by Guy Arnold
At the beginning of 1973 FRELIMO had control of most of Cabo Delgado and Niassa provinces where the Portuguese were confined to a few garrisons; they were also deploying guerrillas all over Tete province. Then in June FRELIMO opened a new front north of Beira. By early 1974 FRELIMO was operating astride the Beira–Rhodesia railway and the real front had moved south close to the Save river and within 100 miles of the South African border. The settlers became seriously worried, cabled Lisbon and demonstrated in Beira. Portugal rushed out military reinforcements and 150,000 villagers in the Beira district were moved into aldeamentos. As the Rand Daily Mail stated: ‘The stark fact is that if the FRELIMO push south is not stopped on the Umtali–Beira axis, the whole country will be in danger of terrorism. Portugal is not winning the war in Mozambique.’
Following Gen. Spinola’s speech of 27 July 1974, recognizing the right to independence of Portugal’s African colonies, the settlers began to leave the country at the rate of 1,000 a week and white troops abandoned their garrisons after making agreements with local guerrilla groups. FRELIMO tried to persuade the settlers to stay. When Portugal suggested some form of federation with its colonies, Machel said: ‘We are not going to discuss independence with the Portuguese. That is our inalienable right.’ The final agreement for independence in 1975 was reached on 7 September 1974. Although FRELIMO made clear that the 220,000 settlers were welcome to stay, the majority in fact left. The right-wing settlers had looked for three things: support from South Africa; support from Rhodesia; and support from other whites in Mozambique. When they did not receive any such support they panicked and the exodus into South Africa mounted.
An independent Mozambique altered fundamentally the strategic situation in southern Africa. It meant that both Rhodesia and South Africa were outflanked; it meant that African nationalist guerrillas and arms could, for the first time, have direct frontier access to South Africa; it began the process whereby South Africa started militarily and psychologically withdrawing into a ‘laager’ while being forced to rethink its entire policy towards black Africa as well as towards Rhodesia and Namibia. There could be no going back.
ANGOLA
The war in Angola developed steadily, if unevenly, through the early 1970s. Writing in the Daily Telegraph13 John Miller said that by then the nine-year-old struggle was pinning down 60,000 Portuguese troops, that travel outside the capital Luanda had to be in convoys and that the guerrillas were building up their strength in the east of the country. Writing in West Africa Basil Davidson claimed that the guerrillas were slowly winning the war: ‘There is no doubt, I think, that the Portuguese have lost the strategic initiative in the east, retaining only the brief tactical initiatives of the kind they exercised when I was there. When judged only by the key area of Muie and its surrounding forests, guerrilla penetration to the West is real and effective.’14 Unlike Mozambique, Angola had three liberation movements: the FNLA (Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola); the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola); and UNITA (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola). Through the first half of the 1970s the MPLA was by far the most aggressive in the field. However, by the time of the April 1974 Revolution in Portugal, the war in Angola remained more open and less decided than that in Mozambique.
African efforts to unite the liberation movements had only limited, temporary success. Acting under an OAU mandate the Presidents of Zaïre and the Congo brought Agostinho Neto, the leader of the MPLA, and Holden Roberto, the leader of the FNLA, together in June 1972. They did not, however, invite Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA, who was suspected of working with the Portuguese against the MPLA. A very tentative agreement was reached and subsequently ratified at the Rabat OAU summit later that June. In December a further move to unify the two movements was attempted at a meeting in Kinshasa of the foreign ministers of Zambia, Tanzania, Zaïre and Congo at which Neto and Roberto agreed to place their armies under the overall command of a Supreme Council for the Liberation of Angola. In fact, these meetings were more about gesture politics than any real intent to achieve unity: the leadership, ideologies and intent of the two movements were simply too far apart for such overtures to be successful. Furthermore, both the MPLA and the FNLA were troubled by internal dissensions; FNLA was the more affected when a number of its leading members defected to the Portuguese. The MPLA opened a new front in the region of Mocamedes and Huila.
