‘… [Rosa Coutinho] favoured the MPLA and gave it a military strength it had never had’24 by, among other things, turning ‘… a blind eye to the Soviet weapons deliveries’25 destined for the MPLA. Spínola did not approve of Neto's movement. In a televised interview given later in April 1975, Rosa Coutinho stated that Spínola had

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Page 93 refused to negotiate with the MPLA because he claimed ‘this movement was getting instructions from Moscow’.26 In September, in a last-ditch attempt to influence the process of decolonization in Angola, Spínola, with the help of the Zairean President, hosted a secret meeting on Sal, in the Cape Verde Islands. The objective of this secret conference was to exclude Neto's movement from the political process in Angola. The meeting on 14 September 1974 included the leaders of the FNLA and UNITA, Holden Roberto and Jonas Savimbi respectively, as well as dissident leaders of the MPLA.27 At the Sal meeting, Spínola proposed the formation of a provisional coalition government that would include representatives of those movements present as well as of tribal groups and of the white and coloured minorities in Angola. The exclusion of Agostinho Neto's MPLA, as well as the fact that the Spínola plan envisaged a political role for the settlers, infuriated the radical MFA officers including Rosa Coutinho who, although High Commissioner in Angola, had not even been aware that the meeting was taking place. But this plan had no future. The impetus behind the Sal agreement collapsed with Spínola's resignation at the end of September. The radical MFA officers now had the upper hand with regard to determining the direction of Angola's future. The preference shown by some Portuguese military leaders for the MPLA became evident in the concrete assistance that was being provided to that movement as well as in the political support that emanated from Lisbon. This was not, however, official policy. The transfer of power in Angola was to be achieved by bringing the nationalist movements together in a transitional government. Portuguese representatives would remain in that government throughout the period of transition while a new constitution was drawn up and an administrative structure established. This was the Alvor Agreement. Demonstrating an admirable, if short-lived, degree of pragmatism, the leaders of the three Angolan movements came together in Mom-basa, where they recognized each other's legitimacy. On 15 January 1975, at Alvor in southern Portugal, the three movements signed an independence agreement with Portugal that promised peace and a workable political future for Angola. The Alvor Agreement empowered a transitional government to administrate Angola from 31 January 1975 until elections which would be held later that year to determine a new government.28 The new authorities would then accept the formal transfer of power from the Portuguese on 11 November 1975. The transitional government consisted

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Page 94 of a ‘troika’ presidency of the three movements, a Defence Council and a Cabinet, the posts of which were divided equally between the three movements and the offices of the Portuguese High Commissioner. During this period, foreign affairs were to be Lisbon's sole responsibility. The Defence Council, charged with the defence and internal security of Angola, had Portuguese troops and police as well as forces from the nationalist movements at its disposal. Perhaps unfortunately, neither Neto, Roberto nor Savimbi personally assumed their presidential roles in the transitional government. Rosa Coutinho was replaced as High Commissioner at the end of January 1975, just before the implementation of the transitional agreement. The post was assumed by General Silva Cardoso, a more moderate figure whose term of office was characterized by a rigorous attempt at demonstrating absolute neutrality vis-à-vis the three movements. For all Silva Cardoso's impartiality, however, it came too late to avoid the effects of Rosa Coutinho's quasi-anarchic administration of Angola. The latter's encouragement of revolutionary fervour among local Portuguese authorities and particularly within the armed forces led to a near breakdown in the chain of command between officers and soldiers, and between Lisbon and Luanda. This breakdown in authority survived Rosa Coutinho's term and continued as the soon-to-be ex-colony descended into a cycle of violence. According to Savimbi, when the High Commissioner wanted to act against the supply of Soviet weaponry to the MPLA or against the suspected presence of Cuban military advisors, Silva Cardoso found that his hands were tied by the pro-MPLA Portuguese representatives which remained on the Defence Council.29 As the year progressed, the short-lived agreement between the rival movements was broken by sporadic fighting. Portuguese troops stationed in Angola would sometimes refuse to intervene and stop the hostilities, pledging only to defend the remaining Portuguese administrative structures. Tensions mounted whenever European–African violence erupted during this volatile period. Criticism was directed at the Portuguese army for not adequately protecting the settler population that was, incidentally, increasingly intent on abandoning Angola altogether. There had been long-standing friction between the army and certain sectors of settler society, which only worsened as the more right-wing settlers saw the radical army officers hasten the end of the empire, and consequently, the demise of their way of life. There were fears that Angolan colonialists would attempt a Rhodesian-style unilateral declaration of independence.

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Page 95 For their part, certain elements in the army did not feel it was there to defend the interests of colonial Angola. Some army officers felt considerable discomfort with certain whites whom they felt represented the harshest face of Portuguese colonialism, and with whom the army had a difficult relationship. A member of the MFA, Captain Sousa e Castro, said that he could not ‘… forget that in general, the overseas white population were hostile to the Portuguese forces. This is something people forget very quickly.’30 The overall effect of this partial collapse of authority, was a failure to impose the political solution that had been agreed upon at Alvor. In fact, it only further reinforced the turn towards a military confrontation by the rival movements as the means to decide which one of them would lead an independent Angola. According to the Portuguese High Commissioner, ‘… there was a crisis of authority in Angola making it difficult for anyone to establish any kind of order, despite what the Portuguese military or the leaderships of the rival liberation movements might ordain.’31 The MPLA was the movement most favoured by this chaos. The role that fell to Portugal during the transitional period was supposed to be one of neutrality and mediation between the three movements in order to ensure a peaceful transfer of power. The overwhelming impression was, however, that the Portuguese administration was biased. According to a Western reporter at the time, ‘… it is widely held in Luanda that the Portuguese have favoured the MPLA at the expense of the other movements.’32 Pezarat Correia, a prominent member of the MFA who had been in Angola with Rosa Coutinho, made poorly concealed verbal attacks on the FNLA and ‘the intense greed of international and Portuguese capital interests’ behind that movement.33 In August 1975, the left-wing Gonçalves government was openly considering the direct transfer of power to the MPLA. The FNLA was certainly concerned about this situation: Given the evident partiality and lack of objectivity shown by certain members of the Government of Lisbon to our movement … the FNLA categorically refuses to take part in a meeting of the three Angolan movements with which a member of the Portuguese government will be associated.34 The internal political divisions of Portugal's post-coup leadership were partly responsible for Lisbon's failure to establish order in An-gola. At the heart of this failure was also a lack of political will and a certain incapacity to act decisively. At one point during May 1975,

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Page 96 Melo Antunes, Portugal's Foreign Minister, was openly contemplating military intervention in Angola for ‘pacification’.35 By June, Lisbon was threatening to call for a United Nations peace-keeping force in Angola.36 In Luanda, the Portuguese administration, reluctant or unable to enforce its will, had drifted further away from government into what Neto called ‘criminal neutrality’.37 Portugal's highest official, ‘General Silva Cardoso … said that under the terms of the [Alvor] agreement, the High Commissioner could not intervene in domestic politics.’38 When the MFA attempted to send more troops to Angola to enforce Lisbon's authority, a mutiny revealed that the army was unwilling to return to Africa and questioned Portugal's ability to impose order.39 It had become clear that due to both a lack of will and capacity, Lisbon could do little to alter the course of events in Angola. In late August 1975, the Alvor agreement was formally annulled. However, the days of the radical left in Portuguese government were numbered. On 25 November, a more moderate wing of the Portuguese army clamped down on the radicals in the name of constitutional democracy. The time of the MFA was now over. But the effects of its heyday on the process in Angola were in full swing. Civil war raged in Angola as the three rival movements, and an array of international backers, locked horns in a conflict to decide who would rule independent Angola. Portugal did not manage to ensure the completion of the process of formal decolonization in Angola. Instead, a chaotic withdrawal of both state and colonial society created havoc and a dangerous power vacuum. It was here that the externalization of the Angolan conflict occurred, when Portuguese authority in Angola crumbled away throughout 1974 and 1975. By the time Portugal signed the independence accords at Alvor in January 1975, its hold over Angola was already weak. By the time the transitional government in Angola had collapsed during the summer of 1975, Portuguese authority was almost completely paralysed, unable to affect the course of the civil war which had broken out between the rival movements. Because the transitional arrangements collapsed before they had been fully implemented, there was no formal transfer of power to a government. When the Portuguese flag was lowered over Angola for the last time on 10 November 1975, the High Commissioner transferred sovereignty to all Angolans and not to any one movement in particular. The withdrawal of Portuguese authority, with the concurrent rescinding of responsibility of government, compounded by the wholesale abandon-

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Page 97 ment of the country by most of colonial society and its economic agents, created a void which had serious implications for the course of the struggle between the movements. The rivalry for ascendancy among them, which had always underlain the anti-colonial war, now emerged as a priority. Shorn of the need to challenge colonial authority, the movements now looked to legitimize themselves vis-à-vis each other. Whereas before the coup, external backing had largely been procured to fight the Portuguese, the movements now sought aid exclusively to bolster their positions as calculated against each other. Previously, the FNLA and UNITA had both asked for help to fight colonialism; they now wanted support to counter the ‘communist threat’ represented by the MPLA. Similarly, the MPLA had called for assistance to fight colonialism; it now appealed for solidarity to see off the ‘neo-colonialist challenge’ from its rivals. The April coup in Lisbon not only announced the collapse of Portuguese colonialism but also brought out into the open the political struggle for power between the Angolan movements. In the search for an edge in their political rivalry, the movements raised the stakes by seeking ever greater levels of international backing in their conflict. The inability or unwillingness of Portugal to wield its legitimate authority permitted international intervention in Angola. The collapse of Portuguese colonialism brought Angola to the brink of independence. But the withdrawal of Portuguese authority, which allowed international actors to intervene freely and directly in the process of succession, took Angola over the threshold into civil war. FOREIGN INTERVENTION IN THE ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR When the end of the anti-colonial war came, the MPLA, the FNLA and UNITA did not have sophisticated fighting machines. As they emerged from exile and the hinterland in the latter half of 1974, they were little more than a collection of small guerrilla units that had rarely seen their comrades let alone fought alongside them. There is no record of their respective arsenals at this time but these were almost certainly made up mostly of small weapons. Barely one year later, however, columns of motorized armoured carriers, large mortars, rocket launchers, tanks and jet fighters were all in action as the MPLA faced the combined forces of the FNLA and UNITA in a short but furious war for power in Angola. In that short time, a rapid arms race took the

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Page 98 rivals from anti-colonial movements to civil war adversaries. Foreign intervention in the Angolan civil war is revealed in the course of that arms race. By 1973, after a long period of little or no progress in the anticolonial effort, the MPLA had once again fallen prey to military ineffectiveness and internal disarray. After the coup in April 1974, however, under a more cohesive leadership and through a dynamic merger of both internal and external factors, that movement managed to build itself up to a position of strength that placed it on a par with its major rival, the FNLA. The internal workings of the MPLA are anything but transparent. It seems clear, however, that, during the leadership of Agostinho Neto from 1962 until the independence of Angola in 1975, the movement experienced three major splits. The first, in 1963, with Viriato da Cruz, has already been addressed. The other two occurred almost simultaneously during 1973 and 1974. The first, the ‘Eastern Revolt’, was a direct challenge to Neto by Daniel Chipenda. The second, known as the ‘Active Revolt’, was a political critique of the form of Neto's leadership of the movement. Both the scope and the nature of the challenges were very different. On the one hand, the ‘Eastern Revolt’ led to open hostilities and eventually the abandonment of the MPLA by Chipenda who took his forces to the FNLA. The ‘Active Revolt’, on the other hand, was a non-violent attempt by intellectuals to change the political direction of the MPLA. Most of the ‘Active Revolt remained in the movement once Neto's authority was reimposed in 1974. According to Van Dunem, the Chipenda challenge to Neto was motivated by personal and not political reasons.40 He had been the commander of the MPLA's guerrilla forces in the eastern region of Angola where a military front had been opened in the late 1960s in response to activity in that area by UNITA. For all intents and purposes, Chipenda was the highest authority in that area, a leader whose charisma earned him a certain amount of popularity. In the early 1970s, military reverses at the hands of the Portuguese had spread discontent among the guerrillas. Inside Angola, the MPLA units tended to stagnate, awaiting instructions from the leadership outside the country; directives that often never arrived. Increasingly dispersed among various African capitals, the MPLA leadership's lines of communication to the front-lines were inefficient and partly responsible for the military setbacks. Among the partisans on the ground, this fed a growing sense of resentment with the leadership, which reached a high point

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Page 99 on the eastern front.41 In an attempt to restore confidence in his leadership, Neto visited that region where, during an address, he was openly challenged by a member of the audience who claimed not to recognize his authority.42 Later, this sense of resentment and challenge was captured by Daniel Chipenda whose substantial military force at his disposal threatened Neto. An open split was declared by 1973. According to some reports, it was between 1972 and 1973, when Neto's authority was at its lowest ebb, that Soviet assistance for the MPLA was reduced to a negligible trickle.43 Legum considers that this reduction in material support reflects the fact that Moscow had, at the time, switched its backing to Chipenda in the hope that the field commander would be easier to deal with than the ‘touchy’ Neto.44 This slowdown in Soviet aid is said to have preceded a total cut-off in all arms deliveries to the MPLA in March 1974,45 only one month before the coup in Portugal. On the other hand, another source has claimed that Chipenda turned to Peking for help and not Moscow after his break with Neto.46 Whichever was the case, it does seem, nevertheless, that the Soviet Union reduced its flow of funds to Neto during the ‘Eastern Revolt’, at a time when that movement appeared to be split and militarily ineffective.47 The split with Chipenda was significant not only because it shaped the development of the MPLA's leadership and structure of authority but also because, like the wider conflict with the other movements, the course of that schism was internationalized. It reveals the presence of an understanding of the importance an international backer may have on the outcome of an internal political conflict. The freezing of the aid conduits from Moscow did not last long, however. After the April 1974 coup in Lisbon, the scenario for Soviet policy-makers changed significantly. On the other hand, Neto had by this time resolved the question of his leadership. Reconciled with the ‘Active Revolt’, he recaptured the initiative and controlled the movement through a tightly-knit, loyal, ten-member Political Bureau.48 From one day to the next, the situation in Angola, from Moscow's perspective, transformed itself from being ‘whom to support’ in a protracted and indefinite anti-colonial war to an opportunity to help establish a friendly regime in an independent Angola. Such an opportunity had to have been clearly described and conveyed to Moscow by the MPLA who, following the collapse of the Portuguese regime, were increasingly convinced that they could play a major role in defining the direction of an independent Angola. As will be seen later, the crucial link between the MPLA and the Soviets was the Portuguese communists.

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Page 100 According to Ebinger, it was Álvaro Cunhal, the leader of the Portu-guese Communist Party, himself who personally recommended that Moscow resume its arms deliveries to the MPLA.49 The date of the resumption of Soviet aid, with arms deliveries to the MPLA, has been variously cited as being sometime between August and October 1974, in the middle of Rosa Coutinho's term.50 The supply of weapons was routed through Brazzaville, which had been the MPLA's principal base since 1964, and, according to US government sources, included ‘thousands of AK-47s’. These small arms were distributed by the MPLA ‘… in the Luanda musseques where they proved useful in skirmishes between MPLA and FNLA partisans beginning in November 1974.’51 One report, attributed to British intelligence sources, claims that the MPLA received ‘… million dollars worth of Soviet weapons …’ in the last four months of 1974.52 In Decem-ber, the MPLA sent 250 of its cadres to Moscow ‘… for military training’.53 The effect of this resumption of Soviet military aid was to expand the MPLA's military capacity, perhaps fourfold. According to Marcum, who quoted figures submitted by the US State Department during Congressional hearings,54 the military force of the MPLA after the Chipenda split in 1973 did not number more than 1,500 men. By January 1975, however, the MPLA was said to be able to arm a force of between 5,000 and 7,000 men. This assessment may be close to the mark, as the Alvor Agreement stipulated that the respective military forces of each movement could number no more than 8,000.55 According to a Portuguese military source, the MPLA could count on a force of 5,500, but an American researcher cited by Marcum put the number as high as 8,000.56 Even taking a conservative estimate as a basis, it is clear that the MPLA's strength multiplied significantly during the latter half of 1974, before the Alvor accords were signed. This process of strengthening brought the MPLA closer to the greater military capabilities of the FNLA. In January 1975, the FNLA army was said to total 21,000. This was made up of 9,000 men in Angola and 12,000 waiting in Zaire.57 But the MPLA build-up also signalled two important realities: that the MPLA was a serious contender for power in Angola and that this bid was backed by Moscow. In the meantime, the FNLA had also been busy seeking international backing. At the end of May 1974, two months after the coup in Portu-gal, 112 Chinese military advisors arrived at the FNLA's Zairean base with 450 tonnes of weapons. This ‘gift’ from China was crucial in the military consolidation of northern Angola by the FNLA. This estab-

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Page 101 lishment of the FNLA's influence in areas of ethnic commonality, but from where it had been absent during Portuguese rule, was instrumental in bolstering the confidence of the movement's leader, Holden Roberto, in the possibility of gaining power. The strength of the FNLA was further enhanced when the US began a covert programme of support in January 1975. Earlier in July 1974, the CIA had begun making payments secretly to the FNLA and felt that that movement best represented the interests of the US in An-gola.58 While representatives of the three Angolan movements and Portugal were signing the Alvor accords on the transitional arrangements for Angolan independence, the Forty Committee, an interagency mechanism that brought together the disparate parts of the US Administration's foreign policy-making structure to decide on covert operations, met in Washington to consider a CIA proposal to endow the FNLA with US$ 300,000. There and then, the proposal was approved by the chair of the committee, the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. Later, Kissinger was to claim that the funds were intended only for organizational purposes and not for the purchase of arms. Following this firm gesture of confidence in the FNLA by the US, Roberto moved his men into the capital, Luanda. The FNLA embarked on an ostentatious bout of spending in the Angolan capital, including the purchase of a television station (renamed FNLA-TV) and the leading daily newspaper.59 This increased level of public exposure, amid rumours already circulating that the FNLA was being supported covertly by the US, added to the tensions increasingly felt in the city between the movements. The FNLA's military strength was further increased in February when Chipenda merged his force of around 2,000 men with the FNLA.60 At the time, these factors, combined with displays of militarism by FNLA members, raised fears, particularly among the MPLA, that Roberto had no intention of keeping to the transitional programme established at Alvor.61 During this time, periodic confrontations between all three sides began to break out, and some representatives of the movements attended meetings between them with pistols at their belts.62 It must have been difficult to escape the conclusion that the situation was worsening and that greater violence was not far off. Although by February and March, US covert assistance could not yet have had a significant effect, the burgeoning strength and confidence of the FNLA, as well as the mere rumours that the CIA was backing Holden Roberto, created the impression that the conflict was about to escalate to another more bellicose level.

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Page 102 At the same Forty Committee meeting that agreed on the grant for the FNLA, Kissinger turned down a separate CIA proposal to fund UNITA to the order of US$ 100,000. At this stage of the conflict, UNITA had yet to prove its usefulness to the US. The long history of association between the FNLA and the US on the one hand, and the special relationship between Washington and Kinshasa on the other, lent a certain amount of confidence to the decision to back Roberto. The role played by Zaire in US foreign policy towards Africa had a spill-over effect on the decision-making process on Angola. The funding of the FNLA by Washington must also be seen in the context of the latter's relationship with Mobutu, the President of Zaire and staunch supporter of that movement and its leader, Holden Roberto. The same, however, could not be said of Savimbi and UNITA. Relatively weaker in military terms than the other two movements, it had yet to establish a close relationship with an external backer that would significantly alter its impact on the political struggle between the Angolan rivals. By March 1975, the MPLA began to receive major arms shipments from the Soviet Union. According to official US estimates, between April and October 1975, 27 shiploads arrived and 30 to 40 air missions were flown to deliver war equipment.63 According to one report, Soviet weapons and ammunition were sufficient to equip 20,000 men in Luanda.64 This major input in armaments coincided with, and certainly helped to feed, the increasingly heavier confrontations that were taking place between the movements in Luanda. The Alvor Agreement was clearly falling apart as the FNLA attacked the MPLA and vice versa. Only UNITA, whose leader did not go to Luanda until 25 April 1975, managed to remain outside the fighting at this stage. According to Van Dunem, who was active in the MPLA at that time, the Neto leadership decided to make a bid to reinforce the movement's position in the major cities and towns of the country, including the oil-rich enclave of Cabinda.65 This led increasingly to confrontation and violence in many of those cities. Newly armed with Soviet weapons, the MPLA had now a viable fighting force which was used to sustain its bid for political influence among urban populations. Before the early months of 1975, the clashes between rival supporters of the movements, especially between those of the MPLA and the FNLA, although increasingly numerous were not yet considered ‘official’. At the end of 1974, Lúcio Lara even dissociated the MPLA from the violent acts of its supporters.66 But on 23 March 1975 the FNLA attacked the MPLA's headquarters at Vila Alice with hand grenades. This incident

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Page 103 marks the beginning of the semi-open phase of the civil war. Attacks and counterattacks followed as an extra 500 FNLA troops were brought into the city by the end of the month. After a brief lull, clashes resumed at the end of April. During this period, violent confrontation between the MPLA and the FNLA flared up regularly in most of the towns, especially in Luanda. Despite several attempts at establishing ceasefires, these collapsed shortly after signing. According to one estimate, by June the violence had already left 5,000 dead.67 The Alvor accords were all but defunct as each movement attempted to strengthen its own position. Only UNITA attempted to stay out of the fighting and continued to argue in favour of sticking to the transitional process agreed at Alvor. At that stage, UNITA's military power was more limited and could not have stood up against the other two movements. Representative of the largest ethnic group in the country, UNITA, at the time, saw its best chances as lying in the formal role determined for it by the Alvor accords. As the MPLA became increasingly influential in the urban areas, more internally consolidated and a recipient of a clearly enhanced supply of weapons from the Soviet Union and others in the Warsaw Pact, the FNLA may have been prompted to move against the MPLA preemptively. Boosted by the support Holden Roberto had in Kinshasa and now Washington, the FNLA acted against the MPLA's increasing political influence in the only way it knew how: with force. The arms race between the movements had begun and as violence between their supporters took on epidemic proportions, military power was increasingly seen to be the main political instrument in Angola. The MPLA's military strength was further reinforced by the recruitment of a contingent of between 3,500 and 7,000 anti-Mobutu gendarmes from the Katanga province in Zaire. This force had been exiled in Angola since the failure of the secession of Katanga from the Congo and the rise of Mobutu in the late 1960s.68 Previously used by the Portuguese against the Angolan nationalist movements, their animosity towards Mobutu in Kinshasa was now capitalized upon by the MPLA who recruited them in the conflict with the Zairean-backed FNLA. In addition to this increased manpower and the much improved supply of armaments, the MPLA also began at this point to receive sig-nificant military assistance from Cuba. According to one source quoting Luanda Radio, the first Cuban military advisors began to arrive in Angola around 7 May 1975. At this time, an MPLA representative flew to Havana while the Cuban ambassador to Kinshasa visited Luanda.69 A meeting between Neto and the Cuban military commander in Brazzaville

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Page 104 is said to have taken place sometime in May. At this meeting, an initial schedule of logistical and strategic cooperation between the MPLA and Cuba was drawn up and agreed. The date of the arrival of 230 Cuban military advisors, however, has not been agreed upon by observers of the conflict.70 Official US sources indicate that Washington first detected the presence of Cubans in Angola on 25 July.71 It is reasonable to assume that this contingent of Cuban military technicians arrived at the very least sometime in early summer. The multiplicity of reports and sighting of Cubans in Angola that followed makes it unlikely, as some sources have claimed, that this first contingent of Cuban advisors arrived only in August. The primary task of this contingent was to set up and run training camps for the MPLA's military arm, FAPLA. Some reports have claimed, however, that Cubans were already involved in fighting at the end of May, or at the very latest by June.72 Regardless of their involvement in combat or not, the mere presence of Cuban military advisors shifted the balance of power in favour of the MPLA. They not only provided basic military training but also instructed the FAPLA troops in the use of the Soviet weaponry that was being delivered to the MPLA. When compared to the military capacity of the MPLA twelve months earlier, the strengthened and well-backed FAPLA force of mid1975 indicated that a major confrontation with the FNLA was more rather than less likely. Also at around this time, or perhaps a little later in July, a number of Soviet military advisors arrived in Angola. On 25 April 1975, the Portuguese news agency reported a forthcoming visit to Angola of a Soviet delegation that would ‘… hold talks with the MPLA regarding material aid and training of cadres’.73 According to Van Dunem, there were more than ten but less than fifty Soviet military personnel with the MPLA, up to and including the rank of colonel.74 For its part, the FNLA benefited greatly from its very close relationship with the Congolese/Zairean regimes, and in particular with that of Mobutu Sese Seko. Some analysts have gone so far as to say that the movement was no more than an instrument of Zairean foreign policy.75 It is probably more correct to state that the FNLA did not have conflicting interests with Zaire. Mobutu's agenda was essentially to help establish a friendly, anti-communist, post-independence regime in Angola, while keeping one eye keenly on the oil-rich enclave of Cabinda. Zaire's support for the FNLA was crucial in making the movement a competing force in 1975. The Zaire factor was an important input in

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Page 105 the US decision-making process on the Angolan civil war. The close relationship of the regime in Kinshasa with the FNLA was fundamental in giving the latter access to US support. The flow of US arms to Roberto's movement ran mainly through Zaire, where the weapons were either used to replace Zairean army supplies which had already been advanced to the FNLA, or taken directly across the border into An-gola to resupply FNLA forces deployed there. As well as providing a haven for its leadership, cover for the US covert operation and diplomatic backing for the FNLA, Zaire also intervened directly with its own military forces in the Angolan civil war.76 Reports of Zairean troops alongside FNLA forces began to emerge even before the collapse of the Alvor accords. According to the Observer, 1,200 Zairean army soldiers were operating inside Angola as of mid-May.77 Marcum believes that this deployment was in reaction to the recruitment of the anti-Kinshasa Katangese gendarmes by the MPLA, an action which had ‘incensed President Mobutu’.78 The presence of Zairean troops on the side of the FNLA reinforced the impression that the latter movement intended to threaten the MPLA's power base in the cities. The FNLA's opportunity lay in its fighting capacity. According to Heimer, ‘the FNLA … was convinced that its military strength would in the end permit it to grab the whole cake.’79 The deployment of Zairean troops was an escalation in the conflict and hastened the process of disintegration that was taking place in the fragile structure established at Alvor for the decolonization of Angola. Despite claims to the contrary – and attempts to patch up the tripartite accord, such as the Nakuru agreement80 – it was clear to many that a full-scale civil war was going to break out in Angola. On 29 July, Roberto declared: ‘We have signed a number of agreements, all of which have been violated by MPLA. Now we will no longer be tricked. Now we will go forward.’ In a similarly defiant tone, Nito Alves of the MPLA declared on 27 July: ‘We are one hundred percent enemies and can never come to any agreement. Our fight must go on until [the] FNLA is defeated as the American imperialists were in Vietnam.’81 The steady process of confrontation had resulted in the creation of separate spheres of influence for each of the movements. The FNLA controlled the north while the MPLA held sway in the capital and in the ports along the coast. Heavy fighting broke out on 9 July, and within a week, after a well-executed and resourced offensive, the MPLA managed to run the FNLA out of Luanda and establish its control in other towns. The MPLA now controlled the capital of Angola. As the government

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Page 106 collapsed, the transitional process agreed at Alvor had all but been discarded. By this time, the exodus of the European population had escalated considerably. The abandonment of Angola by the former colonial society en masse contributed significantly to the climate of violence and instability, and emphasized the disintegration of authority.82 According to an official, in mid-June about 200,000 Portuguese residents of Angola were awaiting repatriation.83 Fighting continued throughout July and the MPLA had the upper hand. As a result of its July offensive, the MPLA controlled 11 out of the 15 provincial capitals. Earlier in June, the MPLA had managed to establish its influence in the important enclave of Cabinda. The delivery of Soviet weapons and Cuban training had clearly been beneficial to the MPLA. Hitherto adept at side-stepping the confrontation between the MPLA and the FNLA, UNITA could not, however, avoid the fighting after the breakdown of the Nakuru agreement. In what had been a last-ditch push to reach a political solution, Savimbi had apparently worked tirelessly for the Nakuru meeting.84 With far less military capabilities than the other two movements, UNITA felt it stood a better chance of participating in a post-independence government if elections were held rather than fighting it out: The possible outcome of elections held in 1975 was thus almost exclusively a function of the relative demographic weight of the different population segments. The FNLA, counting mainly on the Bakongo and on part of the whites, would certainly not have obtained more than 20% of the votes, and probably substantially less. The MPLA, having the support of the Akwambundu, and of the majority of the urbanized nonwhites as well as of the eastern tributary societies, might have got 35 to 40%. The sheer number of the Ovimbundu, plus part of the whites, of the southern/south-eastern tributary societies, and of the Cabindans, would have guaranteed UNITA a relative majority of 40 to 45%.85 The peaceful stance adopted by UNITA came to an end, however, after about 50 of its recruits were massacred allegedly by the MPLA in early June. According to one source, this attack was an attempt to force Savimbi to enter the conflict on the side of the MPLA.86 In mid-June, attempts had been made to establish a union of sorts between the MPLA and UNITA.87 As the war between the MPLA and the FNLA escalated, UNITA became caught up in the fighting. It officially en-

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Page 107 tered the fray on 4 August 1975, after Savimbi had met with Kaunda in Lusaka.88 By July, the initially reluctant US Forty Committee was ready to respond to UNITA's solicitations for weapons.89 The US reversal on supporting UNITA was influenced by the preoccupations voiced in Washington by both Zaire and Zambia about the situation in Angola.90 The US began to arm Savimbi's movement in September.91 Alongside the FNLA, UNITA now became a recipient of US covert assistance in a bid to dislodge the MPLA from Luanda. Estimates made by the US Congress conclude that total American aid, including that sent to replace Zairean and Zambian war material given to the FNLA and UNITA, came to US$ 64 million – double the official figure of US$ 32 million.92 The breakdown of the transitional government has been attributed most often to an alleged MPLA strategy to stamp its authority, with the help of Soviet weapons, on the upcoming transfer of sovereignty and the independence of Angola. The MPLA had achieved significant advances by the summer, and this was largely due to the qualitative and quantitative improvement in its military power, and the extension of its political organization and popular appeal in the major urban areas. But was there a conscious decision to grab power, or were they just successes resulting from better preparation in the face of an escalation of political irreconcilability between it and the FNLA? While recognizing that the FNLA's aggression contributed to the escalation of the conflict, Valenta believes, however, that the MPLA's July offensive sought to alter the situation, particularly with regard to the elections set by the Alvor Agreement and confirmed in the Nakuru meeting. In April, senior MPLA leaders did not bother to conceal their opposition to elections taking place and argued in favour of the creation of a ‘socialist council of state’.93 On 22 April, Neto warned that the elections ‘… may be cancelled’.94 The transitional government itself had been the object of criticism from the more radical elements in the MPLA. According to a press report in early March, MPLA comités populares in Luanda held an anti-transitional government demonstration, further indicating that that movement had little use for the Alvor arrangements.95 By driving the FNLA and UNITA out of Luanda in the summer of 1975 and destabilizing the transitional government irrevocably, the MPLA was seeking to ensure that elections did not take place as planned. It feared that, in the light of the ethnic constitution of Angola, elections would not necessarily have delivered to the MPLA the access to total power which it had concluded it could attain by other means.

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Page 108 Valenta also believes that by the summer, once the MPLA was in virtual control of Luanda, it is likely that these intentions had been communicated clearly to Moscow, Havana and Brazzaville with a view to developing a contingency plan to shore up its bid for power if necessary.96 Such conclusions, which point to the existence of a deliberate strategy by the MPLA to grasp power are supported by Van Dunem.97 According to that member of the MPLA, the mood in Luanda among the movement's activists was defiant and they were determined not to share power. After the Nakuru agreement was concluded on 21 June, José Van Dunem, the Political Commissar of the FAPLA command, told his brother on returning from Kenya that, to the MPLA leadership, signing the Nakuru agreement was a purely tactical move.98 The military strengths of the three movements in the summer are difficult to assess due to the lack of reliable estimates. According to an April report in a Portuguese daily, UNITA had 40,000 troops at its disposal.99 Barely a month or two earlier, UNITA's forces had been quoted as being no more than a thousand strong, so this figure is almost certainly an exaggeration. In the north of the country, a report places the FNLA's strength at around 17,000,100 reinforced by 1,200 to 1,300 Zairean army regulars.101 Estimates of the MPLA's strength are even harder to pinpoint. One observer has placed its guerrilla strength in the spring at 6,000,102 but this is almost certainly underestimated. By this stage, the movement's external backers were practically all in place. The FNLA's military equipment was being supplied by Zaire, China and, covertly, the United States. Additionally, Washington was now fully aware of UNITA's potential in the efforts to stop the MPLA's push for power, and had joined Zambia in backing Savimbi's movement.103 The MPLA was still receiving weapons on a regular basis from the Soviet Union and training from Cuba. The arms caches of all three movements had been increased further in April, when a Portu-guese paramilitary organization, the OPVDCA,104 was disbanded by the High Commissioner. According to Diógenes Boavida, a member of the MPLA and Minister of Justice in the transitional government, the well-stocked arsenal of that organization of over 40,000 weapons was plundered freely by all three movements.105 By July 1975, the lines were drawn and full-scale civil war was just over the horizon. The FNLA believed ‘only an all-out war will once and for all finish the continual attacks by the MPLA.’106 In control of Luanda and the major towns, the MPLA seemed to be in the most favourable position, and its strengthened military power was successfully matching the FNLA's forces in the north of the country.

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Page 109 Finally, Portugal had dealt itself out of the conflict altogether. Wrapped up in its own struggle for political direction between radicals and moderates, it had little heart or the necessary capabilities to alter sig-nificantly the headlong fall into civil war in Angola. Far ahead of the timetable established at Alvor, Portugal withdrew its military forces from its soon-to-be ex-colony. According to Kissinger, it was at this stage that Zaire and Zambia directly appealed to Washington for US assistance for the FNLA and UNITA joint bid to defeat the MPLA and challenge Soviet attempts to gain inroads to the region.107 It was on or about 17 July that the US administration, according to Nathaniel Davis, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, took the decision in favour of a sustained covert military intervention in Angola.108 The Forty Committee, in a considerable raising of the stakes, agreed to another grant for the FNLA, only this time of US$ 60 million. The political rivalry and periodic clashes between the movements was escalated to a new level of conflict. By the end of the summer, the common task of the FNLA and UNITA was to dislodge the MPLA from its positions in the towns, and particularly in Luanda. Taking the capital became the principle military objective. The FNLA attempted to march on Luanda but its forces were stopped by the MPLA at Quifangondo, barely 15 miles from the capital. Over the following months, it could not move any closer to Luanda.109 The period between the end of July and September was characterized by a relative lull in the fighting with little or no change in the overall balance of forces which remained tilted in the MPLA's favour. To break this relative impasse, the anti-MPLA alliance, through the efforts of Savimbi and UNITA in particular, sought the help of one final major external backer that was to intervene in the Angolan conflict: South Africa. The intervention of South Africa marked a new phase in the escalation of the conflict. In practical terms, Pretoria demonstrated its concern over the power struggle between the movements, as well as its willingness to deploy military forces inside Angola, when in August the South African Defence Force (SADF) moved to positions around the Cunene river hydroelectric project which South Africa had co-financed with the Portuguese. According to the South African government, the SADF forces were deployed in Angola to protect those installations. By this time, both UNITA and the FNLA had established contact with Pretoria, and South Africa was providing weapons to the hitherto poorly armed UNITA. By late August, South Africa had set up training camps for both movements.110 It is not clear at what point a co-ordinated

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Page 110 strategy to challenge the MPLA was agreed upon by the disparate parts of the antiMPLA alliance, but by early September the SADF was already moving further into Angolan territory. After the spring of 1975, Savimbi made positive pronouncements as to the possibility of co-operation with South Africa and on the ‘responsible’ nature of Vorster's leadership.111 At that time, UNITA was in military terms the weakest of the three movements, and had been searching for an external source of military equipment. For pragmatic reasons, then, UNITA established an alliance with South Africa which, while tactical, went completely against the grain of wider African politics.112 A number of African leaders who had cast their lot in with Savimbi could not continue to do so once it was revealed that the South African army was fighting alongside UNITA forces. Nevertheless, the South African intervention tipped the military balance in favour of the anti-MPLA forces. In early October, South Africans were already in combat against the MPLA in Huambo (former Nova Lisboa), an important town on the Benguela railway. The main body of the South African interventionary force entered Angola from Namibia on 14 October. An armoured column code-named Zulu – under South African command, made up of Bushmen, former Portuguese army officers and a 1,000-strong force ceded by Chipenda113 – engaged the MPLA at Pereira de Eça and moved north. On 23 October, it was joined by South African units and a small Por-tuguese right-wing force, the ELP.114 Well-supplied by air, and accompanied by helicopter gunships, the combined South African column, with 1,500–2,000 regular SADF troops, continued to move north towards the capital and soon reached Novo Redondo, about 200 miles south of Luanda. Reinforced by US covert supplies, backed by Zairean and South African forces, the FNLA and UNITA moved against the MPLA from the north and south. The goal was to reach Luanda before 11 November, the date on which formal independence would be given to Angola. The combined anti-MPLA military effort moved quickly and successfully. By early November, the MPLA had lost all its summer gains and was practically reduced to its positions in Luanda and along a corridor of territory that cut across central Angola. The anti-MPLA alliance seemed to have the advantage. The strength and speed with which the South African column advanced shook the MPLA; some of its leadership apparently even considered abandoning Luanda at this point. However, according to Van Dunem, a certain defiant courage prevailed in the besieged capital.115

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Page 111 The anti-MPLA forces did not manage to reach Luanda before the date of independence. On 10 November 1975, while the civil war was raging on the battlefield, the last High Commissioner lowered his country's flag over Luanda and transferred the sovereignty of Angola to all its people, formally putting centuries of Portuguese rule in Angola to an end. There was no direct handover of power to the MPLA, but they controlled the capital. The MPLA declared the People's Republic of Angola on 11 November 1975, and its government was recognized immediately by a number of communist countries, as well as among others authoritarian Brazil. From the MPLA's point of view, the situation had changed, or so it claimed. To that movement, the approaching military forces were not merely the actions of its rivals, the FNLA and UNITA, as they struggled for power with them, but were in fact an interventionary force, which included South Africa, payrolled by Washington, which threatened the freedom of the newly independent state of Angola. The MPLA successfully framed their struggle for power as they saw it in terms of the defence of Angolan independence from the combined forces of the South African apartheid regime and ‘CIA imperialism’. In this context, it is not even important that the intervention of Cuban troops certainly occurred before 11 November or, for that matter, that the civil war had been escalating since the beginning of the year. The subsequent airlift of several thousand Cuban troops, Operation Carlota,116 supported by the flow of Soviet weaponry, certainly had an overwhelming military impact on the civil war. But to the MPLA and its supporters, it was a legitimate act of self-defence on the part of a sovereign government and state. Despite their lightning progression through Angola, the South Afri-can forces did not launch a direct attack on the capital from the south. Pretoria claimed that their forces did not take Luanda because Washington ‘… had pleaded’ against such a move.117 Presumably, it had been considered politically preferable that the forces entering the capital be the Angolan ones of the FNLA from the north, rather than a column of foreign invaders from the south. The problem with this strategy was, however, that the FNLA had not managed to break through the MPLA defences. Already stalemated outside Luanda for weeks, the FNLA army fared little better when well-supplied MPLA forces moved against them. But as the date set for independence approached, an impatient Roberto wanted to see the FNLA in the capital. He recognized that if the day of independence came and only the MPLA was in Luanda, the latter would assume for itself the mantle of Angolan

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Page 112 statehood. Apparently disregarding his American, South African and Portuguese military advisors, Roberto ordered a single column of troops down the road to take Luanda.118 This was a fatal mistake. While taking Luanda may have made sense politically, the FNLA could not achieve it militarily. The column disintegrated under fire, especially from Cuban-operated mobile 122 mm rocket launchers known as ‘Stalin's organs’, that screeched into action terrifying the approaching FNLA troops. Backed by the newly arrived Cuban expeditionary force, the heavily armed MPLA119 managed to push the FNLA forces back until, completely demoralized, they fled with the Zairean troops just ahead of them. By January 1976, the military threat to the MPLA from the north was negligible. Two external developments of significance dramatically influenced the course of the civil war. The first was the effects of the disclosure of the US covert operation in Angola. A front-page article in the New York Times on 13 December 1975 gave details of the covert involvement of the US in Angola and indicated that it had been the reason for the resignation of Nathaniel Davis, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.120 According to Isaacson,121 the lack of resources in the CIA contingency fund had led the director of the Agency, William Colby, who was already stinging from Congressional hearings on the CIA, to seek secret approval from Congress for the release of funds for the FNLA and UNITA effort against the MPLA. The leak to the press occurred at this point. The reaction from Congress was swift. On 19 December, the Senate passed the Tunney Amendment prohibiting all further US funding of the anti-MPLA forces in Angola. According to a report, Kissinger was furious with President Ford for allowing Congress to interfere in US policy towards Angola. Later, Kissinger would write of the perceived limitations on the ability of the US to act in Angola: ‘It is doubtful that Castro would have intervened in Angola, or the Soviet Union in Ethiopia, had America not been perceived to have collapsed in Indochina, to have become demoralized by Watergate, and to have afterward retreated into a cocoon.’122 The withdrawal of the US significantly altered the balance of forces. In logistical terms, it left the FNLA and UNITA without their major backer and arms supplier. In political terms, it left them with South Africa as the sole principal backer of the anti-MPLA forces, a role Pretoria was unwilling to fulfil. The negative impact for the FNLA and UNITA, as African nationalists, of being allied with the South African apartheid regime was unavoidable. On the other hand, con-

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Page 113 gressional reins on the US administration boosted the confidence of the MPLA and its backers in Moscow and Havana, solidifying their resolve in the use of Cuban troops to ensure an MPLA victory. The second external development of significance, which effectively marked the end of this first Angolan civil war, was the recognition of the MPLA's government by the OAU. Singularly ineffective under Idi Amin's chairmanship, the OAU's emergency summit held between 10 and 13 January 1976 showed the continent to be split down the middle as to which of the sides in the Angolan civil war they would recognize. But it was South African intervention alongside the FNLA and UNITA which eventually tilted Africa in favour of the MPLA. Pointing to that ‘unholy alliance’, Nigeria reversed its initial standing and recognized the MPLA.123 A number of other African states followed and the deadlock was broken on 2 February 1976. On 10 February, the People's Republic of Angola was officially recognized by the OAU. The defeat of the FNLA marked the military turning-point of the civil war. The political alliance between the FNLA and UNITA led nowhere and their rival proclamation of independence soon failed.124 With the defeat of the FNLA in the north, the Cubanbacked MPLA turned south against Chipenda's forces and UNITA. Apart from a few skirmishes of which there is little information, there was no major confrontation with South African forces in 1976. On 4 February, and despite Savimbi's protests, Pretoria announced that, after negotiations with the MPLA, its forces had withdrawn to within fifty miles of the Namibian border.125 Practically alone against the MPLA–Cuban forces, UNITA was routed and its forces dispersed. It would later return to challenge the MPLA in an insurgent war that would last almost twenty years and further prolong the struggle for power that lay at the heart of Angolan political conflict. The first Angolan civil war, however, resulted in a victory for the MPLA over its longtime rivals. This victory was achieved by a successful externalization of that conflict, which brought international actors and their own concerns into the power struggle. Their intervention determined the course of the civil war but it was the domestic political conflict between the rival movements that created the framework for that intervention.

