ON on AFRICA by Dr JH DU10DIECO of AFICN6RORA

ON ON AFRICA by Dr JH D U10DIECO of AFICN6RORA THE ANGOLAN WAR AND AMERICAN AMBIVALENCE For over a year and a half the Portuguese colony of Angola has been in a state of armed rebellion. Since the outbreak of the nationalist revolt on March 15, 1961, Angola, three times the size of Texas and fourteen times that of Portugal, has been the theater of violent struggle between the forces of African nationalism and Portuguese colonialism. The Angolan War, aimed at achieving independence for the 4.5 million Africans in that long sequested colony, is little publicized or understood in the United States. Yet it is of immense importance to the future of African-American relations. Angola sits below the "Mason and Dixon Line" which cuts across Africa from the northern borders of Angola and Katanga to meet the Indian Ocean on the frontier between Tanganyika and Mozambique. While the rest of the continent is busy fashioning new nation states, building modern economies, expanding educational facilities and forging new interstate relationships, the people below this line in southern Africa remain under European domination. COLONIAL BACKGROUND Portuguese penetration into Angola dates back almost five centuries to 1483-- before Columbus. Early diplomatic relations with the Congo Kingdom of the north were followed by a slow, spasmodic conquest that finally extended Portuguese authority over the interior in the nineteenth century. Depopulated and demoralized by a slave trade that ravaged it up until the middle of the past century, Angola has been treated as a private preserve of raw materials and cheap labor up to the present day. This generalization may be confirmed by means of a brief examination of the political, economic and educational legacy of the centuries of Portuguese rule. (1) Political conditions: Since 1951 Angola and other African possessions have been considered "provinces" or integral parts of Portugal. The avowed goal of the Estado Novo of Antonio Salazar has been to assimilate Angola into the Portuguese nation. Yet as of 1950, only one half of one percent of the African population had become assimilados (about 30,000), while over ninety-nine percent remained indigenas, or "uncivilized" persons without political or civil rights. It cost about $50.00 plus bribes to local administrators for those few who had the educational and other prerequisites for becoming assimilados (a relatively well-paid African school teacher may earn as much as S17.00 per month).I Therefore the privileged status with its accompany right to vote for Salazar government slates lacked appeal. Dr. Salazar himself recognized the snail's pace of assimilation when he said in 1961: "A law recognizing citizenship takes minutes to draft and can be made right away; a citizen that is a man fully and consciously integrated into a civilized political society takes centuries to achieve."2 With absolute power still vested in a governor-general appointed in Lisbon and reinforced by secret police (PIlE) and some thirty-five to forty-five thousand troops, recent reforms granting citizenship to all Angolans have little meaning. Literacy and financial qualifications "do not appear to the Z ited Nations Special Committee on Territories under Portuguese Administration 7 to be designed to extend the right to vote to the majority of the indigenous inhabitants, particularly since -2- few of them have had the opportunity to learn to read and write Portuguese..3 (2) Economic conditions: Angola has been enjoying an economic boom as of late. In 1959, coffee exports rose to nearly fifty million dollars, diamonds to over twenty, and newly discovered oil and iron reserves plus an influx of West German and other western capital promised increasing revenue in foreign currency. Portugal's exports pay for less than one half its imports; in 1959 Portugal's deficit in its balance of payments was about one hundred-fifty million dollars, which was made up with a forty-five million dollar surplus by exports from "overseas provinces." It must be added that the coffee, sisal and cotton plantations, diamond mines and other wealth of Angola are owned by Europeans and only rendered profitable by African labor. For the latter there is still the economy of the palmatorio, a wooden mallot used to beat unsatisfactory workers. In a report on Angolan refugeds in August, 1961, two respected British observers wrote: The system of Contract Labour is one of the chief grievances of the African people in Angola. It is some indication of face relationships in Angola that about half a million Africans are held "in contract" and forced to work for the Portuguese government and Portuguese traders. African men are conscripted for periods of up to eighteen months of Contract Labour; women are forced to do work mending roads, and children from eight years of age upwards are known to have been employed in the copper mines and the coffee plantations. Labourers are frequently ill-treated. For years there has been a constant stream of Africans moving across to the Congo to