The Cunene River scheme for hydro-electric generation and irrigation was launched in 1972 and, like the Cabora Bassa project in Mozambique, was a joint Portuguese-South African venture also designed to draw South Africa into the ‘defence’ of Portugal’s interests in the region. The Cunene formed the boundary between Angola and South African-controlled Namibia and the agreement provided for an expenditure of 17.48 million escudos which made the project larger than the Cabora Bassa Dam. The first stage was designed to control the flow of the Cunene along its entire length: there was to be a dam at Ruacana Falls and the Gove Dam, and irrigation for Ovamboland in northern Namibia. The Gove Dam would create a lake 178 kilometres in length and would provide electric power as well as water for irrigation. A generating station at Ruacana with a capacity of 240–300 MW per hour would provide electric power for the Namibian mines at Tsumeb and Grootfontein, as well as for the fishing industry at Walvis Bay. It was, in other words, to be of greater value to South Africa than to Angola.15
During 1973 the Portuguese were under less pressure in Angola than Mozambique and this enabled them to transfer 10,000 of their troops from Angola to the latter country. Zambia and Tanzania, which had broken diplomatic contact with the FNLA, resumed relations with Holden Roberto, and his movement was re-adopted by the OAU Liberation Committee. The Portuguese were able to expand both industrial activity and the oil industry during the year although the Portuguese themselves remained reluctant to invest in Angola. The three guerrilla movements and the Portuguese each exaggerated their military achievements, yet the guerrilla performance that year was not especially successful. Despite continuing efforts on the part of the OAU to persuade the three movements to work together they remained divided as to ideology and the political ambitions of their three leaders. President Mobutu of Zaïre, always a political weather-vane, took a stronger anti-Portuguese stand through the year and worked more closely with Tanzania and Zambia, the two leading front-line states.
Angola’s oil production from the Cabinda enclave was both a principal economic source of strength for the Portuguese and also an indication of the future resource dependence of an independent Angola. Exports for 1972 from Cabinda Gulf (in barrels) were as follows:16
Canada 16,526,536
US–Trinidad 13,451,138
Japan 9,934,099
Portugal 3,618,570
Spain 1,926,141
Luanda refinery 600,743
Denmark 506,445
Following the 25 April Revolution in Lisbon, before Portugal’s decolonizing intentions had become clear, the suspicion grew that Spinola hoped to hold onto Angola for its wealth. This suspicion was reinforced by the appointment of a right-wing Governor-General, Silvino Silveiro Marques. It was claimed that he had been appointed to reassure the whites, but he did not reassure the blacks. In July fierce black-white rioting erupted in Luanda and many Africans were killed. The Governor was dismissed as a result and a local military council took control of the country. On 29 July the MPLA and FNLA agreed to meet in Zaïre to set up a common front for independence negotiations. But the whites became increasingly vocal in their protests against a ‘sell-out’ to the liberation movements. However, the MPLA/FNLA unity meeting was postponed by disputes within the MPLA. An MPLA congress in Lusaka was attended by 165 supporters of MPLA President Dr Neto, 165 supporters of his rival Daniel Chipenda and 70 delegates from Brazzaville led by Joaquim Pinto de Andrade. The congress lasted from 12 to 21 August but ended without agreement. Dr Neto called for a united Angola but refused to agree to co-operate with other political parties in any future governmen
t. The MPLA and UNITA reached unofficial peace agreements with the Portuguese Army but the FNLA under Holden Roberto continued to fight.17