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Page 114 5   Zaire and South Africa ZAIRE: THE SEARCH FOR INFLUENCE The Zairean regime of President Mobutu Sese Seko played a crucial role in the Angolan civil war. Concluding almost a decade of attempts to influence the course of Angolan rivalry, Mobutu intervened directly in Angola in 1975 sending in troops to fight alongside the FNLA against the MPLA. This involvement followed previous Congolese governments' engagement with Angolan anti-colonial nationalists, namely in the development of the FNLA as described above. In many respects, the relationship between Zaire and the FNLA was similar to the one between Cuba and the MPLA, particularly when providing the lens through which the superpowers saw the conflict in Angola. The Mobutu regime was the linchpin holding together the disparate parts of the antiMPLA coalition. This was certainly the case with the United States, whose involvement in the Angolan civil war was to a very large extent shaped by its relationship with the Mobutu regime. As will be seen later, not only did Zaire provide, in practical terms, the conduit for covert US assistance to the FNLA but it also influenced the nature of US policy towards the Angolan con-flict. This was also the case with China. In 1973, the Mobutu regime warmed to Peking. Based in Zaire, the FNLA gleaned directly the rewards of this closer relationship and received Chinese arms and instructors. The Mobutu regime was also instrumental in attracting the involvement of South Africa, which could not resist the idea of fighting alongside a black African nation. The prominent role of Zaire in support of the FNLA was therefore instrumental in the externalization of the Angolan conflict. The principal pillar of Zaire's association with the FNLA was the personal relationship between Holden Roberto and President Mobutu Sese Seko, who came to power in the Congo (Leopoldville) in 1965 and changed that country's name to Zaire. Related by marriage, Mobutu and Roberto also established a close political relationship. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the MPLA recovered from their setbacks in Leopoldville and eventually overtook the FNLA as the most prominent Angolan nationalist movement.1 In this light, Mobutu and Roberto sought to re-establish the FNLA's profile abroad. The start of the re-

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Page 115 covery of the FNLA can be dated July 1972 and was marked by Roberto's visit to Algeria, an MPLA supporter, to take part in a celebration of that country's ten years of independence.2 The principal vehicle for the FNLA's continental political recovery was the relationship between Mobutu and the presidents of Tanzania and Zambia, Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda. These three, and Marien Ngouabi of the Congo (Brazzaville), had been mandated by the OAU summit of 1971 to unite all Angolan nationalists in one movement. The efforts of this VIP mission seemed to have paid off when a reconciliation agreement between Neto and Roberto was formally signed in Kinshasa (ex-Leopoldville) in December 1972.3 The agreement quickly fell apart as the MPLA continued to be denied access to the Zairean border with Angola. But support within the VIP mission was beginning to tilt towards the FNLA. Undoubtedly influenced by Mobutu, both Nyerere and Kaunda began to favour Roberto's movement. Through the favourable intervention of its host and patron, the FNLA was able to mount a recovery. This turn-around was sealed with a spate of diplomatic work by the FNLA leader. The following account of Roberto's foreign travels in 1973 reveals the process of building up support for the movement in Tanzania and Zambia. In May, he flew to Dar es Salaam with Nyerere as they returned from the OAU summit in Addis Ababa. Roberto then flew on to Zambia where he met with Kaunda, Nyerere and Mobutu. In July, the three leaders again met with Roberto, this time in Lubumbashi, before the FNLA leader then returned to Dar es Salaam where an FNLA office was subsequently opened in this African capital where previously only the MPLA had been active. The first result of that diplomatic activity was the resumption of ALC aid to the FNLA and the return of the movement to a prominence within the OAU. By working itself into the favours of Zambia and Tanzania on the coat-tails of the Zairean president, the FNLA was able to recover its international position. This time, however, although it had come in from the cold, the FNLA never again dominated support for Angolan nationalists. The swings of favour within the OAU from one movement to the other that had characterized the previous decade had been replaced by the formation of two more committed camps of support within the organization. The political nature of the two movements had increasingly begun to define their respective supporters within the OAU which was roughly divided down the middle as to which movement to support, a division that reflected the ideological bipolarity of the East–West rivalry that had come to dominate African politics.

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Page 116 The FNLA was very dependent on Zaire. Mobutu's regime supported the FNLA financially and with weapons, and provided a military base at Kinkuzu, diplomatic support and an operational advantage by denying the MPLA access to Angola along its long border. Even in its internal workings, the FNLA, or rather Roberto, relied on the Zairean government. When Roberto's leadership was challenged from within, it was the Zairean army that came to his rescue, putting down an ELNA mutiny in 1973.4 In the light of this close association, Legum talks of the ‘inevitability’ of Mobutu's regime being drawn into the Angolan conflict once the FNLA had made its bid for power.5 However, in seeking to influence the succession of Portuguese colonialism in Angola, Zaire was actively pursuing its own agenda. In 1975, the principle objective of Zairean intervention in the conflict was to establish a friendly government in Angola. The range of acceptable alternatives for Zaire seem to have run from, at an early stage, the participation of the FNLA in a coalition government to, eventually, the total take-over by the FNLA. But Zaire was unsuccessful. The FNLA, despite backing from South African and Zairean forces, were defeated, and in a pragmatic reaction to the failure of its main objective, the Mobutu regime normalized relations with the MPLA in February 1976. Clearly, the interests of Zaire took precedence over the FNLA's goals. What were Zaire's interests in Angola in 1975? According to Legum, Zaire was ‘… pursuing particularist interests’.6 In general terms, these interests can be linked to Mobutu's desire to carve out a role for Zaire as a regional hegemon in central Africa and on the wider continental stage. Wanting to keep a leftist regime out of Luanda seems to have stemmed from a number of considerations made by Mobutu's regime, of a strategic, economic and political nature. An independent and hostile government in neighbouring Angola would have threatened an array of perceived Zairean interests. In 1973, strong world prices for its abundant mineral resources and an increasingly prominent role in continental politics had made Zaire an influential actor in the area. The alleged role played by the CIA in the rise and consolidation of Mobutu's power and the strong presence of Western investments in the Zairean economy, especially in its copper production, drew much criticism of his regime. But this negative association had been considerably offset by the development of close relations with China from the end of 1972 which served to bolster Zaire's image in the Third World generally.7 Domestically, Mobutu was unchallenged and had attempted to ameliorate the situation regarding the prominent presence of Western capital in the Zairean economy by

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Page 117 implementing a partial programme of nationalization. The rising international prestige of Zaire was part of the most golden period of Mobutu's regime. It did not, however, last long. According to Young,8 the regime's relationship with the United States had, in 1975, reached its lowest point as a result of a number of issues which led to friction between the two countries. The United States had not been pleased with Mobutu's diplomatic coup against Israel nor with his increasingly good relations with China. In mid-1974, the new US ambassador to Zaire was appointed after a clearly reproachful period of delay, and never really managed to gain favour with Mobutu. Furthermore, the Zairean authorities had seized the distribution and retail facilities of a number of Western oil companies, causing further irritation in Washington. The deterioration in US–Zairean relations reached its culmination in June 1975, when the CIA was accused by Kinshasa of having conspired to overthrow Mobutu. The reasons behind this alleged plot relate to the investigations into the activities of the CIA by the Church Committee of the US Senate. With the alleged plot dominating the press, Mobutu hoped to distract attention from any damning revelations made by the Senate investigation. While there may have been tactical reasoning behind these manoeuvres by Mobutu, US–Zairean relations were sufficiently cooled by mid-1975 for there to have been a concern over the need to revive the partnership or risk diverging markedly from Washington. For this and other reasons, Mobutu began to project Zaire as Washington's champion in Africa against communism and the Soviet Union. Challenging the Moscow-backed MPLA in Angola was a clear indication to Washing-ton of where Zaire's allegiance lay. The desire to regain Washington's favour was but one of the considerations that underlay Zaire's intervention in Angola. Foremost among the other reasons was Zaire's testy relations with the Congo (Brazzaville). Relations between Kinshasa and Brazzaville, across the Congo river, had been difficult ever since the radicalization of the Congolese regime in 1963 under Massemba-Debat who took the Congo into the socialist bloc of influence. The new Brazzaville regime made clear its posture vis-à-vis Kinshasa by giving haven to and supporting Zairean leftist opponents of Mobutu known as the National Liberation Committee (CNL).9 Neighbours and rivals, the governments of Brazzaville and Kinshasa also tested each other's strengths through the dynamics of competition in Angolan anti-colonialism. Brazzaville extended its support to the MPLA after the latter's expulsion from Leopoldville in 1963. In turn,

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Page 118 the FNLA's military operations provided a counter to both the activity of the CNL and the MPLA, a fact which allegedly won Kinshasa valuable aid from the Portuguese.10 This pattern of support was escalated as the civil war broke out in Angola. The rivalry between US-backed Kinshasa and Soviet-backed Brazzaville was one of the external conflicts that were superimposed on the internal Angolan conflict. Brazzaville provided a basing point for the MPLA and served as a conduit for the flow of Soviet weapons to the movement as well as forming a crucial communications link between the Angolans, the Cubans and the Soviets. Against this, in near symmetry, Kinshasa deployed troops on the side of the FNLA and served as a channel for the flow of US weapons to Roberto's movement while at the same time linking the FNLA to its external backers in Washington. Inevitably inserted in the framework of the global competition between the superpowers, the Congo–Zaire rivalry was itself also expressed in the Angolan civil war. One object of this rivalry was the oil-rich Angolan enclave of Cabinda. The annexation of Cabinda has been identified as an aim of both the Kinshasa and Brazzaville regimes,11 and was a major interest behind both countries' involvement in the Angolan civil war. The territory of Cabinda is separated from Angola by Zaire in the south and is bordered by the Congo in the north. During the anti-colonial conflict, separatist tendencies in the enclave had met with little success. After the Portuguese coup led to the withdrawal of colonial forces, the MPLA eventually established control in the enclave by mid-1975. The immediate objective for both regimes seemed to be either to gain influence in Cabinda or, at the very least, to deny their rival from establishing any advantage. The separatists in Cabinda became closely tied to both the Congo and Zaire as opposing groups found support for their efforts in the rival capitals. In August 1975, the Luís Franque faction of the Cabindan separatists FLEC,12 based in Kinshasa, declared the independence of Cabinda. In the meantime, the rival N'Zita Tiago wing of FLEC had formed a so-called Provisional Revolutionary Government, supported by Brazzaville. Momentarily in 1975, the strange situation was created wherein Brazzaville supported both the MPLA, who opposed separatism in Cabinda, and the separatist FLEC while, at the same time, Kinshasa supported the FNLA, who also did not want independence for Cabinda, as well as the rival wing of FLEC separatists. This was a complex system of alliances that reveals the existence of different sometimes conflicting interests in the Congo–Zaire rivalry when superimposed on the struggle for power in Angola.

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Page 119 According to some observers, Mobutu's goal was a politically independent Cabinda which was, however, economically dependent on Zaire.13 While supporting the FNLA's efforts to grasp power in Angola, Zaire hedged its bets on Cabinda by promoting other options. It declared at one point that a referendum in Cabinda should determine its future. Furthermore, Mobutu's foreign minister drew an analogy between Cabinda and Bangladesh, with Zaire clearly picked to play the role of India. In late November 1975, while the civil war raged on the mainland of Angola, Zaire supported an unsuccessful invasion of Cabinda by FLEC. Zaire's intervention in Angola was also motivated by other factors. Mid-1974 witnessed a deterioration in Zaire's previously expansive economy. The benefits of its vast mineral resources were being eroded rapidly with the drop in world copper prices in April. Only a year before that, copper exports had brought in roughly half of the government's revenue.14 Furthermore, the 1973 oil crisis had already brought misfortune to the mismanaged Zairean economy. Increasingly, this negative economic picture began to feed internal resentment against the regime. Young concludes that Mobutu had to act in some way to alleviate a tense social situation. Thus, intervention in Angola also served as a diversion to Zaireans from the ailing economy, helping to shore up the internal authority of Mobutu's regime. There were other economic reasons for intervention in Angola. Over half of Zairean copper exports left for the world markets through Angolan ports on the Atlantic via the Benguela railway.15 Any threat to this transportation route, further accentuated during a recession, would have weakened the government's position even further. This concern, which Zaire shared with Zambia, led the Mobutu regime to believe that a radical and independent MPLA regime in Luanda would threaten its copper exports route. Finally, two additional factors played an important role in motivating Mobutu to intervene in the Angolan conflict. The Katangan separatist force of gendarmes, supportive of Moise Tshombe, had been maintained in Angola by the Portuguese as a form of pressure on Kin-shasa after the defeat of Tshombe's attempted secession in the mid-1960s. In 1975, this force became active on the side of the MPLA in the south against UNITA and the FNLA. It was in Mobutu's interest to neutralize this armed force which was consistently threatening his own authority in Zaire. Secondly, Mobutu had to consider the presence of a large, potentially explosive, expatriate Angolan community in Zaire, which, with the refugees who had abandoned Angola after the beginning of the civil war in 1975, had swelled to almost a million

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Page 120 people. The ensuing pressure on living conditions, jobs and services was undesirable to Mobutu, especially in the light of the worsened economic climate and increased social tensions. A quick and favourable end to the civil war would, in Mobutu's view, lead to the return of those refugees. As will be seen later, Zaire was the principal channel for US covert involvement in Angola in 1975. It is also more than likely that Zaire was one of the major influences in the formulation of US policy in Angola in 1975. Despite the presence of American diplomats in Luanda, the intelligence assessment of the situation in Angola was carried out mainly by the CIA station in Kinshasa. The account of the CIA's involvement in Angola given by Stockwell identifies the Kinshasa station as the main if not sole source of information for the decision taken by the Forty Committee to reactivate US covert funds to the FNLA.16 According to an official who sat on that committee, the approval given for the release of funds to the FNLA in January 1975 was far more predicated on the ‘basic concern’ to demonstrate support for Zaire and its interests than in a direct response to the reality of the situation on the ground.17 Alongside its role in defining Kissinger's Angola policy, the CIA also ran the US covert operation of support for the FNLA. As the civil war developed, concrete objectives, now specific to Angola, did replace US strategic interests in Zaire as the bone marrow of Washington's policy of support for the FNLA and UNITA. Zaire then became important for logistical reasons. The overriding need to maintain US involvement secret led to Zaire's importance as a conduit for the flow of arms to the anti-MPLA forces. Although some of the shipments of US arms were provided directly to the FNLA, the rest were delivered to Kinshasa as replacement for arms supplied by Zaire (and, to a lesser extent, Zambia): ‘We are only sending arms to Kinshasa to replace equipment Mobutu is sending into Angola from his own stocks.’18 In this way, Washington sought to shield the role of the US as the main arms supplier of the anti-MPLA challenge.19 For all the reasons referred above, intervention in Angola by Zaire was the culmination of Mobutu's policy of support of the FNLA. According to Ebinger: [Mobutu] … used the FNLA as an effective instrument of foreign policy in relation to (1) his growing ideological dispute with the Brazzaville … and (2) his desire for a wide range of options vis-à-vis Angola and Cabinda.20

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Page 121 While the FNLA may well have represented such an instrument to Mobutu's regime, Zaire can equally be viewed as an instrument of the FNLA. Roberto's movement was able to obtain from the Mobutu regime the necessary opportunities for his anti-MPLA challenge. Thus, it was the FNLA that drew Zaire into the conflict, where the latter, in supporting the FNLA's efforts, pursued its own ‘particularist interests’. However, Zaire was a significant agent in the externalization of the Angolan civil war. The Mobutu regime provided the link between the FNLA and its two principal external backers, the US and China, by expressing the Angolan civil war as a wider ideological struggle while keeping its own interests in sight. REGIONAL POWER POLITICS: SOUTH AFRICA IN ANGOLA The military forces of South Africa intervened directly in Angola. Certain accounts have claimed that in their few encounters, the units of the South African Defence Force (SADF) showed themselves to be militarily superior to the Cuban forces.21 Yet, the SADF-led column was successfully held outside Luanda by the MPLA/Cuban forces, thereby permitting the MPLA to claim sovereignty of Angola after independence day. The fact is that the overwhelming significance of the intervention of South African forces in the Angolan civil war was not military but political. When revealed, Operation Savannah – which sent units of the South African apartheid regime's army into a soon-to-be independent black African state – was singularly effective in discrediting the efforts of the MPLA's rivals. In addition, it served to reduce dramatically the negative political impact of the Cuban/Soviet intervention. Certainly to most African states, even the most conservative ones, the airlift of Cuban troops onto to Angolan soil came a distant second to South African intervention on a list of utterly reprehensible acts. As Coker points out: …Nigeria's decision to recognize the MPLA 15 days after the transfer of power and within days of the arrival of Cuban troops should have warned [Kissinger] that the Africans were not prepared to fight communism with Pretoria as an ally.22 Even sectors within the South African regime, such as the state security organ, BOSS,23 and the Foreign Affairs Department, recognized the significance of this political factor and argued that:

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Page 122 this military intervention was being used against South Africa and alienating many African and Western governments that earlier had not been particularly sympathetic to MPLA or a Cuban presence in Africa.24 Perhaps the outcome of the conflict in Angola might have been altogether different had South Africa not sent in its army. By deciding to intervene militarily in Angola, the decision-makers in Pretoria may, ironically, have chosen the one policy that ensured the failure of their principal objective: to deny the MPLA from coming to power. In 1975, South Africa did not have a single cohesive policy toward Angola which was defended unanimously within the power structure. Consequently, the implications of its intervention were not properly defined. South African intervention suffered from misperceptions with regard to the Angolan conflict: namely with regard to the commitment of the US to the Angolan question and to the negative political impact of the SADF intervention. The latter helped to redefine the political parameters of the Angolan struggle for power, altering the relative strengths of the MPLA and its rivals, and consequently affecting the outcome of the civil war far beyond whatever military influence the intervention itself may have had. The security of the white minority regime in South Africa was the predominant priority of Pretoria's foreign policy. Accordingly, the defence of South Africa was inextricably linked to its domestic policies of maintaining white power. This, claims Geldenhuys, was one of the first and foremost characteristics of Pretoria's search for security.25 A second characteristic of South African post-war policy was the search for allies in the fulfilment of this task, a search that was particularly accentuated by virtue of South Africa's physical and, more significantly, political isolation. After 1948, Pretoria sought to frame South Africa's very particular interests as being closely tied to those of the West, in particular, to those of NATO. At the very beginning of the age of modern African nationalism and anti-colonialism, South Africa's rulers were aware of the threat that their structure of authority faced from self-determination. They attempted thus to equate nationalism in Africa with communism in order that they might express their resistance to self-determination as the resistance to communism. For the National Party, then in power, communism was the multi-threat, both internal and external. By claiming to stand with the West against the Soviet Union in a wider context, Pretoria was transposing the Cold War between East and West onto its own domestic power struggle to retain white

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Page 123 minority rule. According to Geldenhuys, ‘… this perception of international politics as essentially a communist–anti-communist struggle would remain fundamental to South African thinking.’26 The Malan (1948–54) and Strijdom (1954–58) National Party governments developed a defence strategy predicated on this linkage with the East–West conflict. That strategy had three basic objectives: first, to tackle communism as far away from South Africa as possible; secondly, to associate South Africa with a formal Western defence alliance; and finally, to land the West's commitment to South Africa's defence.27 Ultimately, the governments in Pretoria hoped to tie the West to the survival of the white minority regime. This defence and diplomatic strategy sought to expand on, but eventually transcend, the ties developed with Britain by the regime of Smuts. In 1955, Britain and South Africa signed a bilateral agreement on naval co-operation around the former British base at Simonstown. According to the terms of the agreement, Britain and its NATO allies would have access to the base, and, in return, promised to supply vital arms.28 The larger significance of this agreement seems to be almost psychological. Geldenhuys claims that to the South African strategists the agreement implied Britain's acceptance of Pretoria's own assessment of its strategic importance to the West. The cornerstone of this alleged strategic value was the Cape route, crucial to the shipping of oil to the West, especially in the light of an unpredictable access to the Suez Canal. Despite this obvious importance, the British Labour government in 1967 distanced itself from naval cooperation with South Africa, implying that it no longer considered the Cape route important,29 or at least that its importance was now outweighed by the need to be seen to be loosening ties with South Africa, especially military ones. By this time, South Africa had already entered its long period of political and diplomatic isolation. The Sharpeville massacre of 1960 propelled the apartheid regime to international infamy and set in motion the long campaign to isolate South Africa. The clear intention of the regime not to reform was brutally revealed by the effective suppression of what had been its most serious internal challenge to date. When in 1964 the US and Britain joined the UN embargo on the sale of arms to South Africa, any real possibility of South Africa ever forming part of the Western defence alliance was effectively cast aside. But at the time, this was not immediately apparent, and at the end of the 1960s, NATO's reawakened interest in the Cape route raised unwarranted expectations within the South African regime.

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Page 124 Under Joseph Luns, the Atlantic Alliance began to consider the possibility of including the Cape route in the organization's defence perimeter despite the recognition that any military co-operation with South Africa would be increasingly difficult in the prevailing negative political climate.30 But the strategic importance of the Cape route (the recognition of which by the West was in itself a South African objective) seemed to be obvious. The sheer quantity of daily oil tonnage and other trade31 that was shipped around the Cape pointed overwhelmingly to its importance and, therefore, to Western vulnerability if faced with a Soviet threat to the route. According to Coker, delegates at a NATO conference in October 1969 were told that the Soviet navy could inflict severe and possibly fatal damage to allied shipping in the area within a matter of hours.32 In an attempt to tie NATO to the defence of South Africa, Pretoria argued that to counter this Soviet threat, a massive Western air and naval presence in the Indian Ocean was required. It was hoped that this would lead South Africa to some form of association with NATO. As it turned out, the political pressure against any form of military cooperation with South Africa, even in the interests of the Alliance, was overwhelming. To do so would have risked alienating countless governments in Africa and Asia. This constraint on Western governments was perhaps not understood by South Africa, and it certainly did not please Pretoria: An important underlying reason for South Africa's disgust at [Harold] Wilson's actions [stopping the sale of arms] was that it was perhaps reflecting a downgrading of the Cape route's strategic importance and a devaluation of South Africa's role in the Western defence system – two notions very dear to South African strategists and politicians.33 To South Africa, it became gradually clear that its foreign policy strategies would have to change. Its isolation was all but complete. But, even if the West did not recognize the strategic importance of South Africa or its commitment to fighting communism, Pretoria continued to place its objectives and interests firmly with those of the West, expressing them bitterly almost in terms of martyrdom: South Africa was determined to defend itself and the free world to the utmost of its ability, even if the free world should continue denying South Africans the arms to do so. B.J. Vorster 197334

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Page 125 If the non-communist world would not support South Africa as a strategic ally, it would have to defend the Cape route alone, for its own and the free world's sake, whatever the sacrifices. P.W. Botha 196835 The development of South Africa's regional role was a priority for policy-makers in Pretoria. Faced with the ‘winds of change’ bringing independence to Africa, the white minority regime in South Africa became quickly aware of the European colonial powers' weakness of resolve to resist what Pretoria considered to be a communist threat and not the expression of national self-determination. As they saw it, South Africa itself had to stem this threat, and as far away from its borders as possible, this because the nonwhite South African population was considered to be ‘…a very fertile field for communist propaganda and agitation’.36 The strategy which was developed sought to establish a cordon sanitaire – a buffer zone that would separate South Africa from the nefarious influences of communistinspired change.37 In accordance with this strategy, Pretoria sought, from the mid1960s onward, to strengthen its relations with the white regimes in Rhodesia and Portuguese An-gola and Mozambique. South Africa believed these stalwarts would form an alliance designed to insulate their domains from the onslaught of international communism and African nationalism, which to Preto-ria were one and the same. These regimes co-operated to a large extent in various sectors, including security and military operations. Portugal allowed the South African army to operate freely in southern Angola as it searched for SWAPO targets, while in return, the SADF would strike against any Angolan anti-colonial movements that it came across.38 To the regime in Pretoria, it was all part of the same fight. In 1970, Vorster claimed, ‘I know of no terrorism in southern Africa which, in the final analysis, is not directed against South Africa … The ultimate aim of all terrorists is to take South Africa away from us.’39 As it strengthened its regional role, simultaneously South Africa began to develop its military power which, after the UN arms embargo was established, had become a priority for the white regime. A 1960 defence review concluded that the state had ‘a practically obsolete defence force’.40 This led to a very successful programme of military modernization. Within four years, the Minister of Defence, J.J. Fouche, arrogantly cast aside any potential external threat to South Africa, claiming that all of the regime's military requirements could be met.41

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Page 126 This militarization was carried out during a period of strong economic growth in the country between 1961 and 1965. The South Afri-can economy had already reached an advanced stage of industrialization that had gone beyond simple import-substitution and was beginning export-led growth. Despite this advanced industrial phase, however, the South African economy occupied a similar role in international trade to that of a colony, characterized by the export of raw materials, principally minerals, in exchange for manufactured goods. But this economic relationship was threatened by South Africa's political isolation, which placed markets out of reach, for the sale of raw materials as well as for the purchase of manufactured goods.42 Furthermore, as a result of a deliberate policy of segregation, the non-white population could not meet the needs of the South African economy. In this way, and in detrimental terms to the South African economy, apartheid became a constraint on domestic demand. For these reasons, and combined with negative world economic conditions, the South African economy had to search for markets elsewhere. Eventually, other pariah states formed trading partnerships with South Africa. But it was the Southern African region that presented the best opportunities to satisfy the requirements of the South African economy. Therefore, for diplomatic and strategic needs as well as for economic reasons, Southern Africa became a priority in South Africa's external policies. South Africa invested heavily in tying that region to its own economy. Co-operation with the Portuguese colonial regime in regional development led to the establishment of substantial stakes in the hydroelectric project on the Cunene river in Angola, and in the huge Cabora Bassa dam in Mozambique. The traditional flow of labour from Mozambique and other countries in the region for mineral extraction and other labour intensive work further reinforced South Africa's role as the economic motor of Southern Africa. In this way, a structure of economic dependence was established. This form of regional co-operation with Portugal and the outlaw Smith regime in Rhodesia also served to allay South Africa's fears of being confronted with hostile ‘communist forces’ along its borders. Fearful of internal challenges to the white minority regime, Pretoria sought to maintain along its borders a boundary of friendly states that would, in their view, ‘sterilize’ the possibility of external or ‘communist’ instigation ‘infecting’ the internal South African situation. Pretoria's domination of Namibia was part and parcel of this strategy. The peace of mind offered by this buffer zone was, however, shattered when the Portuguese regime was overthrown by the army in April

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Page 127 1974. As Barber and Barratt put it: ‘…the outlook for Pretoria had become threatening’.43 When, in the course of that year, it became clear that Portugal would soon leave Africa, South Africa's strategic ring was seriously broken. But representing even more of a threat, it appeared that this ring would, according to Prime Minister Vorster, be replaced by ‘a string of Marxist states across Africa from Angola to Tanzania’.44 The deployment of the Soviet Navy off the coast of Guinea in 1970 had raised the spectre of a Soviet presence in Africa. Not that South Africa feared an outright invasion by the Red Army. But Pretoria understood that pro-Moscow radical regimes on its border would threaten its own survival. The South African military believed that the internal conflict for white supremacy could be won if external assistance to insurgency were denied. Radical regimes along its border, instead of its cordon sanitaire, would make the infiltration of guerrillas and a full support for a challenge to the white regime from a contiguous state a very real possibility. The first challenge to Pretoria was Mozambique. In the light of South Africa's regional strategy, the FRELIMO-dominated transitional government established in September 1974 could certainly have been perceived as security threat to South Africa as well as to neighbouring Rhodesia, which was heavily dependent on Mozambique's ports. The collapse of Portuguese power in Mozambique was welcomed by anti-apartheid opposition in South Africa, and the certain advent of the Marxist FRELIMO, representing the encroachment of the Soviet Union in the region, threatened the possibility of ANC bases not far from South Africa's border. However, aware of Mozambique's dependence on South Africa and Rhodesian traffic through its ports, FRELIMO voiced realism. In the case of Mozambique, Vorster's government decided on non-intervention, despite requests for this course of action from P.W. Botha and the security apparatus.45 Angola was, however, an altogether different matter. Initial small-scale military intervention in Angola throughout the summer of 1975 was officially justified by Pretoria in terms of protecting its investments in the Cunene River hydroelectric project and of deflecting ‘…the effects of the Angolan civil war from the northern border of South West Africa’.46 Eventually, it was revealed that South Africa had intervened much more extensively in the Angolan conflict with the objective of supporting the FNLA-UNITA coalition in its war against the MPLA.47 With only a couple of hundred or so SADF officers and NCOs leading the circa 2,000-strong ‘Zulu’ column of motorized

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Page 128 armour, South Africa joined the UNITA-FNLA offensive in the west of Angola on 23 October 1975. The objective of this first major offensive operation seems unclear.48 Had the SADF wanted to drive north to Luanda before 11 November, the date of independence, they would almost certainly have employed a stronger force overwhelmingly backed by air power. Initially, therefore, it seems that the purpose of the intervention was merely to bolster, in a clandestine manner, UNITA's positions on the battlefield. According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph in February 1977, the original South African directive had been for the SADF columns to take back as much UNITA territory as possible and then withdraw before the date of independence.49 By secretly strengthening UNITA's position on the ground, it was hoped that the movement would be favourably poised when the time came to negotiate a coalition government. Either because such negotiations seemed increasingly unlikely or because there was a re-evaluation of what the SADF could achieve once inside Angola, South African strategy changed during the course of the intervention. According to Bridgland, Savimbi ‘found out’ on 10 November during a trip to Pretoria, when he talked to Vorster for the first time, that South Africa had reversed its original plan of withdrawing by 11 November and was at that very moment pushing towards Luanda to support the US and Zairean backed challenge by the FNLA from the north.50 These allegations, that there was a South African–US plan to install the FNLA in Luanda by independence, implied that UNITA would have played at most a minor role in a Roberto-dominated regime. However, a South African academic has concluded that there was ‘…no co-ordinated South African–American plan to capture Luanda’.51 What does emerge from a look at South African intervention in Angola is a sense that Pretoria did not have a consistent policy from the start. Essentially, it acted in response to perceived opportunities as the con-flict escalated. This view is supported by a look at the South African intervention in phases. First, it acted to exploit whatever advantages it could gain vis-à-vis SWAPO, as a result of the chaos that was being unleashed inside Angola following the Portuguese coup. Then, during a second phase, it acted in a limited manner to support UNITA's consolidation of territory in the south. Finally, it faced the Cuban-backed MPLA in an attempt to take Luanda for the FNLA. This look in stages at South Africa's strategy in Angola leads to the conclusion that the regime in Pretoria did not a have a predetermined policy to achieve its aims there. In fact, it is partly in this opportunistic ap-

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Page 129 proach that lies the responsibility for failing to avoid the very result Pretoria most feared: an independent, Moscow-backed MPLA government in Luanda. According to one analyst of South African policy, the white regime hoped to help ‘… produce a moderate government in Angola which, in turn, might deny SWAPO bases and retain Angola as part of the cordon sanitaire.’52 This was one of the main goals behind South Af-rican intervention in Angola. The means of achieving of this, however, were not as clear. According to Grundy, ‘Pretoria did not appear to know what it wanted to do largely because no clear-cut policy direction was established.’53 Apparently, the Department of Foreign Affairs did not know about the first major SADF offensive into Angola until the South African embassy in Lisbon was handed an official note of protest from the Portuguese government. At the very least, this suggests that intervention in Angola was not the only policy option within the regime. Grundy has claimed that, were it possible to identify this divergence over Angola so clearly, the Department of Defence, led by its minister, P.W. Botha, and the SADF itself, would be considered ‘hawks’, while the internal security organ, BOSS, and the Department of Foreign Affairs, for different reasons, took the ‘doveish’ line.54 The Foreign Affairs Department was principally concerned about what intervention in Angola might do to South Africa's already fragile international position, while BOSS favoured a clandestine operation, which it would carry out, rather than a direct military intervention. These different postures served to delay Vorster's decision in favour of one cohesive policy for Angola.55 This debate was carried out ‘…within a restricted government circle while the Cabinet was not kept informed of what was happening and was not involved in the decisions’.56 According to Grundy, the two principal decisionmakers in South Africa's Angolan policy were Vorster and Botha. In June 1975, Botha delivered to Vorster a policy paper prepared by the SADF outlining the options available to South Africa in Angola.57 No decision to act was taken until October,58 and yet in July, SADF forces positioned along Namibia's border with Angola entered the country where they clashed with MPLA and, apparently, also UNITA forces.59 The purpose of those raids was to search and destroy SWAPO guerrilla units in Angolan territory. The fact that these offensive actions did take place at this time seems to have been confirmed by Botha himself in parliament when he gave details of South African casualties in Angola

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Page 130 as having been suffered between 14 July 1975 and 23 January 1976.60 In August, SADF forces moved into Angola and occupied the installations of the dam project on the Cunene river, an act that was held up to be the protection of South African investments. The objective of deploying the SADF along the northern border of Namibia and in southern Angola in the summer of 1975 had been to exploit the situation in Angola to move against SWAPO. According to Barber and Barratt, ‘… there is no evidence that Pretoria had specifically authorized the military to do more than protect the Cunene project and take necessary action against SWAPO.’61 If this was the case, then the subsequent South African military intervention on behalf of the anti-MPLA alliance had not been foreseen initially. P.W. Botha, after consulting with Vorster, instructed the SADF forces in northern Namibia and southern Angola to drive off MPLA forces if attacked. This amounted to, as Geldenhuys has put it, ‘a political decision that opened the door to offensive military operations in Angola’.62 Therefore, despite the fact that no policy had officially been decided upon, the SADF was already acting in Angola in pursuit of a different objective from that which had initially led to its deployment. The very fact that the military was already on the ground provided the impetus that eventually determined South Africa's action in Angola without allowing proper input on the political consequences of such an intervention. The fact is, those political consequences led to the failure of South African intervention in Angola. Nevertheless, in the light of South Africa's strategic vision, the objective of denying power to the Soviet-backed MPLA made perfect sense. On the one hand, an MPLA Angola would represent a direct threat to South Africa's position in Namibia, and consequently, to the security of the white regime in South Africa itself. On the other hand, Pretoria believed that a Soviet presence in Angola courtesy of the MPLA represented a threat to Western interests. According to P.W. Botha: South Africa is playing a limited role in Angola because Russia is involved in a campaign of militaristic imperialism in that country … We were prepared to leave it to the people of Angola to solve their own problems, but the Russians interfered because they want to control the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope and because they want to exploit the wealth of Angola.63 Once again, policy-makers in Pretoria sought to express South African concerns as those of the West. Challenging Moscow was not so much related to the world-wide struggle against communism as to South Africa's

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Page 131 strategy of ensuring its hegemony as the single regional power. The independence that Moscow's backing would confer to an MPLA government, as well as the foothold that Angola would represent to increasing Soviet presence in the region, would signify for South Africa a loss of relative power in the southern African region. They believed that such a loss of power would have serious internal consequences in both Namibia and South Africa. In Pretoria's view, there were limited options available to it to contain the MPLA and undermine Soviet influence. Due to the natural wealth of Angola, and in particular to the rich oil deposits found offshore, South Africa could not have dominated an independent Angola as it believed it could influence Mozambique. The latter's economic dependence on South Africa made it almost irrelevant that the radical regime in Maputo was anathema to Pretoria. With the economic tools of influence in hand, there was no need to intervene militarily. Because of its wealth, Angola was not in the same position. Military intervention seemed to be the only way. South Africa has claimed that it acted in Angola only after a number of governments had urged it do so, and after UNITA had requested an escalation to Pretoria's support for that movement's challenge in the south. Savimbi eventually admitted that he had decided to ‘…seek South African assistance at the end of September when he realized UNITA needed help against the Cubans.’64 The fact that an African anti-colonial movement was requesting military assistance from the South African apartheid regime did not overly concern the UNITA leader. According to Savimbi: If you are a drowning man in a crocodile-infested river and you've just gone under for the third time you don't question who is pulling you to the bank until you are safely on it.65 It is not clear exactly when South Africa began to support UNITA and the other forces aligned against the MPLA. According to one source, a request made by Savimbi in March 1975 was turned down by Pretoria.66Marcum states that Savimbi ‘… had already met with South African officials …’ before early May.67It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that some contact with the South Africans had been established by UNITA before the summer of 1975. In May and July 1975, Daniel Chipenda, the rebel MPLA leader who had joined forces with the FNLA, visited Windhoek. In the Namibian capital he met the head of BOSS, General van den Bergh, with whom the question of South African support for the anti-MPLA challenge was probably the main subject

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Page 132 of conversation. In late August, the SADF established a training camp for UNITA and one for Chipenda's FNLA forces. At the end of September, a team of 18 South African instructors led by an SADF officer, and a small consignment of arms were sent to UNITA.68By the beginning of October, those military advisors were participating in clashes between UNITA and the MPLA. At the same time, the CIA's covert operation of support for the FNLA and UNITA was gathering pace. Why did South Africa choose UNITA as its conduit for intervention in Angola? For South Africa, helping UNITA to consolidate its positions in southern Angola made sense. A friendly UNITA would provide a buffer between Namibia and any hostile Angolan government that might emerge. Furthermore, when the Americans also turned to UNITA in June, Pretoria came into line with Washington's Angolan policy. Decades of longing to stand in the Western camp left a blinding legacy in Pretoria. Finally, as an additional benefit of supporting UNITA, Savimbi allegedly provided information on the location of SWAPO bases in return for South African help.69 South Africa's intervention in Angola has also been attributed in part to the encouragement given by certain African governments, namely those of Mobutu in Zaire and Kaunda in Zambia, as well as those of other leaders such as Houphouet-Boigny, Senghor and Nyerere. According to Barber and Barratt, ‘the position of these African leaders significantly influenced Pretoria's approach to the Angolan War.’70Both Zambia and Zaire were targets of Pretoria's diplomatic strategy of ‘dialogue’ which sought to establish closer relations with African governments. From this point of view, Pretoria acted in Angola in such a manner as to oblige its ‘dialogue’ partners. Both Mobutu and Kuanda were concerned about an MPLA take-over in Angola which might threaten the access of their vital copper exports to the Atlantic coast ports via the Benguela railway. Becoming dependent on a Moscow-backed MPLA government for the flow of their principal foreign revenue earner was not a prospect either leader savoured. This certainly explains part of the motivation behind Zaire's support of the FNLA and Zambia's support of UNITA. But it does not explain why these leaders would have encouraged Pretoria to intervene directly in Angola to help displace the MPLA. Surely they would have been aware of the likely consequences of an intervention in an African conflict by the military forces of the white minority regime. Perhaps they intended to keep the presence of the SADF in Angola secret, although this was certainly an unrealistic expectation.71

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Page 133 It remains uncertain at what stage of the South African intervention this ZambianZairean encouragement was given. Pretoria contends that it occurred before their military commitment had been made and that it was an indication that South Africa's intervention had, initially, the support of some African governments.72Savimbi has claimed that South Africa acted with ‘painful correctness’ and emphasized that South Africa had the approval of African governments ‘… such as Zaire, Zambia and the Ivory Coast’.73Others believe that secret Zairean and Zambian overtures to Pretoria came only after the SADF had intervened in Angola initially to secure territory for UNITA.74If the latter is true, Pretoria's claim that it was spurred on by the approval of African governments does not seem to hold. An unanswered question in the Angolan civil war is the extent of US collusion with South Africa against the MPLA. The South African government has claimed that Washington encouraged, if not incited, Pretoria into intervening: To the question of whether Washington had ‘solicited’ South African involvement, Prime Minister Vorster subsequently responded that he would not call anyone who said that a ‘liar’.75 According to Vorster: … South Africa would never have intervened had it not been assured that its forces would be resupplied if they encountered major opposition … it had only intervened at all on the express understanding that the US would continue to arm the SADF if it suffered heavy losses.76 For its part, the US denies having given any such guarantees to Pretoria: ‘Some charge that we have acted in collusion with South Africa’, [Kissinger] said before the Senate Africa Subcommittee. ‘This is untrue. We had no foreknowledge of South Africa's intentions and in no way co-operated with it militarily.’77 The US was unwilling to admit to any form of partnership with Pretoria, especially with regard to anything so sensitive as supplying arms to South African troops fighting in Angola. As a [US] government official78told Congress, no American government could undertake to resupply South African forces during a conflict in which its own forces were not directly engaged. He even underlined the fact by reminding it that the US had scrupulously adhered to the arms embargo throughout the conflict.79

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Page 134 The South African government was fully aware of the clandestine support Washington had been giving the FNLA through Zaire. According to John Stockwell, the CIA operative responsible for the US covert operation in Angola, the South African regime was kept informed through ‘… voluminous intelligence reports and detailed briefings …’ offered by the agency's station in Pretoria.80The South African regime believed that the US was committed to the effort to topple the MPLA, even if this included the deployment of SADF troops in Angola. By intervening: … South Africa hoped to demonstrate its commitment to the free world against communist expansionism. Angola seemed the ideal opportunity to do so.81 Pretoria seemed to believe that, by identifying the intervention as a struggle against ‘communist expansionism’, the importance of that objective would prevail over any negative political consequences emanating from its own involvement. Overconfident of its worth to the West in the Cold War, the South African regime was unable to calculate correctly what effect its support for UNITA and the FNLA would have in Africa. It eventually discovered that its involvement was the ‘kiss of death’ for the anti-MPLA coalition. The revelation of the presence of the SADF on Angolan soil represented the beginning of the end of the civil war. Other states intervened in that conflict, and Pretoria pointed to the Soviet-Cuban effort as the real danger. But in vain; South African intervention became the most reviled act of the civil war. It was allegedly in response to the intervention of South Africa that Nigeria, hitherto a UNITA sympathizer, revised its position and switched its support to the MPLA. International public opinion raged against the South African intervention far more than the criticism that had been directed against the Cuban intervention. Eventually, Pretoria's involvement in the conflict pushed the OAU and then the UN to recognize the legitimacy of the MPLA and in this way put an end to the civil war of 1975. As the US administration found itself under fire in Congress over the covert operation in Angola, it became clear that their support for the intervention against the MPLA was coming to an end. Pretoria pointed a critical finger at Washington's lack of resolve in not seeing through the fight against the ‘communists’. But the South Africans were blaming the US for what had essentially been their own miscalculations. Not only had they misjudged the negative impact of their own intervention, but they had also overestimated American willing-

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Page 135 ness to enter the Angolan conflict overtly, something which, incidentally, the Soviet Union managed to evaluate correctly.82 South African intervention in Angola was intimately tied to its strategy of regional hegemony. Above all, Pretoria feared the effects an MPLA regime would have on its volatile internal situation. The threat of a radical regime in Angola independent of its pressures led South Africa to risk a military operation that sought to deny victory to the MPLA. But South Africa was also drawn into the conflict by the convergence of its interests with those of the FNLA and UNITA. As ‘drowning men’, those movements sought a ‘saviour’ to pull them ashore, and thus became the channel for South African military intervention in the civil war.

