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Angola BACKGROUND
Unavailable
A view of Lobito, one of Angola's largest cities
Courtesy Richard J. Hough
Political units in southwestern Africa evolved into
complex
structures long before the arrival of the first Portuguese
traveler, Diogo C o, in 1483. The Bantu-speaking and
Khoisan-
speaking hunters the Portuguese encountered were
descendants of
those who had peopled most of the region for centuries.
Pastoral
and agricultural villages and kingdoms had also arisen in
the
northern and central plateaus. One of the largest of
these, the
Kongo Kingdom, provided the earliest resistance to
Portuguese
domination
(see Kongo Kingdom
, ch. 1). The Bakongo (people
of
Kongo) and their southern neighbors, the Mbundu, used the
advantage
of their large population and centralized organization to
exploit
their weaker neighbors for the European slave trade.
To facilitate nineteenth-century policies emphasizing
the
extraction of mineral and agricultural resources, colonial
officials reorganized villages and designed transportation
routes
to expedite marketing these resources. Colonial policy
also
encouraged interracial marriage but discouraged education
among
Africans, and the resulting racially and culturally
stratified
population included people of mixed ancestry
(mestiços),
educated Angolans (assimilados--see Glossary) who
identified
with Portuguese cultural values, and the majority of the
African
population that remained uneducated and unassimilated
(indígenas--see Glossary). Opportunities for
economic
advancement were apportioned according to racial
stereotypes, and
even in the 1960s schools were admitting barely more than
2 percent
of the school-age African population each year.
Portugal resisted demands for political independence
long after
other European colonial powers had relinquished direct
control of
their African possessions. After unsuccessfully seeking
support
from the United Nations (UN) in 1959, educated Luandans
organized
a number of resistance groups based on ethnic and regional
loyalties. By the mid-1970s, four independence movements
vied with
one another for leadership of the emerging nation
(see African Associations
, ch. 1).
The MPLA, established by mestiços and educated
workers
in Luanda, drew its support from urban areas and the
Mbundu
population that surrounded the capital city. The Union of
Peoples
of Northern Angola (União das Populações do Norte de
Angola --
UPNA) was founded to defend Bakongo interests. The UPNA
soon
dropped its northern emphasis and became the Union of
Angolan
Peoples (União das Populações de Angola -- UPA) in an
attempt to
broaden its ethnic constituency, although it rebuffed
consolidation
attempts by other associations. The UPA, in turn, formed
the
National Front for the Liberation of Angola (Frente
Nacional de
Libertação de Angola -- FNLA) in 1962, when it merged with
other
northern dissident groups.
A variety of interpretations of Marxist philosophy
emerged
during the 1950s and 1960s, a period when Western nations
refused
to pressure Portugal (a member of the North Atlantic
Treaty
Organization--NATO) to upgrade political life in its
colonies. The
Portuguese Communist Party (Partido Comunista
Português--PCP)
helped organize African students in Lisbon and encouraged
them to
press for independence. A campaign of arrests and forced
exile
crushed most Angolan nationalist leadership, but in
Portugal
underground antifascist groups were gaining strength, and
Angolan
liberation movements flourished. The MPLA established its
headquarters in Léopoldville, Belgian Congo (present-day
Kinshasa,
Zaire), and in 1962, after a period of exile and
imprisonment,
Agostinho Neto became head of the MPLA.
Neto, a physician, poet, and philosopher, strengthened
the
MPLA's left-wing reputation with his rhetorical blend of
socialist
ideology and humanist values. He also led the group in
protests
against enforced cotton cultivation, discriminatory labor
policies,
and colonial rule in general. MPLA and UPA leaders agreed
to
cooperate, but long-standing animosities led members of
these two
groups to sabotage each other's efforts. Within the MPLA,
leadership factions opposed each other on ideological
grounds and
policy issues, but with guidance from the Soviet Union
they
resolved most of their disputes by concentrating power in
their
high command. Soviet military assistance also increased in
response
to the growing commitment to building a socialist state.
In April 1974, the Portuguese army overthrew the regime
in
Lisbon, and its successor began dismantling Portugal's
colonial
empire. In November 1974, Lisbon agreed to grant
independence.
However, after centuries of colonial neglect, Angola's
African
population was poorly prepared for self-government: there
were few
educated or trained leaders and almost none with national
experience. Angola's liberation armies contested control
of the new
nation, and the coalition established by the Alvor
Agreement in
January 1975 quickly disintegrated
(see Coalition, the Transitional Government, and Civil War
, ch. 1).
