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Angola Structure
The Political Bureau reported in 1988 that the MPLA-PT
had more
than 45,000 members. Its social composition, an important
aspect of
its image as a popular vanguard party, consisted of
approximately
18 percent industrial workers, 18 percent peasants, 4
percent
agricultural wage earners, and 60 percent described by the
Political Bureau as "other classes and social strata
interested in
building socialism." However, the fact remained that many
party
members were still government employees, members of the
petite
bourgeoisie the MPLA had denounced so loudly in the 1970s.
The central decision-making bodies of the MPLA-PT
included the
Political Bureau, Central Committee, and the party
congress, each
headed by the president as party chairman
(see
fig. 12). A
hierarchy of committees existed at the provincial,
district, and
village levels; the smallest of these, the party cell,
operated in
many neighborhoods and workplaces. The MPLA-PT's
organizing
principle was democratic centralism, which allowed
participants at
each level of the organization to elect representatives to
the next
higher level. MPLA-PT policy guaranteed open discussion at
each
level, but majority decisions were binding on the
minority, and
lower-level bodies were bound by higher-level decisions.
Party
hierarchies were incomplete in most areas, however,
because of low
literacy rates, poverty, and security problems. Many
lower-level
party functionaries therefore had roles in both party and
government.
Data as of February 1989
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