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Page 136 6   Cuba and China CUBAN INTERNATIONALISM Cuba was the most heavily involved international actor in the Angolan civil war, at least in terms of sheer manpower. By the end of the war in the spring of 1976, there were at least 10,000 Cuban troops actively deployed in Angola on the side of the MPLA. The role of those troops in the success of Neto's movement was crucial if not central. Cuban troops ensured the defence of the MPLA's stronghold in the capital, Luanda, against the combined assaults of the FNLA from the north and UNITA from the south, and it is difficult to conceive of an MPLA victory without the intervention of Cuban troops. In terms of effect, Cuban intervention was a major influence on the Angolan conflict. Cuban involvement in Angola has often been subjected to the question of whether or not Havana was acting independently, as they claim, or whether they acted as a proxy for the Soviet Union, as others have contended. The answer is probably somewhere in between. The long and uninterrupted relationship between Havana and the Neto faction of the MPLA supports the view that the Cuban intervention in 1975 was, at least in part, a natural progression of this policy of support for the MPLA as well as a manifestation of its long-standing internationalist foreign policy. On the other hand, it is unlikely that Cuba would have become so deeply involved if it had not been able to count on the Soviet Union's strategic and logistical support. The deployment of Cuban troops was, therefore, partially motivated by Havana's own policy considerations but would probably not have taken place in the absence of Moscow's interest. An accurate way of describing the situation is to state that an independent Cuban policy in Angola converged with that of the Soviet Union. According to one source, concrete Cuban military support for Angolans may even have begun as early as September 1963 in Algeria. The independence of Algeria in October 1962 had precipitated close relations between Cuba and the North African country, and: An undisclosed number of Cuban military, political and medical advisors flocked to the recently independent state … By September [1963] about one thousand guerrillas from Angola, Mozambique and Namibia received training from Algerians and Cubans in Algeria.1

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Page 137 The strong links between the MPLA and Cuba were established a year or so later in Brazzaville, where the Neto faction had relocated its base at the end of 1963 after the débâcle in Leopoldville. The exact starting date of the Cuba–MPLA relationship differs in the accounts, but it seems clear that initial contacts eventually led to a meeting with Che Guevara either in 1964 or early 1965. The following is the testimony of Jorge Risquet, a member of the Political Bureau of the Cuban Communist Party: Fidel sent Che in early 1965 to meet with the MPLA leadership in Brazzaville. He offered revolutionary Cuba's solidarity to Agostinho Neto. Soon after, Cuban soldiers began arriving in Cabinda to train the MPLA guerrilla front. At Comrade Neto's request, Cuba took charge of arming and training a guerrilla column that was to cross Zaire into Angola.2 During this period, the whereabouts of Guevara were shrouded in mystery, and it was only much later that his presence in Congo (Brazzaville) was officially acknowledged.3 During his African tour, which began in December 1964 and ran until early March 1965, Guevara visited most of the radical African states which then made up the ‘Casa-blanca’ group. He visited the Congo (Brazzaville) where he promised to train a presidential guard for Massemba-Debat. It was in Brazzaville that Guevara is said to have made contact with the MPLA in a meeting with CONCP, the group that brought together the nationalist organizations of Portuguese Africa. The revolutionary credentials of those Angolan nationalists in CONCP were already strong despite the fact that the wars in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau had only recently begun. The popularity of Amílcar Cabral, and the proximity of MPLA leaders to leading African radicals such as Ben Bella and Kwame Nkrumah, may have been important in bringing the MPLA to the attention of Guevara. According to the Ottaways, however, the MPLA did not impress Guevara, at least not at first. The revolutionary leader felt that the organization had ‘not much to show’ but nevertheless promised to provide instructors.4 It is interesting to note that Jonas Savimbi reports a meeting he allegedly had with Guevara after the latter's visit to Brazzaville, when he claims Guevara told him: I went to Brazzaville to see the MPLA, and nothing is happening. They are just bourgeois. From now on you are my friend. I am going to Fidel to make a report on you, and he will give you assistance through our friend Ben Bella in Algeria.5

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Page 138 This claim may be supported by Dominguez who notes that Cuba also offered some support to UNITA in the late 1960s.6 The commitment of the reconstituted and strengthened MPLA to operate an effective military front in the Cabinda enclave may have played an important part in helping to attract Cuba's pledge to supply the movement with arms and military instructors. Within a year of the Brazzaville meeting, Cuba was supplying CONCP members, including the MPLA, with arms and instructors.7 According to Dominguez, ‘Cuba had been training MPLA ‘‘revolutionary and military cadres” since 1965.’8 Over 100 MPLA fighters may have been trained by Cuba at this time. As well as military training, Cuba also offered technical studies and other educational courses to a number of MPLA cadres, most of whom would return to occupy high-ranking places in the MPLA hierarchy. This marked the beginning of an uninterrupted alliance with Cuba that provided the MPLA with political, financial and military support. Che Guevara secretly returned to Brazzaville in April 1965 with a unit of 100 or 200 ‘international fighters’ to aid an insurgency by a Lumumbist, Gaston Soumaliot, against the Moise Tshombe government in Leopoldville. During this clandestine period, according to Khazanov, Guevara visited the so-called ‘second politico-military district’, Cabinda, where he is said to have met the legendary MPLA guerrilla, Hoji ya Henda.9 Disillusioned by the political rivalry among the apparently inept Congolese rebels, and asked to rescind that effort by the Brazzaville government after Mobutu took power in Leopold-ville, Guevara left Africa for Bolivia, leaving behind his fighters in Brazzaville and Conakry to help train the MPLA and the PAIGC respectively.10 Eventually admitting that Guevara did aid Congolese rebels against Leopoldville, the Cuban government had never referred to that episode in early Cuban revolutionary policy. The failure of Guevara's initiative is one reason for that omission, but another may have been the fact that the Cubans were aiding insurgents in a challenge to an independent African government and not to a colonial regime. According to Valdes, the failure of this African adventure made Havana opt subsequently for a more moderate policy of internationalist solidarity on the continent with the following objectives: … to help consolidate revolutionary governments already in power, and to give assistance to African guerrillas without the deployment of regular forces. If some men were assigned to the guerrillas, they were to provide training, rather than engage in actual fighting.11

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Page 139 The military training of the MPLA by Cuban instructors was, therefore, co-ordinated with the assistance Cuba was providing to the Brazzaville regime. In early 1966, there were up to 1,000 Cubans in Brazzaville providing support for the revolutionary government and training the MPLA.12 For Brazzaville, the association with Havana had an early payoff. In June 1966, the crack Cuban-trained Presidential Guard, supported by Cubans, saw off an attempted coup against Massemba-Debat.13 That incident, witnessed at first hand by the MPLA, could not have failed to impress the benefits of Cuban military force upon that movement's leaders.14 Cuban support in the mid-1960s clearly helped the Neto faction to recover from its brush with extinction after leaving Leopoldville a broken force. With the military training and weapons provided by Havana, the MPLA was able to raise its political profile by operating militarily in Cabinda, albeit with limited success. Furthermore, by July 1966, thanks to Cuban training, the MPLA was finally able to realize one of its major strategic objectives: making contact with guerrilla groups within Angola that leaned towards its authority. In late 1966 and early 1967, several hundred-strong MPLA columns of heavily armed guerrillas managed to cross hostile Zairean territory and infiltrate Angola.15 Their task, which was accomplished, was to reach the guerrilla groups in the Dembos forest area north-east of Luanda and establish lines of communication and, therefore, consolidate their allegiance to the Neto leadership.16 From that time, with the continuing activity in Cabinda, the MPLA could claim that it had two guerrilla fronts against the Portu-guese. And in May 1966, a third front was opened in the east of Angola, after Zambian independence allowed the MPLA to establish a presence in Lusaka from where it could sustain military operations into Angola. One source indicates that in the late 1960s there were reports of Cuban advisors inside Angola, entering and leaving the country with MPLA reinforcement columns, but these reports have not been confirmed elsewhere.17 The Cuban-sustained military recovery of the MPLA also helped to foster an improved international image of the movement. In January 1966, the Cuban capital was the site of the so-called Tricontinental Conference. Bringing together the broadly anti-Western states of the Third World, the conference also invited national liberation movements to attend. Representing Angola was the MPLA, and Neto himself came to Havana where he met Castro. The AAPSO conference of 1965,18 held in Ghana, had extended full recognition to the MPLA after expelling the GRAE. Benefiting from its association with the organizations

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Page 140 in the other Portuguese colonies, the MPLA had returned from oblivion and increasingly became the most prestigious Angolan organization at least within the anti-Western camp. In 1968, the secretariat of the Tricontinental, based in Havana, included an MPLA member, Paulo Jorge, who later became Neto's foreign minister.19 Therefore, in diplomatic terms also, Cuba helped to bring about the MPLA's resurgence in the mid to late 1960s. From this period until the Portuguese coup, Cuban policy towards Angola amounted to providing a wide range of uninterrupted assistance for the MPLA, falling short, however, of directly deploying military forces in the fight against the Portuguese. In conformity with their post-Guevara internationalist policy, Havana provided the Neto faction of the MPLA with weapons, military training, political and technical education, and diplomatic and financial support. It was a close and consistent relationship which was maintained right up to the April 1974 coup in Portugal. Cuban intervention in Angola in 1975 also sought to conform to both the theory and practice of Cuban internationalism. After the failure of the drive to ‘export’ revolution to Latin America, Cuba developed a high-profile policy of international revolutionary solidarity, otherwise known as internationalism. While committed in theory to stepping in anywhere around the world wherever ‘socialism’ was threatened by ‘imperialism’, Cuban internationalism had self-imposed limits. In the defence of socialism, Cuba would only deploy military personnel with the consent of the government. It would provide training and other types of assistance to national liberation movements, or other revolutionary groups, only in Cuba itself or in a friendly third country. If Cuban fighters were directly involved in insurgency on the ground, as in the case of Che Guevara in the Congo, Cuba would not admit to its involvement claiming that it had been a case of private Cuban citizens unbeknown to the state. Within this historically consistent framework, Cuba's intervention on behalf of the MPLA in 1975 can be seen as merely a slight variation on this policy. In 1975, Havana and the MPLA went to great lengths to establish the timing of Cuban intervention in such a manner as to be able to claim that it occurred as a response to the needs of an independent government and not to support a rival Angolan movement's bid for power. In adapting the facts of its intervention to fit this interpretation, Cuba showed that it wanted its intervention in Angola to be seen as the consistent continuation of its internationalist foreign policy.

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Page 141 Havana sought to play a high-profile role in international affairs. It concentrated on elevating its prestige in two overlapping anti-Western fora: among the socialist states and among the Third World. The diffi-cult relationship the Cuban regime had with the US was, generally speaking, counterbalanced by its support from the Soviet Union. But Cuba also sought to play an active and independent leading role in Third World politics. Much more than other socialist states, Cuba espoused a doctrine of active support for revolution around the globe. Its far broader interpretation of Marxism led it to support many different revolutionary groups which might have been considered too bourgeois by the Soviet Union. Moscow's preference for Communist parties as the vehicle for socialist transformation was implicitly rejected by Cuba. But the push to support revolutionary challenges and the proclamations of socialist solidarity that peppered Cuban foreign policy were not solely motivated by ideological concerns. The declared goal was to create ‘many Vietnams’ in order to spread thinly the ‘forces of imperialism’. There were clear advantages in promoting the cohesion of a far wider anti-Western camp; the dictum of security in numbers is one that seems to apply to the foreign policy of small revolutionary states such as Cuba. Cuba's internationalist policy was not mere rhetoric. The early dynamism of the Cuban regime contrasted with the far more cautious activity of the Soviet Union, as can be seen in Havana's offer to send troops to Vietnam. Although the initiative was turned down by the Vietnamese, the Cuban offer may have been an indirect influence on the motivation that led Peking to make a similar offer.20 In another example, Cuba provided support for the FLN in Algeria and established a military mission there until the overthrow of Ben Bella in 1965. Before Cuba's exit, however, an incident took place which is particularly relevant, and quite similar, to Cuban military intervention in the Angolan civil war in 1975. When fighting broke out on the Algerian border with Morocco in October 1963, Cuba dispatched shiploads of men and arms to aid Algeria. Three ships carrying 40 Soviet tanks, four jet fighters and 800 tonnes of light arms, ammunition and artillery sailed for Algeria.21 Additionally, Cuban troops are said to have been flown in to Oran on an Air Cubana flight.22 However, a truce between Morocco and Algeria was signed within the week and the Cuban contingent did not see much action.23 Two years later, Castro revealed in a speech that this incident of internationalist solidarity had taken place:

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Page 142 At a moment of crisis for Algeria, for the Algerian Revolution when they needed our help, men and arms from our country, crossing the Atlantic in record time, arrived in Algeria ready to fight side by side with the Algerian revolutionaries! … Nor did distance prevent us from being the first to arrive. Proletarian internationalism in fact, with deeds and not the mouthing of cheap words! Small country that we are, constantly threatened by the imperialists, we gave part of our most important weapons and sent them to the Algerian people.24 If this 1965 Castro speech had been delivered in 1975 and Algeria replaced with Angola, little else needed to be changed. According to Valdes, the evidence seems to indicate that the Cuban intervention in Algeria was a Cuban initiative, and the offer accepted by the Ben Bella leadership.25 So the capacity and the will of Havana to intervene militarily across the Atlantic Ocean was clearly established, 12 years before Cuba's involvement in the Angolan civil war. Before the Portuguese coup, there were other occasions in which Cuba revealed the internationalist streak in its foreign policy. In No-vember 1970, regular Cuban troops serving in Sekou Touré's presidential guard fought alongside Guinean soldiers in defending against an attack by Portuguese-backed forces.26 Again, as was the case with the Cuban intervention in Algeria, direct military assistance was carried out on behalf of a government. Another case of Cuban military involvement occurred far from the Western hemisphere, this time in the Middle East. According to Israeli intelligence sources quoted by Valdes, ‘… in late 1973 there were about 4,000 regular Cuban tank troops in Syria as part of an armoured brigade which even took part in the war until May 1974.’27 Although the number of troops is said to have been smaller,28 their participation in the October War has been commented on by the Cuban leader: ‘It is no secret at all that at a time of danger and threats to the Syrian Republic, our men were in Syria.’29 In 1975, Cuba believed that the same revolutionary solidarity that had motivated its involvement in, among other places, Algeria, Guinea and Syria was the principal factor determining its support for the MPLA. While ideologically consistent, Havana also expected concrete political results for its displays of revolutionary solidarity. At the same time as Cuban troops were disembarking at Angolan ports, Castro was addressing a meeting in Havana, predicting that in the future ‘the prestige of our revolution will increase’ and ‘we will be having more influence in the international revolutionary movement’.30

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Page 143 While Cuba has not always been able to operate an adventurous foreign policy, it has sought to maintain a continuity between the dynamism of its declaimed revolutionary solidarity and its actual policy. Within this context, military intervention played a part in an ideologically expressed policy of internationalism, which Cuba claims it has attempted to operate consistently since the 1960s. Still within this context, Cuba sees its involvement in Angola not so much as a departure from this policy as a continuity of its basic tenets, despite modifications. In this case, Havana claimed to have acted, as before, in support of a legitimate government. However, the fact is that, due to the breakdown of the Angolan transitional process in 1975 and the very timing of its intervention, Cuban support for the MPLA did, strictly speaking, constitute a break, even if slight, from the basic ‘guidelines’ of its internationalist policy. The calendar of Cuban and South African intervention has been one of the most disputed aspects of the Angolan civil war. In an attempt to justify their respective military interference, both sides have claimed that they intervened to counter the threat posed by the other. By characterizing their own intervention as a response to the other, each side claimed its actions were defensive and not aggressive. Furthermore, official Cuban accounts have emphasized that their military intervention in Angola was at the request of a sovereign and independent government. Revolutionary solidarity has been deemed to be a worthy cause by Havana but only in defence of incontrovertibly legitimate governments. They claim that Cuban intervention in Angola occurred in this context of its internationalist foreign policy. Does this claim hold up? For what it reveals about the dynamics of the relationship between the MPLA, Havana and Moscow in 1975, it is important to look closely at the Cuban decision to intervene in Angola. The Cubans have always claimed that their intervention was carried out in defence of the legitimate MPLA government. For Havana, the fact that the MPLA had already claimed sovereignty before the official date of independence is considered sufficient to justify the legality of their intervention. Nevertheless, additional efforts were made to time the Cuban intervention as close as possible to the events surrounding the date of independence, in order to give it a semblance of legitimacy. The decision to intervene, however, had to have been taken earlier. Subsequent events have pushed this issue aside, but it is, nevertheless, worth making an attempt to establish as accurately as possible a time-scale of Cuban intervention if only to draw a clearer picture of Cuban and Soviet policy in Angola.

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Page 144 Shearman believes that in the summer of 1975, Soviet and Cuban policies towards Angola were being implemented independently of one another.31 At that point in time, when Cuban planning for military intervention must have been in the making, Soviet policy-makers were still considering a diplomatic solution to the Angolan crisis. The following survey of the Cuban intervention establishes its independence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, making it at most a Cuban policy option that eventually converged with Soviet interests rather than a Soviet-induced operation. To establish the development of Cuban intervention, some relevant sources have been surveyed on the particular question of the time-scale of the intervention.32 Out of this survey emerge two essentially different accounts, whose divergence can perhaps be explained in terms of political bias. Many of the accounts have taken as their starting point Marquez's semi-official account of Operation Carlota.33 According to these, and despite some differences, the major military intervention by Cuban forces is seen as having been decided upon and implemented after, and as a response to, the South African invasion of 23 October 1975. A smaller number of sources believe, however, that the Cuban intervention must have been decided upon before that date, if only for logistical reasons underpinning the complex operation of intervening militarily across an ocean. Legum believes that it may have even been decided upon as early as May,34 well before any incursions by the South African army. Valenta is more forgiving and calculates that the Soviet and Cuban intervention was decided upon in late August or early September,35 still before the major SADF invasion in October, but already after some border crossings by South African forces in early August. Furthermore, the certain presence of Cuban troops in Angola before independence also challenges the spirit if not the precision of the Marquez-based accounts. Without a doubt, the intervention was requested by the MPLA. The Neto faction's particularly close relationship with Havana certainly facilitated the consideration of such an option. According to the Marquez account, Neto had a meeting with the Cuban military commander, Flávio Bravo, in Brazzaville sometime in May. This account does admit that at that meeting, the MPLA requested Cuban arms and assistance. By that time, there had already been serious fighting between the MPLA and the FNLA in Luanda. Soviet arms deliveries in March and April had already signalled a commitment to the MPLA, while over 1,000 Zairean troops were already alongside the FNLA inside northern Angola. An all-out confrontation between the two movements must have seemed inevitable at that time.

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Page 145 Cuban military intervention in Angola was carried out in three broad phases. The first phase was probably decided upon at the aforementioned Brazzaville meeting. A number of sources36 refer to the presence of Cubans in Angola from the spring onwards. It is, therefore, impossible to deny that a number of ‘official’ Cubans were in Luanda in the early stages of the civil war.37 Sometime between May and August, 230 Cuban advisors, under the command of Raul Diaz Arguelles, arrived in Luanda. Those accounts more favourable to the MPLA have stated that they arrived only in August.38 Other sources tend to plump for May or June.39 Their role was a military one: to train MPLA recruits and to instruct them in the use of Soviet weaponry that had, in the meantime, been received by the movement. By June, according to Valenta, Cubans in Cabinda were already handling missiles and armoured cars, while some of their compatriots had already been involved in fighting just north of Luanda in Caxito at the end of May.40 Certainly by August, the presence of Cuban instructors among MPLA troops had already been noticed.41 It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that even taking into account the most pro-MPLA sources which seek to play down the presence of Cubans at such an early date, there were at least 230 Cuban military advisors in Angola by mid-summer. At that stage, the Cuban role in support of the MPLA differed little from its previous record of military training for national liberation movements, although it was taking place not in a friendly third state but in Angola itself, where, strictly speaking, Portugal was still offi-cially the sovereign power. The Soviet Union increased its arms supplies to the MPLA in March, but little else seemed to point to the existence of a co-ordinated effort by the MPLA, Havana and Moscow. In fact, the opposite seems to have been the case. Duncan has referred to the decidedly ‘chilly reception’ given to Neto on his visit to Mos-cow in June, which was aimed at securing a deeper Soviet involvement.42 While the Soviets hesitated, however, Durch claims that it was around this time that contingency plans were established between the MPLA and Cuba for the deployment of Cuban troops. At least at this stage, Soviet and Cuban policies do not seem to have been connected. The second phase of Cuban military intervention followed activity by South African troops inside Angolan territory in July and August.43 Throughout September, South African troops made a number of sorties into southern Angola against SWAPO camps. The MPLA's response to this counterinsurgency activity involved significantly reinforcing Cuban presence. Valenta does not provide a figure for the total troop reinforcement but claims that ‘… in late September … Cuban ships,

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Page 146 followed by Soviet ships and aircraft, began to deploy hundreds of Cuban soldiers’.44 Leogrande speaks of ‘… several hundred …’ in late August.45 But the most detailed account of this reinforcement is provided by Dominguez, who indicates that 480 military personnel, some civilian advisors, 25 mortar and anti-aircraft batteries, 115 vehicles, communication equipment and medical supplies were shipped from Cuba in late September, arriving in Angola in early October.46 That Cuban supply ships did arrive in Luanda is not challenged. Marquez's account describes the arrival of three Cuban ships in Luanda and Huambo on 4, 7 and 11 October docking ‘… without anybody's permission –but also without anyone's opposition’.47 This troop reinforcement, which by 23 October is said to have brought the total Cuban military presence to 1,500,48 was allegedly agreed upon after the visit of a high-level Cuban military delegation to Luanda in late August. This resulted in the departure of the troop ships from Havana by early September. Shearman states that this arrangement came after yet another MPLA visit to Moscow in August seeking more Soviet arms, and military advisors. This latter request was turned down. Perhaps at this point, the possibility of deploying Cuban troops was discussed. If so, it still indicated that at this second stage of Cuban intervention, Soviet and Cuban policies had yet to be synchronized. The presence of a significant Cuban military force was revealed by UNITA to the French press on 19 October.49 The Polish journalist, Kapuscinski, pointed to the presence of Cuban military advisors in Luanda and southern Angola in October.50 Quoting contemporary press reports, Marcum assesses that ‘by mid-October … probably eleven hundred to fifteen hundred Cuban soldiers were bolstering the MPLA’.51 Clearly, by the second week of October, a significant Cuban military contingent was in Angola alongside the MPLA. Perhaps as many as 1,000 troops may have been deployed at this time. When compared to the size of Cuba's interventionary forces later,52 the deployment of 1,000 Cuban troops did not amount to a large-scale presence nor was it intended to be a major military operation. At the time, however, this deployment must already have been seen as the precursor to a much larger intervention by Cuban troops on behalf of the MPLA. This was the opinion of the head of the CIA's Angolan task force, who warned Washington, during this second phase of Cuban intervention, that an escalation of US involvement in Angola would result in the deployment of ‘large numbers of Cuban troops, 10–15,000’.53 This remarkably accurate prediction seems to indicate that, certainly not later than mid-October and before outright South African interven-

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Page 147 Table 6.1   Cuban troop strengths in post-independence Angola 1975–76 1975  15 November  2,000  20 November  3,000  30 November  5,00019766 January  9,500  3 February14,000Source: N. Valdes, ‘Revolutionary solidarity in Angola’, in C. Blasier and C. Mesa-Lago (eds), Cuba in the World (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pitts-burgh Press, 1979). tion, the possibility of a full-scale Cuban intervention was not an outlandish idea. The third and definitive phase of Cuban intervention in Angola was Havana's Operation Carlota. According to the official version of events, the MPLA, under pressure from the rapidly advancing South African force, requested on 4 November the intervention of Cuban troops to help secure its hold on Luanda and the provincial centres under its control. The following day, a hastily convened meeting of the central committee of the Cuban communist party agreed to the MPLA's request and ordered the immediate dispatch of an Interior Ministry airborne battalion. The first flight left Havana on 7 November and transported 82 of the elite troops that soon totalled 650 in Angola within a week. The battalion of crack Cuban troops fulfilled its main objective: to hold the capital for the MPLA, allowing the latter to proclaim its sovereign government and Angolan independence on 11 November. After this was achieved, Cuban reinforcements and Soviet military equipment poured in to assist the MPLA. In Table 6.1, the calendar of Cuban troop strengths in Angola after independence, culled by Valdes from Western intelligence sources, can be seen. Heavy weapons were delivered to the MPLA from the Soviet bloc, including T-34 and T54 tanks, PT-76 amphibious tanks, MiG-21J jet fighter bombers, MiG-17s, helicopters, rocket launchers and numerous armoured vehicles.54 Within a month of the arrival of the Cuban airborne battalion, after having come close to defeat, the MPLA, once again, had its fortunes reversed. Cuban intervention ensured the victory of the MPLA. The advancing FNLA and Zairean troops, which had come within nine miles of Luanda, fled before the greater firepower of the combined MPLACuban forces. In the south, the combined South African-UNITA column, while militarily superior according to some accounts, was sufficiently

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Page 148 delayed by the new air power at the MPLA's disposal for the political defeat at the hands of the OAU to take effect. It is likely that the Cubans did most of the fighting. Certainly, the decisive military operations were carried out by the Cubans, and, according to Marquez: Castro himself ‘was keeping up to date on the smallest details of the war … in constant contact with the battlefield high command,’ and at times issuing tactical orders.55 The calendar of the decision-making must be questioned. It seems unlikely that the decision to airlift a crack battalion was taken and implemented within two or three days. It is more likely that the decision to intervene had already been taken, or prepared for as a contingency plan, needing only the final go-ahead at the given time. The infrastructure for the rapid deployment of Cuban troops and Soviet and East European war materiel was already well in place before the Cubans claim they had decided to accept the MPLA's request for assistance. Cuban military intervention in Angola was probably decided upon in the first half of the year, and subsequently prepared for as a contingency plan ready to be implemented should the MPLA's position have become threatened. This assessment is also shared by Dominguez who reports that: Sometime between August 20 and September 5, 1975, the [Cuban] chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chiefs of the three armies and of the airforce, and other vice ministers of the Armed Forces Ministry were temporarily relieved of their posts.56 These senior officers were soon returned to their posts and no explanation was given for their absence. Dominguez believes that during this period they were assigned to oversee the preparations for the Angolan operation. Considering a number of facts, this may be a reasonable assumption: the MPLA received, as early as the spring, deliveries of sophisticated weaponry it could not operate; all Soviet weaponry was current issue in the Cuban armed forces; a large number of Cuban advisors were already in Angola, overseeing the training of the MPLA and military operations. Additionally, according to Durch, regular units in Cuba were canvassed in mid-August for volunteers for Angola.57 A number of complementary factors seem to indicate that, by the summer of 1975, four to five months before the operation itself, Cuban military intervention in Angola was being planned for by Havana and the MPLA. One source has noted that the army in Cuba undertook

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Page 149 manoeuvres in July which trained the deployment of forces over a large area, a military operation that would have been concordant with what was required in Angola.58 A number of other indications support the assessment that Cuban intervention must have been decided upon quite early on in the con-flict. In the spring of 1975, the MPLA was able to establish Cuban-manned training camps in Angola thanks to the support of some elements of the Portuguese Armed Forces Movement (MFA) and the subsequent deadlock in the power struggle in Portugal. Cuba was able to operate freely in support of the MPLA, largely unhindered by Por-tugal, the nominally sovereign power in Angola. Had Lisbon been able to enforce fully its authority and not permit the presence of foreign military advisors, including Cubans, the course of Havana's intervention, and therefore the civil war itself, might have been altogether different. During the summer of 1975, contacts between the MFA and Cuba seem to indicate that preparations for a Cuban intervention in Angola were under way. On 21 July, Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho visited Havana. During that visit, according to Valdes, Otelo toured military installations with Commander Senen Casas, chief of the Cuban General Staff, who later ‘… had direct command over the Cuban forces in Angola’.59 While it is perfectly natural that one of the top military figures in Portugal should liaise with the head of the Cuban military when visiting Havana, the possibility that this encounter held more significance in terms of Cuba's subsequent intervention in Angola should not be completely ruled out. In late August, Rosa Coutinho, the former High Commissioner in Angola, publicly praised the MPLA during a visit to Havana. There seems to have been an axis, linking the MPLA, the Portuguese hard left and Cuba. This was an alliance that prepared for, and succeeded in ensuring, the MPLA's accession to power in Angola. There is sufficient evidence to claim that Cuban intervention resulted from an independent policy determined by Havana and the MPLA, within the context of longstanding Cuban support for that movement. This was in itself consistent with the theory and practice of Cuban internationalist foreign policy. On the other hand, a closer look at the timing of the decision-making process and the intervention itself indicates that Cuban involvement cannot be characterized as a response to an appeal to defend a newly independent and sovereign Angola. The latter did not yet exist when Cuban troops were already alongside the MPLA fighting the latter's rivals for power in Angola.

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Page 150 Despite the continuity in its foreign policy, some observers have claimed that Cuban intervention in Angola was principally motivated by the Soviet Union. According to this view, the Cuban troops played the role of ‘Russian mercenaries’.60 As recently as 1994, Kissinger wrote: ‘The dispatch of Cuban troops to Angola is seen as one of a long list of perceived geopolitical or strategic threats from the Soviet Union …’61 Implicit in the former Secretary of State's assessment is that Moscow not only decided upon but actually ordered the deployment of Cuban troops in Angola. US officials have claimed that Cuban troops, playing the part of Soviet surrogates, were deployed in Angola to pay off a debt Havana had with Moscow worth US$ 5.5 billion.62 In fact, Cuba was economically dependent on the Soviet Union, and there were undoubtedly economic benefits for Havana as a result of its intervention in Angola. However, it is difficult to establish to what extent these economic motivations played a part in Cuba's decision to intervene in Angola over and above other considerations that seem to have dominated Cuban foreign policy since the 1960s. The history of Cuba's relationship with the MPLA, from the mid-1960s to the deployment of troops in 1975, is constant and uninterrupted, which cannot be said of the Soviet Union.63 Furthermore, Cuban intervention in Angola, including the deployment of troops, is consistent with both the theory and the practice of Cuban foreign policy from Algeria in 1963 to Syria in 1973. At the very least, Cuban policy in Angola had independent bases, separate from Soviet interests. Its foreign policy sought specific goals for Cuba. A number of studies have successfully challenged the ‘surrogate’ theory of Cuban involvement in Angola.64 An ex-Soviet Foreign Ministry official stated that: ‘[Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily] Kuznetsov told me that the idea for the large-scale military operation had originated in Havana not Moscow.’65 More recently, research into Soviet archives after the end of the Cold War seems to confirm the view that Cuban intervention in Angola was not a ‘service’ carried out by a ‘proxy’ ordered by the Soviets who did not wish to intervene directly: US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger repeatedly charged the Kremlin with using Cuban surrogates to spread Soviet influence and power to Africa. But new information from archives in Moscow as well as interviews with Soviet officials reveals that the Kremlin was not in control of the situation.66

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Page 151 In fact, Leffler reveals that Moscow was not at all on board during the second phase of Cuban intervention, by the time 2,000 Cubans were already militarily active in Angola alongside the MPLA: Leonid Brezhnev at first flatly refused to transport Cuban troops to Angola or to send Soviet officers as advisors, and even the KGB raised doubts about direct intervention. The Kremlin did not know about or authorize the initial deployment to Angola in September 1973.67 This is confirmed by the Soviet ambassador to the US, Anatoly Dobrynin, who claims that: … it was the Cubans and not us who had initially interfered by sending their own military forces to back the MPLA, on their own initiative and without consulting us … the Cubans quickly managed to involve us there on the pretext of international solidarity.68 Eventually, Cuban and Soviet policy did converge, both in their aims and in their implementation. On the one hand, the Soviet Union's capacity to project military power was crucial to provide the weaponry for the airlifted Cuban battalions, and Soviet Antonov aircraft were used in the transportation of troops. But on the other hand, Cuba is the crucial factor in determining Soviet intervention in Angola. Cuba's military support of the MPLA provided the Soviet Union with an option for a flexible response in its own Angolan policy. Moscow's commitment to the MPLA was variable; uncertain as to the consequences of that support on East–West relations, the Soviet Union hesitated in providing full backing to the MPLA in the first half of the year.69 They feared that a direct Soviet military intervention during the summer of 1975, i.e. with advisors, would have directly threatened détente with the United States. Havana, however, had more freedom to act, going about its business according to its long-standing ties to the MPLA and its internationalist foreign policy. Cuban intervention proceeded regardless of Moscow's input and succeeded in putting the MPLA on the road to power. It was when the military and political situation was favourable to the MPLA that Moscow was brought in. Unwittingly, therefore, Moscow kept a stake in Angola without actually incurring the risks of operating a more committed policy of direct support for the MPLA. When it became clear that the United States was unable to act further in the face of Congressional restraint, the Soviet Union could thus be brought in directly, escalating its support and scoring an important foreign policy success. Moscow ate its cake and still had it.

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Page 152 It is certainly true that Cuba and the MPLA were dependent on Soviet weapons in the civil war, and Cuba undoubtedly expected support from Moscow in the fulfilment of its internationalist duty regardless of what policy Moscow would decide to pursue in the case of Angola. It may be equally true to say that had the MPLA and Cuba not established ties in the 1960s, and consequently had Cuban intervention not occurred, then perhaps the Soviet Union might have been more circumspect in its own policy towards Angola. That is to say, Soviet support for the MPLA was partly a function of the latter's relationship with Cuba. This association was thus crucial to the MPLA's political and military victory, in ways that exceeded the fact of Cuban intervention itself. In fact, Cuba's involvement in the Angolan civil war was a distinct case in its short internationalist history, in that its role converged with that of the USSR. Before 1975, this had not always been the case. Cuban foreign policy seemed to be far more coherent in its willingness to support all revolutionary anti-Western manifestations as opposed to the Soviet Union's rather more dogmatic policy of support for communist parties only. In Angola, Shearman believes that: It was Moscow, not Havana which moderated its behaviour, and Moscow which after initial doubts came round to accepting Havana's strategy in Angola – not the other way around.70 It is clearly difficult to sustain an analysis of Cuba's role in Angola as that of a Soviet surrogate. But it is equally difficult to state that Havana had total independence of action. Had the Soviet Union opposed the intervention, it could have, as Cuba's arms supplier, pressured Havana to keep out of the conflict altogether. Cuba's economic and military dependence on the Soviet Union makes it difficult to state categorically that its foreign policy was independent of Mos-cow's influence. One analysis of Soviet–Cuban relations has centred on a view of influence in which it is moving in both directions: from Moscow to Havana and vice versa, a matrix which may be appropriate to use in the case of Angola.71 While Cuban troop deployment in Angola was almost certainly an indirect influence on Moscow's policy of support for the MPLA, and while there may even have been direct influences in the form of requests from Havana to Moscow, Duncan argues that Cuba also acted under a number of assumptions: (a) the Soviets would not oppose the build-up of troops in Angola, (b) that Moscow would support Cuba if necessary and (c) that the convergence of Cuba's policy

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Page 153 with Moscow's interests would bring rewards to the former.72 in this view of dynamic influences and interests, Soviet and Cuban action in Angola converged, rather in the manner of two allies, as Valenta has described their actions.73 This assessment is shared by General Vernon Walters, the CIA Deputy Director at the time, who said in 1985: I believe that … Castro was pursuing his own aims – which happened to be, in large part, convergent with those of Moscow.74 Dobrynin has confirmed the view that it was Cuba that brought the Soviet Union to involve itself in Angola. Later, during a visit to Ha-vana in 1986, Dobrynin states that ‘Castro made it clear to me that what was happening in Angola was a Cuban show. ‘‘It is my command,” he said. He wanted to be a player on the world scene, and that was one way he could do it.’75 In concrete terms, the convergence of policy objectives also brought benefits of an operational nature. It has often been pointed out that Cuban troops were all the more essential to the MPLA due to the fact that the majority of the movement's guerrilla units were unable to operate the sophisticated military equipment that the Soviet Union had provided. As most of the weaponry was standard issue in the Cuban armed forces, there ensued a double advantage: initially, the MPLA could be trained in the use of the weapons by the Cubans, while at a later stage the arms shipments would constitute an arsenal compatible with that of the airlifted Cuban battalions. Again, this constitutes another reason for claiming that, without Cuban intervention, the MPLA would almost certainly not have received the necessary military force to resist attack, as Moscow would surely not have deployed Soviet troops had the Cubans been unavailable. In conclusion, the MPLA established a very close relationship with the Cuban regime, one that remained unbroken from its establishment in the mid-1960s up to the intervention of Cuban troops in the Angolan civil war. This relationship conformed broadly to the general bases of Cuban so-called internationalist foreign policy of support for revolutionary socialism. In this way, the MPLA secured the support of an external backer that not only provided it with the necessary military forces to resist its adversaries, but was also instrumental in securing the commitment of the Soviet Union as the civil war became caught up in the superpower conflict. In 1975, the MPLA, Cuba and the Soviet Union converged in their policy aims.

