For revolutionary Marxists in Africa the Angolan civil war is of crucial importance for two reasons: 1. As is underlined in the declaration of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (INPRECOR, No.39, December 4, 1975) and in the article by C. Gabriel (No.38, November 20, 1975), the struggle of the MPLA has set an internal dynamic in motion. Insofar as the MPLA is based on the most advanced sections of the proletarian and peasant population of the coun try and is forced by the very demands of the ongoing war to ensure a high level of mobilization of that population, the MPLA leadership, despite its thoroughly petty-bourgeois character, cannot avoid opening up at least a possibility of the struggle developing in ar anticapitalist direction. If the coming months do in fact see the deepening of organs of popular power and control in Angola, even in the most partial and initially unstructured fashion, this will be of tremendous significance. First, it will ensure that whatever weight imperialism is able to bring to bear on the situation through U.S. handouts to Mobutu and the direct intervention of the racist regime in South Africa, there will be no question of a purely military victory able to guarantee the longterm stability of a neocolonialist regime in Angola. Second, a struggle marked by the development of such orgars can provide the populations of the states of the rest of black. Africa with an example of the development of mass involvement in struggle and of embryonic dual power, historically virtually unknown on the continent. 2. The Angolan struggle is bringing the political contours of neocolonialist Africa into sharp relief in a way that can be more effective than a thousand pages of polemic in exposing the class nature of these regimes. These have relied on a smokescreen of "African socialism, " "humanism," "authenticity, " etc. in order more effectively to continue playing their role as junior partners of imperialism in the exploitation of the masses of Africa. But the current interventions being made quite openly by Washington and Pretoria have forced several of these regimes to abandon their camouflage in a fashTon that will prove quite educational for the African masses. It is already possible to draw some conclusions. At least two of Africa's neocolonialist regimes have clearly cast off any pretensions of independence from imperiIn the case of Zaire, it has long since been evident that the Mobutu regime was U.S. imperialism's most reliable ally in the area. The FNLA, led by Mobutu's brother-in-law, Holden Roberto, has been receiving covert aid from the U.S. government for many years. Now the American government openly admits its support to that movement, and Ford and Kissinger are engaged in a campaign to obtain reversal of the Congress decision of December, which blocked this help. In addition, it was clear that the eightfold increase in U.S.
----- pull-quotes on this page ----- Kaunda & Vorster Zambia: OF THE ANGOLAN CIVIL WAR by JOHN BLAIR
ZAMBIA military aid to Zaire announced in November was aimed at strengthening Zaire's Angolan intervention. The latter is now well documented. The FLA has always had its main power base among the Bakongo peoples who straddle the border between Angola and Zaire. Hence, it has often been difficult to ascertain the exact origin of many of the FLA fighters. But recent reports from Angola itself (for example, an interview on November 10 with South African mercenaries captured by the MPLA, reported in the November 16 Times of Zambia) affirm that half of Roberto's army is now composed of Zairois regulars. In addition, Mobutu has for many years provided a base for the totally ineffective FLEC (Front for the Liberation of Cabinda) in an attempt to break that oil rich territory away from Angola and annex it to Zaire. In this situation it is the most blatent hypocrisy for the Mobufu government to talk incessantly of its commitment to the principle of withdrawal of all foreign forces from Angola. For ten years now the Mobutu regime has been the main transmission belt for the attempt to maintain U.S. Imperialist interests in Angola, while at the same time maneuvering for a special kickback in the form of Cabinda and its oil wealth.