Events in Angola in 1975 were catastrophic. Major
factors that
contributed to the violence that dogged Angola's political
development for over a decade were the incursions into
northern
Angola by the United States-backed and Zairian-backed
FNLA; an
influx of Cuban advisers and, later, troops providing the
MPLA with
training and combat support; South African incursions in
the south;
UNITA attacks in the east and south, some with direct
troop support
from Pretoria; and dramatic increases in Soviet matériel
and other
assistance to the MPLA. Accounts of the sequence of these
critical
events differed over the next decade and a half, but most
observers
agreed that by the end of 1975 Angola was effectively
embroiled in
a civil war and that growing Soviet, Cuban, South African,
and
United States involvement in that war made peace difficult
to
achieve.
International recognition came slowly to the MPLA,
which
controlled only the northern third of the nation by
December 1975.
A small number of former Portuguese states and Soviet
allies
recognized the regime, and Nigeria led the Organization of
African
Unity (OAU) in granting recognition. The FNLA and UNITA
attempted
unsuccessfully to establish a rival government in the
Angolan town
of Huambo, but no one outside Angola recognized their
regime. By
the end of 1976, Angola was a member of the UN and was
recognized
by most other African states, but its domestic legitimacy
remained
in question.
MPLA leader Neto had avoided ideological labels during
the
struggle for independence, although the MPLA never
concealed the
Marxist bias of some of its members. Neto viewed
Marxist-Leninist
orthodoxy as a means of unifying and organizing Angola's
diverse
society and of establishing agricultural growth as the
basis for
economic development. He also hoped to avoid
disenfranchising urban
workers or encouraging the growth of a rural bourgeoisie,
while
maintaining crucial military support from the Soviet Union
and
Cuba.
One of the MPLA's many slogans, "people's power"
(poder
popular), had won broad support for the group before
independence, especially in Luanda, where neighborhood
self-help
groups were formed to defend residents of poor and
working-class
neighborhoods against armed banditry. This movement was
quickly
curtailed by the police, but people's power remained a
popular
symbol of the demand for political participation. After
independence, despite constitutional guarantees of
people's power,
the slogan became a symbol of unrealized expectations.
President
Neto, despite his democratic ideals, quickly developed an
autocratic governing style. He introduced austerity
measures and
productivity campaigns and countered the resulting popular
discontent with an array of security and intelligence
operations.
Industrial workers, who were among the first to
organize for
people's power, found their newly formed unions absorbed
into the
MPLA-controlled National Union of Angolan Workers (União
Nacional
dos Trabalhadores Angolanos--UNTA), and the party began to
absorb
other popular organizations into the party structure.
Students,
laborers, and peasant farmers agitated against what they
perceived
as a mestiço-dominated political elite, and this
resentment,
even within the ranks of the MPLA itself, culminated in an
abortive
coup attempt led by the former minister of interior, Nito
Alves, in
May 1977.
In the aftermath of the 1977 Nitista coup attempt, the
MPLA
redefined the rules for party membership. After the First
Party
Congress in December 1977 affirmed the Central Committee's
decision
to proclaim its allegiance to Marxist-Leninist ideals, the
MPLA
officially became a "workers' party" and added "-PT" (for
"Partido
de Trabalho") to its acronym. In 1978 its leaders began a
purge of
party cadres, announcing a "rectification campaign" to
correct
policies that had allowed the Nitista factions and other
"demagogic" tendencies to develop. The MPLA-PT reduced its
numbers
from more than 100,000 to about 31,000, dropping members
the party
perceived as lacking dedication to the socialist
revolution. Most
of those purged were farmers or educated mestiços,
especially those whose attitudes were considered "petit
bourgeois."
Urban workers, in contrast to rural peasants, were
admitted to the
MPLA-PT in fairly large numbers.
By the end of the 1970s, the ruling party was smaller,
more
unified, and more powerful, but it had lost standing in
rural
areas, and its strongest support still came from those it
was
attempting to purge--educated mestiços and
assimilados. Progress was hampered by losses in
membership,
trade, and resources resulting from emigration and nearly
two
decades of warfare. The MPLA-PT attempted to impose
austerity
measures to cope with these losses, but in the bitter
atmosphere
engendered by the purges of the late 1970s, these policies
further
damaged MPLA-PT legitimacy. Pursuing the socialist
revolution was
not particularly important in non-Mbundu rural areas, in
part
because of the persistent impression that mestiços
dominated
the governing elite. National politicians claimed economic
privilege and allowed corruption to flourish in state
institutions,
adding to the challenges faced by dos Santos, who became
MPLA-PT
leader in 1979.
Data as of February 1989
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