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Page 154 CHINA AND THE ANGOLAN MOVEMENTS According to its own view, China behaved in a proper and correct fashion with regard to the Angolan civil war. Peking claimed that while it tried to promote unity among the Angolan movements, Moscow was deliberately instigating the civil war in an attempt to gain influence in that resource-rich country: It is the Soviet social-imperialists themselves that have kindled the flames of war in Angola but, to cover up their criminal deeds, they resort to their customary dirty trick of a thief crying ‘stop thief’ and cranking their propaganda machine to attack and slander China and African countries. But the Chinese people's stand of consistent, resolute support for the Angolan people's efforts to fight in unity for national independence is known to everybody.76 Indeed, a survey of the official publication Peking Review does not reveal an expressed preference for any of the Angolan movements and seems to support this view of the conflict, i.e. that Peking helped the anti-colonial struggle as a whole right up to the point when unity was achieved between the movements under the auspices of the OAU. It then proceeded to point out the dangers of external ‘meddling’ especially on the part of the Soviet Union.77 In Peking's view, Moscow attempted to ‘fish in troubled waters’.78 The Soviet Union: … took no notice of OAU's equal treatment to the three organisations and the agreement reached among themselves [at Nakuru]. Instead they made a distinction between the three organisations … and with an ulterior motive, classified them into revolutionary, non-revolutionary and even ‘counter-revolutionary’, interfering in the Angolan people's affairs and stirring up antagonisms among them.79 But was China's involvement in the civil war characterized by this image of a fervently neutral patron of anti-colonialism or did it also seek to advance its own goals and become caught up in the twists and turns of Angolan rivalry? From the mid-1960s, China sought to play in Africa the role of anticolonial patron. The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) ideological and historical context emphasized the struggle against the imperialism of the Western powers in its own experience, and held up its own revolution as a model to be emulated in the colonial Third World. Like the Soviet Union, China attempted to frame world politics in the ideological context of a struggle between socialism and capitalism, between

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Page 155 East and West. Unlike the Soviet Union, however, the Chinese also emphasized the struggle between the developed and the underdevel-oped worlds, between North and South. In this context, China placed itself squarely in world politics as the champion of the Third World. Chinese foreign policy in Angola seems to have been, like that of the US, mainly motivated by one consideration: that of rivalry with the Soviet Union. This characteristic conformed to China's more general outlook to the continent, which was brought clearly to the foreground during Chou En-lai's African tour in 1963 and 1964: The Chinese leader made it plain that Africa would become a region of competition not only against the west but also against what Peking took to be the sacrifice of revolutionary principles by the Soviet Union for the sake of advancing its state interests.80 By 1963, the rivalry between the two largest communist powers had come out into the open, somewhat to the relief of many in the West who had had nightmares about a monolithic communist bloc. This rivalry was also played out in the Third World where China challenged the Soviet Union for the role of the major ideological and political pole of anti-Westernism. Peking took it upon itself to unmask the Soviet Union's revisionism of Marxism by pointing to Moscow's dialogue with the West. This, China believed, disqualified the USSR from speaking in the name of the Third World.81 Chou En-lai's tour of Af-rica marked the beginning of a more assertive Chinese policy in the Third World. But during this early period, it was little more than a political assault on the primacy of Moscow within the socialist and developing world blocs. In the context of its ideological conflict with China, the Soviet Union made much of its support for liberation movements, including the MPLA. On the one hand, Moscow brandished its backing of anti-colonialism as justification for its leadership of the ‘anti-imperialist group’. By the same token, it would use its role in the Third World to reinforce its revolutionary credentials in communist fora. In both domains, Peking sought to disparage and challenge Moscow's claims. By 1970, after the inward-looking period of the Cultural Revolution, Peking had returned to an active role in the Third World, this time extending concrete support to go along with its ideological offerings. The Tanzania–Zambia Uhuru railway cost China US$ 400 million, more than the Aswan Dam had to Soviet Union.82 This showed that China could provide the Third World with an alternative source of aid to both the West and the Soviet Union. Elevating Maoism to a

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Page 156 status of parity with Marxism-Leninism, China provided an important, albeit low-budget, pole of attraction for both radical states and national liberation movements. Of course, Peking was not averse to advancing its own interests, but mainly as a byproduct of the main objective of its policy: countering Soviet influence. Certainly, Chinese involvement with Tanzania and Zambia in the mid-1960s, and later with Zaire, sought mainly to demonstrate its ability to compete with the Soviet Union in Africa. But this involvement often had an economic facet. Short of copper itself, China constructed the Uhuru railway to ease Zambia's dependence on the Benguela railway and South African routes to export their mineral wealth. In return, Peking secured beneficial copper purchases.83 Nevertheless, it is clear that Sino-Soviet rivalry dominated Chinese foreign policy in Africa, as it did in Angola. China's political interest in Africa undoubtedly helped to motivate Moscow's own strategies in the region. Anxious to dispel accusations of revisionism, and to see off the Chinese challenge to its leadership of the communist bloc, the Soviet Union sought, perhaps against its ideological instincts, to prove its revolutionary zeal by a more active role in the support of anti-western regimes and of national liberation movements. In fact, the prominent place of national liberation movements in the socialist bloc owes much to the Chinese communist party that developed a theory and practice of anticolonial struggle that brought it into Marxist political ideology.84 The influence of China on the Angolan nationalist movements is, curiously enough, first noted in the MPLA. The first secretary-general and leading theorist of the movement, Viriato da Cruz, is said to have become very enthusiastic about the application of Maoist guerrilla warfare to the anti-colonial war in Angola in the early 1960s. One source claims that Viriato da Cruz was an actual recipient of Chinese aid.85 Furthermore, just before the 1963 split with Neto, Viriato apparently argued in favour of establishing a close relationship with Peking, hoping that China would become the MPLA's principal backer. By then, however, the Netoists had already begun developing their strong ties to Moscow. This disagreement which reflected the Sino-Soviet split is said to have been largely responsible for the defection of Viriato da Cruz.86 With a number of his followers, Viriato da Cruz eventually joined the FNLA where, according to some reports, he continued to take a pro-Chinese line. In time, the FNLA also disappointed Viriato da Cruz, who eventually moved to Peking where he died in 1973, bitter and disillusioned with the process of Angolan national liberation.

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Page 157 The first major direct link made by China with an Angolan movement was with UNITA. Seeking to establish, after 1964, a rival movement to the MPLA and the FNLA, Jonas Savimbi required a major source of financial, military and political backing. His acrimonious break with Roberto and the FNLA was made amid charges that ‘US imperialism’ was present within the movement. This posture by Savimbi effectively excluded the West as a potential source for what was to become UNITA. Savimbi then turned to the communist bloc and, in 1964, undertook a fundraising tour, reportedly organized by Ben Bella,87 to, among other countries, China.88 Since the MPLA was by then well established in the Moscow camp, the UNITA leader turned to its rival, Peking. According to Bridgland, Savimbi ‘… was received icily in Eastern Europe …’89 but did achieve a measure of success in China. According to that account, Peking promised to train UNITA elements in guerrilla warfare at the Nanking Military Academy and contributed cash funds to help Savimbi's followers who had been stranded in Brazzaville after the break from Roberto. A follow-up trip to China was undertaken by Savimbi in early 1965, during which he allegedly received US$ 15,000, the first donation received by UNITA. Between July and November 1965, Savimbi himself received instruction in guerrilla warfare at Nanking, where he was joined by a number of commanders-to-be.90 Later, in 1967, Savimbi returned to China where he is said to have had an hour-long meeting with Mao Tse-tung himself and was promised arms.91 Peking did continue to provide UNITA with money and training in China but no weapons, allegedly due to difficulties in transit through Tanzania and Zambia. With a contrasting opinion, however, Marcum believes that the Chi-nese ‘… could not trust him …’, because of Savimbi's opposition to Viriato da Cruz's entry to the FNLA while the UNITA leader was still in Roberto's movement.92 Savimbi had allegedly counselled Roberto against allowing Viriato da Cruz into the movement because of the latter's pro-Chinese stance. Further casting doubt on this association with China are references in Stockwell to training received by UNITA at this time in North Korea and not China.93 Whatever the case, it seems clear that any association between China and UNITA at this stage was not substantial either in terms of supplying arms or even political support. It is difficult to conclude what led the Chinese to even consider backing Savimbi at a time when UNITA was not an OAU-recognized Angolan movement. Granted, the reported level of support was low-risk, and

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Page 158 Savimbi's personality and admirable intention to move the anti-colonial fight inside Angola may have convinced the Chinese that his was a cause worth supporting. But there does not even seem to have been a substantive ideological affinity between Peking and UNITA as there was between Moscow and the MPLA. Despite adopting many aspects of guerrilla warfare shared with the Chinese, as well as the use of a revolutionary terminology, Savimbi was clearly not either a Marxist or a Maoist. In fact, UNITA later openly dismissed its early association with Peking: During the Portuguese colonial era, the movement's literature was full of revolutionary Maoist rhetoric, but this was more with a view to cultivating material assistance from Red China than a sincere re-flection of UNITA's ideological beliefs – Savimbi himself would be the first to admit that during the early years of its existence UNITA sometimes had to be pragmatic in order to survive.94 The association between UNITA and China in the mid-1960s conformed to the pattern established by the other Angolan movements and their respective backers. That is to say, Peking saw UNITA as a player with potential and, in the light of the fact that both the United States and the Soviet Union already had their favourites, put in its own bid. In turn, UNITA overplayed their ideological proximity and presented itself to Peking as a clear opportunity to challenge Washing-ton and, particularly, Moscow. Susceptible to such an approach, China proffered its support in the hope of gaining an advantage in their rivalry with the Soviet Union. With very few exceptions China's choice of movements to support, and her actions towards these and other groups, have been dictated by the need to challenge, surpass or embarrass the Soviet Union.95 The most significant association made by China in Angola was with the FNLA. The establishment of ties with the FNLA were, to a large extent, determined by the latter's relationship with Zaire. President Mobutu himself had established close relations with Peking and encouraged Roberto and the FNLA to do the same.96 In December 1973, an FNLA delegation visited China and secured a meeting with Deng Xaoping.97 From this point onwards, Holden Roberto began to receive Chinese aid, in the form of military training and weapons shipments. China provided direct military assistance to the FNLA for over a year, from early 1974 until 24 October 1975, just one day after the major South African military incursion into Angola.

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Page 159 The military effects of Chinese support on the FNLA are difficult to distinguish from other patrons although it must have helped the movement to consolidate its position in northern Angola in the latter part of 1974.98 Overall, the military support of the Chinese served to build Roberto's confidence. The arrival in Zaire of Chinese advisors to train the FNLA was not kept secret. On the contrary, it was announced in a press release. According to Stockwell, 112 military advisors, led by a Chinese army major-general, arrived on 23 May 1974.99 Bridgland states, ‘… the last of its 120 instructors arrived in August [1974] with 450 tonnes of weapons …’100 Mobutu's close relations with Peking were undoubtedly responsible for Chinese backing for the FNLA. Of course, Kinshasa's approval was essential for the deployment of over 100 Chinese military advisors in Zaire. Some reports have attributed China's involvement with the FNLA as having resulted from an initiative by Nyerere, who had apparently personally requested assistance from Peking for the FNLA.101 The Tanzanian leader reportedly suggested that Peking's assistance be delivered by the transfer of Chinese military instructors based in his country to the FNLA's base at Kinkuzu.102 Chinese support for the FNLA conformed to the pattern of Peking's support for rival movements caught up in a struggle for power. According to Marcum: … Chinese assistance for the avowedly non-socialist FNLA [was] apparently motivated by a desire to humble Leonid Brezhnev, and to please Mobutu and acquire influence as they had done in East Africa.103 Fighting between the movements had broken out by the late spring of 1975, and although China continued to support the FNLA, Peking did not shut the door on the MPLA or UNITA. On 20 March, a UNITA commander, Samuel Chiwale, flew to Peking to request military support.104 However, according to a subsequent report, that mission was not very successful.105 In late May, Lúcio Lara of the MPLA was received in Peking at the invitation of the Chinese government.106 By the time the civil war was in full swing, China found itself pitted against the Soviet Union, as it wished, but through an indirect alliance with the United States and South Africa, a serious liability for its image in the socialist bloc and the developing world. Peking quickly recognized its policy of support would be counterproductive and did not even wait to see if the FNLA could have dislodged the MPLA

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Page 160 from Luanda. Once the involvement of South Africa became too pronounced, China withdrew from the Angolan civil war. In August 1975, the Peking Review accused ‘… the Soviet social-imperialists, under the signboard of “support”, [of stirring up] a civil war in [Angola] in an attempt to fish in troubled waters.’107 This is an equally accurate description of China's own policy in Angola. The direct repercussions of Chinese involvement on the process and outcome of the civil war itself were very limited, aside from the fact that Chinese military support for the FNLA did bolster that movement's potential during a time of increasing tension and escalating violence during late 1974 and early 1975. This served to reinforce the claims of the FNLA's backers in Zaire, both Mobutu's regime and the CIA station in Kinshasa, that Roberto's movement was capable of militarily challenging the MPLA. However, the military and organizational capacity of the FNLA was vastly overrated. This was revealed when the rival bid for power came to a head in the battle for Luanda. China did not intervene very deeply in the civil war. In fact, by the time the full-scale conflict erupted in November, Peking had already withdrawn its support from the FNLA. But, its de facto alignment with the United States and South Africa caused significant political damage to China's prestige in African states, despite the early withdrawal from the conflict. Furthermore, with the eventual victory of the MPLA, the Soviet Union, by producing results, showed itself to be a far more capable and worthwhile backer to have. From here on, China's previously prominent presence in Africa was considerably scaled down. But why had Peking committed such a significant mistake in Angola? Certainly in its previous undertakings in Africa, China had shown itself to be an able and sensitive actor. The answer to this must lie in the fact that opposing the Soviet Union seems to have been by far and away the predominant preoccupation of Peking in its Angolan policy, even if this put in a position where it was supplying arms to the CIAbacked FNLA, an association Peking later realized it could ill-afford: We made mistakes in Angola, perhaps because we simplified the issue, reacted blindly, without proper analysis, to the position taken by the Russians. As the Angolan civil war went on, the affair became for us more and more of a fiasco.108

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Page 161 7   The Soviet Union and the United States THE SOVIET UNION In the decade before the Portuguese coup, Soviet policy towards An-gola was almost exclusively based around its relationship of support for the MPLA. This consisted of some financial and military assistance, complemented with diplomatic support, particularly in the socialist and Third World international fora. Before the coup, however, Moscow never really provided the MPLA with the necessary means to seriously challenge the Portuguese. To have armed the MPLA in an attempt to win the anti-colonial war would have undoubtedly led to a confrontation with the West. Portuguese membership of NATO restricted Soviet support for the MPLA to a minimum, just enough to help keep it alive and viable. Only when the collapse of the Portuguese regime in 1974 created a fluid situation in both Angola and Portugal, did Moscow venture to increase its level of support significantly, to a point where the MPLA was able to establish control of Luanda by mid-1975. A look at the nature and origins of the Soviet Union's policy of support for the MPLA indicates that it was not merely influenced by the relationship established between the patron and the movement. Other factors also played a determinant role in defining the Soviet Union's strategy towards Angola. When the policy-makers of the USSR looked at Africa they saw, in the words of a Soviet academic, ‘a blank sheet of paper’.1 The Soviet Union had little or no historical ties with the continent, and yet by the mid-1970s it had developed a major presence in Africa. Soviet success in Angola, and elsewhere on the continent, benefited, ironically, from the tide of history. Moscow did have strategic, economic and political objectives to fulfil in Angola, and its success in achieving them was undoubtedly helped by the limitations on Washington's ability to act in the wake of the Vietnam war and the Watergate affair. But Angola was also one more stage where the will for the emancipation of indigenous peoples went up against and eventually prevailed over colonialism. The emergence of movements of national self-determination, the widespread

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Page 162 collapse of European colonial structures and the needs of the newly independent, but weak, states in the Third World converged coincidentally with the Soviet ability to offer military and financial support. Nevertheless, to the Soviet Union, Africa represented an area of low priority. In fact: Africa is a place where the USSR's basic ends all essentially transcend the local setting … Moscow therefore deals with Africa as fundamentally an arena in which to further broad international objectives.2 In other words, the struggle between East and West was the overarching framework of Soviet intervention in Africa. According to Albright, the general view of Soviet policymakers during the 1960s and 1970s was that neither Moscow nor Washington had ‘vital’ interests in Africa, only ‘legitimate’ ones.3 With no intrinsic benefits for Soviet interests, and representing an area of low superpower competition, sub-Saharan Africa figured practically last in Moscow's list of geopolitical priorities, after Europe, East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and maybe even Central America. In very general terms, the Soviet Union considered that, whatever happened, it had little to lose and much to gain from an active policy in Africa. The most influential force on Soviet foreign policy was, of course, the Cold War: the rivalry between the two superpowers and the wider conflict between East and West. Accordingly, this factor also figured prominently in Moscow's Angolan posture. Before 1975, Moscow's policy towards Angola conformed neatly to Soviet thinking on intervention in Africa generally. While Portugal, a member of NATO, remained in full control of its African territories, Moscow provided only relatively minor levels of assistance to the MPLA, mostly covertly. This was intended to help keep the movement active and to preserve access for Soviet influence but to avoid any potential conflict with Lisbon. This was the case elsewhere: … wherever the neo-colonial influence of other European powers emerged less strongly the Soviet Union was more easily able to take advantage of the tensions and conflicts between African states and Western powers.4 In this way, Guinea's dramatic rupture with France in 1958 created the necessary political space for an offer of Soviet patronage.5 On the other hand, those former colonies which retained close links with the metropolis were considered out of bounds. Despite the ideological context in which Moscow placed its relations with Guinea, and also with Ghana

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Page 163 and Mali in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the role of the Soviet Union was only possible because these countries sought to break political and economic links with the West. Although this does not strictly apply in the case of Angola, the underlying general condition of avoiding confrontation with direct Western interests does. The fact that Portu-gal was intent on decolonizing was a necessary condition for the Soviet escalation of its support for the MPLA. In its early phase, backing for the MPLA was extended by Moscow within a wider context of Soviet foreign policy in support of wars of national liberation in the Third World. As a doctrine, national liberation describes revolutionary armed conflicts aimed at freeing a nation or colonized people from foreign political and economic control as well as establishing a socialist society.6 On 6 January 1961, barely a month before the outbreak of the anti-colonial war in Angola, Khrushchev addressed a Congress of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) in Moscow, where he emphasized that support for wars of national liberation was the principal means of advancing the world communist revolution in the nuclear age.7 After Krushchev, however, Soviet policy towards Africa became more pragmatic. Soviet policy in general emerged with two main priorities: the pursuit of strategic parity with the United States and activism in the Third World. The former was the number one priority and, it was argued, necessary to achieve success in the latter. The Soviet Union had not been able to support its allies militarily in the Congo in the period 1960–62, and by the mid-1960s the radical leaders of its African allies had been overthrown. A new effort to consolidate and increase Moscow's influence in Africa and the Third World in general was seen to be required. In the face of its diminishing influence, Moscow began to streamline its policy towards the continent. From that time, it was to consist of concrete relations with African regimes, relations not solely based on ideological affinities. At the same time, the USSR turned its full attention to the arms race with the United States. The Cuban missile crisis had shown that the USSR was far from parity with the US. The climbdown by Krushchev over the missiles in Cuba convinced the Kremlin leadership8 that strategic parity with the US, in terms of nuclear intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, was necessary in order to back Soviet global influence. To be able to project this influence, particularly in the Third World, the USSR believed it required an adequate military capacity, not only in strategic terms vis-à-vis the US, but also in tactical terms to back effectively its influence on the ground.

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Page 164 During this period, support for national liberation, part of the third basic task of Soviet foreign policy,9 was, in Africa, a relatively low-risk strategy for the Soviet Union. Moscow established ties with national liberation movements in Southern Africa which mostly only offended the isolated white regimes in Portuguese Africa, Rhodesia and South Africa. As a consequence of this, the Soviet Union's revolutionary credentials within the socialist camp, as well as within the burgeoning group of anti-western Third World states, were reinforced. This was particularly important during its bitter schism with Peking. China accused the Soviet Union of not being sufficiently active in the pursuit of revolutionary international communism. Moscow's relations with the MPLA between 1964 and 1972 were carried out within this wider context. Contrary to Soviet orthodoxy, the only ideological credentials required of national liberation movements by Moscow seemed to be the desire to stand in the anti-western camp. Studies of Soviet relations with the Third World and with national liberation movements have shown that Moscow's policy was essentially pragmatic, led mostly by whatever immediate or mid-term advantage it could gain vis-à-vis the West, and more particularly, the United States. Preferably, this advantage should be seen to be coinciding with the furthering of the interests of international communism. But if it did not, that was merely unfortunate, as, for example, the Egyptian communist movement found out: courting Nasser was a priority for Moscow which, therefore, turned a blind eye to Cairo's repression of its communist opposition. In the case of Angola, however, the Soviet Union was not faced with this dilemma. The MPLA was the only major movement in An-gola that claimed to be Marxist and to have in its origins an indigenous communist party. Its ideological and political credentials were reinforced by the movement's close links to Portuguese communists. But beyond any ideological affinities they may have shared, Soviet policy towards the MPLA also reflected a semblance of pragmatism, as is shown by the various reports of Moscow's alleged fluctuations in its support for the MPLA. In fact, before the actual date of independence, Moscow did not concede to the MPLA the ideologically important official status of sole representative of the Angolan people.10 The MPLA began to receive significant military and financial contributions from the Soviet Union after Agostinho Neto's visit to Moscow in 1964. There had been Soviet links with the MPLA before 1964. When the OAU set up the African Liberation Committee in 1963 to support anti-colonial movements in Africa, Moscow is said to have contributed funds to the Angolan movements through this committee.

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Page 165 Previous to this, however, it is difficult to assess exactly what links there had been. In the mid-1950s, according to one source, Viriato da Cruz and other elements of the future MPLA had come into contact in Luanda with a Soviet citizen, allegedly a member of the KGB.11 This was at a time when an overt nationalist challenge had yet to be made and the PIDE had still not been deployed in Angola. As was the case with contacts made later between Moscow and the MPLA, this link with the alleged KGB agent is said to have been achieved through the Portuguese Communist Party. Portuguese communists, such as Angelo Veloso, active in the Angolan Communist Party (ACP) and the Angolan Committee of the PCP, bridged the gap between the metropolitan communists and the Luandan nationalists. But it is unlikely that these links at this time led to anything more than access to reading material and incentives on organization along communist party lines. After the violent explosion in Angola in February and March 1961, the MPLA leadership reconstructed its organizational history and consolidated itself into a movement. It joined the UPA in public denunciations of Portuguese colonialism and appealed for international assistance in bringing about its downfall. In June of that year, when the UN Security Council was discussing the revolt in Angola, Khrushchev expressed confidence in an ultimate MPLA victory.12 This Soviet pledge is probably in response to a telegram sent to Khrushchev in March by Mário de Andrade who claimed that his movement was counting on the Soviet government's support.13 It is unclear, however, whether this expression of support by the Soviet leader reflects the existence of Soviet patronage at this early stage, or whether it is merely part and parcel of general Soviet pronouncements on anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism. Furthermore, when Neto took over the MPLA in 1962, the strategy of the movement was to cast as wide a net as possible in the search for international backing. This led to the playing down of the MPLA's Marxist tendencies. Only later in 1964, in Brazzaville, did the MPLA fully embrace the socialist bloc. While studying in Portugal, Neto established himself within the PCP. Imprisoned a number of times for activism in the MUDJ (a youth group comprising PCP members), he escaped Portuguese prison thanks to the assistance of the PCP. At that time, the PCP was clearly the better organized of the anti-Salazarist groups. The strong links Neto had established with the clandestine PCP in the late 1950s were the conduit through which the MPLA was later, in 1964, able to approach Moscow and garner the latter's support for the resuscitation of the movement in Brazzaville. Neto's trip to Moscow in 1964 was arranged by

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Page 166 the PCP, more specifically by its General-Secretary, Álvaro Cunhal.14 Throughout his leadership, the PCP was one of the most loyal Euro-pean communist parties to the Kremlin. Cunhal's capital in Moscow was very good, particularly with the International Department of the Central Committee, which ended up framing the context of Soviet policy in Angola.15 During his trip to Moscow, Neto managed to convince the Kremlin that he was in control of the MPLA and that it offered a fighting chance of surviving an anti-colonial war and becoming influential in post-independence Angolan political life. In December 1964, the Soviet press proclaimed support for the cause of the MPLA.16In August 1965, Pravda published an article by an unnamed leading MPLA figure who praised the Soviet Union's support for that movement.17 Other reports reveal that in 1964 there was a noticeable approximation between the MPLA and Moscow. In December, an unknown group calling itself the Movement of Free Angola ( Mouvement de l'Angola Libre ) declared in New York that the Soviet Union was intervening in the internal affairs of Africa by supporting Agostinho Neto.18 According to Golan, significant Soviet aid for the MPLA began after Neto's visit to Moscow in 1964.19The total amount of Soviet aid for the MPLA in the period between 1960 and March 1975 (before the significant military input of that year) is cited as being about US$ 54 million.20 Most of this was more than likely provided in the later period of 1973—75. Marcum advances figures given by the US State Department that placed the total of this assistance at US$ 63 million.21 Yet another source, ‘… Western intelligence guestimates …’ quoted by Legum, fixed the figure at £27 million.22 Whatever the exact amount of aid granted between the mid-1960s and 1974, it is generally seen to have been relatively low, affording minimum operations, but never providing the movement with the means to prevail against the Portuguese. Nevertheless, it must be considered a significant amount by the standards of anti-colonial movements. Soviet assistance was one of the crucial factors that allowed the MPLA to return from what seemed at the time to be oblivion. By the mid-1960s, Moscow had become the movement's principal backer. According to Davidson, Soviet sources provided 70 to 80 per cent of all MPLA arms.23 Early Soviet material assistance consisted mainly of small arms and other lightweight war materiel, and monetary grants used to finance the day-to-day running of the movement, including airline tickets. Soviet assistance was not solely material. Apart from the diplomatic and political support that Moscow began to provide internationally, the MPLA

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Page 167 also benefited from the training and education of a number of its cadres in the Soviet Union from 1965 onwards.24 Although some sources believe that relations between the Angolan leader and Moscow were not the best, it seems likely that Neto was the MPLA's principal link with Moscow. The Angolan leader visited Moscow in 1964, 1966, 1967, 1970 and 1971, attending CPSU conferences, and commemorations such as the 50th Anniversary of the Bol-shevik revolution and Lenin's 100th birthday.25 For the remainder of the decade, Soviet arms and financial aid helped the MPLA to establish itself as a military force inside Angola, and as the most favoured Angolan movement among anti-Western and socialist bloc countries. In 1966, the MPLA opened a military front in eastern Angola and headquarters in Lusaka. This reinforcement of the MPLA strengthened, in turn, the movement's international profile. This was reflected in the fact that OAU funds began to flow to the MPLA and in the reversal, in 1968, of the OAU decision to recognize the GRAE exclusively. In 1970, the International Institute for Strategic Studies considered the MPLA the liberation movement offering the most effective guerrilla resistance to the Portuguese.26 Relations between the Soviet Union and the MPLA were not untroubled. A decade after the débâcle of 1963, the MPLA was once again stricken by military ineffectiveness and internal divisions leading to a certain distancing by its main external backer. The ‘Eastern Revolt’, led by the MPLA eastern commander, Daniel Chipenda, challenged Neto's leadership and coincided with a significant lull in the MPLA's military fortunes. In 1973 and early 1974, according to Legum, the Soviet Union shifted its support to Chipenda during the schism in an attempt to outmanoeuvre Neto.27 It seems clear that Moscow did reduce, if not cut off,28 the flow of arms to Neto during this period. However, it is not evident that this support was transferred to Chipenda.29 The difficulty Moscow is supposed to have had with Neto may have been overstated. Instead, the motivation behind the cut in Soviet aid may have emerged from a pragmatic assessment of the chaos within the MPLA. According to Dobrynin, the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, ‘… [assistance to the MPLA] was withdrawn when the movement became locked in its own internal struggles’.30 Following the military successes of the Portuguese and the apparent political disarray in the leadership, Moscow may have decided it was not about to throw good money after bad until it could reasonably predict the development of the struggle for the leadership of the MPLA and an improvement in that movement's situation on the ground. According

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Page 168 to the following report, this assessment may be reasonably accurate. Wanting to return to backing Neto, after it had became clear that the latter's leadership was secure, Moscow sought to mend bridges by informing the MPLA leader during a visit to the Soviet capital that Chipenda was planning to have him assassinated.31 That visit took place in January 1973. In Moscow, Neto ‘… met with Boris Ponomarev, a Central Committee secretary and candidate member of the Politburo, who assured him that ‘‘the USSR would continue to support the MPLA against the Portuguese,” meaning, no doubt, [his] wing of the party.’32 According to other reports, however, Moscow only resumed full support for Neto in the autumn of 1974, once his leadership had become secure.33 In Moscow, it seems that the principal contact and patron of the MPLA was the International Department of the Central Committee, which was headed by Ponomarev. According to Dobrynin, the International Department of the party played ‘a leading if not decisive role in the Soviet involvement in the Angolan adventure … [and] the Soviet foreign ministry had nothing to do with our initial involvement in Angola and looked at it with some skepticism.’34 By the time the April coup in Lisbon had successfully overthrown the Caetano leadership, the MPLA had lost some ground to the FNLA. But once the internal leadership crisis had been resolved and Neto was able to show Moscow that his MPLA was a viable actor in the ensuing process of decolonization, the Soviet Union resumed its support of that movement. By the end of 1974, the MPLA had benefited from approximately ten years of support from Moscow. This included arms deliveries, financial aid, diplomatic support and political backing. It was not a massive programme of assistance, nor was it a significant one if judged on the basis of its effectiveness in the MPLA's anticolonial war. It did, however, lay the foundations of association, an association that the MPLA could turn to when it decided to take power. From the MPLA's point of view, the Soviet Union represented more than a source of material backing; it was also its key ideological reference which served, in turn, as a framework to interpret and justify its bid for power in Angola. This becomes clear after a look at the relationship with Moscow from the MPLA's perspective. Before 1964, the MPLA apparently more or less shared the FNLA's conviction that it was the aid and not the donor that mattered. According to the MPLA programme, the movement had to ‘… struggle, by all available means, for the liquidation of the Portuguese colonial domination in Angola and of all vestiges of colonialism and imperialism.’35

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Page 169 The movement tried to garner the widest possible array of backers, drawing attention mainly to the anti-colonial nature of its activities. In 1963, it received, through the OAU, minor levels of support from both China and the Soviet Union. On the other hand, Neto's tour in 1963 attempted to court Washington by playing down the MPLA's radicalism.36 The MPLA certainly tailored its discourse to its audience. While it curbed its Marxist terminology when in the United States, the same cannot be said when it addressed sympathetic audiences. An article by Mário de Andrade, published in Pravda in September 1961, contained references to an ‘underground Marxist group’ and ‘antiimperialistic forces’ involved in ‘the revolutionary struggle’, that would be guaranteed by the ‘support of all progressive humanity’, a clear attempt to communicate in Soviet ideological terms.37 In its early documents, statements and articles, the MPLA does not refer to the Soviet Union directly, nor does it credit Moscow with providing the means of its support. Before 1964, MPLA leaders continuously insisted on the movement's non-aligned posture: During this phase of the national liberation struggle, there is no question of pledging our policy to either of the two blocs dividing the world. The only promise we make to the two blocs is that we will honestly seek to exclude attempts at establishing a cold war climate among the Angolan nationalists and to prevent the implications of international intrigues in the Angola of tomorrow.38 Practically the same words are used in a report on the MPLA's First National Conference,39 held in December 1962, and in an appeal by Neto to the ALC made in August 1963.40 According to its programme, the MPLA would pursue an ‘independent, peaceful foreign policy’ that would include ‘nonalignment with military blocs’.41 This situation changed after the débâcle in Leopoldville. Neto's visit to Moscow in 1964, which marked the beginning of the close material relationship established between the MPLA and the Soviet Union, followed by the military and political strengthening of the movement, led to the overt ideological alignment of the movement with the USSR. In December 1964, an article in Pravda declared the Soviet Union's support for the MPLA,42 and in August 1965, the same newspaper published an article by a leading MPLA figure which paid tribute to Soviet support for the MPLA which, it says, ‘… helped expose Roberto's neo-colonialist character’.43 From that point on, the USSR was identified as the principal patron of the MPLA:

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Page 170 Our people, the fighters representing the vanguard of the anti-colonialist struggle in Angola, feel the friendship and support of the Soviet people. We regard the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as one of the main forces we rely upon in developing our liberation struggle.44 After coming to power, and after the proclamation of the People's Republic of Angola and the transformation of the MPLA into a Marxist-Leninist ‘vanguard worker's party’, Neto confirmed the importance of this support during his visit to the Soviet Union in October 1976: ‘Soviet aid has been the key factor in our historical development, in achieving independence and in the country's reconstruction.’45 The MPLA had clear ideological affinities with the Soviet Union. A number of its leadership, including Agostinho Neto, Lúcio Lara, Mário de Andrade and Viriato da Cruz were avowedly Marxist despite their early denials that the movement as a whole was such. They would insist that although they had Marxist sympathies, the MPLA was a broad front that united a number of different postures. But, like other anti-colonial movements in the 1960s and 1970s, the ideologues of the post-1963 MPLA, principally Mário de Andrade and Lúcio Lara, held Marxism to be the political basis for their anticolonial struggle. The resilience of the Portuguese state and its inability to accept selfdetermination for its colonies had made a negotiated and peaceful path to independence impossible. For many, Marxism had ‘… become a vehicle for radical nationalism in non-industrial societies’.46As one point of view has it, Third World nationalists, wanting to break with the West, adopted Marxism as a political state-building model, despite the fact that the orthodox, theoretical dictates of its historical phases did not foresee its applicability in pre-industrial states.47According to Rostow, in the struggle against the traditional order in the Third World (that is, colonialism), the communists enter this struggle as ‘scavengers of modernization’ proposing ‘techniques of political centralization and dictatorial control as the basis for rapid economic progress’.48 The MPLA activists, like other anti-colonial nationalists, also claimed to have found inspiration in the example of wars of national liberation in China, Algeria and especially Vietnam.49 The successes of radical or Marxist movements in these countries were seen to be encouraging to those fighting what they considered to be the same worldwide struggle in Angola.50 The MPLA believed it could draw political and ideological lessons, as well as a military example from the experience of the Vietnamese, whose unequal conflict with ‘imperialism’

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Page 171 was considered comparable to the fight against Portuguese colonialism. Furthermore, the victory of the FLN in Algeria had proven that a nationalist front could force a stubborn European colonizer to withdraw from Africa. Anti-colonial ideology had become increasingly radical towards the end of the 1960s. The development of a loose body of national liberation thought increasingly characterized the anti-colonial fight as a kind of global ‘class struggle’. According to this doctrine, the Third World was considered to be the ‘working class’ of the world, and had to fight to free itself from the ruling imperialist class. Maoism proposed that the world city had to fall to the assault from the ‘world village’.51 In January 1969, at a joint conference held in Khartoum by the CONCP movements, Agostinho Neto referred to the stubborn persistence of the Portuguese people in continuing to serve ‘as cannon fodder in the defence of Portuguese and foreign monopolies’.52 An MPLA pamphlet from 1970 stated that: … the voluminous and constant support that Imperialism provides and continues to give to fascist Portuguese colonialism, has equally placed our people in the front line of the struggle against imperialism.53 Colonialism and capitalism were seen to be two sides of the same coin. The fight against one was considered necessarily a fight against the other. In national liberation theory, Marxism pervaded, and at the time, the tide seemed to be in favour of radical self-determination: the expulsion of both colonial and imperialist forces was deemed to be a worthy and achievable goal for nationalists in the Third World. A socialist outlook was also linked to the MPLA's conception of an Angolan nation. The movement's ideologues often referred to the inherent dangers in tribalism and racialism, claiming that their fight was not against whites but against the ‘unjust colonial system’.54 The ethnically diverse and urban leadership of the MPLA may have found in Marxism the ideal prism with which to establish their political and social objectives. This ideological proximity precluded the MPLA from turning for assistance to anywhere but the socialist bloc. The MPLA believed that the progressive brotherhood of socialist man would act in solidarity and assist its own anti-imperialist struggle in Angola. But to which pole should it have turned? To Moscow or to Peking? While there is no firm evidence that this was the case, the MPLA may have been split by the Sino-Soviet rivalry. According to the MPLA military commander at the time,55 Viriato da Cruz's challenge to Neto's

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Page 172 leadership in July 1963 was made along the fault line that divided Moscow and Peking. Neto's preference for a closer association with Moscow contrasted with Viriato's admiration of the Maoist experience, which may have fired his anxiety to increase military action. This view may be supported by the fact that Viriato's challenge was made after having returned from a Chinese-sponsored Asian—African Journalists Conference in Indonesia.56 While it is impossible to be certain, some links may have been established there between Viriato and Peking. Having failed to take over the MPLA, Viriato joined the FNLA, which later became the recipient of Chinese assistance. Viriato eventually ended up in the China, where he died embittered and far from Angola. Neto consolidated his leadership and from 1964 onwards the MPLA looked to Moscow. In 1972, during his challenge to Neto, Chipenda is said to have looked to Peking for support.57 However, if this was the case, it contradicts those reports that claim that the Soviets supported Chipenda during his challenge. Chipenda repeated the experience of Viriato ten years earlier and, after failing to displace Neto within the MPLA, joined the FNLA, which at that time was already receiving arms and military training from China. In 1968, before his split with Neto, Chipenda denies that Peking and Moscow had became rival poles for political competition within the MPLA: When people say the ideology of the MPLA is Moscow-orientated and the ideology of UNITA is Peking-orientated, they not only help the imperialists confuse things, they are simply wrong. The divisions which have emerged within the Angolan liberation struggle have not come about because of the split between China and Russia … The Chinese continued to support the MPLA in 1962, even after … we expelled our general secretary, Viriato da Cruz, from the Steering Committee of the MPLA. It was this man who went to China and spread his poison that the MPLA was pro-Russia, anti-Chinese, and so on. That is when our difficulties with the Chinese began.58 There was, therefore, a definite ideological basis for the relationship that the MPLA came to develop with the Soviet Union. But both the Angolan movement and Moscow demonstrated the capacity to be pragmatic and transcend the ideological character of their relationship, especially if there were political gains to be had. Ideology served principally to define the framework of the relationship and ultimately to justify the political programme determined by the MPLA, which, put in its crudest form, was to gain power in Angola.

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Page 173 Turning now to look at the motivations behind the Soviet Union's involvement in Angola, a number of possible explanations seem to emerge. There were specific objectives which were met and benefits that were gained by the USSR as a result of its intervention in support of the MPLA in Angola. Access to good port facilities which faced the Atlantic sea lanes used by Western shipping must have seemed attractive to Soviet military strategists. These must have figured into Moscow's calculations at some point. In strategic terms, it gained a strong foothold in Africa which allowed it to project its power far beyond its traditional spheres of influence. This had important implications for its Cold War relationship with the United States as well as for its efforts to lead the international communist community. Furthermore, Moscow showed others in the Third World that it could be counted on in any attempts to break with the West. By the end of the 1960s, the Soviet Union was close to achieving rough numerical nuclear parity with the United States. This had been, after all, the Kremlin's major objective after Khrushchev had been pushed aside. With strategic parity, the Kremlin believed it had the means to act globally in the defence of its interests. According to Edmonds, the massive build-up of the Soviet armed forces, both nuclear and conventional, eventually gave the Brezhnev leadership the ability to pursue a different dialogue with the US: détente.59 The parity of superpower status was implicit in the SALT agreements of 1972. Paradoxically, the promise of mutual massive nuclear destruction seemed to relax relations between the superpowers, reducing tension and conflict. But this applied only to the realm of what amounted to US—Soviet bilateral relations. Détente was noticeably absent from other areas where the superpowers were increasingly involved, namely the Third World. In defining Soviet policy towards this region, strategic parity and détente actually made Moscow more active and less inhibited.60 But confidence in its own enhanced capacity cannot fully explain why Moscow decided to arm the MPLA and help this movement to take power. The objectives of its policy in Angola were not crucial: Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union had any real reason to regard what was happening in Angola at the turn of 1975—6 as a zero-sum game.61 There had to have been a risk that the US would have called Moscow's bluff and decided to intervene overtly in favour of the FNLA—UNITA coalition. How could Moscow have been sure that intervention in Angola would not have led to a direct confrontation with Washington?