Mobutu But If Mobutu's current hypocrisy on Angola merely provides further confirmation of an already well established trend in the evolution of the Zairols regime, that of the Kenneth Kaunda government in Zambia is of apparently more recent origin. During ten years of the liberation war, Zambia gave logistic and diplomatic support to the MPLA. But this has changed dramatically during the past eighteen months. First, a consistent campaign was waged for a whole period on behalf of
Jonas Savimbi, the man whose charismatic personality would unite the country's strife-ridden peoples. Of late, the public line has changed somewhat. The Zambian newspapers have now placed Savimbi in the same garbage can as Neto and Roberto, and Angola is said to be awaiting the emergence of a leader with sufficient foresight and capacity to unite the three warring move-
4 ments. At the OAU summit in January, Kaunda was the foremost figure of the tendency that moralized about the need for unity, totally ignoring the class nature and support of the forces involved and shedding crocodile tears aplenty for the population of Angola, which is supposedly suffering purely as a result of the misleadership of three power-hungry and bloodthirsty warriors. Why the Zambian turn But all the rhetoric (and the waterworks, which are a well-established part of Kaunda's platform style) will not be capable of covering up the fact that Zambia's line on Angola does not stem from any concern for the fate of that country's people, nor from any noble "humanist" motives, but from the tactical turn the Zambian ruling group has made in the past eighteen months, a turn that has transformed the country into imperialism's most reliable ally among the black-ruled states of central and southern Africa. Three main factors lie behind the present position of the Kaunda regime: 1. The appreciation of the fact, to which we have already drawn attention, that the potential effects of the ongoing struggles in Angola cannot be contained within the boundaries of that country, and that they therefore constitute a threat to the preservation of capitalist stability not only in Angola but also in neighboring territories. 2. A deep-rooted fear of the consequences for the state of South Africa iself of any ongoing struggles in the region. As we suggested more than a year ago see INPRECOR, No. 14/15, December 12, 1974), the governments of neocolonialist regimes like that in Zambia, despite their verbal commitment to the ending of apartheid, are in fact well aware that because of imperialism's deep-rooted investment in that system, apartheid will be destroyed anly as a result of struggles that will necessarily go beyond the question of race and will threaten the very existence of capitalist property relations. Any prolonged mass struggle in the region can serve as an example and inspiration to the oppressed layers inside South Africa itself and thus could potentially plunge the entire region into continual anticapitalist battles.
3. At the present time, the Zambian regime is undergoing what is acknowledged, even by government spokespersons, as its most deep-going economic crisis since independence. The economy depends on copper for 40 percent of its gross national product and more than
90 percent of its export earnings. This commodity has - slumped in price since the middle of 1974 as a direct result of the international recession of the capitalist economy. The average price for the first eight months of 1974 was 1,541 Kwacha per ton; for the same period of 1975 it was K812 (1 Kwacha = USS1.40). At a press conference held January 17, 1976, the chairmen of the two government-controlled copper companies revealed that for the eight-month period April-November 1975,
the Angolan struggle is bringing the political contours of neocolonial Africa into
LIBERTACAO sharp relief production costs were K896 per ton, yet the metal had fetched an average price of only K773 per ton (Times of Zambia, January 8, 1976). Thus, not only had copper failed to provide Zambia with any revenue through taxation, profits, etc., but in addition its production and sale had constituted a net loss to the economy of at least K40 million during that period. The economic crisis and Zambian "independence" The economic effects of this halving of Zambia's export earnings have been compounded by the transport difficulties arising from the Angolan war, Until it was closed in August 1975, the Benguela railway to the port of Lobito carried roughly 45 percent of Zambian trade. The most noticeable consequence of the shutdown of the railway has been a further worsening of the endemic problems of short supplies of all kinds. At the consumer level, such basic commodities as matches, soap powder, toilet rolls, cooking oil, etc. are virtually unobtainable. More seriously, there has been a dramatic effect on jobs in industries such as textiles and light engineering, which are heavily dependent on imported supplies. It is this third factor that has determined the timing of the government's present moves. The year 1975, a year of world recession, marked the conclusive failure of the attempt, initiated in the late 1960s, to reduce Zambia's links with white-ruled "Rhodesia" and South Africa, which at the time of independence in 1964 accounted for more than 60 percent of imports. For a whole period the Kaunda government staked everything on trying to break away from this economic dependence on the southern African subsector of the imperialist world. At the same time, attempts were made to create an "independent" industrial base. But far from being crowned with success, these attempts simply wound up exchanging one set of economic masters for another. Thus, Japan became the second largest trading partner and Italy a key source of investment. These moves, especially those that involved the setting up of a number of enterprises in which the state held o predominant share in partnership with a variety of im-
