Southern Africa, Vol. 10, No. 1 http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.nusa197701 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org Southern Africa, Vol. 10, No. 1 Alternative title Southern AfricaSouthern Africa News BulletinRhodesia News Summary Author/Creator Southern Africa Committee Publisher Southern Africa Committee Date 1977-01-00 - 1977-02-00 Resource type Magazines (Periodicals) Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa, Southern Africa (region), United States, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde Coverage (temporal) 1977-00-00 Source Northwestern University Libraries Rights By kind permission of the Southern Africa Committee. The photograph captioned "Women attending a political meeting called by the MPLA" is used by kind permission of Mike Shuster. The article entitled "Transforming the Struggle in Zimbabwe" is used by kind permission of John Saul. The cover photograph captioned "Politics of Liberation" is used by kind permission of Mike Shuster. Description Pressing on with the Politics of Liberation, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Mozambique. U.S. Scenes. Transforming the Struggle in Zimbabwe. Report from the U.N. South Africa. Namibia. Angola. New Briefs. Mozambique. Zimbabwe. Action News and Notes. Update. Format extent 32 page(s) (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.nusa197701 http://www.aluka.org JANUARY- FEBRUARY 1977 JANUARY- FEBRUARY 1977 SOUTHERN AFRICA * 4 John Saul on Zimbabwr sformation Basil Davidson on Processes of Reconstruction: Angola, Guinea.Bissau and Mozambique VOLUME X NUMBER I CAPE VERDE .I34.ANDS .~S64 Pop..... .... 525,000 EQ. GUI, 'President Luis Cabral SAO TOME EP LIC 'Ruling pa(ty PAIGC & PRINCIPE GABON OF (African Indepedence CON z .Party of Guinea &Co Cape Verde Islands) Pop ........ 6,761,000 Independence date Pres. Agostinho Nero September 24, 1973 Ruling party. ..MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) ANGOLA Independence date.... November 11, 1975_ Pop ......... ...883,000\N, % African ............ 88% Ruled by South Africa Liberation group... SWAPO (South West Africa People's Organization) Pop ................. 25,471,000 %Black .................... 81% Prime Minister ...... John Vorster Liberation groups ............. ANC (African National Congress) PAC (Pan African Congress) SPop ........... 9,239,000 President Samora Machel Ruling party... FRELIMO (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) Independence date ...... September 25,1975 p .................. 6,310,000 %African ................ 95% Prime Minister ....... Ian Smith Liberation groups ........... ANC (African National Council), ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People's Union) ZANU and ZAPU united in Patriotic Front prior to Geneva lalks BASED ON 1975 U N POPULATION FIGURES CONTENTS 3 Pressing on with the Politics of Liberation, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Mozambique by Basil Davidson 6 U. S. Scenes FBI Harassment of Southern Africa Committee Cyrus Vance, What Prospects for Southern Africa U.S. Mercenaries in Rhodesia U.S. Firms Tout Support for S.A. Agents U.S. Abstains on Angolan Membership Liberals Plan Congressional Strategy A.I.D. Plans Strategy for Southern Africa 12 Transforming the Struggle in Zimbabwe by John Saul 16 Report from the U.N. by Pat Smith 18 SOUTH AFRICA 20 NAMIBIA Angola Border Tense Turnhall, Seeking an Alternative to SWAPO 21 ANGOLA Major Changes Announced More Fighting in the South 23 NEW BRIEFS 24 MOZAMBIQUE XICONHOCA Northwestern University Library *EVanston, Il. 26 ZIMBABWE 28 ACTION NEWS AND NOTES 29 UPDATE C'-- :1L'S- -7. Io- Southern Africa is published monthly, except for July-August when bi-monthly, by the Southern Africa Committee, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011. Subscriptions: Individual (Domestic and foreign)/$8.00; institutional/$18.00; Airmail: Africa, Asia, Europe/$20.50; South and Central America/$17.50 Application to mail at second-class postage rates is pending at New York, N.Y. Cover Photo by Mike Shuster Our collective: barbara barnes carole benglesdorf wes cohen jennifer davis michael davis charlie ebel mimi edmunds carolyn fleuhr-lobban nancy gear lynn goodwin peggy halsey janet hooper craig howard tami hultman alan isaacman bill johnston marci kerr richard knight reed kramer richard leonard richard lobban edgar lockwood mary mcanally-knight bill minter ruth minter antonio neves dipankar ray david robinson susan rogers christine root karen rothmeyer mike shuster janet siskind pat smith jinni