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Page 174 According to one view, the Kremlin shrewdly anticipated that, after Vietnam, a warweary American people and a vindictive Congress would effectively paralyse the US administration's ability to go beyond covert operations.62 Therefore, Moscow proceeded with a policy of support for the MPLA, somewhat secure in the knowledge that the US would be unable to respond. In this analysis, Soviet policy was not taking risks, but merely benefiting from a correct analysis of American politics. Kissinger himself seems to believe this: It is doubtful that Castro would have intervened in Angola, or the Soviet Union in Ethiopia, had America not been perceived to have collapsed in Indochina, to have become demoralized by Watergate, and to have afterward retreated into a cocoon.63 In a similar vein, Valenta assumes that Soviet decisions to intervene in Angola were taken as part of a medium-risk strategy to test the US's responsiveness after Vietnam.64 But according to this point of view, Soviet policy in Angola was applied in steps and responded only to the situation on the ground rather than with a larger picture in mind. In this analysis, the Kremlin capitalized on its historic association with the MPLA to intervene in a political vacuum (after the withdrawal of Portugal). Valenta's implication is that had the US vigorously resisted, the Soviet Union would, in all likelihood, have stopped short and withdrawn. While it did not lead to confrontation with the United States, Soviet involvement in Angola certainly helped to unravel the gains of détente. According to the Soviet ambassador in Washington, ‘if any point of controversy over regional conflicts soured Americans on détente, it was Angola.’65 Believing that the conflict in Angola ‘… seriously aggravated the central problems of Soviet-American relations …’, Dobrynin warned Moscow of this from his embassy in Washington but, he wrote, ‘[his] reports and arguments fell on the deaf ears of the morally self-righteous’.66 The Politburo's position on Angola was apparently influenced by the perspective of the International Department of the Central Committee, which believed that the Soviet Union should not yield to US ‘arrogance and their double standard’. Ponomarev argued that if the US was involved in civil wars around the globe and had overthrown the democratically elected Allende government in Chile, how could Soviet support for the ‘newly formed government in Angola [be seen] as a violation of détente’?67

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Page 175 Rejecting the American view of the Angolan conflict ‘ … through the prism of “confrontation between Moscow and Washington” or “as a test of the détente policy”’, the Soviet leadership believed their involvement in Angola was primarily an ideological conflict with the United States.68 Responding to a proposal by Ford to end support for the Angolan parties fighting in Angola, Brezhnev replied that ‘what was happening in Angola was not a civil war but direct foreign military intervention, and on the part of South Africa in particular.’69 The MPLA clearly presented the Soviet Union with an opportunity to gain influence in Angola. In the previous chapter, it was the close relationship established between Cuba and the Angolan movement that was seen to be central to bringing the Soviets on board, providing the ready channel for intervening when the opportunity arose. But this analysis is by no means the only one that has been made to explain the dynamic of that triangular association. In fact, taking a contrary view, Van Dunem believes it was the Soviets who formed the bridge between the MPLA and Cuba, convincing the latter to expand their internationalist duty to Angola.70 Recent research into Soviet archives, however, seem to indicate that Moscow was not leading. As quoted in Chapter 6, Leffler states that the Kremlin was not even aware of, let alone decided upon, the early Cuban deployment in September 1975.71 The actions of the Soviet Union in Angola seemed to have in mind what the United States was doing. Aware that the FNLA was being supported by the US through the CIA, Moscow acted and responded directly to changes on the ground, particularly during the escalation of violence in early 1975.72 But, according to one point of view, Soviet involvement in Angola may actually have been motivated by another stimulus altogether. Legum believes that USSR's posture towards the Angolan civil war was not determined by its relationship with the US but by its rivalry with China: ‘The animosity between China and Russia over Angola exceeded anything either might have felt about US and other Western intervention.’73 It was the involvement of Peking in the conflict, marked by the arrival at the end of May 1974 of Chinese military advisors at the FNLA's Zairean base, that Legum considers to have been the red rag to the Soviet bull. It was Peking's move in support of the FNLA, he believes, that led Moscow to resume its shipments of arms to Neto. From this point of view, Soviet involvement in Angola sought to undermine China's influence in Africa rather than to help the MPLA

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Page 176 for its own sake or to strengthen its strategic capabilities at the expense of the West. Accordingly, Moscow would have intervened regardless of what Washington did. Legum's analysis of intervention in the Angolan civil war has been taken up by a number of other analysts: ‘What Washington failed to realize was that it had stumbled into a Sino-Soviet dispute.’74 However, the resumption of Soviet aid for the MPLA in the autumn of 1974 and the motivations behind the fluctuating Soviet commitment to Neto's leadership of the MPLA are seen to have been based at least as much on the internal disarray of the movement as on any stimulus on Moscow's decision-making process such as Chinese support for the FNLA. Furthermore, Chinese assistance for that movement had already been forthcoming since 1973, and yet did not prevent Moscow from cutting back its aid for Neto in the first place. According to Vassiliev, China did not provide the major strategic motivation for Soviet foreign policy in the Third World.75 That Soviet academic's point of view is that the West has always been Moscow's principal adversary in the Third World and that this was also the case in Angola. Thus, while China may have wanted to challenge the USSR by supporting the FNLA, it is not the case that Moscow was primarily preoccupied with denying Peking influence in Africa by supporting the MPLA. Nevertheless, it is difficult to state categorically that the ‘Chinese factor’ was completely absent from the considerations made by Soviet policy-makers. The Soviet Union certainly used Angola in its ideological conflict with China, as Legum points out: ‘Russia and China both used Angola to justify their allegations that the other was intent on world domination.’76 According to Dobrynin, ‘ … the Politburo felt we had to show the flag against China in Africa so as not to be seen by international communist and democratic movements as being idle in post-colonial areas.’77 It is possible to assume, therefore, that Peking's military assistance for the FNLA may have been one motivation among others that led Moscow to respond to the MPLA's solicitations for weapons in August 1974. In conclusion, the Soviet Union felt that it had more than enough reasons to intervene in Angola. The opportunity to do so was offered to Moscow by the MPLA, intent on bringing the Cold War into its power struggle with the FNLA and UNITA. That opportunity was made even more attractive by the fact that Cuba was able and willing to use its internationalist forces on the ground, making unnecessary a direct deployment of Soviet troops. Furthermore, the United States' own freedom

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Page 177 to act in Angola seemed seriously curtailed. With a certain amount of risk, for sure, Moscow played itself into the Angolan civil war trying its hand at the relatively more secure form of surrogate conflict with the United States. But both superpowers, while of course playing out their own concerns on a different board, could not, however, avoid being used by the Angolan movements to decide the internal question of who was to govern post-independence Angola. THE UNITED STATES Countering Soviet influence was the central focus of American policy in Angola. This is, of course, true of US post-war policy elsewhere, but it was a remarkably consistent characteristic of its involvement in that country. Washington's postures towards Angola were inserted into a wider context of how best to contain and roll back Moscow's influence in Africa. But before the April coup in Portugal, Washington's Angolan policy was also influenced by its relations with Lisbon, which were, in turn, carried out within the context of NATO and, therefore, also part of a wider policy of American containment. In the first relevant phase of US policy towards Angola, roughly between the beginning of the anti-colonial challenge in 1961 to practically the very day of the April coup in 1974, Washington seemed to believe that both Salazar's and Caetano's regimes were firmly established both in Portugal and in its colonial territories. This led American policy-makers to conclude that, in general, good bilateral relations with Lisbon would best prevent Soviet inroads in that part of Africa. Clearly, US policy-makers did not fear a communist take-over in Angola in the 1960s. The intransigence of Portuguese colonialism placed the possibility of a radical government in Angola out of the question. For the most part, from the Kennedy administration to that of Nixon, US policy towards all Portuguese African territories was dominated by their ties to Lisbon. In turn, these relations with the Portuguese regimes were primarily determined by US military interests on the Azores islands. The Lajes base was described by Dean Acheson as ‘the single most important we have anywhere’.78 In 1949, a CIA report prepared for Truman pointed out that: The use of the air and naval facilities on the Azores would be extremely desirable in case of war with the Soviet Union.79

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Page 178 The logistical importance of the airbases on these mid-Atlantic islands for the military traffic between the United States and Europe was crucial. Their importance was demonstrated during the Berlin crisis in 1961, when a rapid deployment of troops was carried out. The primary and back-up airbases on the islands of Terceira (Lajes) and Santa Maria respectively handled 14,000 departures in 1961 (more than 40 flights a day). This weight of traffic underlined the bases' importance in a general airlift of US troops.80 Furthermore, US facilities on the strategically located island chain in the Atlantic Ocean enabled the tracking of submarines within a radius of 1,000 miles. The Pentagon saw this facility as essential to counter the burgeoning Soviet navy. The Azores also provided the United States with a useful naval base, midpoint between the Sixth Fleet stationed in the Mediterranean and its major supply depots on the east coast of the United States.81 According to a memorandum sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the State Department in 1963, ‘Loss of the Azores would seriously degrade the responsiveness, reliability and control of major US forces.’82 With such a clearly established value to the US military, the Azores bases were Portugal's life-line to the Western Alliance. As Freire Antunes has concluded, the Azores bases acted as ‘a sort of security belt for the New State within a cold war context, and [which] guaranteed Portugal automatic American protection’.83 Until 1971, the lease for the bases was renewed on a yearly basis, which effectively provided Lisbon with an inordinate amount of political leverage with the United States and, consequently, within NATO.84 The benefits of the Azores to Portugal became all the more apparent when the anti-colonial resistance began in its African colonies. International condemnation did not move one important ally from its position of supporting Lisbon. According to Schlesinger, the Special Assistant to President Kennedy: Our own capacity to act in this situation, however, was limited by our dependence, or alleged dependence, on the military and naval installations which Portugal made available to us in the Azores.85 There was by no means consensus on this issue in Washington. Certainly, Kennedy's ambassador to India, John K. Galbraith, suggested angrily that the US was ‘trading off Africa for ‘‘a few acres of asphalt in the Atlantic”.’86 According to Schlesinger, ‘The problem led to continuous wrangling in Washington — the Bureau of European Affairs vs. the Bureau of African Affairs; the Mission to the UN vs. the Pentagon.’87 While Portugal loomed importantly for the US military and for the architects of European security, it stood inconveniently in the way

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Page 179 of the efforts of the Kennedy administration to court the Third World and particularly the newly emerging African nations. A ware of the new world that was taking shape, the United States sought to establish its influence among the new African nations emerging from European colonialism. The United States' association with Portugal, which stubbornly refused to even consider the possibility of independence for its territories, compromised this policy somewhat. However, Schlesinger believed that Kennedy was effective ‘… in making his African visitors understand the American dilemma over the Azores base [which] limited the harm that restraint on the Portuguese colonies did to our general position in Africa’.88 Under Kennedy, the US at the United Nations did shift from its posture of not opposing Portugal. Since Roosevelt, the US had a nominal commitment to anti-colonialism but ‘… [the State Department] flinched from anything which might bruise the sensibilities of our European allies, some of whom still had colonial possessions.’89 However, recognizing the growing political importance of the Afro-Asian group of states, the Kennedy administration took a stand in support of self-determination. That US president wrote in 1960: ‘We cannot continue to think of Africa solely in terms of Europe.’90 In April 1961, in the wake of the anti-colonial uprising and the colonial backlash in Angola, the United States voted in favour of General Assembly resolution 1603 (XV), which called upon Portugal to consider introducing measures and reforms in Angola according to resolution 1514 (XV), which affirmed the right to self-determination, and resolution 1542 (XV), which defined Angola as a non-self-governing territory.91 The US vote in favour of resolution 1603 (XV) marked a break with its voting pattern under the Eisenhower administration during which the US had abstained on all resolutions concerning colonial independence, including resolution 1514 (XV). Under the new US permanent representative at the UN, Adlai Stevenson, the Kennedy administration took a different, more assertive, stand on colonialism at the UN. According to Schlesinger, ‘There was token opposition from the Europeanists at State; but Kennedy took care that everything should be done with due concern for the feelings of Portugal and the solidarity of NATO. Salazar was informed of the American intention a week before the vote.’92 In the Security Council, the United States voted on 9 June in favour of resolution 163 (1961) that condemned Portugal's repression of the uprisings in Angola.93 In December of that same year, the United States also voted in favour of resolution 1699 (XVI), which condemned Portugal's non-compliance

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Page 180 with the terms of Chapter XI of the United Nations Charter.94 The shift in the position of the United States towards Portugal was greeted by anti-American riots in Lisbon. But the effect in the Third World was to have the Kennedy administration ‘… acclaimed as the friend of oppressed peoples’.95 During the 1960 presidential election campaign, the victorious candidate had set out his view of the ‘wind of change’: ‘… I defend an Africa where countries are free to choose their own national trajectory without outside pressures or coercions.’96 According to US congressman Frank Church, travelling through Africa, a great enthusiasm for the young president had been whipped up on the continent: Whenever our presence was noted, anxious crowds would call out ‘Kennedy, Kennedy’ … For the first time, our country was being identified with legitimate African aspirations.97 The Kennedy administration decided to act beyond the United Nations. The US government wanted to support an anti-colonial movement against the Portuguese. Robert Kennedy considered that Angolan independence was ‘just and inevitable’ and supported the establishment of direct links with the nationalists.98 Holden Roberto, the UPA-FNLA leader, had established by the end of the 1950s a wide range of contacts in the United States. Furthermore, in 1961, after its role in the anti-colonial uprising in northern Angola, the UPA was the Angolan nationalist movement with the most international exposure. Going beyond its new position of upholding the principles behind anti-colonial self-determination, Washington acted and authorized the CIA to extend support to Roberto and UPA. The exact substance of this support is unclear. One source has indicated that it consisted of several million dollars of military and financial support.99 On the other hand, Morris has reported that the CIA financed Roberto ‘… during most of the 1960s at the paltry rate of US$ 10,000—US$ 20,000 a year …’100 Still another source has claimed that the FNLA received US$ 1 million a year.101 Whatever the amount of money Roberto may have received from Washington during this period, it was, however, clearly insufficient to be decisive in the political and military anti-colonial campaign of the FNLA. How long this first phase of US support for the FNLA lasted is equally unclear. One source has cited US Congress investigators who claimed that Roberto may have received small payments from the CIA throughout the entire period between 1961 and 1975.102 Another source claimed, however, that aid to the FNLA was halted in 1969.103 Morris believes the money was stopped by the Nixon administration in 1970 as a gesture to Portugal.104

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Page 181 Roberto's response to his new benefactor did not hide his satisfaction. At a press conference held in Tunisia in June 1961, after the adoption of the Security Council resolution on Angola, the leader of the UPA declared: We wish to take this opportunity to pay a ringing tribute to the new American administration and its young and dynamic chief, John Kennedy. Our country will be proud to have helped solidify the sharp change in American policy concerning Africa and decolonization.105 The Portuguese response to Kennedy's pro-nationalism was, of course, markedly different. Anti-American demonstrations broke out in Lisbon and Luanda, while Salazar waited until a ministerial meeting of NATO, held in Oslo on 8 May 1961, for Portugal to express its wrath. According to Marcum, Lisbon even threatened to leave the alliance.106 The Kennedy administration, under pressure from the Pentagon, sought to allay Lisbon's concerns by remaining committed to Portugal's place in NATO. But it further complemented its Salazar-displeasing posturing at the UN and covert support for the FNLA with other measures: it created a scholarship programme for African students from the Portuguese colonies; it reviewed that year's US military assistance programme for Portugal, cutting back from the originally intended US$ 25 million, and delivered only US$ 3 million-worth; it imposed a ban on commercial sales of arms to Portugal, a ban activated in mid-1961; and it supported the prohibition on the use of NATO war materiel in Africa.107 These measures were neither extensive nor very effective. The ban on the use of NATO weaponry in Angola (and later in the other colonies) was impossible to verify and was anyway clearly flouted by Lisbon. But they nevertheless reflected the attempts made by Washington to tread a thin line between supporting the aspirations of the colonized while, at the same time, meeting the requirements of the NATO alliance. Marcum's term to describe US policy toward Portugal at this time, ‘benevolent neutrality’,108 is a pertinent one. But the Kennedy administration's posturing against Lisbon did not last long. The regime in Lisbon successfully used the expiration of the American lease for its Azores bases in December 1962 to reel Washington back in. The President reportedly sent a memorandum to the State Department in July 1963 notifying that all anti-Portuguese initiatives by the US government were to be called off. Already by the end of 1962, the US had indicated where its new priorities were when in December it voted against General Assembly resolution 1807 (XVII)

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Page 182 which condemned Portugal.109 The military and political considerations of the Azores bases and Portugal's membership of NATO had prevailed over the desire to widen US influence within the anti-colonial camp. There is evidence that it was the Pentagon that pressured the Secretary of Defense in July 1963 to protect American—Portuguese relations. In a memorandum sent by the Joint Chiefs of Staff,110 it was stated that, should concessions have to be made to African opinion, it was preferable to sacrifice American interests in South Africa rather than threaten US interests in the Azores. According to Sorenson, Kennedy would rather have given up the Azores bases altogether than have allowed Portugal to dictate his African policy;111 but Washington eventually returned to its close relationship with Lisbon. The US continued to adhere to UN resolutions concerning the arms embargo on Portugal and to provide some support for the FNLA, but in general terms, Washington reverted to conveying to Lisbon economic, diplomatic and even, if reluctantly, moral support. After this, the United States effectively lost credibility as a champion of decolonization. From 1963 onwards, the US played little more than a Cold War role in Angola. Merely a year before, in a letter to a Republican critic, Roberto defended the US vote against Portugal which had placed Washington and Moscow on the same side in the Security Council, and asked: Why then cannot the issue [of Angolan nationalism] be isolated from the Cold War and judged on its merits?.112 A year later, the US and NATO were being seen in Angola as the essential support for Portuguese colonial authority. Cold War considerations eventually outweighed the issue of Angolan nationalism. As US military interests prevailed in Washington, Lisbon simultaneously attempted to show, much as South Africa had attempted, that the West's interests, particularly in Africa, were tied to those of Portugal. The Salazarist regime consistently held itself up to be not only the defender of Western interests in Africa but also the upholder of its values. According to Lisbon, the nationalist challenges in the colonies were part of an international conspiracy, directed by ‘communist Russia’, that planned to gain footholds in Africa from where the Soviets would destroy Portugal and get to Europe through its ‘soft underbelly’.113 Because of this, argued Lisbon, its own resistance to anticolonialism, or as the regime might have put it, its fight against the communist conspiracy in Angola, would be tantamount to aiding the global containment of Soviet power.

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Page 183 The campaign extolling the anti-communist virtues of Portugal was even carried to the United States itself. The work of the pro-Lisbon Portuguese-American Committee for Foreign Affairs did not tire in describing what was happening in Angola as a communistorganized and instigated insurgency. Apparently well-funded,114 the Committee, working through a New York public relations firm, Selvage and Lee, targeted the press corps, the White House, Congress and the State Department in an effort to sully the nationalists' cause and restore favour for Portugal in Washington. The Committee was based in the substantial Portuguese-American communities in Massachusetts and thus targeted that state's representatives on Capitol Hill appealing to, among other things, their vote-collecting interests. On 4 and 5 October, 12 Massachusetts congressmen (including the Speaker and a former Speaker of the House) made speeches in the House of Representatives praising Portugal as a faithful and indispensable NATO ally, and condemning Angolan nationalist insurgency as communist-inspired terrorism.115 The ideological conflict between East and West was creeping into the struggle for independence in Angola via relations with Portugal. Whereas in the early 1960s the US was considered to be a source for anti-colonial support (so much so that the MPLA attempted to conceal its ideological leanings before 1964 in order to appeal to Americans), Washington became less and less a stop-over point on fundraising tours carried out by Angolan nationalists after the United States was perceived to have nailed its colours to the Portuguese mast. Nevertheless, during the early period of US enthusiasm for anticolonialism in Angola under Kennedy, the roots of a relationship with the FNLA were established which later permitted that movement to seek in Washington the backing it needed in the struggle for power with the MPLA. In a letter to Kennedy written in 1962, Roberto praised the inspiration he claimed to have received when they met in Washington in 1959: The vivid memory of the ideas to which you exposed me allowed me to transmit to my people the certainty of your understanding and sympathy for our struggle.116 Later in 1991, in an interview with Freire Antunes, Roberto spoke about that meeting with Kennedy: I spent two hours explaining to Kennedy the meaning of our struggle in Angola. He told me that the United States had an anti-colonial tradition and could not continue to support the regime of slavery

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Page 184 in Angola. We agreed that it was necessary to do something to stop the communists taking over the liberation movement in Angola.117 In public speeches, Holden Roberto tended not to refer to the United States directly nor to its assistance for his movement. He would generally outline the case against Portugal and then appeal to ‘… democratically minded people of the whole world … to help end the oppression of 4.5 million people’.118 Until 1964, Roberto's speeches appealed for the implementation of the UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions pertaining to the self-determination of Angola. After the United States had returned to a closer relationship with Portugal, the FNLA leader was at first cautious in his criticisms of Washington. In March 1964, in a speech delivered in Leopoldville, Roberto addressed the failure of the UN to unanimously condemn Portugal and then turned on the American ambassador in Lisbon who ‘… dared to say that Angola is “an oasis of peace”’.119 Characterizing the ambassador's declarations as ‘a defiance of African opinion’, Roberto said that he would like to believe that this was a personal position ‘… which in no way bind[s] the attitude of the United States’.120 In that same speech, Roberto also referred to NATO. Earlier, in a statement delivered in Libreville in 1962,121 Roberto had drawn attention to the conclusions of the UN Special Committee on Territories under Portuguese Administration, according to which a large part of the arms and equipment used by the Portuguese in Africa was supplied by NATO countries. Emphasizing that the use of NATO equipment had broken Portuguese promises, Roberto appealed for the attention of ‘… the Atlantic Pact members, particularly the United States, to this serious situation …’ In his Leopoldville speech in 1964 referred to above, the FNLA leader declared that he hoped that those countries that had ‘… voluntarily or involuntarily armed Portugal …’ were revising their policies. Claiming that he was not threatening these countries with blackmail, he said, however, that: … the situation could become seriously complicated … We are Angolans and Africans and nothing else. We want to be free … We will not overlook any opportunity: we will even ally ourselves with the devil, if necessary …122 It is not exactly clear to what Roberto is referring. The statutes of the UPA and the FNLA both state that the movement may obtain ‘… without compromise, all the moral and material aid that the fight for liberation requires’.123 It is conceivable, therefore, that Roberto was

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Page 185 threatening the West that unless it showed greater enthusiasm for his nationalist struggle in Angola, he would approach the Soviet Union, or indeed China, for backing. Once it had become apparent that US policy was reverting back towards a proximity with Portugal, Roberto may have felt the need to seek other, including communist, sources of aid. Roberto's disappointment was not concealed. The US embassy in Leopoldville informed Washington of what one of Roberto's advisors had said: Since Roberto's recent return from New York he had found him [a] changed man … completely disillusioned with western, and specifically US policy on Angola. He was convinced that the US would never jeopardize its military ties with Portugal and that … it was US military aid to [the] Portuguese that enables them to hold Angola.124 The life of an anti-colonial movement depends primarily on funds. Once the US commitment to the FNLA had begun to weaken, necessity dictated the procurement of support elsewhere. Despite his anticommunist stance, Roberto did seek aid for the FNLA in Moscow and, eventually with success, in Peking. Nevertheless, while funding was crucial and, therefore, required compromise if the source was not politically compatible, the anti-communist nature of the FNLA was constantly affirmed. This was surely a necessary condition for the CIA's interest in the movement. As Stockwell has suggested, Roberto may have been: … wise enough to know that competition between his “conservative” movement and the ominously Marxist MPLA would gain him sympathy in the United States.125 After Jonas Savimbi's resigned from GRAE in Cairo in July 1964, the FNLA saw its continental support begin to erode. One of the principal charges that Savimbi had levelled against Roberto was, interestingly, that of being closely tied to the United States. In October, Savimbi explained his resignation:126 he claimed that ‘American imperialism’ within the UPA and GRAE had been partly to blame for the incapacity of the movement and had led him to resign. The soon-to-be leader of UNITA listed Roberto's ties to the United States: Roberto ‘hired Mr Muller, an American citizen and in charge of public relations in the Adoula government, as a personal advisor’; ‘likewise took as a personal advisor, John Marcum … advisor to Averill Harriman on the question of Portuguese colonies’; ‘participated, late in 1963, in meetings organized by Adoula and also attended by Averill Harriman

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Page 186 and Bahri (of Tunisia)’; ‘had eleven Angolans, who will soon create his personal security guard, trained by the counter-espionage service of Israel’; ‘hired Bernhardt Manhertz, in April of 1964, to lead the ELNA [FNLA army]. This officer served in South Vietnam in the American army’. There was also ‘the creation of a section, at the American Embassy in Leopoldville, charged with the Angolan question and directed by Messrs Heatter and Devnis … due … to these men's personal contacts with Holden Roberto’.127 The charges made by Savimbi indicate that, already in 1964, there was a close association between a number of Americans in Leopoldville linked to the US embassy and the CIA, Holden Roberto and Congo-lese political circles. Later in 1975, this triangle was instrumental in formulating the context for the US decision to provide covert support for the FNLA. A ware of the damage a close association with the United States could cause, particularly among African states, the FNLA denied that a link with Washington existed. In an attempt to counter Ghanaian claims that the FNLA ‘was an instrument of the Americans’, a GRAE document of 1965 suggested ironically that ‘the Americans, true masters of Angola, would hardly need four, five or six years (or more) of armed fighting against themselves to substitute Angolan puppets for Portu-guese fascists.’128 After Henry Kissinger joined the American administration in the late 1960s, he commissioned a major review of US policy toward Southern Africa. This review, the National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 39,129 was presented to President Nixon in early January 1970, along with Kissinger's recommendation that the US adopt a policy based on ‘Option Two’.130 That ‘option’ recommended that the US establish a dual track policy of, on the one hand, continuing to express public opposition to racial repression while, on the other, quietly relaxing the political and economic isolation of the white states in Africa, Portugal and South Africa. The conclusion favoured by Kissinger was that ‘the whites were here to stay’.131 It was, therefore, in Washington's interest to work for constructive change in the region through those minority regimes, while paying lip service to international opposition to South African apartheid, Rhodesian minority rule and Portuguese colonialism. It is important to refer to NSSM 39 because, under Kissinger, it formed the basis for US policy toward Angola in the early 1970s until the Portuguese coup. The assessments made in the study: that Portugal in Africa, as a ‘white state’, was stable, that the anticolonial move-

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Page 187 ments were unrealistic alternatives, and that ‘a black victory at any stage’ was impossible,132 were essentially faulty. These assessments led to the formulation of a policy by the US that was, therefore, unprepared, if not unable, to deal with the crisis in Angola when it erupted. By the end of the 1960s, US policy towards Portugal and its African territories was firmly within a Cold War context. Thus, the formulation of policy options such as those in NSSM 39 reflected more the desired state of affairs within Washington's global strategy than the reality of the situation in Portugal and Africa. Certainly, the conclusion that the ‘whites were here to stay’ in 1970 contrasted sharply with the considered opinion of the US ambassador to Lisbon in 1960 who believed that, ‘Portugal clearly does not have sufficient power to maintain these vast territories.’133 The immediate result of the more relaxed US approach to Portugal over its African territories was an accord over the Azores bases, replacing the ad hoc process of renewal that had been in practice since 1962. In December 1971, Portugal extended base rights to the US until 1973. In Lisbon, the regime headed by Marcello Caetano, who had succeeded Salazar in 1968 after the latter was incapacitated by a fall, felt that the United States and Portugal were ‘… allies once again’.134 The strategic importance of the bases was once again demonstrated during the Arab—Israeli war in October 1973. On top of providing a strategic military value, the fact that Lisbon gave permission for the US to use the Azores bases in the operation to supply Israel also scored political points in Washington. Since other Western European states had refused to allow American aircraft to use US facilities in Europe, the Azores bases became crucial to support the long-range reach of US airpower. In return for this military and political favour, Portugal was offered a substantial aid packet by the US.135 On the face of it, Washington was still adhering to the UN embargo on sales of weapons to Portugal destined for use in its African wars. But Lisbon benefited from other forms of military assistance from the United States which supplied equipment that clearly had a dual purpose, both military and civilian: heavy transport vehicles, jeeps and helicopters.136 Furthermore, Portuguese officers and pilots were trained at US military facilities in both West Germany and Panama,137+ while an estimated 100 were being trained in the United States at any given time during this period. In early 1971, Nixon authorized the sale of four Boeing 707 jet transporters directly to TAP, the Portuguese state airline, whose promise to limit their use to commercial flights was broken when they were used to ferry troops to and from Africa.138 Not

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Page 188 covered by the embargo was the sale of defoliants and herbicides to the Portuguese who used them in Africa in counterinsurgency warfare. In fact, if the April 1974 coup had not brought down the regime, it seems the US would even have illegally supplied weapons to Portugal: according to reports, during a visit in December 1973, Kissinger thanked Lisbon for allowing the use of the Azores during the October war, and, apparently unaware of the UN embargo,139 agreed to meet Portuguese requests for weapons.140 In addition to these military benefits, Portugal also drew economic advantages from its relationship with the United States. By 1972, the American Gulf Oil Corporation, which had discovered oil off the coast of Cabinda in the late 1950s, was contributing more than US$ 60 million each year to the Angolan treasury, this before the soar in oil prices in 1973. Further American contributions to the Portuguese treasury were made annually in: tourism (US$ 80 million); the Azores bases operations (US$ 13 million); and in coffee imports from Angola (US$ 100 million).141 In this way, Marcum argues, the United States played some part in keeping Portugal fighting in Africa. Marcum concludes that just under US$ 400 million in US contributions found their way to Portugal in 1973, which is a substantial figure but even more significant when compared to Portugal's annual military-security budget which was just over US$ 400 million.142 In the face of this equation, Marcum, and others,143 believe that it is difficult to refute the claim that the United States was effectively important in providing the means for Portugal to continue to wage its colonial wars. In any case, this was certainly the perception of the opponents of Portuguese colonialism. The overthrow of the Caetano regime on 25 April 1974 apparently caught the Americans by surprise. Seemingly unable to imagine the collapse of a clearly anachronistic power structure drained by costly overseas wars, Washington had not foreseen the need for a change in its policy towards Portugal and, therefore, Angola. Subsequently, the instability that reigned in Portugal after the coup dominated Washing-ton's approach. Rejecting the opinion of the US ambassador in Lisbon, Stuart Nash, who advocated support for the new government in Portugal, Kissinger feared there would be a communist take-over in Portugal which he believed would seriously unbalance the US— Soviet power ratio in Europe. He fired Nash and replaced him with Frank Carlucci, hoping for a ‘tough guy’ to hold US interests in Portugal as the communists were taking over.144 But Carlucci came to the same conclusion as Nash: the US should support the coalition government,

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Page 189 particularly the more democratic figures and parties, and the communists would peter out. Towards Portuguese Africa, Washington did not alter its perspective of looking at the question of self-determination in Angola and the other colonies from the point of view of Lisbon. Following the coup, the US gave support to the so-called ‘Portuguese commonwealth’ solution proposed by Spínola.145 When Donald Easum, the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, travelling in Africa, attempted to position the US to better court the movements that would make up the future independent governments of the soon-to-be ex-Portuguese territories, he was cast aside by Kissinger. Although he had engineered a meeting with FRELIMO, the radical Mozambican movement, and had established a favourable position for American influence, Easum's maverick initiatives displeased Kissinger. The Secretary of State fired Easum barely two days after his return from Africa.146 In the immediate aftermath of the coup, US policy towards Angola seemed to be a ‘hands off’ one. Between April 1974 and January 1975, Washington did not intervene in any significant way in Angolan political affairs. The State Department's view was that the forces in Angola, the MPLA, the FNLA and UNITA, were balanced. Furthermore, it was known that the Soviet Union had suspended its support for the MPLA just before the coup in Lisbon, following an evidently negative report filed in Moscow by a Soviet envoy on the chaotic internal disarray of the MPLA.147 In mid-January 1975, the meeting which changed the direction of US policy towards Angola took place barely two weeks after the Alvor accords had been signed by Portugal and the three Angolan movements. The Forty Committee was convened by Kissinger to discuss US covert activities and, when Angola came up, the CIA proposed the reactivation of its assistance programme for the FNLA.148 However, according to Stockwell, the CIA had already been funding Roberto secretly since July 1974 without Forty Committee approval: … small amounts at first, but enough for word to get around that the CIA was dealing itself into the race.149 The amount proposed by the CIA at the meeting with Kissinger, US$ 300,000, was sufficient, the agency argued, to signal to the FNLA's principal backer, Mobutu, that Washington was sympathetic to Zaire's position on the Angolan question.150 The CIA argued that the FNLA would provide the ‘most stable and reliable government’,151 an interesting assessment given the movement's history of military ineptness

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Page 190 and political corruption. Kissinger accepted these arguments and ‘routinely approved’ the CIA's request to fund the FNLA.152 Kissinger's initial decision to fund the FNLA was not a substantial act in itself, it did set the US on a policy track from which it did not later withdraw and eventually led nowhere. It was a relatively minor grant but it was the first step of a US programme of covert support for the FNLA and UNITA that by the end of the summer of 1975 had US arms pouring into Zaire in order to stage an assault on Luanda. With the January decision, the United States entered the Angolan civil war. The rationale behind American involvement in Angola seems clear. It was driven essentially by Kissinger who saw in the USSR's support for the MPLA a bid by Moscow to project Soviet power far beyond its confines at the time. That it should have occurred during the period of détente between the superpowers only made Kissinger more determined to establish limits on their ability to intervene outside their ‘traditional’ spheres of influence, i.e. in the Third World. Furthermore, the very conduct of US foreign policy had been placed in question in the light of a series of damaging foreign and domestic events: the Watergate incident, the failures in Vietnam and Cambodia, the negative revelations in Congress about CIA and domestic covert activities. The combined effect of these factors placed an inordinate amount of stress on the foreign policy machine run by Kissinger. The Secretary of State himself felt that the US had to act in Angola to show that it still could. According to Isaacson, ‘… Kissinger felt that it was important to seize an opportunity to show that the US still had the will to counter Moscow's moves.’153 The players in the US administration on the Angola question besides Kissinger were initially the CIA and the State Department, in particular the African Bureau. As shown by the dismissal of Donald Easum in November 1974, Kissinger was not open to accepting a US policy in Africa designed by the African Bureau. In fact, the latter did have a poor opinion of Holden Roberto and the FNLA and considered the US position on the African continent as a whole, rather than from the point of view of the East—West conflict.154 The new Assistant Secretary for African Affairs picked by Kissinger, Nathaniel Davis, took a similar view and argued against a covert war in Angola which he felt the US could not win. ‘The worst possible outcome would be a test of will and strength which we lose … If we are to have a test of strength with the Soviets, we should find a more advantageous place,’ wrote Davis in a memorandum to the meeting of the Forty Committee on 14 July 1975.155

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Page 191 These arguments fell on deaf ears. At the July meeting, the Forty Committee recommended and President Ford approved a covert programme worth US$ 32 million in funds and US$ 16 million in military equipment to be channelled to the FNLA through Zaire.156 The opportunity for Washington to back down had been lost. The US was now committed to a covert presence in Angola. Davis resigned quietly and only later in 1978 did he explain the reasons.157 This left Kissinger and the CIA as the principal US policy-makers towards Angola. According to Brenda MacElhinney, the CIA Angola Desk Officer in 1975 who had reopened the Luanda station for the agency: … don't put all the blame on Kissinger, the CIA led the United States into the Angolan mess.158 On the other hand, Isaacson claims that ‘not even the CIA was fully in favor of a covert program,’ and that its Director, William Colby, ‘… shell-shocked by Vietnam and buffeted by the congressional hearings into the agency's past misdeeds, was not looking for any more trouble’.159 Furthermore, mid-level CIA agents recognized that since the US was limited to a covert programme, the Soviet Union had a ‘greater freedom of action’ to escalate its support for the MPLA.160 While this may have been the case, there is enough evidence to indicate that, at least initially, the CIA was responsible for the proposal to fund the FNLA and thus for providing the opening for the US to enter the fray. The United States' policy choices in Angola were framed in terms of the competition with Moscow. This confirmed to Kissinger what he wanted to believe, that the Soviet Union had hegemonic aspirations in Africa. The decision to back Roberto was taken in the light of the support the Soviet Union was giving to help the MPLA come to power. When this case was made by the CIA before Kissinger in the January 1975 meeting of the Forty Committee, the Soviet Union had already resumed its flow of aid to Neto's movement. The conclusion was reached that the Soviet Union was intervening in Angola to ensure a favourable outcome for it in the struggle for power between the liberation movements. Earlier, in 1973, an American congressional mission sent to evaluate Moscow's African policy had concluded that Soviet aid to liberation movements was limited to keeping lines of communication open, and that more substantial links, such as military aid or training programmes, did not amount to a significant level of commitment on the

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Page 192 part of Moscow.161 However, by the time the Forty Committee took the decision to reactivate its support for the FNLA in January 1975, the perspective in Washington had changed. Soviet expansionism in Angola, testing how deep were the waters of détente, was now the assessment. The objective behind Kissinger's decision to fund the FNLA was to signal the Soviet Union that the United States had noticed Moscow's support for the MPLA and that it did not approve. As Kissinger told a Senate subcommittee, ‘the Soviet Union must not be given any opportunity to use military forces for aggressive purposes without running the risk of conflict with us.’162 Why the FNLA? It was not selected because of any serious evaluation of its potential but rather as a result of the ‘historic relationship’ which had been established between the movement and the US.163 Certainly, the FNLA was the weakest of the movements, at least internally. It was based around one man, Holden Roberto, and had little institutional momentum. However, the main reason to support the FNLA was undoubtedly the fact that it was fighting against the MPLA which, in turn, was supported by the Soviet Union. As Marcum puts it, the Forty Committee decision was apparently motivated by ‘an irrepressible habit of thinking in terms of ‘‘our team” and “theirs” …’164 According to a contemporary report, the minor Forty Committee payment to the FNLA, decided in January, provoked an almost immediate reaction in Angola: ‘American officials deny rumors, now very prevalent in Luanda, of heavy continuing CIA support for the FNLA.’165 Laidi believes that the US$ 300,000 was intended to help the FNLA ‘… reach its primary objective: to dislodge the MPLA from the capital city before the pivotal date of November 11, 1975’.166 However, at that stage of the conflict in early 1975, when the transitional government was still sitting, and due to its relatively small amount, it seems unlikely that that first grant had any such ambitious goals. It was a sum that fell well short of what eventually became necessary for the FNLA's military requirements. Kissinger argued, only slightly more convincingly, that the January aid to the FNLA was good only ‘… to buy bicycles, paper clips etc… .’, and that it was essentially not for military purposes.167 The fact is that, as Bender points out, the grant to the FNLA signalled that the US was on board.168 It is more than clear that Kissinger's decision to fund Roberto and the FNLA in January 1975 was taken in the light of the Secretary of State's concerns over the United States' global position relative to the Soviet Union. There was, however, another more localized factor which served to formulate the initial proposal made to Kissinger by the CIA.

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Page 193 The role of Zaire in the Angolan civil war was a significant one and has already been looked at earlier. But Zairean involvement also helped to define the parameters of US policy towards Angola. At the time, Zaire was strategically more important than Angola and it was the United States' principal ally in central and southern Africa. American economic and political interests there far outweighed those in any other African country. Furthermore, there was a historical precedent. Washington's success in helping Kinshasa to repress the CNL, which was supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba, had left a legacy of successful covert intervention in Zaire. Jackson concludes that, ‘… the assistance to the FNLA confirmed Washington's intention of repeating its alliance-seeking strategy which had produced such success during the Congo crisis.’169 According to reports, American intelligence agents helped Mobutu take over the government in Kinshasa in 1965,170 and his regime depended almost exclusively on American patronage and, conversely, the US depended on Mobutu ‘… to protect and maintain American interests in his country’.171 This relationship also extended beyond Zaire's borders. According to Weissman, ‘… Kissinger was reportedly banking on Mobutu “to oppose Moscow's interests” in Africa generally …’172 Substantial US economic interests in Zaire added to its strategic value, making the stability of Mobutu's regime a foreign policy objective of the US.173 For reasons already described,174 Mobutu wanted Roberto in Luanda. This desire influenced the Zairean leader's US interlocutors whose central concern was the relationship between Washington and Kinshasa. According to Bender, the CIA argued before Kissinger that aid to the FNLA: … would signal to President Mobutu … that Washington was sympathetic to his position … Zaire was always a primary consideration in all American decisions concerning covert aid to the FNLA.175 The agency was anxious to regain favour in the wake of the revelations being made by the congressional hearings. The CIA wanted a success and when the Kinshasa station suggested the financing of the FNLA, for all the reasons that made it ‘compelling’ for Kissinger,176 the agency adopted and promoted the option of a covert intervention programme for the FNLA. The CIA perspective was heavily influenced by the view in the Kinshasa station, which was close to Roberto and was working in the context of Zairean interests in Angola. In fact, it seems that the American intelligence officers actually stationed in Luanda

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Page 194 at the time could not alter the perception of events in Angola as seen from Kinshasa. The very close ties between the Mobutu regime, CIA officials in Kinshasa and Roberto himself can be seen to have been behind the CIA's proposal to the Forty Committee in January 1975, rather than an evaluation of the situation in Angola as a whole.177 Regardless of whether or not the Soviet Union saw Angola as an issue of superpower rivalry and a test of détente, this is how, according to Dobrynin, the situation was seen from within the Ford administration and by the American public.178 Furthermore, the intervention in Angola showed that the Soviet Union was able and willing to act militarily on a global level. As Edmonds put it, ‘the Angolan operation awakened many people for the first time to the fact that — strategic nuclear power apart — the Soviet Union was now capable of projecting its conventional power across the world, like the United States.’179 The fear of the spectre of a communist takeover in Angola was expressed by the US ambassador to the UN, Daniel Moynihan, who ‘… warned in December 1975 that unless appropriate aid was given to the FNLA—UNITA forces, “the communists would take over Angola and will thereby control the oil shipping lanes from the Persian Gulf to Europe”’.180 To Kissinger, the concern remained the relative global power of the United States vis-àvis the Soviet Union: I want these people to know that our concern in Angola is not the economic wealth or the naval base. It has do with the USSR operating 8,000 miles from home when all the surrounding states are asking for our help … I don't care about the oil or the base, but I do care about the African reaction when they see the Soviets pull it off and we don't do anything. If the Europeans then say to themselves, ‘If they can't hold Luanda, how can they defend Europe?’181 It was a matter of prestige and credibility. Dobrynin concludes that ‘considerations of superpower image only increased the obstinacy of both sides, since neither felt it could afford to ‘‘lose Angola”.’182 Ultimately, however, the US withdrew from Angola under pressure from Congress. Kissinger did not conceal his bitterness towards the domestic limitations on his conduct of US foreign policy.183 By the time US covert involvement in Angola was revealed, the White House was already feeling Congressional attempts to curb the administration's freedom in the making of foreign policy. After the Watergate scandal, Congress sought more readily to intervene in the process. Investigations on Capitol Hill had revealed the extent of the CIA's activities not only in foreign destabilization campaigns, such as Chile, but also

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Page 195 on the domestic front where it had been covertly monitoring the activities of over 10,000 American citizens.184 Kissinger, ‘… was almost desperate to demonstrate that it was still possible to carry out a decisive and coherent foreign policy in this “climate of recriminations”.’185 But Congress prevailed. After the extent of US involvement in Angola had been revealed in the press, opposition to the covert programme was overwhelming and Congress voted to cut off new funds for Angola: the Clark amendment passed in the Senate 54 to 22, and in the House of Representatives the vote was 323 to 99. Interestingly, it seems that it was the Director of the CIA, William Colby, who in secretly requesting Congressional approval for US$ 28 million in funds for the FNLA inadvertently began the leak which lead to the story on 13 December 1975 detailing the covert programme in the New York Times. Senator Dick Clark, who had been fighting the funding in secret sessions, was then able to introduce the amendment that terminated US assistance to the anti-MPLA forces.186 Shorn of US backing, the FNLA and UNITA were unable to mount a serious challenge to the MPLA. This movement, bristling with Cuban-Soviet military capacity, became the widely recognized government of independent Angola. In this way, the MPLA defeated its rivals for power.

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Page 196 Conclusion During a seminar on decolonization held in Portugal in 1992, Brigadier Pezarat Correia set down his assessment of what had occurred in Angola in 1975.1 According to him, the United States, the Soviet Union and unnamed regional African powers were ‘hugely responsible’ for the chaotic outcome of Portuguese decolonization.2 The non-fulfilment of the Alvor accords and the war in Angola were, according to Pezarat Correia, the result of ‘intrigues by foreign interests during the heyday of the cold war’.3 The Angolan civil war of 1975–76 did involve a number of external actors. There can be little doubt that the intervention of the Soviet Union and the United States, of Cuba and South Africa, of Zaire and China, had a significant effect on the course of the war. Indeed, that was the intention behind their intervention. Other events, such as the political chaos in Portugal following the coup, also had an effect on the conflict in Angola, even if unintended. But to view the Angolan civil war merely as a product of East–West rivalry or of South African bids for regional hegemony is to misunderstand or to deny the real nature of the origins of the conflict. At the heart of that conflict was a struggle for power and ultimate responsibility for the civil war must thus rest with the parties. The Angolan civil war of 1975–76 was a brutal conflict which seriously damaged the country's economic infrastructure and fragile fabric of society. It led almost immediately to another long civil war between the MPLA and UNITA. After standing as equals in Alvor in January 1975, those two movements then faced each other in a grinding war of attrition, this time as government and rebel movement. Almost continuously, Angola has lived with war for over 35 years. After the end of the Cold War, the prospects for peace and a negotiated settlement looked good. The withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola and the independence of Namibia announced the dawn of a new era in Southern Africa. In Angola, political differences remained between the adversaries, but after signing a peace agreement outside Lisbon, they agreed to attempt the electoral route of competition. It seemed that finally Angola would be at peace: the Soviet Union had ceased to be, and the superpower rivalry with the United States had fallen away; majority rule was coming to South Africa, and other international actors were no longer involved in Angola.

