TT

ANGOLA

Background to the long
struggle for independence

Fighting has intensified in An-
gola between the MPLA (People’s
Movement for the Liberation of
Angola) and FNLA (Angolan Lib-
eration Front), backed by presi-
dent Mobutu of Zaire, and
through him, by the CIA.

We reprint here an article on
the background to these develop-
ments by Bazil Davidson from
the September issue of Anti-
Apartheid News.

* x *

A few fundamental facts will
not explain all the torments of
the storm that is raging, and
what kind of storm it is.

The first fact to latch on to
is that the people of Angola,
numbering some six million Afri-
cans and perhaps 300,000 white-
civilian residents, have never
formed a single nation.

Nationalism began there in the
1950s. As elsewhere in Africa, it
began as a protest against racial
discrimination and colonial op-
pression. Then, as elsewhere, it
developed into a demand for in-
dependence.

So the task was to build a
consciousness of independent
national unity. This was the aim
of the Angolan nationalist move-
ment, the MPLA, which came
into existence in 1956; and which
at once proclaimed the need to
build a broad front of unity such
as could win the support and
participation of all sections of
the country’s population. In this,
of course, the central aim of the
MPLA was exactly the same as

that of its sister-movements, the -

PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau and
Cape Verde, and FRELIMO in
Mozambique.

Portugal’s dictatorship would
not yield an inch. So the MPLA,
like its sister-movements, had to
choose between defeat and arm-
ed struggle. It chose the second,
and began in 1961. All through
the 1960s and early 1970s the
men and women of the MPLA
held firmly, and in very difficult
conditions, to their hugely diffi-
cult task of ending colonial rule.

They had much success: mili-
tary,
They found their way to a pro-
gram of social change and na-
tional unity around which in-
creasing numbers of ordinary
Angolans could and did gather.
Anti-racist, “anti - dictatorship,
anti-neo-colonialist, they strug-
gled for an Angola. which could
have a democratic way of life
as well as an independent one.

Why then is Angola in the
toils of violence, while Guinea-
Bissau, Cape Verde, and Mozam-

> we
The MPLA has been
since its founding in 1956.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—OCTOBER 17, 1975—Page 6

but still more political.

bique are at peace?

This is where the second fact
comes in. Ever since the 1950s
the men and women of the na-
tionalist movement were oppos-
ed by a variety of groups based
on tribal separatism or fear of
democracy. The most significant
of these was a Bakongo tribalist
movement known then as UPA,
and now as FNLA. In 1960, and
repeatedly after that, this UPA/
FNLA refused to join a broad
front of unity with the MPLA.
On the contrary, UPA/FNLA
turned its guns against the
MPLA as early as 1961.

Although corrupt, inefficient,
and tribalist, FNLA survived as
a political element on the scene
because of a third fact. This was
the strong and continuing sup-
port given to it by its “host”
and chief paymaster, the Zaire
(ex-Belgian Congo) dictator, Mo-
butu Sese Seko. Mobutu gave
this support because he wanted,
and wants now, to kill off any
genuine national movement in
Angola.

For several reasons. Partly, for
reasons of a “general” kind. Mo-
butu was deeply involved in all
those reactionary plots which
brought about the murder of
Lumumba in Congo (Zaire), and
then made Zaire into one of the
most abject of the neo-colonies
of Africa. Books by CIA opera-
tors have repeatedly stated that
Mobutu owed his rise to CIA
money and manoeuvres.

Installed as tyrant of Zaire,
Mobutu has long feared that a
progressive Angola, such as. the
MPLA is in the course of build-
ing, would make his own posi-
tion in Zaire finally impossible.

-At least from 1965, he has ac-

cordingly. worked to put Angola
into the grip of the movement he
centrols, the tribalist and separ-
atist FNLA. Its prominent figure,
Roberto Holden; is a man very
close to Mobutu’s own ideas and
business connections, and, inci-
dentally, the long-time “friend”
of Mobutu’s_ sister. Mobutu
would then control Angola
through Holden.

This ambition of Mobutu’s has
become immensely strengthened
by Gulf-Oil’s discovery of off-
shore oil on the coast of the An-
golan enclave of Cabinda in the
extreme north of the country.
Mobutu’s primary aim now is to
make Holden boss of all Angola.
Or, if he can’t pull that off, boss
of a separatist Cabinda.

Other facts that matter: after
the Lisbon coup of April 1974,
two important things happened

fighting for national independence and unity”

AGOSTINHO NETO
leader of the MPLA.

in relation to Ahgola. One was
that the men and women of the
MPLA, free at last to work in
public, at once found massive
support in Luanda and other
great towns from which they
had previously been debarred, or

where they had been able to

work only in secret. They at
once began to broaden their
united front. They did this espe-
cially by joining their efforts to
the democratic movement known
as Poder Popular.

Poder Popular and MPLA be-

gan organizing town and village

Angolans into committees of
local self-rule. With this, the
emergence of a genuine organi-
zation of representative national
self-rule became fully possible.