stroman john stroman stephanie urdang jim weikart leiza zadel January 1977 Dear Readers: Here is the first issue of our "new magazine", a double issue for January-February. We have worked hard on it, and hope you will feel that we are moving in the right direction. Despite the long list of collective names, there are actually relatively few people who have the time to work on writing and editing, so some of us have burned a lot of midnight oil these last few weeks. We are hoping to shift the whole technical production process away from New York. That will mean a major re-organization, so we will not have a separate February issue. The improved March issue will, we hope, more than make up for the delay. We have been very encouraged by your response to our subscription mailing, and the support that has been expressed for our work. We particularly want to thank those subscribers who sent us donations in addition to their subscription. Readers whose subscriptions lapsed at the end of December and who have not yet resubscribed will be receiving this issue, but not the March one. Hope you'll resubscribe in time. A luta continua The struggle continues THE COLLECTIVE QUALITY CONTROL MARK Pressing on with the Politics of Liberation ANGOLA, GUINEA BISSAU, CAPE VERDE AND MOZAMBIQUE AFTER INDEPENDENCE The Politics of Liberation The wars of liberation in "Portuguese Africa" were won, as we all know, by the politics of liberation. What do we really mean by that? The question has been answered both by the record of the three liberation movements, MPLA in Angola, PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau and FRELIMO in Mozambique, and also by the careful explanations of each stage of the struggle given by the leaders of these movements. A pioneering group of revolutionary nationalists, at first very small, begins to mobilize people, at first very few people, against the colonial system. They explain that misery, hunger and oppression are not sent by God, are not "natural in this world" and are not bound to go on for ever. They continue with their work of explanation and soon they meet with Portuguese repression. When it is clear that the Portuguese colonial system will make no concessions by peaceful means, the revolutionary nationalists prepare to fight for justice. Slowly, painfully, they mobilize more support. But support is not enough. People have to liberate themselves. The revolutionary nationalists take the next step. They begin to transform support into active participation. This mass participation in the work of self-liberation becomes the key to everything done by the liberation movements. It stands at the heart of the politics of liberation. In every essential sense, it is the politics of liberation. Everyone who travelled in the liberated zones of Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique during the war years, bore witness to this. They saw villages governing themselves by elected committees under the leadership of the liberation movements. They found the beginnings of a new educational system, a new legal system, a new economic system. In all these ways, and in other and comparable ways, mass participation not only made it possible to fight and win the guerrilla wars against huge and often terrible odds. It also made it possible to lay the foundations of a new social order, of a new state, of a new kind of nationalism. New in two ways: new because it could overcome the constrictions Basil Davidson is a British journalist and African historian who has written extensively on Africa. He paid visits to the three ex-Portuguese colonies before and after independence. Among his many books are The Liberation of Guine and In the Eye of the Storm about Angola. Basil Davidson Women guerrillas of FRELIMO's Women's Detach ment during the war (Van Lierop) and distortions of the colonial system; and new, secondly, because it could also overcome those pre-colonial African structures which, however valid in the distant past, have now become a drag on democratic progress. This achievement is the main thing to bear in mind when looking at what has happened in these countries since independence. Unlike the nationalists of an earlier decade, these revolutionaries had no interest in merely taking over the structures of the colonial states evacuated by colonial power; their aim was to dismantle and replace them with new structures. The framework for the new structures was already in existence in the liberated zones. The central task was not to invent a new system of government, nor to simply "occupy" and prolong the colonial system.