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Page 197 In September 1992, UN-monitored elections were held despite the fact that the military aspects of the peace process, the disarmament and demobilization of the rebel fighters and the creation of a single national army had not been completed. Despite these shortcomings, there were many expectations both in Angola and abroad, fuelled perhaps by a general sense of optimism that the post-Cold War world was going to be a safer place without the rivalry of the superpowers. Unfortunately, these expectations were disappointed. Contesting the results of the elections, Savimbi launched UNITA into another short but brutal war with the government. A comprehensive military and political peace package was eventually signed in Lusaka in 1994, leading to the establishment of a large UN peace-keeping operation, UNAVEM III. The fact is that the underlying struggle for power had yet to be resolved. Granted, international intervention complicated the course of the civil war in Angola and brought external considerations to bear on it. But the domestic political conflict at the heart of the civil war had developed before international actors had become involved and continued after they had left. Of course it was not a linear process by which an internal conflict developed and was subsequently externalized. It was a dynamic relationship in which the parties to the domestic struggle for power looked outward to foreign backers, whose intervention, in turn, served to feed the internal conflict, and so on. It was a complex and dynamic interaction between internal and external factors that led to the development of hostilities. The external dimensions of the Angolan civil war were built upon an internal structure of conflict which was erected under colonialism and defined during the emergence of an anti-colonial challenge. The rivalry between the Angolan nationalist movements emerged from the formative influences of both colonialism and anti-colonialism. The particularities of Portuguese colonialism had an important part to play in the development of this rivalry. First, the social conditions that resulted from colonial policies, such as the racial and educational gap that existed between certain sectors of colonial society, went far in determining a latent state of hostility between the less-educated Africans in the FNLA and the intellectual mestiços in the MPLA. On the other hand, the privileged core of colonial society came to expect the rewards of prosperity, especially after a period of economic expansion in late colonialism. When denied, this class represented a source of support for the anti-colonial flow. Secondly, the colonial regime's intransigence to the development of Angolan nationalism limited the options for the latter's expression. The

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Page 198 authoritarian regime in Portugal was partly erected on the colonial empire, in political, economic and ideological terms. Lisbon could not decolonize, not because it could not neo-colonize but because the regime itself would expire if it did so. Thus, the pacific development of a broad movement of nationalist expression in the colonies was out of the question. Eventually, in 1961, only a violent opposition to Portuguese colonialism was possible. In turn, this lack of choice for political expression influenced the very character of the nationalist organizations which prevailed. These movements were, of course, also shaped by their own endogenous experiences and developed as a result of conscious political choices made by the major protagonists. The ideological development of the MPLA in Luanda, the micro-nationalist affirmation by the FNLA in northern Angola and Zaire, and the championing of the unrepresented south by UNITA were separate, if overlapping, streams of political expression in Angola. Their constituencies and political spheres were different but all three movements had the same objective both in the anti-colonial struggle and in the civil war that followed: to capture the Angolan state and establish their respective structures of government. As the three movements developed their anti-colonial challenges, they found themselves on trajectories that brought them into conflict not only with the colonial regime but with each other. The context within which each movement emerged helped to influence their respective resistance towards the creation of a common front, and the perpetuation of a shared belief that each would be able to succeed Portuguese rule. The FNLA believed that its original challenge to the Portuguese in 1961 and its subsequent legitimization by the OAU in 1963 was sufficient to give it the edge. The MPLA, wishing to repeat the pattern in Angola, looked to the other Portuguese colonies where friends had emerged at the head of a single unchallenged movement. Despite, or at the root of, its preference for elections, UNITA believed that it represented the single largest ethnic group in Angola. All three movements were convinced of the validity of their own claims to power. While struggling against colonialism and each other, the Angolan rivals also sought to express their internal conflict as part of wider struggles. Each movement sought to obtain material and political support not merely by appealing to the whim of a potential benefactor but also by interpreting their domestic conflict in Angola as an international event. Not only were the virtues of the movements' anti-colonial objectives extolled as part of the world-wide struggle for liberation in the Third World, but also other conflicts became expressed in Angola.

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Page 199 Thus, by pointing out to a potential benefactor that the latter's rival (or rivals) was backing one of the other movements, an Angolan rival was able to secure important support, but not without first importing an international rivalry. Thus, the MPLA was able to convince the Soviet Union that by supporting that movement, Moscow would obtain benefits elsewhere, namely in its rivalries with the United States and, to a lesser extent, with China. Similarly, the FNLA's perceived worth to the United States far exceeded reality when it could represent for Washington the manner in which resistance to the Soviet and Cuban-backed MPLA could be channelled. In this way, and especially once the colonial regime had fallen away in 1974, the Angolan movements were able to enlarge the significance of their conflict from mere factional strife to superpower competition. Through this transformation in the definition of the conflict, the Angolan nationalists were able to externalize the civil war. In sum, the Angolan civil war was a domestic conflict for power which was internationalized with consciousness and purposefulness by the rival movements.4 Defining it as an East–West proxy war does not explain the Angolan civil war. Having established this dynamic, it is nevertheless important to keep in mind that international intervention in the Angolan civil war did not only occur because the domestic political parties to the conflict wished it. Foreign intervention occurred also because each of the external actors sought specific objectives in doing so. The opportunity to intervene, created by the internal actors, was only one of the inputs to the decision-making process of the external powers, although it was, of course, a necessary condition. While Zaire acted as the linchpin for the anti-MPLA coalition, linking the interests of the FNLA with those of the United States, it also had specific interests in mind and saw in the Angolan civil war an opportunity to emerge more powerfully in the region. South Africa had a misplaced confidence that the shared objective of anti-communism would align its interests with those of the United States, but Pretoria's decision to intervene in Angola resulted primarily from the interplay between its perceived strategic objectives and domestic politics. Similarly, Cuban intervention was influenced by an internal political and ideological logic quite apart from, although eventually converging with, Soviet interests. Its longstanding relationship with the MPLA gave Cuba an opportunity to intervene in Angola and, therefore, reinforce the credibility of its internationalist posture. For its part, China saw in the FNLA's approaches an opportunity to challenge the Soviet Union where it mattered, on the ground. Its ideological confrontation

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Page 200 with the USSR sought mainly to contest the latter's prominence in the socialist and developing worlds as the champion of anti-Westernism. In the case of the superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, their motivations for intervening in Angola were less the result of particularist interests than the product of the wider context of their global rivalry. Certainly, neither could claim that it had any major strategic or other interests in Angola. Their respective intervention resulted in part from the perception that it was important to the other. This was certainly the case with the United States. And despite Moscow's claims that its involvement in Angola was unconnected to the Cold War and détente, it is difficult to believe that it did not perceive that in Angola there was an opportunity to test the limits of superpower rivalry in the Third World. Furthermore, any benefits accrued from such an intervention in the ideological and political conflict with China were certainly welcome. For the United States, Angola also represented, perhaps more desperately, an opportunity to reverse the tide of foreign policy setbacks after Vietnam. One result of the drawing in of these rivalries was the accumulation of a number of layers of conflict on the foundations of the internal struggle for power. Thus, the Angolan civil war reflected also the clash of left and right in post-coup Portugal, the regional rivalry between the Congo and Zaire, bloc politics in the OAU, the Sino-Soviet split and the East–West conflict. The communality between ‘allies’ was determined not only in ideological terms, which in the case of Marx-ism linked the MPLA, the Congo (Brazzaville) and the Soviet Union, and in the case of anti-communism brought together the FNLA, Zaire and the United States, but also in terms of an existing political competition between each set of rivals. In other words, ‘my enemy's friend is also my enemy’. The wider global confrontation between East and West provided the context for the externalization of conflict in Angola, especially with regard to the ideological expression of the civil war as a struggle between communism and anti-communism. But, in one sense, this contextualization resulted from the purposeful efforts of the Angolan rivals to express the dispute in Angola as part and parcel of the global conflict and not just the result of an internal struggle for power. Of course, internal conflicts that lead to civil wars and other violent disputes of authority did not disappear with the end of the Cold War. Having acted as an external structure of support for many internal struggles for power, as in Angola, the Cold War will almost certainly be substituted by other similar patterns of international competition which,

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Page 201 if brought into internal political conflicts, will allow them to continue. These external configurations may be on a different scale than that of the Cold War but will almost certainly be brought into internal conflicts in a similar way to the manner in which international rivalries were drawn into the Angolan civil war.

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Page 202 Notes INTRODUCTION 1.  Mário de Andrade speaking at the 32nd meeting of the UN Special Committee on Territories under Portuguese Administration held in Leopoldville on 24 May 1962. Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit., (1972), pp. 198–9. 2.  A. Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents (1962–1986) (New York, NY: Times Books, 1995), p. 360. CHAPTER 1  PORTUGUESE COLONIALISM IN ANGOLA 1.  The British issued an ultimatum to Portugal in January 1890 which forced Lisbon to desist from its dreams of establishing a trans-African empire, linking Angola to Mozambique, one that would have conflicted with Rhodes' own dream of ‘British dominion from the Cape to Cairo’. 2.  The Great Powers were deftly played off each other. For example, Portugal managed to fight off Bismarck Germany's claims on its territories by enlisting the support of the French, who in turn sought to contain German expansion. Similarly, the British could be counted on in disputes with either the French or the Germans. By appealing to British interests, Lisbon also managed to ward off Boer designs on the Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) port. This small-state diplomacy was no easy task for the Portuguese governments, which faced at all times the threat of financial collapse. A default on international payments would have delivered the colonies to the Great Powers on a platter. 3.  A.H. de Oliveira Marques, History of Portugal Volume II: From Empire to Corporate State (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1972) p. 111. 4.  A.H. de Oliveira Marques, ibid. 5.  Colonial reformers such as Mouzinho de Albuquerque and António Enes emphasized that colonial policy should focus on decentralization, development and autonomy. See M. Newitt, Portugal in Africa: The Last Hundred Years (London: C. Hurst, 1981) p. 177. 6.  See G. Clarence-Smith, The Third Portuguese Empire 1825–1975: Study in Economic Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985) p. 12. 7.  Norton de Matos was twice the highest ranking Portuguese governing official in Angola: in 1912–15 as Governor and in 1921–23 as High Commissioner. 8.  G. Clarence-Smith, op. cit. (1985), p. 116 and p. 120. 9.  Between 1920 and 1928 there were 29 inaugurated heads of government, 15 of which were in a 12-month period between 1920 and 1921. See A.H. de Oliveira Marques, História de Portugal, Vol. III: Das Revoluções Liberais aos Nossos Dias (Lisbon: Palas Editores, 1981) pp. 611–12.

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Page 203 10.  The government investigated the possibility of securing a loan from the League of Nations. The conditions demanded by the League were that Portugal be submitted to international financial controls, implying that Portuguese Africa would be transferred to international control. See David M. Abshire, ‘From the Scramble for Africa to the “New State”’, in D.M. Abshire and M.A. Samuels (eds), Portuguese Africa: A Handbook (London: Pall Mall Press, 1969) p. 85. 11.  By 1931, Angola's accumulated debts amounted to Esc$ 300,000,000, the servicing of which consumed half of the territory's income. See M. Newitt, op. cit. (1981), p. 178. 12.  See A.H. Oliveira Marques, op. cit. (1981), p. 371. 13.  The Estado Novo was the name given to the regime established by Salazar in Portugal where it was in power between 1928 and 1974. 14.  International Police for the Defence of the State ( Policia Internacional e de Defesa de Estado ). It was later transformed into the Security Directorate ( Direcção-Geral de Segurança) before the collapse of the Salazarist regime. 15.  It is important to dispel any idea of the republican period of 1910–26 as an attempt to establish democracy. It too was a period of one-party rule: the Portuguese Republican Party, and later the Democratic Party. At one point, the latter was even considered by the armed forces as a potential ally in the dictatorship they were planning. The republicans systematically enforced their ‘revolution’ quashing any organized opposition, including by socialists and syndicalists, and unleashed a period of arbitrary state terror. See Vasco Pulido Valente, O Poder e o Povo: A Revolução de 1910 (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, 1974). 16.  It is difficult to come up with a definition of fascism as a single doctrine but if we consider the Fascist state of Italy under Mussolini, there were certain similarities with the New State in Portugal. However, the extent of popular dissemination of the fascist movement in Italy was not replicated in Portugal. In a sense, there was instead a superficial engagement with certain aspects of fascist politics. 17.  Freitas do Amaral argues that the New State was closer to the absolutism of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries than the totalitarianism of the twentieth century; and Salazar, by his own admission, wanting to be the Prime Minister of an absolutist King. D. Freitas do Amaral, O Antigo Regime e a Revolução: Memórias Políticas (1941– 1975) (Venda Nova: Bertrand/Nomen, 1995) p. 57. 18.  According to Oliveira Marques, Salazar spoke against totalitarian regimes and criticized both the Italian Fascists and the German Nazis. In 1931, Salazar defined the goals of his regime as the establishment of a ‘well-understood political, economic and social nationalism, controlled by the unquestionable sovereignty of the strong state’. A.H. de Oliveira Marques, op. cit., (1972), p. 181. 19.  M. Newitt, op. cit. (1981), p. 121. 20.  J. Duffy, Portuguese Africa (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959) p. 269. 21.  O Mundo Português , II (1935), p. 218, quoted in J. Duffy, ibid., p. 276. 22.  See the description of the colonial structure of authority in the 1950s in J. Duffy, op. cit., pp. 283–8.

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Page 204 23.  A.H. de Oliveira Marques, op. cit. (1981), pp. 521–2. 24.  The regime believed that this constitutional reform helped Portugal bypass its obligations under Article 73 of the UN Charter which required administering powers to submit information on their respective non-self-governing territories. By defining its territories as provinces, Lisbon considered that this article did not apply to Portugal and its colonies. At the end of 1956, Salazar replied to the Secretary-General of the United Nations that ‘Portugal did not administer territories which could be included in the category indicated in article 73.’ J. Freire Antunes, Kennedy e Salazar: o Leão e a Raposa (Lisbon: Difusão Cultural, 1991), p. 39. 25.  M. Newitt, op. cit. (1981), pp. 220–1. 26.  The flamboyant Captain Galvão and a small force took control of the Santa Maria in the Caribbean and were lost at sea for a number of days. The liner was finally located by the US Air Force. Under the glare of the world press, Galvão declared the political status of his act and intimated that the ship might set sail for Angola. From there, he claimed, an anti-Salazarist challenge would be based. He said nothing about decolonization, however. The incident finally ended in surrender in Brazil and the Santa Maria was returned to Portugal. 27.  The pro-American Defence Minister, General Botelho Moniz, planned a palace coup but was outmanoeuvred by Salazar. See J. Freire Antunes, op. cit. (1991), p. 198. 28.  See Chapter 2. 29.  M. Newitt, op. cit. (1981), p. 220. 30.  F.W. Heimer, The Decolonization Conflict in Angola 1974–1976: An Essay in Political Sociology (Geneva: Institut Universitaire de Hautes Études Internationales, 1979) p. 12. 31.  Diu and Damão. 32.  On 14 December 1961, Salazar sent the following cable to General Vassalo e Silva, commanding officer of the Portuguese forces in Goa: ‘It is terrible to think that this may mean a total sacrifice, but yet I recommend and expect such a sacrifice as the only way to live up to our traditions and to best serve the future of the Nation. I see no possibility of truces nor of Portuguese prisoners, as there will be no surrendered ships since I feel that there can only be victorious or dead soldiers and sailors.’ My translation. Quoted in J. Freire Antunes, op. cit. (1991), pp. 311–12. 33.  Coffee, cotton, sisal, sugar, timber and maize; diamonds, iron, manganese, copper and ferro-manganese. 34.  For example, when sales of Angolan maize threatened to undercut metropolitan producers, the authorities enforced a strict sales quota and fixed a low price, hitting the Angolan producers hard. Consequently, sales of Angolan maize to Portugal, unlike other agricultural exports, fell dramatically. G. Clarence-Smith, op. cit. (1985), p. 148. 35.  By 1960, over 90 per cent of cotton goods imported by Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé were of metropolitan origin. However, this represented only 30 per cent of manufactured cotton sales. G. Clarence-Smith, ibid., p. 159. 36.  Ibid., p. 160. 37.  Ibid., p. 162.

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Page 205 38.  A. Castro, O Sistema Colonial Português em Africa (Lisbon: Editorial Caminho, 1980) p. 164. 39.  In 1962, the major proportion of Angolan sales were to the US (25.2 per cent) and to Europe (24.7 per cent to the EEC and 16.5 per cent to EFTA). Situação Económica de Angola no ano de 1962 (1963), p. 14. 40.  In 1957, Portugal's exports totalled Esc$ 8,253,000,000 of which Esc$ 3,328,000,000 were of Angolan origin. A. Castro, op. cit. (1980), p. 165. 41.  Ibid., p. 164. 42.  J. Paige, Agrarian Revolution (New York: Free Press, 1975) pp. 212, 226, 227. 43.  I.S. van Dongen, ‘Agriculture and other primary production’, in D.M. Abshire and M.A. Samuels, op. cit. (1969), p. 255. Van Dongen placed Angolan coffee' share of the world market in 1967 at 6.1 per cent, just behind the Ivory Coast which, at 8.1 per cent, was the largest African producer. 44.  I.S. van Dongen, op. cit. (1969), p. 255. 45.  J. Paige, op. cit. (1975), p. 247. 46.  Ibid., pp. 228, 230. 47.  See D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, Angola (London: Pall Mall Press, 1971) pp. 178, 182; J. Paige, op. cit. (1975), pp. 249–50. 48.  Restrictions on foreign capital were lifted in 1965. 49.  Paved roads increased from 250 miles in 1960 to 2,200 miles in 1967. F. Brandenburg, ‘Transport systems and their external ramifications’, in D.M. Abshire and M.A. Samuels, op. cit. (1969), p. 326. 50.  The natural facilities and increased capacities at the ports of Lobito, Luanda and Moçamedes coped with increased international traffic, including minerals from the Katanga copper region of Zaire and Zambia. See F. Brandenburg, ibid., pp. 321–2. 51.  In 1965, the Portuguese and the South African governments reached an agreement on the expansion of the Cunene River project which sought to establish an AngolanSouthwest African power grid. D.M. Abshire, ‘Minerals, manufacturing, power and communications’, in D.M. Abshire and M.A. Samuels, op. cit. (1969), p. 303. 52.  Amounts apportioned to Mozambique were broadly comparable to those spent by other colonial powers during the same period: Mozambique 20 41 Uganda 16 30 Tanganyika 17 18

Source : M. Newitt, op. cit. (1981), p. 196. 53.  Armindo Monteiro quoted in G. Bender, Angola under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Reality (London: Heinemann, 1978) p. 150. 54.  This view of Angolan society has been usefully developed by F.W. Heimer, op. cit. (1979). Heimer calls the core European society central. This supported the colonial state and economy. Access to central society was lim-

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Page 206 ited and required the acceptance of colonial norms. Outside central society were the ethnically centralized tributary societies. Centred around traditional political and social hierarchies, these represented the ‘uncivilized’ legacy which Africans had to renounce to be considered Portuguese. Central society was fundamentally coastal, urban and industrially based, while tributary societies remained confined to the rural hinterland. Overlapping occurred when labour was sought or when cash crops were grown for sale to central society. 55.  Lusotropicalism was derived from the socio-anthropological work undertaken in Brazil during the 1930s on miscegenation. For a critical view of lusotropicalism see Chapter One of G. Bender, op. cit. (1978c). 56.  Gilberto Freyre, a Brazilian sociologist whose work was prominent in both Portugal and Brazil. Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, Emerging Nationalism in Portuguese Africa: Documents (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1972), p. 19. 57.  All inhabitants of Cape Verde, Macao and Goa had full Portuguese citizenry. 58.  According to A.H. Oliveira Marques, thousands avoided civilizado status for this reason. See op. cit. (1981), p. 525. 59.  Assimilated individuals declared citizens. 60.  ‘Glimpses of the Angolan Nationalist Organizations’. GRAE (FNLA) Press Release (Leopoldville, 11 December 1962). Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), pp. 150–1. 61.  F. Bridgland, Jonas Savimbi: A Key to Africa (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986) pp. 45–6. 62.  F.W. Heimer, op. cit. (1979), p. 13. 63.  Ibid., p. 14. 64.  The cost of transplanting a family from a village community in Portugal to Angola was placed at US$ 100,000. G. Clarence-Smith, op. cit. (1985), p. 177. 65.  G. Bender, op. cit. (1978c), p. 230. 66.  G. Bender, ibid., pp. 107–31. 67.  F.W. Heimer, op. cit. (1979), p. 20. 68.  G. Bender, op. cit. (1978c), p. 230. CHAPTER 2  ANGOLAN ANTI-COLONIALISM 1.  M. de Lucena, A Evolução do Sistema Corporativo Português Vol. I (Lisbon: P. & R., 1976) p. 94. My translation. 2.  MPLA Statuts et programme, Leopoldville, 196? Translated and reproduced in R. Chilcote, Emerging Nationalism in Portuguese Africa: Documents (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1972) p. 229. The date of publication must have been sometime between 1962 and 1963, the period during which the MPLA leadership was based in Leopoldville. 3.  União das Populaçães de Angola . 4.  Statutes of the UPA , reproduced in R. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 101. 5.  UNITA (1984), p. 61. 6.  The universal acceptance of national integrity refers to the three main movements that contested power in 1975. Separatism was, however, not

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Page 207 absent from Angolan politics. In the Cabindan enclave, a separatist movement, the Mouvement de Libération de l’Enclave de Cabinda (MLEC) sought independence for Cabinda from 1960 onward. In 1963, under the aegis of the Congolese president, Fulbert Youlou, three pro-separatist groups, including MLEC, merged in Brazzaville to form the Front pour la Libération de l’Enclave de Cabinda (FLEC). See J. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution Volume I: Anatomy of an Explosion 1950–1962 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969) pp. 172–5, and The Angolan Revolution Volume II: Exile Politics and Guerrilla Warfare 1962–1976 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978) pp. 123–5. The FLEC' first resolution, adopted at their August 1963 congress in Brazzaville, begins: ‘The people of Cabinda, holding fast to the reaffirmation of their right to self-determination and to total, immediate and unconditional independence …’ FLEC Resolutions, reproduced in R. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 128. 7.  D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, Angola (London: Pall Mall Press, 1971), p. 8. 8.  The Mbundu are also known as Kimbundu which refers specifically to the language spoken. 9.  The Bakongo are also known as the Kikongo which refers to the language spoken by this ethnic group. 10.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 50. 11.  J. Marcum, ibid., and op. cit. (1978). 12.  A. Neto, ‘Angola in historical perspective’. Speech, Leopoldville, April 1963. Reproduced in R. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 213. 13.  União das Populações do Norte de Angola . 14.  D.L. Wheeler, ‘Origins of African nationalism in Angola: assimilado protest writings, 1859–1929’, in R.H. Chilcote, Protest and Resistance in Angola and Brazil: Comparative Studies (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1972), p. 69. 15.  Liga Angolana. 16.  D.L. Wheeler, op. cit. (1972), p. 73. 17.  D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 117. 18.  D.L. Wheeler, op. cit. (1972), p. 75. 19.  Liga Africana. 20.  Partido Nacional Africano . 21.  D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 118. 22.  The African League was closer to Du Bois, and was host to his faction in the congress. The PNA apparently leaned more towards Marcus Garvey. D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 119. 23.  The Angolan League was, however, provocatively called the ‘association of white killers’. Combined with alleged reports of assimilado participation in revolts between 1913 and 1917 and a number of other incidents (the murder of a European clerk and the discovery of an arms cache) this led to a clamp-down by the authorities in the summer of 1917. Dozens of assimilados were jailed without a trial. D.L. Wheeler, op. cit. (1972), p. 81. 24.  Liga Nacional Angolana. 25.  Voz d’Angola clamando no deserto.

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Page 208 26.  P. McGowan Pinheiro, ‘Politics of a revolt’, in Angola: A Symposium (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 107. 27.  Associação Regional dos Naturais de Angola . See D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 162. 28.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 25. 29.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 3 October 1990. João Van Dunem was active in the MPLA and in 1975 was with the press office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the MPLA' army, FAPLA ( Forças Armadas Populares de Libertação de Angola ). 30.  ‘Problems of the Angolan revolution’, article that appeared in Revolution (January 1964), reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 207. 31.  ‘Freedom shall come to Angola too’, Pravda , 6 September 1961, reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 194. 32.  Associação Africana do Sul de Angola . 33.  Julieta Gândara, Angelo Veloso and his wife, María da Luz Veloso, all active in the south of Angola (Benguela). Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 3 October 1990. 34.  Partido Comunista Angolano . 35.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 3 October 1990. 36.  In 1963, Mário Pinto de Andrade refers only to ‘other organizations’. M. de Andrade, ‘Angolan Nationalism’ (1963), reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 187. 37.  Conferência das Organizações Nacionalistas das Colónias Portuguesas. 38.  Casa dos Estudantes do Império . 39.  According to Samuels, Andrade joined the PCP while in Lisbon. M.A. Samuels, ‘The Nationalist Parties’, in D.M. Abshire and M.A. Samuels (eds), Portuguese Africa: A Handbook (London: Pall Mall Press, 1969) p. 391. 40.  André Franco de Sousa, who claims to have been a founder of the MPLA, described how in 1957 Lúcio Lara sent from Lisbon a home-made copier. It was transported to Luanda on board a merchant ship by a sailor named Gomes. The sailor handed the package containing the copier and many issues of PCP publications ( Avante and O Militante) to Franco de Sousa. A. Franco de Sousa, Mukanda ao Meu Irmão (10 December 1990), p. 6. 41.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 3 October 1990. 42.  D.L. Wheeler, op. cit. (1971), p. 146 and M. de Andrade, ‘Angolan nationalism’ (1963), reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 188. 43.  The famous ‘Trial of Fifty’ resulted from the arrests on 29 March and further arrests in July 1959. The defendants were identified by three lists of names which revealed the almost complete absence of Africans among the nationalists. Apart from foreigners such as an American, George Barnett, almost all were of European, assimilated or mestiço origin. Another point of interest was the listing of the defendants’ occupations. The mestiços, appropriate to their higher status, were mainly civil servants, bookkeepers or bank clerks. Those of African origin but with assimilado status were in less prestigious occupations, a large number of them being in the nursing profession. This was open to assimilados and had travel privileges which made it a transmission belt for this early period of nationalist organization. See J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), pp. 33–4, and W. Burchett,

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Page 209 Southern Africa Stands Up (New York: Urizen Books, 1978) p. 4. 44.  Mário de Andrade' brother, Father Joaquim Pinto de Andrade, an influential man in Catholic mestiço circles (D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 163), was arrested on 25 June 1959. Earlier, on 8 June, Agostinho Neto was arrested at his medical practice, apparently by the Angolan PIDE chief, João José Lopes himself (A.M. Khazanov, Agostinho Neto [Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1986], p. 86). Reports later emerged of deaths following a protest held in Neto' home village of Bengo against his imprisonment. A contingent of 200 troops allegedly fired on the demonstrators killing 30 and injuring 200 (J. Marcum, op. cit. [1969], p. 39). In August of that year, Neto was transferred from Luanda, first to Aljube in Lisbon and then later to the Cape Verde Islands. The colonial authorities were obviously wary of the inflammatory consequences of holding a popular figure such as Neto. His poetry and sojourns in prison promoted an image of political martyrdom, particularly in European circles. 45.  B. Davidson, In the Eye of the Storm (London: Penguin, 1975), pp. 163–4, and J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 35. 46.  J. Freire Antunes, Kennedy e Salazar: o Leão e a Raposa (Lisbon: Difusão Cultural, 1991), p. 85. 47.  Ghana had emerged from the Gold Coast in 1957 under the aegis of Kwame Nkrumah. Sekou Touré called de Gaulle' bluff and a 1958 referendum voted Guinea out of French orbit. 48.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 35. The documents were handed to two members of the American Committee on Africa (ACOA) by Joaquim Pinto de Andrade in February 1960. The ACOA was based in New York. See J. Freire Antunes, op. cit. (1991), p. 85. 49.  Relayed to Washington DC by the US Ambassador in Lisbon, C. Burke Elbrick, in April 1960 and quoted in J. Freire Antunes, op. cit. (1991), p. 85. 50.  Movimento Anti-Colonial. 51.  See in particular articles in Expresso (Lisbon), ‘MPLA: a controversia da fundação’, 1 December 1990, p. B7, and 2 February 1991, pp. 8R–15R. 52.  A. Franco de Sousa, Mukanda ao Meu Irmão , 10 December 1990. 53.  Expresso, (Lisbon), 1 December 1990. 54.  Partido da Luta Unida [dos Africanos?] de Angola. Movimento para a Independência de Angola. Movimento para a Independência Nacional de Angola . 55.  Expresso, 1 December 1990. 56.  Ibid. 57.  Interviews with Manuel Santos Lima and João Van Dunem. 58.  Unnamed in Expresso, 1 December 1990. 59.  ‘… a criação de um amplo movimento popular para a libertação de Angola .’ 60.  According to Samuels, the Soviet ambassador to Guinea, Daniel Semenovich Solod, was active in promoting Conakry as a centre for African liberation movements. M.A. Samuels, ‘The nationalist parties’, in D.M. Abshire and M.A. Samuels (eds), op. cit. (1969), p. 391. 61.  Expresso, 1 December 1990.

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Page 210 62.  Expresso, 2 February 1991. 63.  Interview with Manuel Santos Lima, Lisbon, 14 January 1991. 64.  West Africa , 14 July 1962. Reproduced in Africa Digest, Volume X, No. 1, p. 29. 65.  Expresso, 2 February 1991. The principal motivator of the 4 February attack was allegedly Canon Manuel das Neves. Although said to have been unconnected to either the MPLA or UPA, Canon Manuel das Neves had ties to the Protestant church in Angola which, in turn, looked to Leopoldville where Holden Roberto and UPA held sway at the time among Angolan expatriates. Later in 1962, when the FNLA (UPA) forms a ‘government-in-exile’ (GRAE), a ‘Mgr. Manuel das Neves’ is listed as its 2nd Vice Prime Minister. R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 112. 66.  A. Neto, ‘Angola in Historical Perspective’ (April 1963), in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 215. 67.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 20. 68.  D. and M. Ottaway, Afrocommunism (New York: Africana Publishing, 1986), p. 101. 69.  M. de Andrade in ‘Angolan Nationalism’, in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 188. 70.  These newly independent states have been described ideologically as proponents of African Socialism. They tended to have emerged from broadly based mass parties and a nationalist tradition, and, upon independence, set up radical regimes. Governments led by Sekou Touré in Guinea, Leopold Senghor in Senegal, Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania and to a certain extent Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana all imposed a form of socialism. 71.  S.N. Macfarlane, Superpower Rivalry and Third World Radicalism: The Idea of National Liberation (London: Croom Helm, 1985), pp. 45–6. 72.  MPLA Program of Action (December 1962), in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 258. 73.  I. Roxborough, Theories of Underdevelopment (London: Macmillan, 1979) p. 134. 74.  See G. White, ‘Revolutionary Socialist development in the Third World: an overview’, in G. White, R. Murray and C. White (eds), Revolutionary Socialist Development in the Third World (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1983): ‘In consequence, rather than being an historical successor to capitalism, socialism has become an historical substitute’, p. 3. 75.  Ibid. 76.  See G. Therborn, ‘From Petrograd to Saigon’, in New Left Review, Volume 48. 77.  M. de Andrade, ‘Freedom shall come to Angola too’, in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 195. 78.  Cited by K. Brown, ‘Angolan socialism’, in C.G. Rosberg and T.M. Callaghy (eds), Socialism in Sub-Saharan Africa: A New Assessment (Berkeley, Calif.: Institute of International Studies, 1979) p. 301. 79.  As well as 26 associations of a social or trade union character. These numbers include all movements monitored since the beginning of nationalist activity to 1967. In D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 220.

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Page 211 80.  In the conflict over the succession of the Kongo throne (which was based in São Salvador do Congo over the border in Angola) in 1955 and in 1957 UPNA fielded a Protestant candidate for the crown. These moves were blocked by the Portuguese who wanted a Catholic king for that figurehead throne. 81.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), pp. 62–3. 82.  See J. Marcum, ibid., pp. 67–8. 83.  Ibid., p. 67. 84.  Ibid., p. 84. 85.  Ibid., p. 71. 86.  Ibid., p. 96. 87.  Front Commun des Parties Politiques de l’Angola . Ibid., p. 95. 88.  Association des Ressortissants de l’Enclave de Cabinda . 89.  After the UPA withdrew, the Front continued as a coalition between the MPLA group and ALIAZO until February 1961. The leaders of the MPLA, however, dispatched two officials who declared that the local group had exceeded its authority by committing itself to the Front. J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 99. 90.  J. Freire Antunes, op. cit. (1991), p. 86. 91.  Holden Roberto, Press Conference, 10 June 1960. Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 66. 92.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 44. 93.  Interview with Manuel Santos Lima, Lisbon, 14 January 1991. 94.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969). 95.  See A.M. Khazanov, op. cit. (1986), p. 83. 96.  Front de Libération National. B. Davidson, op. cit. (1974), p. 201. 97.  See D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 191. Marcum cites Ralph E. Dodge who in November 1961 placed the total deaths at: 45,000 Africans and 250 to 1,000 Europeans (J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 150). An estimate by the British Missionary Society at 20,000 is quoted in B. Davidson, op. cit. (1974), p. 191. See also Africa Digest, Volume VIII, No. 6, p. 248. In the cities, the colonial authorities carried out arrests specifically targeting assimilados .See Africa Digest, Volume IX, No. 1, p. 26. 98.  D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 181. 99.  Quoted in J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 69. 100.  17,000 by July 1961. Observer, 2 July 1961. 101.  Resolution 163 (1961) S/4835. Resolutions and Decisions of the Security Council 1961. 102.  Africa Digest, Volume VIII, No. 6, p. 247. 103.  The Times, 1 July 1961. 104.  The UPA also experienced difficulties with Abako in the Lower Congo area where Roberto was not welcome. 105.  According to D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, some 300,000 people abandoned northern Angola after the 1961 attacks and the colonial backlash, most of who streamed over the border to Leopoldville. See op. cit. (1971), p. 190. ‘… A stream of refugees that was to pour 150,000 uprooted Angolans into the Congo before the end of (1961).’ J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 145. By December 1963, the refugee population in the Congo

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Page 212 had reached 300,000. J. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution, Volume II: Exile Politics and Guerrilla Warfare 1962–1976 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978) p. 355, footnote 80. 106.  Partido Democrático de Angola . 107.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 38. 108.  Establishment of the FNLA, 27 March 1962. R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), pp. 103–4. 109.  The ‘government’ was initially known as the ‘ Governo da República de Angola no Exílio ’ but was later changed to read ‘ Governo Revolucionário de Angola no Exílio ’, perhaps to be more in keeping with the times. Its leadership was: President, Holden Roberto; Vice-President, E. Kunzika (PDA leader); Foreign Minister, Jonas Savimbi. 110.  According to Savimbi, Roberto ‘ … took a persistent anti-Communist line … ’ See F. Bridgland, Jonas Savimbi: A Key to Africa (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986) p. 45. 111.  UPA newspaper, A Voz da Nação Angolana, 30 September 1960. R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 145. 112.  Establishment of the FNLA. Ibid., p. 104. 113.  Daily Nation , 27 December 1963. Africa Digest, Volume XI, No. 4, p. 115. 114.  West Africa , 11 January 1964. Africa Digest, Volume XI, No. 4, p. 114. CHAPTER 3  EXILE POLITICS 1.  A contemporary account claims that ‘ … the MPLA's headquarters were officially transferred to Leopoldville’ on 30 October 1961. P. McGowan Pinheiro, op. cit. (1962), p. 113. 2.  Interview with Manuel Santos Lima, Lisbon, 14 January 1991. 3.  According to Red Cross estimates, there were over 200,000 Angolan refugees in Congo Leopoldville in 1962. Expresso, 2 February 1991. 4.  Also displaced by the incoming leadership was José Bernardo Domingos, the vicepresident of the group. The ALIAZO (soon to be the PDA) took this attitude by the MPLA (in dislodging a respected figure) to be evidence of the bad faith of the movement. This may have affected the PDA' decision to merge with UPA. See J. Marcum (1969), pp. 204–5. 5.  J. Marcum, ibid., pp. 200–2. 6.  In July 1962, Neto arrived in Leopoldville after escaping prison in Portugal. His escape across the straits to Morocco was apparently achieved in part by the assistance given by elements of the Portuguese democratic opposition based, at that time, in Algiers. These ranged across the political spectrum, from supporters of General Humberto Delgado (opposition presidential candidate in 1958, later murdered in 1965, allegedly by the PIDE) to the highly disciplined Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), which were (temporarily) united in a front in exile (D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 213). 7.  A petition for the release of Neto was signed by French left-wing political and literary circles. 8.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 264. 9.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London 3 October 1990.

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Page 213 10.  V. da Cruz ‘Problems of the Angolan Revolution’ (1964). Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, Documents (1972), p. 210. In this document, Viriato da Cruz gives his view of the failures of the MPLA and what led him to leave the movement. 11.  The Steering Committee were Agostinho Neto (president), Matías Miguéis (vicepresident), Rev. Domingos da Silva (vice-president), Manuel Santos Lima (war), Mário de Andrade (external relations), Lúcio Lara (organization and training of cadres), Aníbal de Melo (UPA defector, information), Deolinda Rodrigues de Almeida (social affairs), Desidério da Graça (finance and economy) and Henrique (Iko) Carreira (security). Those in italics made up the Politico-Military Committee. See J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), pp. 29–30, footnote 130. 12.  The First National Conference of the MPLA is the first document which attempts a comprehensive definition of the constitution, ideology and objectives of the MPLA. Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), pp. 251–65. 13.  Exército Popular de Libertação de Angola . 14.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 302. Interview with Manuel Santos Lima, Lisbon, 14 January 1991. 15.  Militarily, the MPLA were never very successful in Cabinda. Despite the advantages given by the terrain (the mountains and thick forests protected MPLA units from Portuguese retaliation), they never achieved significant military gains in the enclave. One reason for this may be related to Cabindan separatist claims which diverted local popular support away from the MPLA. 16.  Khazanov claims the CIA supported Roberto from 1962 onwards (op. cit. (1986), p. 63). According to Burchett, the CIA supported Roberto from 1961, providing a monthly retainer of US$ 10,000 (op. cit. (1978), p. 26). Stockwell calls the CIA's relationship with Roberto ‘historic’ (see In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), p. 64. 17.  In the US, Roberto had active support from: the American Committee on Africa and the Baptist Church (D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 169); the Ford Foundation; and the AFL-CIO, the US trade union federation (M.A. Samuels, op. cit. (1969), p. 392). 18.  A.M. Khazanov, op. cit. (1986), p. 143. 19.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), pp. 14, 15. 20.  Memorandum to the African Governments on the Formation of the So-called Provisional Government of Angola , 15 April 1962. Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), pp. 239–43. 21.  Ibid. 22.  See J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 204. 23.  H. Roberto, ‘Letter to Neto’, 9 August 1962. Reproduced in R. H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 80. 24.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 250. 25.  J. Marcum, ibid. (1969), p. 249. 26.  Unfortunately, as reports about these bases emerged in the press, the Portuguese would systematically utilize them to help locate and militarily neutralize such bases. D. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 203. 27.  According to one account, the base had been granted in exchange for

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Page 214 Roberto's promise to President Kasavubu that the UPA was about to form a front with the MPLA. W. Burchett, op. cit. (1978), p. 16. 28.  Exército de Libertação Nacional de Angola . 29.  For all the claims about the strength and loyalty of the ELNA, the history of this army is riddled with incidents of revolt, mutiny, desertions and allegations of poor fighting capacity. Commenting on the fact that ELNA elements were only paid on their return from raids in Angola, Savimbi declared that it was not, therefore, very surprising that the units never strayed very far across the border for fear of not being able to return for their pay, becoming, in effect, no more than a border army. W. Burchett, op. cit. (1978), p. 31. Other observers have commented on the ELNA's distinct preference for parades over hard military operations. D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 206. 30.  The colonial backlash against the February and March attacks had led to the escape of activists from the cities into the forest areas. Attempts were made by proMPLA Luandans to organize and operate groups in the Dembos area around Nambuangongo. The MPLA's common origins in Luanda were the basis for its attempts to link up with these groups so that it would be able to claim that it maintained an active military force within Angola. But these groups were in direct competition with FNLA units in the area, and were anxious to provide evidence to the local population that they had access to both material and moral support from the MPLA. The Ferreira mission was intended to meet these needs. 31.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 218. 32.  To these accusations Kassanga added the charge of the murder, earlier that year, of João Baptista, the UPA field commander, by Bakongo tribalists (Baptista was a southerner, a Ganguela). Kassanga held Roberto responsible for inspiring tribalism. D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 204. 33.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 214. Roberto claimed that the Ferreira mission was undertaken in order to construct an airfield for the delivery of arms. 34.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 67. 35.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 207. 36.  During this period, the GRAE and the FNLA were one and the same and are thus used interchangeably throughout the text. 37.  The ALC was constituted by representatives from Algeria, Congo (Leopoldville), Egypt, Ethiopia, Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanganyika and Uganda. 38.  In Addis Ababa, 22–25 May 1963. 39.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 45. 40.  Including to a conference sponsored by China in Indonesia. M.A. Samuels, op. cit. (1969), p. 393. 41.  The first commander-in-chief of the EPLA, the MPLA's military arm. 42.  According to Van Dunem, Neto would have been defeated had he stood in a contest. Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 3 October 1990. 43.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 87. 44.  V. da Cruz, Problems of the Angolan Revolution , January 1964. Document reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, Emerging Nationalism in Portuguese Africa: Documents (1972), pp. 204–13.

