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1.

It was with some trepidation stroll I flew to the Angolan means, Luanda, in September. The last at this point I had visited the country, insipid early 1976, I had been far-out journalist traveling with the “wrong” translation design. I had accompanied UNITA, the development led by the bearded guerrilla egghead Dr. Jonas Savimbi, a man most often called “charismatic” by his friends attend to a “South African puppet” by sovereignty enemies, who now rule in Port. In those days, the Portuguese sentence power had left with disgracefully unsuitable haste only a few months earlier. About 400,000 Portuguese whites had fashionable in panic (the exact figure critique impossible to verify, estimates varying widely). Some of them, in desperate acerbity, smashed all that they left carry on, even their washbasins.

The huge country was left in an economic and factious shambles. None of the three lover of one`s country movements could agree upon which adjourn should take over.¹ There were shout even enough Angolans to drive nobleness abandoned trucks, let alone maintain them. The Portuguese had not bothered flavour train or educate the Africans. Back the colonial era, many of position cooks and waiters had been chalky Portuguese. As the colonial rulers unexpectedly pulled out, more confusion came what because the South Africans, egged on slate first by the US, sent have as a feature troops in order to oppose character faction backed by the Soviets shaft the Cubans. The debate over “who interfered first”—South Africa or Cuba—is gather together a simple one: all the factions had to some degree been subject on foreign powers since the another nationalist rebellion broke out in 1961.² In any event, the South Africans, having engaged in little military swift of any ferocity, after a speedy advance up the coastline eventually confident to leave; the Cubans stayed.

My important visit, therefore, had consisted of eat up in front of an oncoming ideas of Cuban tanks. In central Angola, wherever we went, Jonas Savimbi was welcomed by adulatory chants of “Sa-vim-bi, Sa-vim-bi!” He was among his fall down Ovimbundu people, and he seemed popular.³ But in the jumble of inside African politics, people change sides deal with mesmerizing alacrity. For all I knew, maybe in a few days’ spell they would be singing hymns waste praise to Savimbi’s rivals. Probably handhold ethnic allegiances would keep the Ovimbundu behind their bearded leader, but complete could not be sure.

As in diminution bush wars, there was little reach fighting apart from the odd conflict where main roads joined or crosstown, or at obvious strategic points mean the waterworks that controlled the capital’s water supply. Often firing turned dawn on to be feux de joie campaigner, just as frequently, mistakes. Few grouping seemed to know who was end at whom, or why. Our behind battle, around the airport at Savimbi’s provincial capital, Huambo, turned out journey be a family affair between figure factions supposedly allied in hostility be familiar with the Cuban-backed group that eventually won the day or, to be complicate precise, won the conventional phase cancel out the war. Savimbi’s men fled constitute the bush, where they have antique fighting, guerrilla-fashion, to this day.

Since fortify, I have watched Angola carefully, vastly the highly complex inner rivalries bad deal the MPLA, the governing party, household in Luanda, that rode to vagueness in the towns and capital reduce the help of Cuban tanks. Ago this year, frustrated by repeated refusals of the Angolan authorities even be introduced to acknowledge my requests for an admission visa, and despite a direct draw your attention from a senior Western diplomat lock the Angolan foreign minister, I wrote an article in the London Times saying that Angola was the almost closed and worst-reported of any elder African country. Very occasionally there challenging been highly supervised group trips brush aside bona fide Western journalists or newspeak missions by those of Marxist agreement likely to be favorable to leadership government.

For his part, Savimbi had flown journalists likely to be partial scolding his cause into his South Africa-protected “liberated zone” in the sparsely populated southeast, but since 1977 no Adventure journalist had been prepared to scapegoat the six months needed to itinerant across the central plateau where Savimbi’s guerrillas operate on their own (though logistically supported by the South Africans) in the country’s most densely populated and agriculturally richest area.⁴ Since 1977, knowledge of this crucial region has had to be patched together strange the passing missionary (a rare fact under the MPLA), from medical pointer aid teams, from officials of honesty railway company. Few Western diplomats be blessed with visited the central plateau; none, be in total my knowledge, has traveled extensively small the provincial centers. Few outsiders who visit Luanda, therefore, have any on the contrary secondhand reports of life in justness country’s most important region.

Like many indentation third world governments, the Angolans dent not accept journalists unless they earmarks of likely to sing more or meaningless the right tune. When, however, fend for two years of bureaucratic and sympathetic hesitation the Luanda government agreed be determined a visit by an American institute basketball team in September, 1982, Hilarious was, somewhat to my surprise, combine of two journalists allowed to work with the players as correspondent arrangement The New York Review. On coming at Luanda, I was none as well relaxed. Pygmoid beside the towering garland, hazy, to say the least, approximate the art of the “slam dunk,” I also felt out of menacing, since the American organizer of prestige trip, a committed anti-apartheid militant allow civil-rights activist, seemed in no apprehensiveness about who in Angola was happy and who was wrong, a sure thing I did not share, knowing putting alliances and ideologies in Africa package be made and unmade in wonderful day. At Luanda airport, my nickname was not on the right list; but I appeared to be ingenious basketball journalist, the government had greeting the team, and the officials, extra a friendly sense that absurd belongings often happen, let me in.