The other thing that happened
was that, Mobutu the dictator of
Zaire, seeing this, organized an
army of Zaire soldiers and con-
scripted Angolan refugees in
Zaire, and sent this army into
Angola to destroy the MPLA and
Poder Popular. —

What we have been hearing
about in the last few weeks is
Mobutu/Holden’s desperate at-
tempt to achieve this aim. Many
have suffered from the violence
of this army of mercenaries and
conscripted stooges. On July 29
I received a letter from the large
Angolan town of Benguela. It
was written by an old friend.

Among other things, it says
this: “On Saturday night (that
is, July 19) the MPLA held its
usual Saturday dance here in a
working class area, in the MPLA
hall. Some armed FNLA men
tried to get in. When entry was
refused, they lobbed a grenade
into the hall, killing two people
in the dance hall, wounding six
seriously, while thirty-four were
treated in hospital for minor
wounds...”

These facts add up to a cent-
ral conclusion. This is that the
trouble in Angola is not because
there are “several liberation
movements that will not agree’.
There is only one liberation
movement, the MPLA led by
Agostinho Neto together with its
allies of Poder Popular.

Today there are only two pos-
sibilities for Angola.

One is that the country is
pushed by the FNLA and its
foreign backers into a Congo-
like chaos. The other is that the
cause of the MPLA prevails, and
Angola can then begin to move
along thé same way to peace
and progress that already taken
by Mozambique under the lead
of FRELIMO or of Guinea-Bissau
and Cape Verde under the lead
of PAIGC.

By JACKIE GREATBATCH

In 1973, a United Nations spe-
cial committee on decolonization
adopted a resolution declaring
that Puerto Rico has the in-
alienable right to independence
from the United States. Passed
by the General Assembly, the
U.S. was successful in having’
discussion and vote on the re-
solution tabled until 1976.

In response to the historic re-
cognition of the rights of the
Puerto Rican people to decide
their own destiny, a world-wide

* campaign has begun to mobilize

support for_the resolution.

The campaign had its official
initiation, last month at the In-
ternational Conference of Solid-
arity with the Independence of
Puerto Rico, held: in Havana,
Cuba. Participating were 291
delegates and 34 observers from
79 countries, including Canada,
and 18 international organiza-
tions.

Conference delegates unani-
mously passed a general state-

Puerto Rico is called a “free
associated state” by the United
States’ government. To the Puer-
to Rican people it is simply a
colony. For the three million
people living on this island, and
the more than two million forced ~
through economic necessity to
emigrate to the USA there can
be no illusions of free associa-
tion or equality with the country
which controls every part of
their lives.

Puerto Rico, serving the Unit-
ed States as a military base for
stockpiling nuclear and conven-
ticnal weapons, for training CIA,
FBI, Green Berets and other
soldiers of American imperial-
ism, is the key to U.S. military
power in Latin American and
the Caribbean.

It was from this small island
that the United States threaten-
ed Venezuela with invasion in
1958, plotted -armed attacks
against Cuba and organized the
invasion of the Dominican Re-
public in 1965.

For American Corporations,
Puerto Rico is “profit island”,
where in post-World War Two
times it has been the fourth
highest foreign investment coun-
try. Foreign capital accounts for
81% of investment in manufac-
turing industries, 100% -in air
transportation, 90% in  insur-
ance, 88% of all private invest-
ment. :

)
ment, reading in part: “Tt .
ternational Conference Of "%y
arity with the Independém™,,
Puerto Rico took place A
vana, Cuba, on the eve [j,
107th anniversary of the
Lares”, expression of thé i
of Puerto Rican nationalillj,
the date on which the Fi®q,
public was proclaimed. hy
“| During the 77 Y¥p
U.S. domination, the Puc fh,
can people have unintertUPp,
maintained their struge™ by
national liberation. he
“Today the indepe™ 4.
movement faces a new
sive escalation against it}.
ers and militants and i }*
tical, trade union and stv ;
organizations in*which the:
varied methods are used: #7)
nations, terrorist attacks, idel
ups, defamation camP#),
against leaders or the id@ 2
of the patriotic revolutl? ;
forces.” mS
During the conference’),
days of reports and SP*

«oft

Three-quarters of puerlj,
co’s exports and imports of 3
and: from the United "ih
Sixty-five per cent of th® },.
consumed is imparted frof hy
U.S. ae}
Massive profits made i? | ,
to Rico stem from the fa¢ if!
wages there are one-third *
U.S. average and that the ae
rican government which jit
controls all political, e
and social aspects of the (gl
runs Puerto Rico for the © My
of American capitalists. gif
Control by the Améric®
ernment extends throug” jv
ign relations, citizenshiP:
toms, the military, forei8? (Rl
and commerce, “transpo™ ft
postal service, the medi il,
sorship and so on. (i
Federal judges are app? nN
by the U.S. president, an™ 04
courts the language of ‘
Rico is not permitted. und My
of numerous laws passe@ sift
United States, America © th
ship was imposed on PU ty
cans although the 0
previously been rejected “4
Puerto Rican Chamber % tn
ties. i
The country was first i
by American troops in 189 rt
Spanish-American War Wf.
by the government as 4?”
to continue their expartit
policy. It was ruled by 4 mips
government for two ye4

rs