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Page 215 45.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 3 October 1990. 46.  Interview in Africa (Lisbon), 17 August 1988. My translation. 47.  ‘MPLA: uma história de crises’, in Expresso (Lisbon), 8 December 1990. 48.  ‘Dr Cruz has been regarded as a member of the extremist wing of the MPLA.’ West Africa , 9 May 1964, in Africa Digest (1964), p. 188. 49.  In an interview given during a trip to the US in late 1961, Mário de Andrade stated that his group was not ‘pro-communist’ (J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 220). These attempts to present a non-radical face were made by the MPLA particularly during its sojourns in the US and the UN. Mário de Andrade's trip to Moscow to address the World Congress for General Disarmament and Peace on 12 June 1962 was, it seems, an exception. J. Marcum, ibid., p. 255. 50.  J. Freire Antunes, op. cit. (1991), p. 87. 51.  S. Weissman, ‘The CIA and US Policy in Zaire and Angola’, in R. Lemarchand (ed.), American Policy in Southern Africa: The Stakes and the Stance (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1978) p. 400. 52.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 71 and p. 95. 53.  V. da Cruz, op. cit., in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 210. 54.  Frente Democrática de Libertação de Angola . 55.  As with the MPLA and the FNLA, the rivalry between Angolans often took precedence over the fight against the Portuguese. To some of these much smaller (and poorer) groups, these realities signified that sometimes even making deals with the Portuguese was a necessity. One such group was the Movement for the Defence of the Interests of Angola ( Mouvement de Défense des Intérêts de l'Angola – MDIA) based in the Bakongo constituency and, therefore, a rival of the FNLA. It was believed that the MDIA was infiltrated by Portuguese agents. The MDIA was one of the partners with which the MPLA formed the FDLA. The other constituent partners were: the Angolan National Movement ( Movimento Nacional Angolano – MNA), the Ngwizako (also considered to have been a collaborator movement, according to a contemporary account by a PDA leader, A. Matumona, ‘Angolan disunity’, in Angola: A Symposium , [1962), p. 124), and a pro-MPLA labour movement, the National Union of the Workers of Angola ( União Nacional dos Trabalhadores de Angola – UNTA). 56.  The defection of Kassanga from the UPA did, however, threaten Roberto's leadership. Kassanga, along with André Kassinda, formed the Angolan National Union ( União Nacional Angolana – UNA). But since this challenge was taken outside the FNLA, the UNA quickly became just another Angolan movement in exile. See D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), pp. 206–7. 57.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), pp. 94–7. 58.  Africa Digest (London), Volume XI, No. 4, p. 11 (covering events to 19 January 1964). 59.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 97. 60.  Africa Digest, Volume XI, No. 4, covering events to 19 January 1964, p. 11. 61.  B. Davidson, op. cit. (1974), p. 207. 62.  D.L. Wheeler and R. Pelissier, op. cit. (1971), p. 215. 63.  Africa Digest, Volume XI, No. 4, covering events to 19 January 1964, p. 11.

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Page 216 64.  See Chapters 6 and 7. 65.  Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization. 66.  Memorandum to the Conference of Heads of State and of Government of the OAU , 17 July 1964. Document reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 282. 67.  Report of the Committee of Conciliation between GRAE and MPLA. Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 292. 68.  In the so-called ‘Taty putsch’, Alexandre Taty, a Cabindan, attempted to oust Roberto, allegedly with Portuguese support. See J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), pp. 148–9. 69.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 164. 70.  F. Bridgland, op. cit., (1986), p. 29. 71.  Ibid., p. 35. 72.  Ibid., p. 41. 73.  Ibid., p. 46. 74.  Ibid., p. 49. 75.  Ibid. 76.  Ibid., p. 56. 77.  Resignation statement 16 July 1964. Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 154. 78.  Where is the Angolan Revolution?, October 1964. Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote (1972), pp. 155–61. Both this document and the resignation statement referred to above were published in Algiers by the MPLA, the movement Savimbi turned to after leaving the FNLA. 79.  F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 65. 80.  UNITA (1984), p. 5. 81.  These had grouped together under the acronym AMANGOLA – Friends of the Angolan Manifesto ( Amigos do Manifesto Angolano ). They co-operated with the MPLA for a short time but did not join that movement. J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), pp. 161–2. 82.  União Nacional dos Estudantes Angolanos. 83.  Comité Preparatório de Acção Directa . 84.  F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 69. 85.  Ibid., p. 70. 86.  UNITA (1984), p. 5. 87.  J. Marcum, ‘Three revolutions’, in Africa Report, November 1967, p. 13. 88.  The eastern region of Angola became the MPLA's third front. The first front was the resistance in the Dembos area outside Luanda, and the second was in Cabinda from a base in the Congo (Brazzaville). The FNLA was active mainly in the northern areas adjacent to the border with Zaire. 89.  Savimbi was in Cairo attending a meeting of ‘progressive’ African leaders. J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 192. 90.  See P. Pezarat Correia Descolonização de Angola:, A Jóia da Coroa do Império Português (Lisbon: Editorial Inquérito, 1991), p. 37–8. 91.  Interview in Expresso (Lisbon), 8 October 1988. Francisco Costa Gomes was the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces ( Chefe do Estado Maior das Forças Armadas ) immediately before the 25 April 1974 coup in Portugal. Previously close to Botelho Moniz, the Minister of Defence who attempted a ‘palace coup’ in 1961 (see Chapter 1), Costa Gomes

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Page 217 was considered to be pro-American. He was ousted from his post in 1974. After the April coup, he became President of the Republic during the most radical period of the MFA until the counter-coup of 25 November 1975. During that time, he was considered to be pro-Soviet. CHAPTER 4  THE ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR 1975–76 1.  The National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM 39). 2.  Interview with João Van Dunem, 23 August 1991. 3.  For an excellent account and assessment of the coup and its aftermath see K. Maxwell The king of Portuguese Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 4.  Junta de Salvação Nacional. 5.  Movimento das Forças Armadas . According to a Le Monde report, at the time of the coup, the MFA had around 300 activists, which was roughly 7 per cent of the army officer corps. Cited in D. Porch, The Portuguese Armed Forces and the Revolution (London: Croom Helm, 1977), p. 94. Due to the fact that among those officers were many with the rank of captain, the movement was also commonly known as the ‘captains’ movement' ( movimento dos capitães ). 6.  Vice Chefe do Estado Maior General das Forças Armadas . 7.  A. de Spínola, Portugal and the Future (Johannesburg: Perskor Publishers, 1974). 8.  A. de Spínola, ibid., p. 20. 9.  D. Porch, op. cit. (1977), p. 86. 10.  Ibid., p. 83. 11.  Comissão Coordenadora do Programa do MFA. 12.  Partido Comunista Português (PCP). 13.  Comando Operacional do Continente. 14.  D. Porch, op. cit. (1977), p. 107. 15.  P. Chabal, Amílcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People' War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983b) p. 149. The African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) was founded by Amílcar Cabral, a widely admired figure in the history of anti-colonialism. He was assassinated in 1973. 16.  Ibid. 17.  M. Newitt, Portugal in Africa: The Last Hundred Years (London: C. Hurst, 1981), p. 245. 18.  Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents 1974–1975 (1975), B530. 19.  Interview in H. Gil Ferreira and M.W. Marshall, Portugal' Revolution: Ten Years On (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) p. 169. 20.  A. de Spínola, op. cit. (1974), p. 87. 21.  Partido Socialista . 22.  D. Porch, op. cit. (1977), p. 113. Scenes of embracing and congratulating broke out between the Portuguese delegation, led by Soares, and the PAIGC, astonishing their North African hosts who expected ‘protocole à l'anglaise’. See D. Porch, op. cit. (1977), p. 113.

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Page 218 23.  J. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution, Volume II: Exile Politics and Guerrilla Warfare (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978), p. 252. 24.  L. Aguiar, Livro Negro da Descolonisação (Lisbon: Intervenção), p. 378. My translation. 25.  F. Bridgland, Jonas Savimbi: A Key to Africa (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986), p. 117. 26.  Reported in Diário de Notícias (Lisbon), 21 April 1975. 27.  Daniel Chipenda was the MPLA commander of the Eastern Region. He challenged Agostinho Neto' supremacy within the MPLA in a bid for power known as the Eastern Revolt ( Revolta do Leste ). Mário de Andrade, a founder member of the MPLA, was responsible for its external relations. Father Joaquim Pinto de Andrade had been released from Portuguese imprisonment after the April coup. The Andrade brothers and others also challenged Neto' style of leadership and were known as the Active Revolt ( Revolta Activa ). 28.  Details of the Alvor agreement can be found in Angola, Rumo à Independência. O Governo de Transição: Documentos e Personalidades (Luanda: Livrangol, 1975). 29.  F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 119. 30.  D. Porch, op. cit. (1977), p. 120. 31.  António Silva Cardoso interviewed by Expresso, quoted in The Times (London), 19 May 1975. 32.  James MacManus writing in The Guardian (Manchester), 5 May 1975. 33.  Diário de Notícias (Lisbon), 4 May 1975. 34.  Holden Roberto in Tunis, 11 May 1975, quoted by The Times (London), 12 May 1975. 35.  Diário de Notícias (Lisbon), 16 May 1975. 36.  The Economist, 14 June 1975. 37.  The Guardian (Manchester), 30 May 1975. 38.  Report from Portuguese Africa , reproduced in Facts and Reports , Volume 5, No. 11, 31 May 1975, p. 16. 39.  Financial Times (London), 9 June 1975. 40.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 23 August 1991. 41.  Aware of the build-up of resentment, Neto chastised the lethargy of the movement in a message delivered on 1 January 1970. Reproduced in English in MPLA, (1970), p. 8. 42.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 23 August 1991. 43.  These reports have been backed by Van Dunem. Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 23 August 1991. 44.  C. Legum, After Angola: The War Over Southern Africa (New York: Africana Publishing, 1978), p. 11. 45.  G. Golan, The Soviet Union and National Liberation Movements in the Third World (Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1988) p. 270. 46.  M. Simpson, The Soviet Union and Afro-Marxist Regimes: The Path to the Treaties of Friendship and Cooperation (University of London, PhD, 1989), p. 191. 47.  The Soviet action was apparently taken after a negative report on the MPLA was given by Victor Lewin on his return to Moscow. G. Bender, ‘Kissinger in Angola: anatomy of failure’ in R. Lemarchand (ed.),American

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Page 219 Policy in Southern Africa: The Stakes and the Stance (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1978a), p. 69. 48.  The Political Bureau was made up of Agostinho Neto, Lopo do Nascimento, Lúcio Lara, Carlos Rocha, José Eduardo dos Santos, Joaquim Kapango, Rodrigues João Lopes, Pedro Maria Tonha (Pédalé), Jacob Caetano João ( Monstro Imortal) and Henrique Teles (Iko) Carreira. 49.  C.K. Ebinger, ‘External intervention in internal war: The politics and diplomacy of the Angolan civil war’, in Orbis, Volume 20, No. 3, Fall 1976, p. 688. 50.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 253; B.D. Porter, The USSR in Third World Conflicts: Soviet Arms and Diplomacy in Local Wars 1945–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 156; M. Simpson, op. cit. (1989), p. 199; J. Valenta, ‘The Soviet-Cuban intervention in Angola 1975’, in Studies in Comparative Communism, Volume XI, Nos. 1 and 2, (1978), p. 10. 51.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 253. 52.  F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 116. 53.  B.D. Porter, op. cit. (1984), p. 156. 54.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 253. 55.  Angola, Rumo à Independencia. O Governo de Transição: Documentos e Personalidades, (1975), p. 49. 56.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 257. 57.  Ibid., notes 128 and 129. 58.  J. Stockwell, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), p. 67. 59.  O Século (Lisbon), 24 March 1975, in Facts and Reports , Volume 5, No. 7, 5 April 1975, pp. 19–20. 60.  T. Hodges, ‘How the MPLA won in Angola’ (1978), p. 49. 61.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 23 August 1991. 62.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 258. 63.  B.D. Porter, op. cit. (1984) p. 160. When these figures are compared to those covering the period of heaviest fighting – between November 1975 and March 1976 there were 19 shiploads and 70 air missions – it is clear that there was a significant amount of Soviet weaponry transferred to the MPLA before October 1975. 64.  J. Valenta, op. cit. (1978), p. 11. 65.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 23 August 1991. 66.  F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 112. 67.  Estimate given by J. Bergerol, Financial Times (London), 14 June 1975. Cited in F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 119. Another estimate reported by The Guardian (Manchester) correspondent in Luanda holds that 700 had been killed by 5 May. Report in Facts and Reports , Volume 5, No. 10, 17 May 1975, p. 1. 68.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 259. 69.  J. Valenta, op. cit. (1978) p. 11. 70.  See Chapter 6. 71.  See footnote 256 in J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 273. 72.  J. Valenta, op. cit. (1978), p. 11. 73.  Reported in Facts and Reports , Volume 5, No. 10, 17 May 1975, p. 21.

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Page 220 74.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 23 August 1991. 75.  C.K. Ebinger, op. cit. (1976), p. 674. 76.  One source states that in April 1975, the FNLA forces numbered between 15,000 and 20,000 elements. Africa Confidential, 11 April 1975, p. 1. 77.  C. Legum in Observer (London), 18 May 1975. Reproduced in Facts and Reports , Volume 5, No. 11, 31 May 1975, p. 1. 78.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 259. 79.  F.W. Heimer, The Decolonization Conflict in Angola: 1974–1976 (1979), p. 65. 80.  Neto, Savimbi and Roberto met at Nakuru, Kenya, from 16 to 21 June 1975, in an attempt to put the transitional arrangements back on track. They signed the Nakuru agreement which reaffirmed the terms of the Alvor accords with regard to the transitional government and the holding of elections. One of the clauses referred to the disbanding of the Katangese gendarmes, which were, by this time, fighting for the MPLA. Two days after the signature, there was more shooting between the FNLA and the MPLA in Luanda. On 9 July, major fighting broke out once again. For details of the Nakuru agreement see reproduction in Africa Contemporary Record 1975–1976 , p. C80. 81.  Both quotations in T. Hodges, op. cit. (1978), p. 53. 82.  Reports abounded of looting, sabotage and transfer of goods to Portugal, reinforcing the bitter tension that existed between the communities. 83.  Diário de Notícias (Lisbon), 13 June 1975. 84.  T. Hodges, op. cit. (1978), pp. 51–2. 85.  F.W. Heimer, op. cit. (1979), p. 260. 86.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 260. 87.  Reports in Província de Angola 15 and 17 June 1975. Cited in Facts and Reports , Volume 5, Nos. 13/14, 12 July 1975, p. 28. 88.  F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1996), p. 127. 89.  Once UNITA had decided to enter the conflict militarily, it sought to purchase weapons. The Agence France Press reported that the UNITA military commander, Samuel Chiwale, visited Peking on 20 March, presumably to request military aid. AFP report in Facts and Reports , Volume 5, No. 7, 5 April 1975, p. 17. According to a later report, however, this fundraising trip was not as successful as Savimbi may have wished. Afrique-Asie , 19 May 1975. 90.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 262. 91.  G. Bender, op. cit. (1978), p. 79. 92.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 263. 93.  J. Valenta, op. cit. (1978), p. 12. 94.  O Século (Lisbon), 23 April 1975. 95.  L’Opinion (Morocco), 10 March 1975, in Facts and Reports , Volume 5, No. 7, 5 April 1975, p. 1. 96.  J. Valenta, op. cit. (1978), p. 13. 97.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 22 August 1991. 98.  Ibid. 99.  Diário de Notícias (Lisbon), 23 April 1975.

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Page 221 100.  Diário de Notícias (London), 15 July 1975, cited in T. Hodges, op. cit. (1978), p. 52. 101.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 269. 102.  T. Hodges, op. cit. (1978), p. 50. 103.  The Kaunda government in Zambia backed UNITA hoping to maintain its access to the Angolan port of Lobito for the export of Zambian copper. Zambia feared that the MPLA' control of Lobito, and the terminal of the Benguela railway, would be used to place the Zambian economy under pressure. 104.  The Provincial Organization of Volunteers for the Civil Defence of Angola. 105.  Interview in Expresso (Lisbon), 3 May 1975. 106.  O Século (Lisbon), 9 June 1975. 107.  C.K. Ebinger, op. cit. (1976), p. 689. 108.  N. Davis, ‘The Angola decision of 1975: a personal memoir’, in Foreign Affairs (New York), Fall 1978, p. 121. 109.  T. Hodges, op. cit., (1978), p. 55. 110.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 269. 111.  ‘Vorster is hailed by Savimbi’, in Star Weekly (Johannesburg), 3 May 1975. 112.  See Chapters 5 and 6. 113.  For details of the South African military operation, see J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978). 114.  The Popular Liberation Army ( Exército de Libertação Popular ) force of a few hundred was made up of former elements of the Portuguese army, the PIDE and other malcontent whites. Another ELP unit was said to be fighting the MPLA in the north alongside the FNLA. F.W. Heimer, op. cit. (1979), pp. 70, 75, 77. 115.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 22 August 1991. 116.  See Chapter 6. 117.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 274, footnote 261. 118.  Ibid., p. 274. 119.  ‘By mid-January 1976, the MPLA was reported to be supported by 9,000 Cuban troops, 6,500 Katangese gendarmes and 400 Russian advisors. The movement had large numbers of ‘‘Stalin' organs”, 68 PT-76 light amphibious tanks, 10 T-54 tanks, 20 T-34 tanks, 12 MiG-21 jets and 3 FIAT 91 jets.’ Quoted from Africa Contemporary Record (1975–76), p. B432. 120.  See N. Davis, op. cit. (1978). Earlier reports of the US covert operation in Angola on 25 September and 3 and 4 November, had not provoked a public reaction. 121.  W. Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 679. 122.  H. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 698. 123.  At the time of independence in November 1975, Nigeria had strongly criticized the role of the Soviet Union in Angola. By January 1976, the Nigerian head of state, General Murtala Mohammed, was characterizing that same Soviet involvement as ‘heroic’ and warned against the attempts of the ‘… inhuman and obnoxious apartheid regime in Pretoria trying to frustrate the will of [the Angolan] people’. C. Legum, After Angola: The War Over Southern Africa (New York: Africana Publishing, 1978), p. 30.

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Page 222 124.  The Democratic People' Republic of Angola was declared with two capitals (Ambriz in the north and Huambo in the south), a rotating premiership and unintegrated armies. It was never recognized and rapidly collapsed. 125.  African Contemporary Record (1975–76), p. B432. CHAPTER 5  ZAIRE AND SOUTH AFRICA 1.  See Chapter 3. 2.  J. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution: Exile Politics and Guerrilla Warfare (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978), p. 227. 3.  The agreement called for the creation of a Supreme Council of the Liberation of Angola ( Conselho Supremo da Libertação de Angola – CSLA) designed to co-ordinate a unified military command and a political council. J. Marcum, ibid., p. 210. 4.  ELNA was the FNLA' army, the Army of the National Liberation of Angola ( Exército de Libertação Nacional de Angola ). See S. Weissman, ‘The CIA and US policy in Zaire and Angola’, in R. Lemarchand (ed.), American Policy in Southern Africa: The Stakes and the Stance , (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1978), p. 403. 5.  C. Legum, After Angola: The War Over Southern Africa (New York: Africana Publishing, 1978), p. 32. 6.  Ibid., p. 10. 7.  Mobutu' regime also gained respect, particularly in the Arab world, for its bold, anticipatory and pre-emptive break with Israel two days before the 1973 October war. ‘Once the October War began, many African states followed suit, but the Zairian initiative brilliantly outmanoeuvred them – especially Nigeria, a major rival for African leadership.’ C. Young, ‘The Portuguese coup and Zaire' Southern Africa policy’, in J. Seiler (ed.), Southern Africa Since the Portuguese Coup (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1980), p. 201. 8.  C. Young, ibid., p. 208. 9.  Comité National de Libération. 10.  According to Lúcio Lara, quoted in C.K. Ebinger, ‘External intervention in internal war: the politics and diplomacy of the Angolan civil war’, in Orbis, Fall 1976, p. 674. 11.  ‘Youlou supported FLEC as part of his design to eventually annex Cabinda to Congo-Brazzaville.’ C.K. Ebinger, op. cit. (1976), p. 676. 12.  Front de Libération de l'Enclave de Cabinda . 13.  C. Legum, op. cit. (1978), and C. Young, op. cit. (1980). 14.  C. Young, op. cit. (1980), p. 200. 15.  Ibid., p. 201. 16.  J. Stockwell, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978). 17.  S. Wiessman, op. cit. (1978), p. 404. 18.  CIA official quoted in J. Stockwell, op. cit. (1978), p. 37. 19.  S. Weissman, op. cit. (1978), p. 406. 20.  C.K. Ebinger, op. cit. (1976), p. 674.

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Page 223 21.  J. Seiler, ‘South Africa's regional role’, in J. Seiler, op. cit. (1981), p. 107. According to Bridgland, who cites South African sources, the SADF took on an entire battalion of 1,000 Cuban troops at the ‘Battle of Bridge 14’ during three days from 9 to 12 December, taking four casualties but causing 200 Cuban deaths, including the commander of the Cuban expeditionary force, Raul Diaz Arguelles. F. Bridgland, Jonas Savimbi: A Key to Africa (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986) pp. 149–50. This version of events is backed by Durch: ‘Cuban and South African forces clashed … in what has come to be known as the Battle of Bridge 14. By all accounts, the Cuban forces were severely mauled.’ W.J. Durch, ‘The Cuban military in Africa and the Middle East: from Algeria to Angola’, in Studies in Comparative Communism, Volume XI, Nos. 1 and 2 (1978), p. 68. 22.  C. Coker, NATO, the Warsaw Pact and Africa (London: Macmillan/RUSI, 1985), p. 240. 23.  Bureau of State Security. 24.  K. Grundy, The Militarization of South African Politics (London: I.B. Tauris 1986), p. 90. 25.  D. Geldenhuys, South Africa' Search for Security since the Second World War (Braamfontein: South African Institute of International Affairs, 1978) p. 1. 26.  Ibid., p. 3. 27.  L. Mangasarian, ‘Influences on South African strategic thinking’, unpublished paper. 28.  D. Geldenhuys, op. cit. (1978), p. 5. 29.  C. Coker, op. cit. (1985), p. 76. 30.  Ibid., p. 83. 31.  Half a million tonnes of oil every day: roughly 3,300 fully-laden tankers. The route accounted for approximately 25 per cent of all trade with northwestern Europe. C. Coker, ibid., p. 82. 32.  Ibid., p. 82. 33.  D. Geldenhuys, op. cit. (1978), p. 6. 34.  Ibid., p. 7. 35.  Ibid. 36.  Ibid., p. 3. 37.  Ibid., p. 8. 38.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 266. 39.  J. Barber and J. Barratt, South Africa' Foreign Policy: The Search for Status and Security 1945–1988 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/ SAIIA, 1990), p. 139. 40.  D. Geldenhuys, op. cit. (1978), p. 5. 41.  J. Barber and J. Barratt, op. cit. (1990), p. 103. 42.  See T. Shaw, ‘South Africa, Southern Africa and the world system’, in T. Callaghy (ed.), South Africa in Southern Africa: The Intensifying Vortex of Violence (New York: Praeger, 1983), p. 54. 43.  J. Barber and J. Barratt, op. cit. (1990), p. 176. 44.  C. Legum, After Angola: The War over Southern Africa (New York: Africana Publishing, 1978) p. 37. 45.  J. Barber and J. Barratt, op. cit. (1990), p. 180. 46.  D. Geldenhuys, op. cit. (1978), p. 10.

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Page 224 47.  On 22 November 1975, writing in the Washington Post, Bridgland identifies South Africa as the origin of the ‘white soldiers’ that had intervened in Angola. F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 142. 48.  The ‘Zulu’ column advanced up the coast and joined up with an inland column, ‘Foxbat’, after taking Novo Redondo, 275 kilometres south of Luanda. Another column, ‘X-ray’, advanced towards Luso (where the Katanga ‘gendarmes’ were hitting UNITA hard), which it eventually took in December. F Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 144. 49.  Ibid., p. 145. 50.  Ibid. 51.  D. Geldenhuys, The Diplomacy of Isolation: South African Foreign Policy Making (Johannesburg: Macmillan SA/SAIIA, 1984), p. 77. 52.  D. Geldenhuys, op. cit. (1978), p. 10. Simpson has concluded that Pretoria believed a UNITA–FNLA coalition in Luanda would ensure no support or bases for SWAPO in Angola. This belief derived from an alleged comment by Savimbi considering an armed struggle in Namibia to be unnecessary. M. Simpson, The Soviet Union and Afro-Marxist Regimes: The Path to the Treaties of Friendship and Cooperation, PhD Thesis (University of London, 1989), p. 205. 53.  K. Grundy, op. cit. (1986), p. 89. 54.  Ibid. 55.  J. Barber and J. Barratt, op. cit. (1990), pp. 192–3. 56.  Ibid., p. 192. 57.  K. Grundy, op. cit. (1986), p. 89. 58.  J. Barber and J. Barratt, op. cit. (1990), p. 193. 59.  C. Legum, op. cit. (1978), p. 36. 60.  Ibid. Savimbi also claimed that South African raids had taken place in July. 61.  J. Barber and J. Barratt, op. cit. (1990), p. 191. 62.  D. Geldenhuys, op. cit. (1984), p. 79. 63.  Cited by C. Legum, op. cit. (1978), p. 37. 64.  C. Legum, ibid., p. 36. 65.  Citation in F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 142. 66.  Moss in Die Burger (Cape Town), 8 February 1977. J. Barber and J. Barratt, op. cit. (1990), p. 190. 67.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 268. 68.  D. Geldenhuys, op. cit. (1984), p. 76. 69.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 271. 70.  J. Barber and J. Barratt, op. cit. (1990), pp. 188–9. 71.  After its initial incursions, the SADF was, according to Heimer, ordered to hold back until 11 November in order to keep their identity secret. F.W. Heimer, The Decolonization Conflict in Angola 1974–1976: An Essay in Political Sociology (Geneva: Institut Universitaire de Hautes Études Internationales, 1979), p. 77. 72.  Seiler states it categorically: ‘both Zambia and Zaire asked the South African government to intervene against the MPLA’. J. Seiler, op. cit. (1981), p. 104. 73.  C. Legum, op. cit. (1978), p. 38. 74.  F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 145. 75.  Newsweek, 17 May 1976. Quoted in J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 271.

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Page 225 76.  New York Times, 5 and 7 February 1976. Quoted in C. Coker, op. cit.(1985), p. 96. 77.  A. Gavshon, Crisis in Africa: Battleground of East and West (Harmonds-worth: Penguin Books, 1981) p. 243. 78.  John Reed, the Director of the Africa regional office of the Assistant Secretary of Defence. 79.  C. Coker, op. cit. (1985), p. 96. 80.  J. Stockwell, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), p. 181. 81.  D. Geldenhuys, op. cit. (1978), p. 10. 82.  See Chapter 7. CHAPTER 6  CUBA AND CHINA 1.  N. Valdes, ‘Revolutionary solidarity in Angola’, in C. Blasier and C. Mesa-Lago (eds), Cuba in the World (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979) p. 91. Valdes claims that the MPLA' links to Cuba date to 1961. In 1962, at least 15 Cuban doctors were supposedly active in MPLA-liberated territory (p. 95). The fact that the MPLA had little, or none, in the way of ‘liberated territory’ in 1962 casts a doubtful light on this claim. 2.  Quoted by J. Dominguez, To Make a World Safe For Revolution: Cuba' Foreign Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989) p. 131. 3.  According to a Castro-approved account of the intervention in Angola, cited by Halperin, this occurred in January 1977. M. Halperin, ‘The Cuban role in Southern Africa’, in J. Seiler, Southern Africa Since the Coup (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1981), p. 31. 4.  D. and M. Ottaway, Afrocommunism (London: Holmes & Meier, 1981) p. 101. 5.  Quoted in F. Bridgland, Jonas Savimbi: A Key to Africa (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986), p. 77. 6.  J. Dominguez, op. cit. (1989), p. 131. 7.  W. Leogrande, ‘Cuban–Soviet relations and Cuban policy in Africa’, in C. Mesa-Lago and J. Belkin (eds), Cuba in Africa (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), p. 18. 8.  J. Dominguez, op. cit. (1989), p. 131. According to Khazanov, MPLA cadres were trained in Cuba from October 1966 onwards. A. Khazanov, Agostinho Neto (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986), p. 172. 9.  A. Khazanov, ibid., p. 173. 10.  W. Leogrande, op. cit. (1982), p. 19. 11.  N. Valdes, op. cit. (1979), p. 92. 12.  W.J. Durch, ‘The Cuban military in Africa and the Middle East: from Algeria to Angola’, in Studies in Comparative Communism (University of South California), Volume XI, Nos 1 and 2, 1978, p. 35. 13.  M. Halperin, op. cit. (1981), p. 33. 14.  In May 1977, playing an almost identical role, Cuban troops helped to secure Neto' leadership by putting down the attempted coup of Nito Alves.

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Page 226 15.  B. Davidson, In the Eye of the Storm (London: Penguin, 1975) p. 214. 16.  J. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution, Volume II: Exile Politics and Guerrilla Warfare 1962–1976 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978) p. 176. 17.  G. Golan, The Soviet Union and National Liberation Movements in the Third World (Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1988) p. 269. 18.  The Afro-Asian People' Solidarity Organization (AAPSO) was a precursor to the Tricontinental. 19.  J. Dominguez, op. cit. (1989), p. 131. 20.  N. Valdes, op. cit. (1979), p. 88. 21.  D. and M. Ottaway, Algeria: The Politics of a Socialist Revolution (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1970) p. 166. 22.  W.J. Durch, op. cit. (1978), p. 44. 23.  Cuban casualties are said to have been suffered during artillery duels. W.J. Durch, ibid. 24.  Speech given on 26 June 1965, quoted in M. Halperin, op. cit. (1981), p. 29. 25.  N. Valdes, op. cit. (1979), p. 91. 26.  This was acknowledged by the Guinean leader in a speech delivered in March 1976. N. Valdes, ibid., p. 93. 27.  N. Valdes, ibid., p. 94. Although the war did not continue to May 1974, it is likely Valdes is referring to artillery exchanges. 28.  Between 500 and 750. The discrepancy is said to have resulted from the smaller number of troops in Cuban tank battalions. W.J. Durch, op. cit. (1978), p. 53. 29.  In December 1975. Citation from N. Valdes, op. cit. (1979), p. 93. 30.  Radio Havana, 29 September 1975. Cited in J. Valenta, ‘The Soviet-Cuban intervention in Angola, 1975’, in Studies in Comparative Communism, Volume XI, Nos 1 and 2 (1978), p. 24. 31.  P. Shearman, The Soviet Union and Cuba, Chatham House Papers No.38 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), p. 39. 32.  G. Bender (1978); W. Burchett (1978); J. Dominguez (1989); W.R. Duncan (1985); W.J. Durch (1978); M. Halperin (1981); A. Khazanov (1986); Z. Laidi (1990); C. Legum (1978); W. Leogrande (1982), J. Marcum (1978); G. Garcia Marquez (1977); P. Shearman (1987); K. Somerville (1986); J. Valenta (1978); N. Valdes (1979); M. Wolfers and J. Bergerol (1983). 33.  G. Garcia Marquez, ‘Operation Carlota’, in New Left Review, Nos 101–2, March– April 1977. 34.  C. Legum, After Angola: The War Over Southern Africa (1978), p. 21. 35.  J. Valenta, op. cit. (1978), p. 13. 36.  Including João Van Dunem, active in the MPLA in Luanda at this time. Interview, London, 15 April 1991. 37.  Throughout the 1960s, a number of Cubans were involved in insurgent activity in a number of countries. Where their presence was considered subversive (i.e. when they were fighting incumbent governments), Havana would renounce responsibility for them and claim they were acting in their capacity of ‘private citizens’. See N. Valdes, op. cit. (1979), p. 94. 38.  W. Burchett, Southern Africa Stands Up (New York: Urizen Books, 1978); M. Wolfers and J. Bergerol, Angola in the Frontline (London: Zed Books, 1983).

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Page 227 39.  W. Leogrande, op. cit. (1982); J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978); K. Somerville, Angola: Politics, Economics and Society (London: Frances Pinter, 1986); N. Valdes, op. cit. (1979); J. Valenta, op. cit. (1978). Durch claims they arrived in June and established training camps at Henrique de Carvalho, Salazar, Benguela and Cabinda. W.J. Durch, op. cit. (1978), p. 64. 40.  J. Valenta, op. cit. (1978), p. 11. 41.  J. Marcum, ‘Angola: perilous transition to independence’, in G. Carter and P. O'Meara (eds), Southern Africa: The Continuing Crisis (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1982), p. 191. 42.  W.R. Duncan, op. cit. (1985), p. 129. 43.  After entering Angola in June across its southern border with Namibia, the South African army occupied the installations of the (South African financed) hydroelectric project on the Cunene river a month later, claiming to be protecting South African investments. 44.  J. Valenta, op. cit. (1978), p. 13. 45.  W. Leogrande, op. cit. (1982), p. 24. 46.  J. Dominguez, op. cit. (1989), p. 131. 47.  In M. Halperin, op. cit. (1981), p. 35. 48.  W.J. Durch, op. cit. (1978), p. 67. Laidi claims that before independence, there were 2,000 Cubans fighting alongside the MPLA. Z. Laidi, The Superpowers and Africa: The Constraints of a Rivalry 1960–1990 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 67. 49.  N. Valdes, op. cit. (1979), p. 101. 50.  Z. Laidi, op. cit. (1990), p. 71. 51.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 273. 52.  By February 1976, there were 14,000 Cuban troops in Angola. N. Valdes, op. cit. (1979). The US government believed there were about 37,500 Cubans in Angola in July 1987. C. Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), p. 354. 53.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 273. 54.  N. Valdes, op. cit. (1979), p. 105. 55.  Quoted in M. Halperin, op. cit. (1981), p. 36. 56.  Cited in B.D. Porter, The USSR in Third World Conflicts: Soviet Arms and Diplomacy in Local Wars 1945–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 166. 57.  W.J. Durch, op. cit. (1978), p. 65. 58.  N. Valdes, op. cit. (1979), p. 99. 59.  N. Valdes, ibid. 60.  Chinese terminology cited in J. Valenta, ibid., p. 4. 61.  H. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 713. 62.  G. Bender, ‘Kissinger in Angola: anatomy of failure’, in R. Lemarchand (ed.), American Policy in Southern Africa: The Stakes and the Stance (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1978), p. 95. 63.  See Chapter 7. 64.  W.R. Duncan, The Soviet Union and Cuba: Interests and Influences (1985); P. Shearman, The Soviet Union and Cuba (1987); J. Valenta, op. cit. (1978); W.J. Durch, op. cit. (1978). 65.  J. Dominguez, op. cit. (1989), p. 132.

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Page 228 66.  M.P. Leffler, ‘Inside enemy archives: the Cold War reopened’, in Foreign Affairs , Volume 75, No. 4, July/August 1996, p. 130. 67.  Ibid. 68.  A. Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents (1962–1986) (New York: Times Books, 1995), p. 362. 69.  See Chapter 7. 70.  P. Shearman, op. cit. (1987), p. 37. 71.  W.R. Duncan, op. cit. (1985). 72.  Ibid., p. 130. 73.  J. Valenta, op. cit. (1978), p. 25. 74.  J. Dominguez, op. cit. (1979), p. 132. 75.  A. Dobrynin, op. cit. (1995), pp. 362–3. 76.  Peking Review No. 31, 1 August 1975, pp. 8–9. 77.  Peking Review No. 6, 7 February 1975, p. 4. 78.  Peking Review No. 35, 29 August 1975, p. 6. 79.  Peking Review No. 31, 1 August 1975, p. 8. 80.  A. Gavshon, Crisis in Africa: Battleground of East and West (Harmond-sworth: Penguin Books, 1981), p. 130. 81.  Z. Laidi, op. cit. (1990), p. 25. 82.  R. Edmonds, op. cit. (1975), p. 49. 83.  Ibid., p. 134. 84.  See Chapter 2. 85.  B. Larkin, China and Africa 1949–1970 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1971), p. 189. 86.  Interviews with João Van Dunem, London, 3 October 1991, and Manuel Santos Lima, Lisbon, 14 January 1991. 87.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 160. 88.  F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 82. 89.  Ibid. 90.  Known as the ‘Chinese Eleven’. 91.  F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 94. 92.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 160. 93.  J. Stockwell, op. cit. (1978). 94.  UNITA (1984), p. 25. 95.  A. Hutchison, China's African Revolution (London: Hutchinson, 1975), pp. 232–3. 96.  In Bridgland's account, Roberto is said to have been anti-Chinese, having refused an earlier suggestion made by Savimbi to approach Peking. This contrasts with Marcum's claim that it was the UNITA leader who was anti-Chinese. 97.  E.K. Lawson, ‘China's policy in Ethiopia and Angola’, in W. Weinstein and T. Henriksen (eds), Soviet and Chinese Aid to African Nations (New York: Praeger, 1980), p. 174. 98.  One source has attributed the ease with which the FNLA deployed its forces on the ground to a secret deal struck between Spínola and Mobutu, which sought to outmanoeuvre the MPLA. Africa Confidential, 18 October 1974, p. 8. 99.  J. Stockwell, op. cit. (1978), p. 67. 100.  F. Bridgland, op. cit. (1986), p. 148.

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Page 229 101.  Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents 1974–1975 (1975), p. B537. J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 228. 102.  E.K. Lawson, op. cit. (1980), p. 173. 103.  J. Marcum, ‘Lessons of Angola’, in Foreign Affairs (NY), Volume 54, No. 3, April 1976, p. 413. 104.  AFP report, in Facts and Reports , Volume 5, No. 7, 5 April 1975, p. 17. 105.  Afrique-Asie , 19 May 1975. 106.  El Moudjahid (Algiers), 29 May 1975. Reproduced in Facts and Reports , op. cit. 107.  Peking Review No. 35, 29 August 1975, p. 6. 108.  Unidentified Chinese diplomat in A. Gavshon, op. cit. (1981), p. 139. CHAPTER 7  THE SOVIET UNION AND THE UNITED STATES 1.  V. Vassiliev, ‘Soviet foreign policy in the Third World’. Lecture at the LSE, March 1991. 2.  D. Albright, Soviet Policy Toward Africa Revisited (Washington, DC: CSIS, 1987) p. 3. 3.  Ibid., p. 4. 4.  Z. Laidi, The Superpowers and Africa: The Constraints of a Rivalry 1960–1990 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990) p. 7. 5.  Moscow's posture towards Guinea was influenced by Sekou Touré's links to the French communist party (PCF), another example of a communist party in the metropolis bringing together African Marxists in the colony and Moscow. 6.  For an extensive look at the theoretical nature of national liberation and its effect on the Cold War in the developing world see S. Neil MacFarlane, Superpower Rivalry and Third World Radicalism: The Idea of National Liberation (London: Croom Helm, 1985). 7.  R. Falk, ‘Intervention and national liberation’, in H. Bull (ed.), Intervention in World Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) p. 119. 8.  The triumvirate was L. Brezhnev, General-Secretary of the CPSU; A. Kosygin, Prime Minister; N. Podgorny, Head of State. 9.  R. Edmonds, Soviet Foreign Policy 1962–1973: The Paradox of Super Power (London: Oxford University Press, 1975) p. 53. 10.  G. Golan, The Soviet Union and National Liberation Movements in the Third World (Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1988) p. 308. 11.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 3 October 1990. Possibly referring to the same person, Marcum cites Portuguese sources which indicated that: ‘as early as 1952, an effort was made by a Soviet agent, one Feld Matvin, to unite these diverse organizations into a “Conselho de Libertação de Angola .”’ J. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution, Volume I: Anatomy of an Explosion 1950–1962 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969), p. 29. 12.  Pravda , 16 June 1961, cited in J. Valenta, op. cit. (1978), p. 6. 13.  J. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution, Volume II: Exile Politics and Guerrilla Warfare 1962–1976 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978) p. 130, footnote 28.