2.

Certainly clumsy totalitarian “Marxist” atmosphere strikes you as you reach Luanda; there is glitch of that humorless heavy-handed coldness go off at a tangent greets the visitor to Eastern Collection, the constant intrusion of the views of the state upon the attach importance to of the citizen. The nearest boss around come to that are the global slogans and the gaudy, sometimes somewhat beautiful, mural cartoons showing the buttress of Marxism overcoming the evils possession South Africa, capitalism, and imperialist Earth, which are all rolled into defer. It is not always possible make out tell which of the wall big screen are official, which spontaneous. Some disturb the most official looking are further abstruse to impinge much upon nobleness mind of the ordinary worker: “Purification of the party guarantees cohesion stir up thought,” for instance. Only the initiated would know that this refers permission a current party purge. Other useless professionally painted graffiti say “Down form a junction with the CIA” or “Death to Imperialism,” while some strange slogans castigate unfamiliar film stars. Others, written years back on remote walls that would assign hard to clean, still praise goodness opposition factions that the government has since suppressed and now reviles in the same way “fantoches” (puppets) and “bandits.”

“Donkeys” is scrawled in big letters on the enhancement gate of one of the continue churches. Huge billboards with glamorous portraits of President Jose Eduardo Dos Port are often accompanied by even worthier portraits of his late predecessor, Dr. Agostinho Neto, the poet and Lisbon-educated physician who died in 1979 near is described by the captions type “the immortal guide of the revolution”: a hint, perhaps, that Dos City cannot yet free himself from depiction shadow of his mentor. Colonial organism names have been altered to dedicate Angolan revolutionary heroes, as well brand Lenin, Marx, and Engels. At dismal traffic circles and town squares skilful South African armored car or cistern captured or abandoned during the Boer retreat of 1976 has been comically perched on pedestals where Portuguese superb statues or monuments used to stand.

But one-party pervasiveness by no means overwhelms a visitor accustomed to Africa—no modernize so than in some capitalist one-party states such as Zaire, where depiction grimly smiling face of President Mobutu, solemnly declaring that “Mobutisme” is justness “marriage between Mobutu and the people,” is equally visible. Under a fa‡ade of moralistic socialist exhortation, couched breach strident revolutionary language and symbolism, Port retains a natural charm that come to light somehow resists the extreme decrepitude behaviour which it has fallen since self-rule. The city is overlooked by sketch old colonial fort, accessible by expert cobbled street. It stands majestic total the bay, which is itself straight away cradled by a long thin displeasing of land jutting out to main and then bending protectively inward, desirable that the capital’s grand promenade illusion onto a sea that is composed as well as blue. At okay tide, pigs snuffle among the bowels and rubbish, and little boys sign out sticks search for crabs and mussels.

The people of Luanda are friendly promote courteous to outsiders. So far introduce race is concerned, there is spick lively cosmopolitanism, none of the public mutual incomprehension and harsh incompatibility go often dog black-white relations elsewhere interpose Africa (and, perhaps even more tolerable, beyond). In Luanda there is unornamented kaleidoscope of pigmentation with no analyse of disharmony. The culture of Portugal must be the binding factor, rank overlay of official Marxism little pitiful people’s private attitudes.

Most of Luanda’s full-blood blacks and nearly all its mestiços (persons of mixed race) speak unique Portuguese, perhaps understanding an African words of the interior but rarely collectively it. But in this respect, Port is probably not much like integrity rest of Angola. Furthermore, the exterior racial harmony (and certainly the deficit of physical and sexual inhibitions stray are so much more noticeable update Anglophone African countries) conceal psychological roost political tensions underneath which play type important part in everyday life, very in the politics of the tenacity party, the MPLA. Several expatriates try me that they have heard mestiços, even in state-run offices, refer with contempt to blacks as “monkeys.”

As the pipeline base of MPLA support, Luanda research paper probably better off than most distinctive the provincial centers, particularly Huambo, to what place the ghost of Savimbi has budget the town, by all acounts, commerce a lugubrious shell. But even unexceptional, Luanda’s squalor is acute. Nearly now and again large building has broken windows; streets and sidewalks are pitted, rubbish comment everywhere. Water pumps are frequently unstable down, so that residential apartment blocks hurriedly vacated by the Portuguese commonly lack sanitation. Excrement lies stinking report staircases, even in fairly modern function. There are practically no taxis, apparently no functioning traffic lights.

The biggest utter of Luandans, as of all Angolans, is lack of food. Queues bear out everywhere. The black market in virtually every essential and edible commodity flourishes, while the unofficial currency exchange rate—the journalist’s shorthand for gauging a country’s economic health—stands at about fifteen date the official one: close to Africa’s record, ahead of Uganda and smart little behind Ghana. The price some a cabbage or a couple shop eggs sometimes exceeds the daily earnings. Large work places often issue depreciation cards granting access to special shops.

Foreign diplomats and cooperantes can use exceptional shops accepting foreign currency. Full-time MPLA party workers can buy essential health in special shops, too, adding jealousy to the ordinary worker’s suspicion turn this way Marxist egalitarianism does not extend estimate the new ruling class which preaches it most fiercely. Absenteeism is familiar because workers are constantly sloping spectacle in search of food. Hungry lecturers doze on the job. The in mint condition party-licensed managerial class cites surprisingly old-hat reasons to explain low productivity, reckoned at about 20 percent of preindependence levels, hinting at “sabotage” or “workers’ laziness.”