In October, after the fall of Spinola, the FNLA declared a ceasefire to end 13 years of war. The struggle for ascendancy in Angola now got under way. Roberto was backed by Zaïre’s Mobutu while the Americans regarded him as neutral; their principal concern was to safeguard the high level of foreign investment in the country, especially the oil in Cabinda. Complex manoeuvres followed and a fragile common front was formed by the liberation movements in Kinshasa to deal with a delegation from Lisbon. Mobutu and the Portuguese wanted to back the FNLA and the Chipenda faction of the MPLA. Neto did not attend these meetings. During November further violence erupted in Luanda in which 50 people were killed and 100 injured. By this time the differences between the three liberation movements were steadily widening. FNLA influence was confined to the northern coffee-growing region and it had again lost the support of the OAU. Holden Roberto was always in Zaïre rather than in Angola with his forces and the FNLA, like the MPLA, was weakened by splits. By this time the MPLA had made the widest international impact although its main Angolan support was confined to the region around Luanda. Its close links with the Communists ensured US opposition and the split between the Neto and Chipenda factions had yet to be resolved. The third liberation movement, UNITA, which had been formed in 1964 when Jonas Savimbi broke with Holden Roberto, was then operating in the south of the country. As the prospect of Angola being split by civil war to secure the succession to the departing Portuguese developed, Savimbi extended the influence of UNITA in the centre and south of the country and gathered support from white settlers. These manoeuvres continued to the end of the year while cynics looked greedily at Angola’s great wealth: diamonds, coffee, iron ore, oil. ‘No one knows how rich the country is going to be. But we know it is going to be very rich indeed. Possibly the richest country in the continent per head of the population after South Africa.’18 Angola’s coming independence was going to be deeply troubled and the liberation war, which had ended with the 13 October FNLA ceasefire, would in fact merge into a civil war between the different nationalist factions and was destined to last to the end of the century.
The differences between the liberation movements were deep: part ideological, part a question of power, part tribal. They were temporarily suspended in January 1975, following a meeting between the three movements in Nairobi, which enabled them to present a united front to Portugal at Alvor in the Algarve later that month when Neto, Roberto and Savimbi represented their movements and Portugal agreed upon 11 November as the date for Angolan independence. On 31 January a transitional government was established in Luanda. The unity was short-lived. On his return to Luanda on 4 February, Neto was greeted by a crowd of 100,000; he called for unity. From Kinshasa Roberto rejected the idea of people’s power and communism. Then Chipenda’s wing of the MPLA staged a revolt in Luanda and merged with Roberto’s FNLA. In March fighting broke out between the MPLA and the FNLA. In April a joint OAU/UN mission tried but failed to bring the liberation movements together again. Instead, dissension and fighting increased for the rest of the year. By June the fighting between the three movements had spread to the capital but by 12 July the MPLA, with Soviet assistance, had driven the Western-backed FNLA and UNITA out of Luanda and then controlled 12 out of 15 provinces. Roberto had returned to Angola for the first time since 1961 to lead the FNLA in its attack upon Luanda but without success. By August the fighting had spread to most parts of the country and South African troops had entered the south of Angola. On 19 September Portugal announced that it would withdraw all its troops by 11 November and most of them had left the country by the end of October. UNITA and the FNLA announced they would set up a government at Huambo in the south of the country until the MPLA had been driven from Luanda. On 11 November the Portuguese made a hurried departure from Angola with nothing settled. The MPLA proclaimed the People’s Republic of Angola with Agostinho Neto as President. In Ambriz the FNLA and UNITA proclaimed the Popular and Democratic Republic of Angola with Holden Roberto as President. As the civil war intensified the US offered direct assistance to both the FNLA and UNITA, while the USSR increased its assistance to the MPLA; by 11 November the USSR had airlifted some 16,000 Cuban troops into the country in support of the MPLA. At independence the MPLA had the decisive advantage: it controlled the capital and most of the towns and won international recognition as the government. South Africa, however, was preparing for a major intervention against the MPLA. The departure of the Portuguese signalled the end of the liberation struggle and the beginning of years of civil war that would see the two superpowers, the Cubans, South Africa and mercenaries all involved in a struggle that would continue to 2000.