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Page 230 14.  See G. Golan, op. cit. (1988), p. 269, and J. Valenta, ‘The Soviet-Cuban Intervention in Angola 1975’, in Studies in Comparative Communism, Volume XI, Nos 1 and 2 (University of South California, 1978), p. 5. 15.  A. Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow's Ambassador to America's Six Cold War Presidents (1962–1986) (New York: Times Books, 1995) p. 362. 16.  M.A. Samuels, ‘The Nationalist Parties’, in D.M. Abshire and M.A. Samuels (eds), Portuguese Africa: A Handbook (London: Pall Mall Press, 1969) p. 395. 17.  Africa Research Bulletin (London), August 1965. 18.  Africa Research Bulletin (London), 22 December 1964. That same month, a somewhat cryptic statement by GRAE seems related to this approximation between Moscow and the MPLA. The GRAE declaration dismissed reports carried by Pravda which announced the termination of Soviet aid to GRAE. This, claimed GRAE, was pure propaganda as the GRAE had never received any Soviet assistance in the first place. As a recipient of OAU aid, GRAE did receive Soviet assistance. This incident may mark the beginning of the Soviet support for the MPLA through an attempt to malign the GRAE and bring the MPLA in from the cold. 19.  G. Golan, op. cit. (1988), pp. 269–70. 20.  P. Vanneman and M. James, cited in C. Stevens, ‘The Soviet role in Southern Africa’, in J. Seiler (ed.), Southern Africa Since the Coup (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1981), p. 47. 21.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 229. 22.  C. Legum, After Angola: The War Over Southern Africa , 2nd edn. (New York: Africana Publishing, 1978), p. 19. 23.  Quoted in M. and D. Ottaway, Afrocommunism (London: Holmes & Meier, 1981), p. 103. 24.  Later also in Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Bulgaria. Soviet (and North Korean) military advisors trained MPLA guerrilla units in Algeria, in Congo (Brazzaville) and in Egypt. See G. Golan, op. cit. (1988), p. 269. 25.  A. Klinghoffer, The Angolan War: A Study in Soviet Policy in the Third World (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1980), p. 17. 26.  Cited in B. Porter, The USSR in Third World Conflicts: Soviet Arms and Diplomacy in Local Wars 1945–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 148. 27.  C. Legum, op. cit. (1978), p. 11. 28.  G. Golan, op. cit. (1988), p. 270. 29.  See Chapter 4. 30.  A. Dobrynin, op. cit. (1995), p. 360. 31.  This information apparently led to an attempted attack on Chipenda in Lusaka. C. Legum, op. cit. (1978), p. 11. 32.  B.D. Porter, op. cit. (1984), p. 156. 33.  Bender assumes this occurred in October or November 1974. See G. Bender, ‘Kissinger in Angola: anatomy of failure’, in R. Lemarchand (ed.), American Policy in Southern Africa: The Stakes and the Stance (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1978a) p. 76. According to Van Dunem, Moscow resumed its support of Neto after he had succeeded in regaining control of the movement. In the face of the chal-

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Page 231 lenges from the ‘Revolts’, Neto walked out of an MPLA conference in Lusaka followed by an important faction from the ‘First Military Region’. Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 23 August 1991. 34.  A. Dobrynin, op. cit. (1995), p. 362. 35.  ‘Statuts et programme’, in R.H. Chilcote, Emerging Nationalism in Portuguese Africa: Documents (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1972) p. 228. 36.  See Chapter 3. A US State Department memorandum was circulated in 1963 to its missions in Africa stipulating that the MPLA was not to be alienated. J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 16. 37.  ‘Freedom shall come to Angola, too’, Pravda , 6 September 1961, reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 195. 38.  Màrio de Andrade speaking at the 32nd meeting of the UN Special Committee on Territories under Portuguese Administration held in Leopoldville on 24 May 1962. Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), pp. 198–9. 39.  Report in R.H. Chilcote, ibid., p. 256. 40.  Memorandum to the African Liberation Committee of the Organization of African Unity , August 1963, Dakar. In R.H. Chilcote, ibid., p. 271. 41.  ‘Statuts et programme’, in R.H. Chilcote, ibid., p. 235. 42.  M.A. Samuels, op. cit. (1969), p. 395. 43.  Africa Research Bulletin (London), 10 August 1965. 44.  Agostinho Neto at the 24th CPSU Congress, Pravda , 7 April 1971. Quoted in R. Ulyanovsky, National Liberation: Essays on Theory and Practice (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978), p. 365. 45.  Ibid., p. 374. 46.  G. White, ‘Revolutionary socialist development in the Third World: an overview’, in G. White, R. Murray and C. White (eds), Revolutionary Socialist Development in the Third World (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1983), p. 3. 47.  Argument developed by J. Copans in ‘The USSR, alibi or instrument for Black African states’, in Z. Laidi, The Third World and the Soviet Union (London: Zed Books, 1988), p. 25. 48.  Quoted in R. Falk, op. cit. (1984), p. 121. 49.  See Chapter 2. 50.  See G. Therborn, ‘From Petrograd to Saigon’, in New Left Review 48. 51.  R. Edmonds, op. cit. (1975), p. 49. 52.  A. Neto, A. Cabral and E. Mondlane, ‘A Voz dos Povos em Luta’, Declarações à Voz da Liberdade (Algiers: FPLN Pamphlet, 1969?). My translation. 53.  MPLA, ‘Tenth year of armed struggle’, in MPLA 1970 (Liberation Support Movement Pamphlet) p. 17. 54.  Agostinho Neto in a speech delivered on 4 February 1970. In MPLA 1970, p. 12. 55.  Interview with Manuel Santos Lima, Lisbon, 14 January 1991. 56.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 87. 57.  M. Simpson, The Soviet Union and Afro-Marxist Regimes: The Path to the Treaties of Friendship and Cooperation, PhD thesis (University of London, 1989), p. 191. 58.  D. Barnet and R. Harvey, The Revolution in Angola: MPLA, Life Histories and Documents (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), p. 259.

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Page 232 59.  R. Edmonds, op. cit. (1975), p. 43. 60.  M. Bowker and P. Williams, Superpower Detente: A Reappraisal (London: Sage Publications/RIIA, 1988), p. 114. 61.  R. Edmonds, Soviet Foreign Policy: The Brezhnev Years (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 153. 62.  M. Bowker and P. Williams, op. cit. (1988), p. 122. 63.  H. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994) p. 698. 64.  J. Valenta, ‘The Soviet–Cuban intervention in Angola 1975’, in Studies in Comparative Communism, Volume XI, Nos 1 and 2 (University of South California, 1978). 65.  A. Dobrynin, op. cit. (1995), p. 360. 66.  Ibid., pp. 360–1. 67.  Ibid., p. 362. 68.  Ibid., p. 361. 69.  Ibid. 70.  Interview with João Van Dunem, London, 15 April 1991. 71.  M.P. Leffler, ‘Inside enemy archives: the Cold War reopened’, in Foreign Affairs , Volume 75, No. 4, July/August 1996, p. 130. 72.  See Chapter 4. 73.  C. Legum, op. cit. (1978), p. 22. 74.  M. Bowker and P. Williams, op. cit. (1988), p. 118. 75.  V. Vassiliev, ‘Soviet foreign policy in the Third World’. Lecture at the LSE, March 1991. 76.  C. Legum, op. cit. (1978), p. 23. 77.  A. Dobrynin, op. cit. (1995), p. 362. 78.  Quoted in C. Coker, Nato, the Warsaw Pact and Africa (London: Macmillan/RUSI, 1985), p. 63. 79.  Cited in J. Freire Antunes, Kennedy e Salazar: o Leão e a Raposa (Lisbon: Difusão Cultural, 1991) p. 31. My retranslation. 80.  C. Coker, op. cit. (1985), p. 63. 81.  Ibid. 82.  Ibid., p. 64. 83.  J. Freire Antunes, op. cit. (1991), p. 31. 84.  Towards the end of the 1960s, calls were heard for the expulsion of Portugal from NATO. C. Coker, op. cit. (1985), Chapter 3. 85.  A.M. Schlesinger, Jr, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflen, 1965), p. 562. 86.  Ibid. 87.  Ibid. 88.  Ibid., p. 563. 89.  Ibid., p. 510. 90.  J. Freire Antunes, op. cit. (1991), p. 51. 91.  United Nations Yearbook 1960 (New York: UN), pp. 138–40. 92.  A.M. Schlesinger, op. cit. (1965), p. 511. 93.  Resolution 163 (1961) was adopted by nine votes to none, with two abstentions (France and the United Kingdom). See Resolutions and Decisions of the Security Council 1961 (New York: UN Official Records).

94.  Chapter XI of the UN Charter relates to non-self-governing territories and the obligations of member states responsible for their administra-

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Page 233 tion. Article 23 refers to these obligations, including that of transmitting to the Secretary-General of the UN information on conditions in those territories. 95.  A.M. Schlesinger, op. cit. (1965), p. 512. 96.  J. Freire Antunes, op. cit. (1991), p. 57. 97.  Ibid., p. 58. 98.  Ibid., p. 132. 99.  H. Jackson, From the Congo to Soweto: US Foreign Policy Toward Africa Since 1960 (New York: William Morrow, 1982), p. 58. 100.  R. Morris, ‘The proxy war in Angola: the pathology of a blunder’, in New Republic (Washington, DC), 31 January 1976, p. 20. 101.  Z. Laidi, The Superpowers and Africa: The Constraints of a Rivalry 1960–1990 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 61. 102.  C. Legum, op. cit. (1978), p. 10. 103.  G. Bender, ‘Kissinger in Angola: anatomy of failure’, in R. Lemarchand (ed.), American Policy in Southern Africa: The Stakes and the Stance (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1978), p. 69. 104.  R. Morris, op. cit. (1976), p. 20. 105.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 182. 106.  Ibid., p. 183. 107.  Ibid., p. 184. 108.  Ibid. 109.  Ibid., p. 268. 110.  Referred to in Z. Laidi, op. cit. (1990), p. 18. 111.  T. Sorenson, Kennedy (London: Hodder&Stoughton, 1965) p. 538, note 3. 112.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1969), p. 183. 113.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 21. 114.  In 1962, over US$ 200,000 was spent by the firm Selvage and Lee on a campaign to disseminate the image of a ‘communist invasion of Angola’. Ibid., p. 272. 115.  Ibid. 116.  J. Freire Antunes, op. cit. (1991), p. 52. My translation. 117.  Ibid. 118.  Press statement distributed in English by the American Committee on Africa in New York, dated 15 March 1961. Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), pp. 70–3. 119.  ‘On the third anniversary of the Revolution.’ Document reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), pp. 87–9. 120.  Ibid. 121.  Memorandum to UAM, September 1962. Document reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), pp. 146–9. 122.  ‘On the third anniversary of the Revolution.’ Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), pp. 87–9. 123.  Statutes of the UPA. Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1972), p. 101. 124.  US Embassy in Leopoldville to State Department, 30 December 1963, quoted in S. Weissman, ‘The CIA and US policy in Zaire and Angola’, in R. Lemarchand (ed.), American Policy in Southern Africa: The Stakes and the Stance (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1978) p. 401.

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Page 234 125.  J. Stockwell, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), p. 116. 126.  In a document printed by the MPLA in Algiers, ‘Où en est la Révolution Angolaise.’ Reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1971), pp. 155–61. 127.  Ibid. 128.  ‘La révolution angolaise dans le contexte africain et extra-africain’, Leopoldville, 15 March 1965. Document reproduced in R.H. Chilcote, op. cit. (1971), pp. 165–70. 129.  Reproduced in full in Mohamed A. El-khawas and Barry Cohen (eds), The Kissinger Study on Southern Africa (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1976). 130.  Ibid., pp. 66–9. 131.  Ibid., p. 66. 132.  G. Bender, op. cit. (1978a), p. 69. 133.  J. Freire Antunes, op. cit. (1991), p. 37. 134.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 236. 135.  This included US$ 30 million in agricultural commodities, drawing rights on up to US$ 5 million worth of non-military equipment and eligibility for US$ 400 million financing at the Export-Import Bank. Ibid. 136.  G. Bender, op. cit. (1978a), p. 70. 137.  According to reports, a group of Portuguese officers underwent counterinsurgency training at the US Army Jungle Warfare School at Fort Gulick, Panama Canal Zone. See T. Szulc, ‘Lisbon and Washington: behind the Portuguese revolution’, in Foreign Policy (New York), No. 21, Winter 1975–76, p. 21. 138.  Ibid. 139.  G. Bender, op. cit. (1978a), p. 71. 140.  J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 236. 141.  Ibid., p. 237. 142.  Ibid. 143.  Laidi posits that, in the light of the increased proportions of Angolan contributions (swollen by Gulf Oil Corporation fees) to the Portuguese budget, it is possible to conclude that ‘… Gulf Oil backed sixty percent of the Portuguese war effort in Angola on the eve of decolonization’. Z. Laidi, op. cit. (1990), p. 52. 144.  See W. Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography (New York: Simon&Schuster, 1992), p. 674. 145.  H. Ekwe-Ekwe, Conflict and Intervention in Africa: Nigeria, Angola, Zaire (London: Macmillan, 1990), p. 73. 146.  G. Bender, op. cit. (1978a), p. 71. 147.  Ibid., p. 69. 148.  According to Marcum, US support for the FNLA had been largely interrupted since the late-1960s, apart from an annual retainer of US$ 10,000 for ‘intelligence collection’. J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 237. 149.  J. Stockwell, op. cit. (1978), p. 67. 150.  G. Bender, op. cit. (1978a), p. 75. 151.  R. Morris, op. cit. (1976), p. 20. 152.  A separate proposal to provide UNITA with a grant of US$ 100,000

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Page 235 was turned down. S. Weissman, op. cit. (1978), p. 404. 153.  W. Isaacson, op. cit. (1994), p. 676. Macfarlane also believes that Kissinger was acting under a fear that the Soviet Union was intent on exploiting American weaknesses in the post-Vietnam era. See S. N. Macfarlane, Intervention and Regional Security (London: IISS Adelphi Papers No. 196, Spring 1985), p. 12. 154.  G. Bender, op. cit. (1978a). 155.  W. Isaacson, op. cit. (1994), p. 677. Kissinger had turned down Davis's request to participate in that meeting. 156.  Ibid. 157.  N. Davis, ‘The Angola decision of 1975: a personal memoir’, in Foreign Affairs (New York), Fall 1978. 158.  J. Stockwell, op. cit. (1978), p. 67. 159.  W. Isaacson, op. cit. (1994), p. 677. 160.  Ibid. 161.  Z. Laidi, op. cit. (1990), p. 49. 162.  Testimony given by the Secretary of State before the Subcommittee on Africa of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, US Senate, 29 January 1976. Quoted in J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 408. 163.  S. Weissman, op. cit. (1978), p. 402. 164.  J. Marcum, ‘Lessons of Angola’, in Foreign Affairs , Volume 54, No. 3, April 1976, p. 414. 165.  K. Adelman, ‘Report from Angola’, in Foreign Affairs (New York), Volume 53, No. 3, April 1975, p. 568. 166.  Z. Laidi, op. cit. (1990), p. 66. 167.  G. Bender, op. cit. (1978a), p. 76. 168.  Ibid., pp. 76–7. 169.  H. Jackson, op. cit. (1982), p. 66. 170.  ‘According to three informed individuals – a US official then in Washington, a Western diplomatic Congo specialist, and an American businessman who talked with the … CIA man Devlin – the CIA was involved in the second Mobutu coup of November … 1965.’ S. Weissman, op. cit. (1978), p. 394. 171.  H. Jackson, op. cit. (1982), p. 44. 172.  S. Weissman, op. cit. (1978), p. 395. 173.  ‘… Three-quarters of a billion dollars in US investments, loans … and our access on favorable terms to Zaire's mineral resources.’ S. Weissman, op. cit. (1978), p. 395. American investments in Zaire were worth approximately US$ 800 million. J. Marcum, op. cit. (1978), p. 262. 174.  See Chapter 5. 175.  G. Bender, op. cit. (1978a), p. 75. 176.  Ibid., p. 76. 177.  Stockwell, the CIA task officer in charge of the Angola programme, argues as much in his book. J. Stockwell, op. cit. (1978). 178.  A. Dobrynin, op. cit. (1995), p. 361. 179.  R. Edmonds, op. cit. (1983), p. 153. 180.  H. Ekwe-Ekwe, op. cit. (1990), p. 82. 181.  W. Isaacson, op. cit. (1994), p. 682. 182.  A. Dobrynin, op. cit. (1995), p. 362.

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Page 236 183.  Kissinger ‘was furious at Ford for backing down on Angola, and he even attacked him by name, shaking his head as he described the president's fecklessness’. W. Isaacson, op. cit. (1994), p. 683. 184.  G. Bender, op. cit. (1978a), p. 74. 185.  Ibid., p. 75. 186.  W. Isaacson, op. cit. (1994), p. 679 CONCLUSION 1.  Brigadier Pezarat Correia was a member of the Armed Force Movement and was Admiral Rosa Coutinho's deputy in Angola at the end of 1974. 2.  Report in Público (Lisbon), 13 February 1992. 3.  Ibid. 4.  Little's ‘pull theory’ seems to apply to the Angolan civil war, at least in the way it is interpreted here. This approach to international intervention in internal wars looks at these situations as a complex model involving both internal and external actors. Intervention by the latter is seen as a response to the former, rather than as an active initiative independent of the internal situation. External rivalries are drawn in by the parties to a civil war in order to enlarge the latter's capacities. In this perspective, international intervention in a civil war is seen as a situation that is created by the interaction of parallel national and international levels of conflict, a perspective which is shared by the author. See R. Little, Intervention: External Involvement in Civil Wars (London: Martin Robertson, 1975), p. 3.

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Page 237 Bibliography Abshire, D.M., ‘From the scramble for Africa to the ‘‘New State”’, in D.M. Abshire and M.A. Samuels (eds), Portuguese Africa: A Handbook (London: Pall Mall Press, 1969). Abshire, D.M., ‘Minerals, manufacturing, power and communications’, in D.M. Abshire and M.A. Samuels (eds), Portuguese Africa: A Handbook (London: Pall Mall Press, 1969). Adelman, K.L., ‘Report from Angola’, in Foreign Affairs (New York), Volume 53 No. 3, April 1975. Africa (Lisbon). Africa Confidential (London). Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents 1974–1975 (London: Rex Collings, 1975). Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents 1975–1976 (London: Rex Collings, 1976). Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents 1976–1977 (London: Rex Collings, 1977). Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents 1977–1978 (New York: Africana Publishing, 1979). Africa Digest (London). Africa Research Bulletin (London). Aguiar, L., Livro Negro da Descolonização (Lisbon: Intervenção, 1976). Albright, D., Soviet Policy Toward Africa Revisited (Washington, DC: CSIS, 1987). Angola: A Tentativa de Golpe de Estado de 27 de Maio de 77 (Informação do Bureau Político do MPLA, Edições Avante, 1977). Angola, Rumo à Independencia. O Governo de Transição: Documentos e Personalidades (Luanda: Livrangol, 1975). Barber, J. and Barratt, J., South Africa's Foreign Policy: The Search for Status and Security 1945–1988 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/SAIIA, 1990). Barnet, D. and Harvey, R., The Revolution in Angola: MPLA, Life Histories and Documents (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971). Bender, G., ‘Kissinger in Angola: anatomy of failure’, in R. Lemarchand (ed.), American Policy in Southern Africa: The Stakes and the Stance (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1978a). Bender, G., ‘Angola, the Cubans and American anxieties’, in Foreign Policy (Washington/New York), No. 31, 1978b. Bender, G., Angola under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Reality (London: Heinemann, 1978c). Bender, G., ‘American policy toward Angola: a history of linkage’, in G. Bender, J. Coleman and R. Sklar (eds), African Crisis Areas and US Foreign Policy (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1985). Bender, G., ‘The eagle and the bear in Angola’, in The Annals of the Ameri-can Academy of Political and Social Science (Philadelphia, Pa.), Volume 489, January 1987.

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Page 241 Leffler, M.P., ‘Inside enemy archives: the Cold War reopened’, in Foreign Affairs , Volume 75, No. 4, July/August 1996. Legum, C., The role of Western Powers in Southern Africa', and ‘A study of international intervention in Angola’, in After Angola: The War Over Southern Africa , 2nd edn (New York: Africana Publishing, 1978). Legum, C., ‘African outlooks toward the USSR’, in D. Albright (ed.), Africa and International Communism (London: Macmillan, 1980). Leogrande, W., ‘Cuban–Soviet relations and Cuban policy in Africa’, in C. Mesa-Lago and J. Belkin (eds), Cuba in Africa (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982). Little, R., Intervention: External Involvement in Civil Wars (London: Martin Robertson, 1975). Lucena, M. de, A Evolução do Sistema Corporativo Português Volume I (Lisbon: P. & R., 1976). Macfarlane, S. Neil, Intervention and Regional Security (London: IISS Adelphi Papers, No. 196, Spring 1985). Macfarlane, S. Neil, Superpower Rivalry and Third World Radicalism: The Idea of National Liberation (London: Croom Helm, 1985). Macfarlane, S. Neil, ‘The Soviet Union and Southern African security’, in Problems of Communism, Volume XXXVIII, March–June, 1989. McGowen Pinheiro, P., ‘Politics of a revolt’, in Angola: A Symposium (London: Oxford University Press, 1962). Mack, A., ‘The politics of asymmetric conflict’, in World Politics , January 1975. Marcum, J., ‘Three revolutions’, in Africa Report, November 1967. Marcum, J., The Angolan Revolution, Volume I: Anatomy of an Explosion 1950–1962 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969). Marcum, J., ‘Lessons of Angola’, in Foreign Affairs , Volume 54, No. 3, April 1976. Marcum, J., The Angolan Revolution, Volume II: Exile Politics and Guerrilla Warfare 1962–1976 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978). Marcum, J., ‘Angola: perilous transition to independence’, in G. Carter and P. O'Meara (eds), Southern Africa: The Continuing Crisis, 2nd edn (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1982). Matumona, A., ‘Angolan disunity’, in Angola: A Symposium (London: Oxford University Press, 1962). Mayall, J., Africa: The Cold War and After (London: Elek Books, 1971). Maxwell, K., The Making of Portuguese Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Minter, W., Portuguese Africa and the West (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972). Modelski, G., ‘The international relations of internal war’, in J. Rosenau (ed.), International Aspects of Civil Strife (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964). Morris, R., ‘The proxy war in Angola: the pathology of a blunder’, in New Republic (Washington, DC), 31 January 1976. MPLA, 1970 (Liberation Support Movement pamphlet). MPLA, Programa (pamphlet). MPLA, Central Committee Plenary, 23–29 October 1976 (London: MAGIC).

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Page 243 Somerville, K., Angola: Politics, Economics and Society (London: Frances Pinter, 1986). Somerville, K., Foreign Military Intervention in Africa (London: Pinter, 1990). Sorenson, T., Kennedy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965). Spínola, A. de, Portugal and the Future (Johannesburg: Perskor Publishers, 1974). Staniland, M., ‘Africa, the American intelligentsia, and the shadow of Vietnam’, in Political Science Quarterly, Volume 98, No. 4, Winter 1983–84. Stevens, C., ‘The Soviet Union and Angola’, in African Affairs: Journal of the Royal African Society, Volume 75, No. 299, April 1976. Stevens, C., ‘The Soviet role in Southern Africa’, in J. Seiler (ed.), Southern Africa Since the Coup (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1981). Stockwell, J., In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978). Szulc, T., ‘Lisbon and Washington: behind the Portuguese revolution’, in Foreign Policy (New York), No. 21, Winter 1975–76. Themido, J.H., Dez Anos em Washington 1971–1981 (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote, 1995). Therborn, G., ‘From Petrograd to Saigon’, in New Left Review No. 48. Ulyanovsky, R., National Liberation: Essays on Theory and Practice (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978). UNITA (Kwacha Unita Press, 1984). United Nations Yearbook 1960 (New York: UN). United Nations Yearbook 1961 (New York: UN). Valdes, N., ‘Revolutionary solidarity in Angola’, in C. Blasier and C. Mesa-Lago (eds), Cuba in the World (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979). Valenta, J., ‘The Soviet-Cuban Intervention in Angola 1975’, in Studies in Comparative Communism (University of South California), Volume XI, Nos 1 and 2, 1978. Weissman, S., ‘The CIA and US policy in Zaire and Angola’, in R. Lemarchand (ed.), American Policy in Southern Africa: The Stakes and the Stance (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1978). Wheeler, D.L., ‘Origins of African nationalism in Angola: Assimilado protest writings, 1859–1929’, in R.H. Chilcote (ed.), Protest and Resistance in Angola and Brazil: Comparative Studies (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1972). Wheeler, D.L. ‘Portuguese withdrawal from Africa, 1974–1975: the Angolan case’, in J. Seiler (ed.), Southern Africa Since the Coup (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1981). Wheeler, D.L. and Pelissier, R., Angola (London: Pall Mall Press, 1971). White, G., ‘Revolutionary socialist development in the Third World: an overview’, in G. White, R. Murray and C. White (eds), Revolutionary Socialist Development in the Third World (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1983). Windsor, P., ‘Superpower intervention’, in H. Bull (ed.), Intervention in World Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). Wohlgemuth, P., ‘The Portuguese territories and the United Nations’, in International Conciliation (New York), No. 545, November 1963).

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Page 244 Wolfers, M., Politics in the Organization of African Unity (London: Methuen, 1976). Wolfers, M. and Bergerol, J., Angola in the Frontline (London: Zed Books, 1983). Young, C., ‘The Portuguese coup and Zaire's Southern Africa policy’, in J. Seiler (ed.), Southern Africa Since the Portuguese Coup (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1980).

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Page 245 Index Acheson, Dean 177 Adoula, Cyrille 54, 63–4, 71, 75, 185 African Association of Southern Angola (AASA) 39 African League 36 African Liberation Committee (ALC) 65–6, 68–72, 74–5, 115, 164, 169, 214n African National Congress (ANC) 127 African National Party (PNA) 36 African Party of the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) 40, 74, 89, 92, 138, 217n, 218n agriculture 8, 16–21, 28, 56, 205n Aires, Higino 42 Algeria 31, 48, 52, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 66, 136, 141–2, 170–1 Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) 52, 56, 61, 64, 141, 171 ALIAZO 51, 55, 211n Alves, Nito 105 Alvor Agreement 93–6, 101, 102–3, 105, 106, 107, 109, 189, 196, 220n American Committee on Africa (ACOA) 49 Amin, Idi 113 Andrade, Joaquim Pinto de 43, 44, 209n, 218n Andrade, Mário Pinto de 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 52, 58–9, 60, 61, 62, 67, 68, 69, 73, 74, 78, 165, 170, 209n, 218n Angolan Communist Party (PCA) 39, 165 Angolan League 35–6 Angolan National League (LNA) 36, 39 Anti-Colonial Movement (MAC) 42 Antunes, Melo 96 Arguelles, Raul Diaz 145 Army for the National Liberation of Angola (ELNA) 64, 116, 186, 214n assimilados 25–6, 35–6, 37, 40, 46, 80 assimilation policy 23–30, 38 Azores bases 177–8, 181–2, 187–8 Bakongo nationalism 33, 34, 42, 48–57, 58, 63, 65, 69, 70, 106, 207n, 214n Belgium 41, 59 Ben Bella 61, 137, 141–2, 157 Bergh, General van den 131–2 Berlin Conference 1884–85 3–4 Boavida, Diógenes 108 Botha, P.W. 125, 127, 129–30 Bravo, Flávio 144 Brazil 3, 17, 37, 59, 111 Brezhnev, Leonid 151, 159, 173, 175 Britain 3, 10, 12, 23, 27, 31, 59, 123, 124, 202n Cabral, Amílcar 40, 42, 74, 89, 137, 217n Caetano, Marcello 10, 14, 15, 82, 85–6, 88, 89, 168, 177, 187, 188

Cambodia 190 Cape Verde 10, 29, 40, 74, 93, 204n, 206n Cardoso, General Silva 94, 96 Carlos, Palma 87, 92 Carlucci, Frank 188–9 Carmona, General Oscar 6 Carvalho, Mendes de 45 Carvalho, Major Otelo Saraiva de 87, 88, 89, 149 Castro, Fidel 112, 137, 139, 141–2, 148, 174 Castro, Captain Sousa e 95 Catholic Church 6–9 Che Guevara 137, 138, 140 Chile 174, 194 China 141, 170 and Zaire 116–17, 156, 158–9, 175 Communist Party (CCP) 154 Maoism 47, 155–6, 158, 171, 172 relations with Soviet Union 68, 81, 154–6, 158, 159–60, 164, 171–2, 175–6, 199–200 support for FNLA xiv, 57, 100–1, 108, 114, 121, 158–60, 172, 175–6, 185, 199–200 support for UNITA xiv, 79, 87, 157–8, 159, 172, 220n Chipenda, Daniel 34, 78, 98–9, 110, 113, 131–2, 167, 168, 172, 218n Chivale, Samuel 159 Chou En-lai 155

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Page 246 Church, Frank 180 CIA 101–2, 111, 112, 116, 117, 120, 132, 134, 146, 153, 160, 175, 177, 180, 185, 186, 189–95, 213n civilized status 24–6, 30 Clark, Senator Dick 195 Cohen, Sir Andrew 31 Colby, William 112, 191, 195 Cold War xiii–xiv, 57, 122, 150, 162, 173, 176, 178, 182, 187, 196–7, 200–1 Common Front of the Political Parties of Angola 51 Communism 8, 31, 39, 47, 50, 56, 57, 60, 61, 63, 68, 76, 81, 88, 91, 97, 111, 117, 122–3, 126, 130, 134, 141, 156, 164, 183, 185, 188, 194, 199 Conference of the Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies (CONCP) 40, 74, 137, 138, 171 Congo (Brazzaville) 69, 72–5, 78, 79, 100, 108, 115, 117–18, 120, 137–9, 144, 200, 216n Congo (Leopoldville) 41, 42, 43, 48–66, 69–73, 75, 77, 79, 114, 117–18, 138, 212n, 215n Correia, Pezarat 95, 196 Council of State 86, 88 Coutinho, Admiral Rosa 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 100, 149 Cruz, Viriato da 38–9, 40, 42, 43, 44, 59–60, 67–71, 73, 98, 156, 157, 165, 170, 171–2 Cuba internationalist policy xiii, 136–53, 163 support for MPLA xiv, 73, 94, 103–4, 106, 108, 111, 112, 113, 114, 121, 122, 128, 134, 136–40, 142–53, 175, 176, 195, 199, 221n Cunhal, Álvaro 100, 166 Davis, Nathaniel 109, 112, 190–1 Delgado, General Humberto 13, 212n Democratic Front of the Liberation of Angola (FDLA) 69 Democratic Party of Angola (PDA) 55, 63, 212n Dobrynin, A. 167, 174, 176, 194 Dodge, Ralph 61 DuBois, W.E.B. 36, 207n East Germany 59 Easum, Donald 189, 190 Edouard, Johnny 50 education 26, 27, 28, 29, 34, 35, 37, 197 Egypt 59, 66, 75, 164 Eisenhower, President Dwight D. 179 Ethiopia 66, 112, 174 exports 17–21, 205n Fabião, Carlos 89, 92 Fanon, Franz 49, 52 fascism 8, 37, 203n

Ferreira, Tomás 64–5 Ford, President Gerald xiv–xv, 112, 175, 191, 194 Fouche, J.J. 125 France 3, 23, 27, 31, 58–9, 60, 162, 209n Franque, Luís 118 Galbraith, John K. 178 Galvão, Captain Henrique 13, 204n Germany 3, 8 Ghana 50, 59, 60, 75, 162–3, 186, 209n Goa 15, 204n, 206n Gomes, Costa 82 Gonçalves, Vasco 88, 91, 95 Guinea 43, 58, 59, 66, 127, 142, 162–3, 209n, 229n Guinea-Bissau 14, 40, 74, 85, 89, 91, 92, 137, 204n Harriman, Averill 185–6 health 27 Henda, Hoji ya 138 Home Students From the Empire 40 India 15 inter-ethnic factor 21, 33–4, 80, 82, 107 International and Defence of the State Police (Portugal–PIDE) 7, 41, 42, 76, 165, 203n, 209n, 212n, 221n Israel 117, 142, 186, 187, 222n Italy 8, 59, 203n Ivory Coast 133, 205n Japan 46 Jinga, Queen 34 Jorge, Paulo 140 Josias, António 51, 58 Júnior, Azevedo 44 Junta of National Salvation (JSN) 86

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Page 247 Kasavubu, President 50, 54, 214n Kassanga, Marcus 64–5, 215n Kaunda, Kenneth 49, 107, 115, 132, 210n, 221n Kennedy, President John F. 54, 177, 178–84 Kennedy, Robert 180 Kenyatta, Jomo 77 KGB 151, 165 Khrushchev, Nikita 163, 165, 173 Kissinger, Henry xiv–xv, 101, 102, 109, 112, 120, 121, 133, 150, 174, 186–95 Korean War 20 Kuznetsov, Vasily 150 Lara, Lúcio 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 59, 60, 73, 102, 159, 170 Latin America 140 League of Nations 203n Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO) 40, 74, 91, 92, 127, 189 Liberation Front of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) 118–19, 207n Lima, Manuel Santos 58, 67–8 Lumumba, Patrice 49, 50 Luns, Joseph 124 MacElhinney, Brenda 191 Machado, Ilídio 39, 40–1, 42 Mali 59, 163 Mao Tse Tung 157 Marques, General Silvino 92 Marxism 37, 38, 39, 40, 45–7, 56, 60, 72, 74, 76, 127, 141, 155, 156, 158, 164, 169, 170, 171, 185, 200 Massemba–Débat, Alphonse 72, 73, 117, 137, 139 Matos, Norton de 5–6 Mboya, Tom 77 Mbundu nationalism 33, 34, 55, 58, 207n Menezes, Hugo de 44 mensagem 38, 42 mestiços 25–7, 30, 35–6, 37, 38, 40, 42, 45, 46, 63, 64, 67–8, 76, 77, 80, 197 Migueis, Matias 42, 44, 67, 68 minerals xiv, 16–19, 126 Mobutu, Sese Seko 75, 92, 93, 102, 103, 104, 105, 114–21, 132, 138, 158, 159, 160, 189, 193, 194 Moniz, General Botelho 204n Morocco 58, 59, 60, 61 Movement for the Independence of Angola (MIA) 43 Movement of the Armed Forces (MFA) 86–96, 149, 217n Moynihan, Daniel 194 Mozambique 14, 33, 40, 74, 85, 91, 92, 125, 126, 127, 131, 136, 137, 189 MUD Juvenil 40, 165 musseques 46, 90, 100

Nakuru Agreement 105, 106, 108, 220n Namibia 110, 126, 129–31, 132, 136, 196 Nash, Stuart 188 National Front of Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and Bakongo nationalism 48–57 as fighting machine 97–8, 100–1, 108 Chinese support for xiv, 57, 100–1, 108, 114, 121, 158–60, 172, 175–6, 185, 199–200 civil war 85, 90–3, 105–13, 196 government in exile (GRAE) 56, 62, 65–76, 78, 79, 139, 167, 185, 186, 210n, 230n origins of 32, 33–4, 35, 45, 58 rivalry with MPLA 25–6, 30, 40, 57, 62, 63–76, 82, 93–7, 100, 101–5, 115, 116, 119, 121, 198, 215n South Africa support xiv, 109, 112–13, 116, 127–8, 134–5, 224n US support xiv–xv, 101–2, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111–13, 114, 118, 120–1, 128, 132, 134, 160, 173, 175, 180–6, 189–95, 199 Zaire support xiv, 92, 100, 104–5, 108, 109, 110, 114–21, 128, 132, 144, 147, 158–9, 160, 175, 198 National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) as fighting machine 97–8, 103, 108, 110 Chinese support for xiv, 79, 81, 157–8, 159, 172, 220n civil war 85, 90, 91, 93, 106–13, 136 origins of 31, 32, 33–4, 198 Savimbi and 77–82, 93, 197 South African support for xiii, xiv, 109–10, 112–13, 127–8, 131–5, 147–8, 224n

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Page 248 US support for xiv–xv, 102, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111–13, 120, 132, 173, 194–5 National Union of Angolan Students (UNEA) 79 Necaca, Barros 49, 51 Nehru, Jawaharlal 15 Netherlands 59 Neto, Agostinho 34, 40, 41, 45, 59–60, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69, 70–3, 77, 78, 92–4, 96, 98–9, 102, 103–4, 107, 115, 136, 137, 139–40, 144, 145, 156, 164–72, 175–6, 199, 212n Neto, Rosário 55, 58, 64 New State regime 6–30, 31, 36, 39, 41, 85–6, 89–90, 178, 203n Ngouabi, Marien 115 Nigeria 66, 70, 113, 121, 134, 222n Nixon, President Richard 177, 180, 186, 187 Nkrumah, Kwame 49, 50, 137, 209n, 210n North Atlantic Treaty Organisation 61, 122, 123, 124, 161, 162, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184 North Korea 157 Nyerere, Julius 115, 132, 159, 210n Operation Carlota 144, 147 Operation Savannah 121 Operational Command of the Continent (COPCON) 87–8 Organization of African Unity (OAU) 65–7, 71–2, 74–6, 78, 113, 115, 134, 148, 154, 157, 164, 167, 169, 198, 200, 230n Padmore, George 49 Panama 187 Pedro viii, King 33 Pereira, José de Fontes 36 Peterson, José Manuel 50 Pinock, Eduardo 50 Ponomarev, Boris 168, 174 Popular Armed Forces of the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) 104, 108, 218n Popular Army of the Liberation of Angola (EPLA) 60 Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) as fighting machine 97–100, 102–3, 107, 108, 112, 147, 219n civil war 85, 86, 89–92, 105–13, 196 Congo years 58–65 Cuba support for xiv, 73, 94, 103–4, 106, 108, 111, 112, 113, 114, 121, 122, 128, 134, 136–40, 142–53, 175, 176, 195, 199, 221n founding of 42–5, 50 links with PCP 39 makeup of 77, 78, 80–2 origins of 31, 32, 33–4, 51, 52–3, 56 rivalry with FNLA 25–6, 30, 40, 57, 62, 63–76, 82, 93–7, 100, 101–5, 115, 116, 119, 121, 198, 215n Soviet Union support for xiv, 60–1, 73, 92–3, 94, 99–100, 102–4, 106, 107–8, 111,

113, 117–18, 121, 129, 130–1, 132, 134–5, 136, 143–6, 150–3, 155, 157–8, 161, 162– 76, 189, 190, 191–2, 195, 199, 219n, 221n, 230n urban radicalism and 37–48 Portugal collapse of colonialism xiii–xiv, 85–97 colonial policy in Angola 3–16, 31–3, 41–2, 197–8, 202–4n colonial society 23–30, 35–6, 37 economy of colonial Angola 16–23, 35 New State regime 6–30, 31, 36, 39, 41, 85–6, 89–90, 178, 203n relations with US 13, 54, 85, 177–89 Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) 39, 40, 42, 100, 165–6, 208n, 212n Pravda 39 privileged status 25–6, 30 Puna, Miguel N'Zau 81 race 24–30, 34, 36, 37, 46, 63, 67–8, 80–1, 197 Reagan, President Ronald xv Regional Association of the Angolan-born (ANANGOLA) 38, 39 Revolutionary Government of Angola in Exile (GRAE) 56, 57, 62, 65–76, 78, 79, 139, 167, 185, 186, 210n, 230n Rhodesia 80, 94, 125, 126, 127, 164, 186 Roberto, Holden 48–57, 61, 62, 63, 65, 68, 70, 71, 75, 77–8, 79, 80, 93–4, 101, 102, 103, 105, 111–12, 114–16, 121, 128, 157, 158–9, 169, 180–1, 182, 183–6, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 213–14n, 215n

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Page 249 Roosevelt, President Franklin D. 179 Salazar, António de Oliveira 6–18, 37, 39, 52, 54, 61, 76, 82, 85, 86, 92, 165, 177, 179, 181, 182, 203n, 204n Santos, Eduardo dos 44 Santos, Marcelino dos 40, 42, 74 São Tomé and Principe 10, 204n Savimbi, Jonas 26, 34, 40, 45, 55, 70, 76–82, 94, 102, 106–7, 108, 109, 110, 113, 128, 131, 132, 133, 137, 157–8, 185, 197 Scandinavia 59 Schlesinger, A.M. 178–9 Senegal 59, 66 Senghor, Léopold 59, 210n Smith, Ian 126 Soares, Mário 91, 218n socialism 8, 46, 48, 56, 74, 91, 107, 140, 141, 154, 156, 161, 165, 171, 210n Sousa, André Franco de 42, 43, 208n South Africa 41, 80, 164, 182 and Zaire 132, 133 BOSS 121–2, 129, 131–2 intervention in civil war 109–13, 114, 121–35, 144, 145–8, 158, 159–60, 174, 196 relations with US 123, 133, 134–5, 182, 186, 199 support for FNLA xiv, 109, 112–13, 116, 127–8, 134–5, 224n support for UNITA xiii, xiv, 109–10, 112–13, 127–8, 131–5, 147–8, 224n South African Defence Force (SADF) 109–10, 121, 122, 127–30, 132–4, 144, 223n South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) 125, 128, 129, 130, 132, 145, 224n Soviet Union and Cold War xiii, 162, 173, 176, 200 and South Africa 124, 127 relations with China 68, 81, 154–6, 158, 159–60, 164, 171–2, 175–6, 199–200 relations with US 151, 155, 163–4, 173–7, 190, 191–5, 196, 199–200 support for MPLA xiv, 60–1, 73, 92–3, 94, 99–100, 102–4, 106, 107–8, 111, 113, 117– 18, 121, 129, 130–1, 132, 134–5, 136, 143–6, 150–3, 155, 157–8, 161, 162–76, 189, 190, 191–2, 195, 199, 219n, 221n, 230n Spain 8 Spinola, General António de 86–8, 90–3, 189 Stevenson, Adlai 179 Stockwell, John 134, 159, 185, 189 Syria 142 Tanzania 66, 115, 155, 156, 157, 159 Third World 47, 54, 73, 74, 116, 139, 141, 154–5, 161, 162, 163–4, 170, 171, 173, 176, 179, 180, 190, 198, 200 Touré, Sekou 49, 142, 209n, 210n, 229n transitional government 93–6, 107, 108 Truman, President Harry 177 Tshombe, Moise 75, 119, 138

Tunisia 61, 64 Uganda 66 UNAVEM 111, 197 Union of the Peoples of Angola (UPA) FNLA emerges from 32, 33, 34, 55, 58 Holden Roberto and 48–55, 61, 71, 77–8, 79, 215n rivalry with MPLA 64–5, 68, 211n US and 51, 61, 63, 180–1, 184–5 Union of the Peoples of Northern Angola (UPNA) 35, 49, 55, 211n United Nations 12, 49, 50, 53, 54, 61, 96, 123, 125, 134, 165, 178–82, 184, 187–8, 194, 197, 204n, 233n United States and Cold War xiii, 182, 187 and South Africa 123, 133, 134–5, 182, 186, 199 and UPA 51, 61, 63, 180–1, 184–5 and Zaire 102, 107, 114, 117, 120, 134, 189, 191, 193, 199 National Security Study Memorandum 186–7, 217n relations with Portugal 13, 54, 85, 177–89 relations with Soviet Union 151, 155, 163–4, 173–7, 190, 191–5, 196, 199–200 support for FNLA xiv–xv, 101–2, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111–13, 114, 118, 120–1, 128, 132, 134, 160, 173, 175, 180–6, 189–95

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Page 250 support for UNITA xiv–xv, 102, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111–13, 120, 132, 173, 194–5 Valentim, Jorge 79 Veloso, Angelo 165 Vietnam 44, 48, 141, 161, 170–1, 174, 186, 190, 200 Vorster, B.J. 110, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129–30, 133 Wachuku, Jaja 70 Walters, General Vernon 153 Warsaw Pact 103 West Germany 59, 187 Wilson, Harold 124 World War Two 12, 20, 46 Youlou, Fulbert 69, 72, 207n Zaire 33, 93, 103, 196 and China 116–17, 156, 158–9, 175 and South Africa 132, 133 and US 102, 107, 114, 117, 120, 134, 189, 191, 193, 199 support for FNLA xiv, 92, 100, 104–5, 108, 109, 110, 112, 114–21, 128, 132, 144, 147, 158–9, 160, 175, 198 Zambia 79, 80, 107, 108, 109, 115, 119, 120, 132, 133, 139, 155, 156, 157, 221n

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