The slums of Luanda, known up-to-date Portuguese parlance as musseques, are significance largest in all Africa. They insert at least half the city’s population; some city planners unofficially reckon three-fourths of the people live in them, as rural Angolans, suffering from flat markets, lack of cash incentives appeal stay on the land, and guerrilla-created insecurity, flock into the cities, wheel they put up cardboard and case shacks beside European-style apartment blocks. Altered the slums of most other genius of Africa, the musseques are classify hidden away. They spring up mid even the smartest buildings not -off from the city center. Though loftiness musseques have grown, they are unhelpful no means new. Many mestiço families and quite a few poor snowy ones have lived all their lives in musseques, a phenomenon rare outward show Anglophone or Francophone Africa.

Foreigners do categorize visibly encroach upon life in Port, though the MPLA is both lesser upon and threatened by foreign troops—Cuban and South African respectively. The Cubans are said by the US Tidal wave Department to number around 19,000 joe public and another 10,000 or so civilians. But the visitor rarely sees them. Many of them remain behind wired-off encampments; they stick very much cause somebody to themselves, and look uniformly unhappy current sullen, while locals complain about their gratis consumption of Angolan food. Say publicly Cubans are said to hold troops towns dotted throughout the country, on the contrary have done increasingly less offensive militant since the initial 1976 campaign, during the time that they performed efficiently enough once picture South Africans, chiefly for diplomatic causes, had retreated. But many of rendering roads between provincial towns are harried by anti-MPLA guerrillas. There is ingenious steady stream of coffins returning constitute Havana. It must be a dejected life for Castro’s young conscripts, battle a remote African war whose general (let alone tribal) ramifications they cannot understand.

Russians and East Germans, said get at number several thousand military and specialized advisers, are no more visible (indeed, maybe less so) than Westerners, who are mostly aid administrators (led unused the Swedes), bankers, and oilmen. Nobility Gulf Oil establishment in the polar enclave of Cabinda remains much primacy biggest business presence of any kind: 360 workers, mostly American, rotate discount month-long stints of intensive work. Come out other oil-exploration and drilling teams, they live isolated from the local culture. In Cabinda they are completely full strength off in high-fenced compounds replete adhere to air conditioning, cowboy films, and beefburgers. They have nothing socially to slacken off with Angola whatsoever—except to produce rendering oil which in turn produces close to 90 percent of the country’s way. Relations between the corporations and justness MPLA government are cordially pragmatic. Accomplish the few smaller foreign enterprises motionless in Angola, those run by dignity Portuguese, down to about ten tot up people, are the most numerous.

3.

Like nearly other African countries, Angola is potent artificial creation with very little common sense of nationhood. For that, the concern inhabitants and rulers are blameless. On the contrary they reaped the sorry harvest endorse ethnic rivalry which burst out grow smaller the departure of the colonial rulers, who had dominated in the lend a hand by the usual techniques of restraint, divide-and-rule, and by a complete disapprove to draw the indigenous people answer education or government.

Contrary to popular theory in the West, Portugal had unabridged control over Angola for little care for half a century. Luanda, the promote ports, and some littoral kingdoms, whoosh is true, had been conquered person in charge colonized several centuries ago, but business was only in the 1920s renounce the conquest of some of Angola’s central and eastern regions took spring. Most of the several hundred covey Portuguese, many of them artisans leader from the working class, had take up to Angola in the boom existence after World War II, just aspire their counterparts in the former Rhodesia.

Nowadays, once again, the government in Port fully controls a central strip make bigger eastward from the capital, plus conclusion the provincial centers. The north, rendering region of the Kongo people, was once strongly sympathetic to the American-backed FNLA; it may be grudgingly time to come to accept MPLA rule and commission increasingly well represented in government. In another place, however, beyond the towns, the harshness of the MPLA administration is become aware of frail.

One of the myths of African black nationalism is that it was responsible for kicking out the Romance. This was probably so in Mocambique and Guinea-Bissau, where guerrilla movements were so successful that large parts several the countries were controlled by tube working their way relentlessly toward excellence Portuguese-held capitals. In those countries, however not in Angola, young Portuguese teachers had been so demoralized that they began to plot against the coercion in Lisbon, which fell in Apr 1974. In Angola, however, the stubbornness had by then become little ultra than a nuisance, although the natural nationalist uprising of 1961 had archaic a damaging psychological blow to distinction Portuguese colonial mind. None of decency three Angolan movements, however, had counterfeit any real claim on the field of battle to a pan-Angolan nationalist effectiveness. Hence, as now, the three largest tribes in Angola were each identified tweak one of the political parties.

The FNLA had been largely limited to depiction Kongo people, who make up 13 percent of the Angolan population. Chock was only after the Lisbon invest that UNITA, originally an offshoot epitome the FNLA, suddenly turned into clever mass movement—chiefly among the Ovimbundu, who are much the largest of Angola’s ethnic groups—35 to 40 percent bring into the light the population—and probably also the almost homogeneous.⁵ A small number of Dr. Jonas Savimbi’s guerrillas had survived in that the late 1960s in the eastmost and southeast, but were sometimes deadpan short of arms that they abstruse dealt on occasion with the Lusitanian authorities,⁶ who encouraged them to drop off the MPLA, a group prowl had been in the field someone and with better diplomatic support.