ZAMBIA perialist multinational companies, were designed primarily to stabilize the position of Zambio's new political elite by also giving it decisive economic weight. But the actual results can be quickly summarized: *The industrial sector has remained stagnant. Employment there increased only from 40, 620 in June 1971 to 43, 130 in June 1974, and if figures were available for the past year, they would doubtless show that the figure has begun to slide again; *Since import substitution has not been successful in any significant field, the only effect of Zambia's "reorientation" of its trading links has been to increase the prices of commodities, many of which come from afar at considerably greater cost than when they were imported from the white south. For the Zambian bourgeoisie, of course, self-preservation is a consideration that weighs much more heavily than economic independence. If the latter cannot be achieved and If dependence on metropolitan capitalisms is more costly than the re-establishment of the former relationship with white-ruled southern Africa, and if, in addition, the world economic crisis has brought the economy to an all time low, then to hell with all the high-blown rhetoric about principled opposition to apartheid! Sink or swim with Voister! This appears the safest option and indeed the only one capable of delaying the inevitable confrontation with the working masses of a country that is suffering in such a devastating fashion from the effects of recession and inflation. It is only when we take these economic factors into account that we can fully understand the Zambian regime's present position on Angola. It is necessary to state quite plainly that Zambia's claims of holding a neufral position are no less hypocritical than the claims of Mobutu. Positions on Angola The public overthrow of Savimbi from the position of favored son has not at all been reflected in practice. In November correspondents traveling in a jet supplied by the Lonrho corporation from Lusaka airport to Huambo in UNITA-held territory found themselves accompanying crates of arms that were addressed to Zambia's ruling party, the UNIP, but clearly destined for the UNITA forces. On January 7 Savimbi, on his way to Addis
Ababa, stopped over in Lusaka for "consultations" with his sponsors. UNITA remains the Angolan movement that is granted broadcast time on Radio Zambia. Thus, the Zambian regime is the de facto ally of Savimbis main sponsors of the past five months, the racist Repub-
Tie of South Africa.
For a whole period (until early December), the Zambian media maintained silence about the mounting evidence of direct South African involvement in support of the
FNLA-UNITA bloc. Now - only after the South Afri-
6 can government has itself acknowledged the intervention - it is conceded to exist. But instead of condemnation, in the Zambian press we read only explanation of and justification for that presence. Here is what was said by the editor-in-chief of the government-controlled Zambia Daily Mail in a center-page article published January 7 (under the title: "Vincent Mijoni forcefully puts forward Zambia's viewpoint"): *President Kaunda last week put it aptly in an interview to a foreign correspondent: "The United States ams help for FNLA and UNITA is an effect of the situation not the cause.' And If the OAU will do justice to the people of Angola it must condemn the Soviet military assistance to the MPLA on a scale which gave encouragement to the MPLA to defy the other two political parties to the extent that it plunged Angola into a civil war. ... It was because of this miscalculation on the part of the Soviets together with their badly timed adventure that has been responsible for the South Africans moving into Angola." Later, Kaunda is once again quoted as saying: "Much as we condemn the South African presence in Angola we cheat ourselves if we think that by condemning South Africa we are settling things. The South African presence too is an effect of the problem and not the cause." The payoff These are the fawning words of the leading representative of the pitifully weak Zambian bourgeoisie as he seeks to cover up for the intervention of his new-found masters. The payoff for Kaunda's betrayal of Angola's anti-imperialist fighter is the operation being mounted by South Africa to bail out the Zambian economy, no details of which have appeared in the Zambian press, of course. However, the December 20 Economist reported: "South Africa's minister of economic affairs, Mr. J.C. Heunis, visited the Zambian capital in October and arranged an export credit deal with the Zambian govemment worth up to E71m - equivalent to about one quarter of Zambia's current import bill. Mr. Jan Marais, a leading South African banker • . visited Lusaka at the end of October and held extremely fruitful discussions with President Kaunda about the tremendous advantages' to be derived from economic co-operation in southern Africa. And the South African Financial Mail reported in November that South Africa is now believed to be Zambia's most important foreign supplier. The
Pretoria government, it was said, was providing longterm export credits to Zambian importers of capital and consumer goods. A meeting of general managers of the
Zambian state-owned conglomerate, INDECO, was told on October 30th that import policy had changed and that imports from South Africa were now to be encouraged.