THE PORTUGUESE RETREAT
By 1972 the world wondered at Portugal’s determination to carry on a conflict it could not win but the Portuguese response was that it could not do otherwise. The Portuguese had long been taught that their country’s future lay in Africa and that without Africa it would become a nonentity in Europe. Opponents of this view argued that if the same effort that went into holding onto the African colonies were to be used instead to develop Portugal itself the country would be far better off. The change in the Organic Law which governed the African colonies was not very far-reaching and amounted to little more than designating the overseas African provinces of Angola and Mozambique as states with marginal autonomy that would allow them a greater say in their home affairs, largely over economic matters. The change would not be permitted to disrupt ‘the essential unity of the Portuguese nation’. When the hard right responded to this new ‘soft’ line in Africa by re-electing for the third time Admiral Americo Thomaz as President for seven years – he was an old associate of Salazar – left-wing urban guerrillas reacted with violence. Hours before Thomaz was sworn in as President, 30 bombs were exploded in various parts of Lisbon, as well as in Coimbra and Oporto and, among other damage, put the power network out of action.
The priority that had been accorded to African development during the wars meant that in 1972 the economic growth rates in both Angola and Mozambique passed that of Portugal for the first time. At the same time Portugal’s home problems were multiplying and Caetano blamed emigration, inflation and housing for Portugal’s ills. An estimated 1.5 million Portuguese were living permanently abroad, mainly in France, Germany and the US, while the population at home stood at 8.8 million. The annual rate of emigration stood at 180,000 of whom about 30,000 a year went to Angola and Mozambique; many of the others were draft dodgers or soldiers who had finished their service but feared a second call-up. Despite increasing military service to four years, the army remained short of manpower and in order to induce soldiers to serve for a third time in Africa they were offered a 10 per cent pay increase and further family allowances. When Rhodesia’s Ian Smith visited Lisbon in October 1972 and expressed his alarm at the adverse turn of events in the Tete province of Mozambique, Caetano publicly rebuked him, without mentioning his name, when he said: ‘Some neighbours with less experience of guerrilla warfare than ourselves do not conceal their fears, and are playing the enemy’s game.’ Resentment of Rhodesia made sense only if Portugal’s concept of multiracialism was to carry conviction among the Africans; in fact, dependence on a so-called southern African bloc made a mockery out of Portugal’s policy which, for all its ambivalence, was in no way akin to apartheid.19
Opponents of Portugal’s African policy were arrested during a peace vigil in Lisbon on New Year’s Eve, December 1972. On 15 January 1973 the Prime Minister, Marcello Caetano, said he would not talk with terrorist groups. Liberals in the Portuguese Parliament were defeated by the right-wingers who controlled the assembly, although the country’s politics were becoming increasingly stormy as the African wars dominated public life. The Secretary of State for Information, Moreira Baptista, said Portugal was at war and nothing should be allowed to weaken the national effort: ‘We shall continue
the fight for freedom of thought.’20 Herminio Palma Ignacio, a revolutionary of 30 years and the leader of the League of Revolutionary Unity and Action (LUAR) in Portugal, said that revolution would come to Portugal before the freedom fighters succeeded in the colonies and claimed that when the government of Portugal had been overthrown they (the revolutionaries) would bring an immediate end to the African wars. By 1973, although Caetano appeared to be in firm control of events there was growing and widespread opposition to his policies. Britain tried to bolster Portugal’s stand by agreeing to celebrations in June 1973 to mark 600 years of Anglo-Portuguese alliance: the Duke of Edinburgh was to visit Portugal over 5–8 June and Caetano was to return the visit in Britain over 16–19 July. These arrangements led to a storm of protests in Britain from anti-apartheid groups. In September 1973 the PAIGC proclaimed the independence of Guinea-Bissau, which was then admitted as the forty-second member of the OAU and recognized by 70 countries while in November the General Assembly of the UN adopted a resolution by 93 to seven with 30 abstentions to welcome ‘the recent accession to independence of the people of Guinea-Bissau’.