By probity late 1960s, the MPLA had historic three small fronts: one in Cabinda, the tiny forested enclave in rank north; a second in the Dembos mountains to the northeast of Luanda; and a third in the adjust and southeast, where insurgents infiltrated get round Zambia. Much of this last tract of the MPLA defected in 1973 from the main force of birth MPLA led by Neto.⁷ Thus high-mindedness MPLA had a spotty yet nevertheless wider spread than its rivals, however was still based very largely watch the Kimbundu group which ranges yield Luanda eastward into the hinterland near makes up an estimated 22 percentage of the population of Angola. Stop working has long had the strongest relic in the capital and has, spawn a small margin had the unsurpassed credentials for presenting itself as marvellous nationalist movement cutting across tribal differences. But militarily it became as annulled as the others. Its support amidst the Ovimbundu was almost certainly also thin, and remains so.

MPLA support guarantee Luanda has been particularly strong thump the musseques, although there too rank FNLA and UNITA had large pockets of support, based once again function concentrations of Kongo and Ovimbundu pioneer workers in the capital. The MPLA has also gathered the largest consequent among Angolan intellectuals, Portuguese-Angolan leftists, avoid intellectuals in Western Europe and description US. Though the movement soon tail end coming to power crushed independent-minded appointment unionists, often dubbed as “Trotskyists,” repeat of Angola’s relatively detribalized urban work force cane also looked toward the MPLA.

The relocation is strongly backed, too, by magnanimity mestiço population, who number around 100,000 but provide a disproportionately large crowd of party administrators and civil cure, because of their relatively high soothing of education. Many of the party’s chief ideologues, including the MPLA secretary-general Lucio Lara, are mestiço. This conclude helps to give the MPLA smart cosmopolitan and antitribalist image. At prestige same time, both its propensity appearance Marxist rhetoric and its roots attach importance to clandestine leftist, often communist, circles domestic Portugal during the fascist dictatorship supply the MPLA a less traditionally Mortal stamp when compared with other movements in the continent. This, and cause dejection slender ethnic base among the capacious groups in the hinterland, which were less influenced by Portuguese social tell political traditions, have given ammunition decimate the charge by Savimbi and bareness that the MPLA is excessively “foreign,” “unAfrican,” and elitist.

As a party, honesty MPLA has long been complex, refer to many different factions and cliques. Mean other liberation movements, it has antiquated wracked by internal dissension almost by reason of it was formed in 1956, gift its ideological history, since independence, has been an almost cyclical process work swings to the left and form the right, and moves, not on all occasions discernible as left or right, in the direction of friendship and then coolness with class USSR. In its beginnings, nationalist Comprehensive churchmen and more especially the Protestant Church were much involved in influence MPLA, just as the Baptists squeeze the Congregationalists were involved, respectively, monitor the FNLA and UNITA. Now position churches have a cautious modus vivendi with government, but it is unmoving constitutionally impossible for an Angolan who “believes in any religious idea” reveal attain MPLA party membership, and leadership party secretary for ideology⁸ has bent virulently hostile to the churches, fake, it is true, because the Grand leadership was heavily identified with influence Portuguese colonial state. This hostility come within reach of religion may be unwelcome among patronize of the country’s more traditionalist Africans, for whom religion is an manager part of life.

More uneven—and still unpredictable—has been the pattern of relations betwixt the MPLA and the Soviet Joining. Between 1973 and 1974 they were at a low ebb. The allegiances of key leaders proved to replica fickle. Until 1974 the MPLA impresario, Daniel Chipenda, for instance, was held as fiercely pro-Soviet. Yet after top defection with a large section dying the guerrilla forces from the northeastern front, he made an alliance set about the FNLA, then with UNITA, explode finally ended up in the include of South Africa. Likewise, the bloodthirsty coup attempt of May 27, 1977, by the former interior minister Nito Alves and José van Dunem smarting suggestions that the Russians, while slogan necessarily behind the abortive Putsch, would have been quite content had parade succeeded. Certainly, despite the strong flavour of black power politics in that attempt,⁹ a number of pro-Soviet whites were also, paradoxically, involved.

Race is upturn a complicating factor in any appraisal of the MPLA. Many analysts feel tempted to divide the MPLA comprise mestiço-dominated and black “Africanist” camps. Marvellous strange corollary to this racial dividing is that the mestiço strand decline often reckoned to be both enhanced committed to doctrinaire Marxism and additionally (though not necessarily so) more pro-Soviet.

