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Angola MASS ORGANIZATIONS AND INTEREST GROUPS
Mass Organizations
Three mass organizations were affiliated with the
MPLA-PT in
1988--the Popular Movement for the Liberation of
Angola-Youth
Movement (Juventude do Movimento Popular de Libertação de
Angola --
JMPLA), the Organization of Angolan Women (Organização da
Mulher
Angolana--OMA), and the UNTA. Each was founded as an
anticolonial
social movement during the 1960s and transformed into a
party
affiliate when the MPLA-PT became a vanguard party in
1977.
Although these groups were formally subordinate to the
party in
accordance with Marxist-Leninist doctrine, they continued
to
operate with relative autonomy. Strict party ideologues
objected to
this independence and sometimes treated organization
leaders with
contempt. The resulting tensions added to public
resentment of
party discipline and became a political issue when Neto
accused
leaders of the JMPLA, the OMA, and the UNTA of supporting
the
Nitista coup attempt of 1977. Alves, the coup leader, had
criticized MPLA-PT leaders for bourgeois attitudes and
racism, and
many people in these organizations supported Alves's
allegations.
In the late 1970s, mass organizations became an
important
target of the rectification campaign. Their role in
society was
redefined to emphasize the dissemination of information
about party
policy and the encouragement of participation in programs.
Throughout most of the next decade, MPLA-PT officials
continued to
criticize the lack of coordination of organizational
agenda with
party needs. The mass organizations became centers of
public
resentment of MPLA-PT controls, but these groups were not
yet
effective at organizing or mobilizing against MPLA-PT
rule.
Data as of February 1989
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