"A regular air-freight service • • . has begun to operate between Johannesburg and Lusaka, but most of the goods are moved by road through Botswana, Rumours are also circulating in Lusaka that South Africa has agreed to finance Zambia's soaring oil bill. The country's oil imports jumped in value from El3.6m in 1973 to £36.2m last year. To avoid political embarrassment, the Zambian government has apparently made secret arrangements for South Africa to pay Iran directly for Zambia's oil imports." These are the sort of facts that determine the Zambian• government's present international posture and belle its claims to any idealistic motives. A reactionary alternative
Ian Smith 255 Nor is Angola the only area where the Lusaka-Pretoria ficial attitude on the question of Zimbabwe ("Rhodesia") is a neutralist stance on the split in the African National Council (ANC) and a commitment to immediate majority rule or intensified armed struggle to overthrow the Smith regime. But it is quite safe to predict that the immediate period will see one of the following developments: *Either Nkomo, who represents the aspiring African petty bourgeoisie of Rhodesia, will reach the only possible settlement available from Smith, which must fall far short of one man one vote and immediate majority rule. If this occurs, it is certain that the Zambian govemment will be among the most ardent advocates of the settlement. It is to this end that Nkomo is now jetting in and out of Lusaka at frequent intervals in Zambia Air Force planes to consult with Kaunda and that Zambia has provided Nkomo with the entire legal and technical staff for his negotiating team. Such a deal would be the signal for Zambia to officially reopen its border and reestablish the crucial rail link through Rhodesia to the port of Beira.
*Or the Smith-Nkomo talks will break down. In this case, one thing that will certainly not happen is the granting of Zambian facilities to the ANC's external wing for the conduct of intensified armed struggle. Indeed, 1975 saw the virtually total liquidation of any presence by Zimbabwean freedom fighters in Zambia; this was a result of a combination of detentions, liquidation, and emigration. Following the murder of Herbert Chitepo, chairman of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), in Lusaka in April 1975, more than seventy leading ZANU members were rounded up; many have still not been released. In September at least thirty freedom fighters were killed in an incident at Kabwe Zambia Army base, where they were supposedly undergoing military training. No doubt heavily influenced by such events, the majority of militants have moved to hoped-for safer exile in Mozambique or Tanzania. We have dealt at some length with the current positions of Zambia's rulers as they relate to the unfolding development of the struggle in Angola. Exposing the essentially capitalist nature of regimes of this kind, which attempt to disguise their true positions with humanitarian and anti-racist rhetoric, is of crucial imporiance to the development of the conscious revolutionary cadre that alone can begin to develop the conditions for the overthrow of these regimes. Precisely because its real foreign policy now stands at such variance with its verbal proclamations, the Zambian government can be severely embarrassed in the coming period by such an exposure. Already a campaign at the University of Zambia in * Lusaka has been initiated to win support for a principled stand of solidarity with the MPLA; the Students' Union has announced its support of this position. Without doubt, the further development of such agitation will induce severe tensions between the ruling bureaucracy and those sectors involved in the campaign, which will in turn provide further lessons about the real nature of the Zambian regime. We would further suggest that it is not only in Zambia that such a campaign will be a critical vehicle for anticapitalist propagande. Even those countries that have been shamed, largely as a result of the South African intervention, into diplomatic recognition of the MPLA regime have stopped short of providing adequate material assistance. This question certainly cannot be swept away under the pretext that such supplies are currently being supplied by Moscow. If is necessary to prepare for the provision of massive material aid to the Angolan revolution and to begin propaganda throughout the African continent that can bring this about. In the course of such a struggle, many steps forward will be taken toward the education of the most conscious secfions of the African masses about the real nature of imperialism, neocolonialism, and the reigning regimes in their own countries. January 9, 1976