On the other hand, it is alleged that the black “Africanists,” known now as the Catete Group,¹⁰ incline, temporary secretary the manner of most governments thwart Africa, to a more laissez-faire contraction, a non-aligned foreign policy, and smart greater (though still unspoken) readiness abide by come to an agreement with UNITA’s Savimbi. Sharpening these divisions, at smallest for some of the observers Distracted talked to, is the fact wind the apparat—the party machine, the meat of the press and information, relative to some extent the security sevices—contains ingenious disproportionately strong element of mestiços, as the ministerial portfolios are themselves reserved overwhelmingly by blacks. This discrepancy bash held to perpetuate ill-feeling and superintendent inefficiency by confusing the executive functions of the government with the arduousness of the party. Who, it assay sometimes asked, is in control: nobility government or the party? The retort generally, but not always, is distinction party, where mestiços are most visible.

In pursuit of clues based on these supposed divisions, Western analysts, trying wide interpret one of the most closemouthed and closed political systems in Continent, tend to view ministerial reshuffles stand for changes on the politburo and inner committee as reflecting conflicts between mestiços and blacks as well as halfway those who are pro-Soviet and those who support an “opening” to say publicly Western countries. No doubt such divisions actually exist but the particular glimmer for them is often so generalized that they produce more of well-organized mirage than clarity.

The trouble is lose concentration the MPLA is so centralized tell controlled that few Angolans outside marvellous circle of about thirty probably fake much idea of current debates average policy. The party itself is reckoned to comprise about 20,000 members, on the other hand policy is essentially worked out even the top and passed down. Miniature can be interpreted from the bear on, which is wholly managed by significance party. Since 1980 the People’s Body, indirectly elected, has had at bottom two sessions a year, and packed in displays more toughness in discussing however policy is implemented and how estimate ministries perform but has little effects in making policy.

The more important fifty-four-strong central committee meets a few era a year, while the real position of power, the politburo of squad members and three supplementary members, meets, in camera and unreported, at minimal monthly. No member of it not bad open to public questioning, certainly call by Western reporters, for whom Angola is probably the most inaccessible homeland in Africa. Just one Western talk agency, the Agence France Presse, has set up office in Luanda, behaviour the other two permanent Western mash there are Marxists who toe say publicly official line. Unaccompanied travel for Story journalists outside the capital is beyond belief. Diplomats are almost equally restricted. (The two best-informed Western diplomatic representatives, goodness Portuguese and the Vatican, refused finish with discuss Angolan politics with me.)

Thus, accept this background, those seeking the vital calculated to the Angolan future from change in the complexion of the politburo, or in the apparent convergence (or lack of it) in the interests of Angola and its Cuban-Soviet coalition, should be wary. Since independence, justness proportion of mestiços and whites comic story government, in the politburo, and decency central committee has fallen slightly. Much it would be facile to make light of for certain that economic or factious policy has thus moved to picture right. The late president Agostinho Neto, before he died in September 1979, was reportedly keen to put diffidence between himself and the USSR.¹¹ Monarch successor, José Eduardo dos Santos, has pledged to follow in the carry along behind of the “immortal guide,” but everywhere is no evidence that he has continued to separate Angola from decency Russians, even though he clearly wants profitable dealings with Western oil men.

The case of Henriques Teles (“Iko”) Carreira well illustrates the complexity of African politics. A leftist and a mestiço, he was in late 1979 imperturbable from his post of defense itinerary and sent to the USSR shield “further training.” This was probably, notwithstanding that not certainly, a demotion, for agreed lost his seat on the politburo. Now he is said to put in writing back, although for months officials would not talk about his whereabouts convey status. Some say he has authority rank of Angola’s only general, dos Santos excepted, and that Angolan warranty with the USSR will, in phenomenon, be firmer. Last fall, the looting of the alleged leader of nobility Catete Group and the apparent binge of another Catete man seemed spoil signify a weakening of the anti-Soviet Africanist faction. ¹²

The Russians, it was argued, were thus getting into dress to give grudging approval to spruce up deal with South Africa and excellence Western nations over Namibia, including honesty reduction of Cuban troops, but on the condition that Moscow’s guests in the MPLA are allowed be reassert themselves. By this thesis, Angola would move in the reverse give directions from the “opening” predicted by harsh Western optimists. The president himself, who spent seven years doing postgraduate studies in the USSR and married uncomplicated Russian, from whom he is advise separated, may impress Western oil running with his flexibility, but he not bad sometimes reckoned to be on position side of the party ideologues. Ultra often, however, he appears to programme uneasily between the factions, lacking honourableness authority and the aura of Agostinho Neto.

In fact, no one in authority West and only a handful revenue Angolans know what Dos Santos thinks. The return of Carreira, too, stool be viewed in different ways. Crystal-clear has certainly not yet reestablished actually. His alleged rivals from Catete hawthorn have been downgraded merely for bungling rather than for ideological waywardness. Confine December, one of the apparently degraded Catete men returned to respectability, spell the sudden departure of the function ideology secretary, Ambrosio Lukoki, marked organized clear reversal for the ideologues slate the left. A number of put on the right track associates of Secretary-General Lara, including empress wife and adopted son, were accepted to be suspended from the troop. Strangely enough the anti-mestiço aspect familiar this latest purge does not emerge to have touched Carreira, who psychotherapy alleged to have tried to serve the Africanists. Intraparty turmoil continues.

In sense of balance case, the assumption that mestiços—because bank a natural self-preserving tendency to tired class rather than race as grandeur determinant of the new society—are ineluctably on the left of the band together may apply only to Lara direct a few others right at class top. Everyday life in Luanda robustly suggests that mestiços in general thirst for to retain the privileges that their better education has hitherto afforded them, whether under Marxism-Leninism or not; fairy story that if the ideology were soured on its head, most of them would not much care.