escape Contract Labour. Some Contract Labourers have run away froi their work but if they are caught they are severely beaten."4 Commenting upon a relatively mild report on labor conditions in Angola made by a commission of the International Labor Organization,5 which conducted its survey under Portuguese surveillance and without any means of protecting African informants from reprisals, a former missionary in Angola, Rev. Malcolm McVeigh has pointed out that "idleness" remains an offense and obligations to work, either for the state or private employers on the latters' terms, still define the economic relationship of African to European.6 Referring to reforms in the labor code, the United Nations Committee on Portuguese Territories has said: "Since vagabondage is punishable under the Portuguese Civil Code, the Committee considers that whether or not the new legislation brings an improvement in the daily lives of the indigenous inhabitants will depend to a great extent on how the laws are interpreted and applied."7 Meanwhile, Europeans continue to earn approximately three times the wages of Africans for doing the same work. (3) Educational conditions: Perhaps it is in the educational field that the Portuguese colonial record compares most unfavorably with those of more advanced colonial powers. As of 1956, approximately one percent of the African school age population was attending school; in neighboring Northern Rhodesia the figure for 1958 was eleven percent; and whereas the Northern Rhodesian government was spending approximately four dollars per capita for education in 1959, the Portuguese government was spending but one tenth of one cent per capita in 1956 ($,760).8 There are few secondary schools, populated mostly by Europeans and mulattos, a middle caste enjoying near-European privileges. There are no universities. In 1962, much heralded plans to establish overseas universities in Angola and Mozambique were abandoned as "unconstitutional."'9 Of the handful of Angolan students only recently permitted to study in Portuguese universities, most escaped Portugal after the outbreak of the Angolan War placed them under mounting pressure from the Portuguese police. The fact that even less than five percent of the African population read or write at all is due in good measure to the efforts of missionary and church schools. Yet educational activities of American Protestant missions have been curtailed by a hostile regime. "The danger of the Protestant missions" is seen in an alleged "systematic" refusal "to educate the native for the Portuguese concept of integration."10 According to the Portuguese government, the trouble with these missions is that they do not believe that Angolans are Portuguese. "They insist in their attitude of preaching self-determination as the only possible solution for problems and difficulties that foreigners and only foreigners have raised in the path so far followed by Portuguese policy." There may be some truth in this allegation if one accepts that fact that Protestant missions allowed in Christian ideals that are dangerous to the status quo. As the missionary's price for remaining, Portugal demands collaboration with its "policy of integration."11 THE ISSUES Since the outbreak of hostilities in 1961, the Portuguese government has been under international pressure to reform its administration. Yet it has changed little. To begin with, its means are limited. Selfstyled civilizer, it itself suffers from an illiteracy rate of forty percent and a low per capita income level of something over 5200.00. It needs outside aid in order to develop economic and educational programs for its own people. With this in mind, the United States government recently extended a fifty-five million dollar loan as assistance for a Tagus River bridge development project. Added to incapacity is culpability. What Portugal cannot do for itself, let alone for millions of Africans, it prohibits others from doing. Lisbon has steadfastly refused to permit humanitarian agencies such as the World Health Organization and UNICEF to operate in its colonies. Poverty and contract labor amidst the growing prosperity of a recruited immigrant population (200,000) that has been alienating choice agricultural land and building European cities surrounded by African slms, coupled with the injection of a small dose of education, inevitably created a revolutionary climate. Nationalist movements began forming in the mid-1950's, Radio Brazzaville and Leopoldville brought news of political change in the Congo and Africa at large. By 1960 and Congolese independence, the Union of the Populations of Angola (UPA) led by Holden Roberto had organized headquarters in Leopoldville, Matadi and Elizabethvilles was publishing a newspaper in four languages, was disseminating tracts to African soldiers and workers inside Angola, was petitioning the United Nations and was appealing to the Lisbon government for a negotiated course toward self-government. Lisbon refused then and still refuses to take heed.

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