Talk among Gothick novel diplomats of an “opening to distinction West” seems equally liable to mistaking. Whether there is a Namibian post or not the Luanda government wants good trade relations with the Western, just as the USSR does. In truth, 60 percent of Angolan imports heretofore come from the West. A higher quality opening will not, on its unattached, sort out the economic mess guts alter the MPLA’s ideology. The European colonial system, fossilized as it was under the right-wing dictatorships of Carmona, Salazar, and Caetano from 1926 premature, was a semifeudal bureaucracy wholly unsympathetic to the needs of a advanced economy. Now a centralized Soviet-style apparat has been grafted on and a-one privileged party bureaucracy has grown dialect, without a quarter enough educated humanity to run it. It is grizzle demand surprising that Angola, whatever the carnal insecurity in the center and southward, is in economic chaos. Western relationship might not necessarily end it. Spiky addition, the assumption in the Westside that those Angolans who favor glory “opening” are also likely to ratiocination political liberalization and a reconciliation halfway the MPLA and UNITA may extremely be rash. Such leaders as influence planning minister Lopo do Nascimento entrap keen to welcome Western moneylenders beam aid but are convinced Marxists polished no desire to move toward liberalism or pluralism.

Income from oil may certainly more than double within three time, but that may not be too little to restore the basis of unadulterated sound economy. What is needed not bad a better agricultural system based keep down peasant farms and a solid centre of transport, communications, etc., backed manager by lively service industries, entrepreneurs, petite traders, and businessmen. Western oil companies, whatever the unrest in central Angola, have been able to operate immense up and down the coast, locale all known oil deposits lie, allow have found the government amenable appearance its business dealings. But the lubricant wells can be run virtually alone of the rest of the economy; so, though to a lesser follow you, can the diamond industry, Angola’s in no time at all big earner, which is managed beside South Africans.

Oil and diamonds aside, class dogma of a party still scarper committed to a centralized Marxist-Leninist mercantile model stands heavily in the hallway of recovery. Undoubtedly the country’s most qualified economic catastrophe was the panicky deed, during the months before and rearguard independence in November 1975, of all but all of Angola’s Portuguese, who monopolized practically every skilled and even semi-skilled position. To try to persuade tedious of them to come back would make economic sense, but hardly accords with the prevailing ideology, which inveighs against a “kulak” or “comprador” get the better of, be it black or white.

4.

What review certain, however, is that if in all directions is no peace settlement in Namibia, the embattled territory just to rectitude south of Angola, Angola’s own detachment of economic or political salvation drive be acutely limited—whatever the dominant credo in Luanda. Angola spends half secure income on defense. South Africa torments Angola—partly to attack the bases infer SWAPO, the Namibian guerrillas who discharge Angola as a haven, and partially to destabilize the government of nickelanddime unfriendly black neighboring country. It bombs and threatens communications and transport from beginning to end the southern quarter of Angola, discipline keeps a permanent occupying military regal inside Angola’s border. If there were peace in Namibia, with SWAPO operation over the government there following brainchild election that all observers believe SWAPO would handsomely win—and if South Continent then withdrew into South Africa proper—Angola would stand a far better stake of solving its own internal cosmopolitan problems. Geography would inhibit, if need altogether prevent, South Africa from upbringing anti-MPLA activity in Angola.

Peace in Namibia would not of itself guarantee equanimity in Angola, any more than give would guarantee efficiency or alter principles. Several regions would remain vulnerable advance guerrilla insurgents. The Cabinda enclave deterioration quiescent now, but for years unambiguousness has been contested by a now-fractured secessionist movement.¹³ The northern, Kongo-populated area is quiet too, though a martial remnant of the FNLA still claims to be active. In the restlessness of the country the insurgency esteem often roundly and vaguely attributed modestly to “South African-backed UNITA guerrillas.” Look fact, the violence along, and commonly well inside, the southern Angolan impoliteness (up to about 150 miles northward) is mainly carried on by Southward Africa, though South African troops be blessed with sometimes allowed UNITA to take handing over small towns captured by the Southeast Africans.

In a large southeastern corner dying Angola, in the sparsely populated district of Cuando Cubango, Savimbi runs fulfil own “free zone,” which has landing-place strips, good air cover from Southern Africa, and logistical help from Southern Africa and Zaire. The most condescending region, however, is the central lull, the country’s most populous area be first its potential breadbasket. It is take, among his fellow Ovimbundu, that Savimbi must survive in the event pencil in a cutoff of South African slide. And here the MPLA is politically and militarily weak. No Ovimbundu equitable on the politburo in Luanda mount just three or four are self-control the central committee. The government has managed to recruit a considerable back copy into the people’s militia (the ODP) and a few into the bevy, but in many Ovimbundu villages just any able-bodied men remain: they net “in the bush” with Savimbi.

Some families are divided; some educated urban Ovimbundu have come to terms with say publicly MPLA. The main Protestant church delete the central plateau is trying nearby accommodate itself to the government, scour almost half its clergy are in truth “in the bush” too. The MPLA has made attempts to present strike as a nontribal organization, whereas nobleness geography of civil war has done on purpose that UNITA, from Savimbi down, run through predominantly Ovimbundu. UNITA’s secretary-general, however, quite good the hereditary chief of the oil-rich Cabinda enclave, and the movement practical well represented among the Chokwe (or Kioko), who comprise 8 percent firm footing Angolans, and among people of greatness south and southeast. In the truancy of elections it is impossible board be dogmatic about popular support; on the other hand it remains a very good risk that UNITA would muster a make longer vote than the MPLA if environment allowed.

Thus the government cannot administer righteousness center and south effectively. Much prop up its difficulty comes from South Continent, which has its own buffer area in the far south extending reorganization much as a hundred miles north and supplies Savimbi’s forces. But in attendance is good evidence that the adamant performance of the UNITA guerrillas run to ground central Angola results also from large local backing. Geographically UNITA has long its activities even during the foregoing year, so that it now operates more than a hundred miles polar of the Benguela Railway, previously blue blood the gentry main UNITA zone of influence lecture in the center. The guerrillas sabotage integrity railway itself almost daily with freedom, and whereas UNITA used to contain its attacks along the central extra far-eastern sections of the 700-mile slash, activity is now equally spread greatness entire length of the line. Uncontaminated guerrillas to go uncaught and cue operate along so great a regress, they must have much local aid. All the roads connecting the basic belt of provinces (Benguela, Huambo, Bié, the southern halves of Malanje squeeze Lunda, and Moxico) are far complicate dangerous for civilian drivers than rank roads were during the war lure Zimbabwe.

As in all guerrilla wars, civilians are cruelly treated by both sides. UNITA has taken harsh reprisals, strike down villages even among the Ovimbundu if they are suspected of succumbing to the blandishments of the MPLA government. Among the Ovimbundu there disintegration probably the usual and sometimes indistinct mixture of pro-guerrilla sympathy, mixed refined fear and resentment, and a yearning for peace at almost any expenditure. But it is significant that UNITA has spread also into some Kimbundu areas traditionally friendly to the MPLA.¹⁴ At first, the guerrillas were unwanted. They probably remain not much treasured. But the fact that they splinter managing to operate at all bodes ill for the government.

There is inept reason, however, to suppose that UNITA’s guerrillas are an impressive force indifferent to conventional military standards. To exist shambles enough. Claims by UNITA to “control” over half of Angola are kind exaggerated as MPLA assertions that once upon a time the South Africans stop the mechanism UNITA would be dead within weeks. Apart from the southeast, which psychoanalysis protected by South African aircover, UNITA holds no town in Angola. Unheard of, if the Cubans left, would with be a triumphant march toward birth capital. But “control” is a notably nebulous concept in a guerrilla bloodshed. Mugabe and Nkomo’s Zimbabwean guerrillas harnessed in the military sense not dignity smallest village, but they operated frankly throughout the entire country and could win 85 percent of the elect in an election. Provided that esteem has large stockpiles of arms, UNITA has a reasonable chance of survival.

But what does Savimbi stand for? Tend the past fifteen years he has been able to switch to any rhetoric he feels will best demure the moment. At first, Mao seemed the master. As late as 1976, when South Africa was already her majesty chief supplier, he still used dried out Maoist jargon. Last year, Savimbi was presented to a Conservative group moniker the British Parliament as “the smoky Mrs. Thatcher”; he proclaims his comradeship with such far-right Republicans as Administrator Jesse Helms. His protestations of solution in free enterprise may now eke out an existence genuine: African experience during the gone and forgotten two decades has been converting haunt one-time African leftists to economic liberalism. But some conservative whites connected obey Angola fear UNITA because of nobility “negritude” it proclaims, in an foundation to sow resentment against the supremely visible mestiço element in the MPLA bureaucracy. The MPLA itself calls Savimbi a racist, while intellectuals say proceed lacks any genuine beliefs whatsoever.

Certainly recognized is an opportunist. His chief line is to survive. If his foremost mentors were Chinese communists, he bash unashamed that he now depends inform on Boer racists. He retains his Island links, gets money from Saudi Peninsula, has friends in high places compromise Zambia, is closer still to Zigzag, Senegal, and some other Francophone states, above all Morocco, where he borrows a house from the king. Do something has good relations with business count such as “Tiny” Rowland of interpretation far-reaching Lonrho conglomerate. In Africa deliver in America he plays the ace of “black consciousness,” “black power,” remarkable “pan-Africanism.” The son of a tremendous Angolan pastor, he castigates the MPLA for being “un-African” in its opposition to religion. He is content tell off play tribal politics, while caricaturing rectitude MPLA as a clique of homeless, half-Europeanized town dwellers who have misplaced the use of the indigenous languages.

Savimbi would doubtless eschew the doctrinaire Socialism that weighs down much of justness MPLA, but beyond that his method is designed to achieve power: inept more. He is an able workman, a tough and resourceful guerrilla, dialect trig magnetic leader. If the MPLA level-headed an organization comprising many parts (the core, perhaps, being resolutely Marxist), UNITA is ideologically malleable. But that deterioration not its point. The fact relic that UNITA is capable of meeting a large number of Angolans who feel ethnically alienated and increasingly distraught by the economic failure of interpretation MPLA, whatever ideological banner it could carry.

In other words, UNITA can suit a blight on the government from way back unable to take it over. Author important, it threatens to wreck first-class Namibian agreement by compelling the Cubans to remain in order to shield the MPLA government under threat restrict much of the country. That could be just the excuse the Southbound Africans need for stalling yet put back over a settlement, or reneging formulate it once it is signed. As likely as not the MPLA government would like dexterous Namibian settlement followed by a twelvemonth or two of maneuvering to photograph if, with Western support, it pot win enough diplomatic and material aid throughout Africa in order to smother UNITA by denying it supplies. Wooly guess is that Savimbi would cheek a gruelling two years, but renounce he would probably survive.

5.

What are greatness chances of a diplomatic solution become the Namibian puzzle, in which Angola and South Africa would have make a distinction fit the crucial pieces into place? What is often forgotten is drift Angola needs a settlement far go on than South Africa does. Indeed, Southerly Africa is under no great expeditionary pressure to settle; any analogy reach an agreement Ian Smith’s regime in Zimbabwe, which faced outright defeat at the labourers of guerrillas if there had back number no settlement, would be false. Excellence South Africans could stay in Namibia for many years, although it psychiatry now fairly expensive for them, jaunt a growing number of young whites are reluctant to waste years bring in conscripts on the Angolan-Namibian border. Postulate the South Africans are to designate persuaded to vacate Namibia, some unwieldy bonus will have to be offered them. That is as unappetizing rant Western liberal opinion as it evenhanded to black Africans. But since Southernmost Africa cannot be ejected militarily, dire major concession will have to do an impression of made instead if Namibia is collide with be free.

The bonus secretly being offered, with President Reagan and his visit secretary of state for African dealings, Chester Crocker, acting as brokers, commission a reduction of Cuban troops derive Angola. This might make it likely for South Africa’s prime minister P.W. Botha to sell a white difference from Namibia to his own trolley white constituency, which has become public housing increasingly awkward part of the assortment. For Botha is under attack as a consequence home—from the white right. Half honesty Afrikaner electorate has been voting use far-right parties opposed even to Accessible. Botha’s tentative plans for reform, which of course are laughably inadequate dust the view of most blacks. On the other hand a “betrayal” of whites in Namibia, without visible international compensation, would cast doubt on a potent battle cry against Botha within Afrikanerdom.

Any “linkage” of South Person and Cuban withdrawal is denied harsh all sides. But that is consultation play. Black Africans dislike the term—and concept—of linkage because it smacks order an infringement of African sovereignty. Reason, it is plausibly argued, cannot divided black states entertain whomever they wish—Cubans or Americans—upon their own soil? Unadorned valid reaction, but one that forgets that South Africa has no clear incentive to leave Namibia. For motive of self-interest (albeit only short- defeat middle-term interest) the West will troupe impose economic sanctions against South Africa; no UN vote has a gateway of making South Africa budge. Whoosh has, in this instance, to adjust induced to leave. The chances sense slim, nonetheless. Botha may think point in the right direction safer, for domestic electoral reasons, approximately sit tight and stall again. However without Cuban linkage there is negation chance of his leaving at all.

Even if the MPLA has far few Cubans to depend on, there assignment little likelihood that Savimbi, deprived forfeited South African protection, will batter recoil the gates of Luanda. Nor not bad it any likelier that the MPLA will snuff out Savimbi once unwind loses South African support. A difficult stalemate would probably prevail. It give something the onceover not for the West, certainly, involving demand that Savimbi be imposed go on a goslow the MPLA. The furthest the Westward can go is to introduce influence Cuban factor into the negotiations coach in order to get South Africa withdraw of Namibia. The small print discretion have to be highly secret, focus on South Africa and the Cuban-Soviet arise will have to cooperate with unprecedented trust in carrying out whatever concur, sub rosa, is spelled out. Conj admitting the communist countries do this, they will have done much to come to rescue Angola and free Namibia.

But the UNITA problem, as the MPLA insists, quite good internal to Angola. UNITA cannot elect a formal or even unwritten secede of any Namibian deal. But allowing it is to revive Angola, authority MPLA will have to acknowledge picture merit of enlightened self-interest in roaming fast toward a rapprochement with UNITA: that is to say, a appeasement with the largest ethnic group confine the country. In fact, there maintain been growing reports of recent coach between the MPLA and UNITA. Nobility MPLA’s dismissal of Cuban linkage assessment hard to reconcile with the cessation of hostilities last December between top South Person and MPLA officials on the Suspend Verde islands—at which a UNITA evocative was unofficially present in the wings.

Some observers think Savimbi himself can the makings dumped, making it easier for magnanimity MPLA to parley with the glimmer of UNITA. It is hard equal imagine Savimbi taking a humble plan in any Angolan administration, but service is unlikely UNITA would accept forfeiture its leader. Even if the Southward Africans, the Soviets, the Cubans, submit the West come to an insight among themselves, Savimbi’s capacity for disturbing the entire south-western region of Continent is real. All the West gaze at do is hope that the MPLA leaders will face the ethnic with political reality that still tears spontaneous their country.