People's Republic of Angola was constituted. This crisis is exacerbated by the lack of technical and administrafive personnel after the massive departure of the colons. And the solidity of the army is not much greater, considering that the presence of about 10,000 Cuban soldiers is still necessary to assure the reorganization of Angolan troops and to aid the reorganization of the police, the administration, and the economic enterConscious of this weakness, the government of the People's Republic very soon engaged a diplomatic battle to have the country recognized by the international bodies capable of providing some aid and legitimizing independence. Although not yet admitted to the United Nations because of the grotesque veto of the United States, the People's Republic of Angola is a member of the Organization of African Unity, the International Labor Office, and UNICEF and has even accepted the charms of the very much neocolonial African Development Bank, which is linked to the European Common Economic policy The economic project of the MPL A was drown up little by little during the months that followed the Portuguese coup of April 25, 1974. Motivated by the nationalist political line of the movement, the government remained ideologically faithful to what was the program of the armed struggle: the construction of a free Angola with an independent national economy. There was to be no break with the lows of the imperialist market, but there was a desire to control the machinery of the Angolan economy and to decide economic policy. The phraseol-
----- pull-quotes on this page ----- what IS the People's Republic of Angola? by C. GABRIEL
ANGOLA ogy of the regime, while extensively sprinkled with Marxist terminology, undoubtedly reflects the influence of the "Algerian road. Thus, for purposes of demonstration the Angolan economy may be analyzed on three levels. The economic sectors that had always been controlled by non-Portuguese imperialist capital, which are the sectors that provided Angola with virtually all its currency, remain in the hands of their owners. The Cabinda Gulf Oil company continues to operate in Cabinda, paying royalties to the government, although we do not know whether or not the contract will be renegotiated. The Diamang company, owned by Anglo-Saxon and South African capital, continues its activities. Krupp and its subsidiaries still own the Benguela iron mines, although they are not operating at present. Only the Benguela railway has been taken over by the state and is now the subject of negotiations with the states of Zaire and Zambia, which want to use the railway to transport their mineral resources. Specific resources like coffee, cotton, sisal, and other export crops have been placed under control in the framework of the nationalization of commerce and trode; some large plantations that had been abandoned are now under administrative control. The traditionally Portuguese industrial sectors have been nationalized, including the Textang company, under the joint pressure of the workers, the official economic project, and the departure of the colons. (1) It is here that the MPL A wants to consolidate its economic power, by aking over the sector oriented toward the domestic market and by taking the first steps toward a policy of investment and industrialization. It is here that the project of state capitalism takes form. Finally, and this is not greatly different from what we had seen fifteen years ago in other African countries, there is a rather impoverished economic sector open to national private enterprise: small and medium-sized commerce, tourism, various black markets, and so on. The development of the intermediary sector will occupy the greater part of the government's attentions. It is here that the regime will gain its credibility, including among imperialist circles, and it is by virtue of this development that it will be able to give some substance to its populist project of "people's power" for some time. Authoritarianism and repression The final months of the struggle demonstrated, even to its most enthusiastic supporters, that the MPLA, as a rodical nationalist movement, would not break with the traditional practices of paternalism and authoritarTanism in regard to the mosses. That the masses neverthe less did rally behind the banner of the MPL A against reaction within the terms of a complex historical process 14
LUCIO LARA does, of course, confirm that the various political forces involved in fact represented different historic interests. But this was obviously not enough to ensure that the MPLA would take any sort of anticapitalist road. From November 1975, the leadership began to frontally attack what had up to then constituted the most advanced wing of the Luanda neighborhood committees, namely the militants of the Amilcar Cabral Committees. On the radio and in the press constant warnings were issued against "ultraleftists" and "infiltrators." Militants were thrown into prison, many of them browbeaten, without the popular movement ever being given the opportunity to hear and discuss the differences. In their speeches, the leaders always insisted that the MPLA "directed the state" and that any attack on the MPL A was an attack on the unity of the Angolan people. A typical example of good old nationalist rhetoric. In October 1975 a Fraction of these Amilcar Cabral Committees regrouped underground to create the Angolan Communist Organization (OCA). But there was nothing attractive about this project except its name, for after a period of entrism in the MPLA, the militants involved boosted the prestige of the leadership and began denouncing the influence of Soviet "social imperi-
"calling for a boycott of the Soviet Union. The Maoistic irresponsibility of this turn obviously aided the repressive plans of Agostinho Neto and Lucio Lara. The OCA was gradually rooted out and strongly weakened by arrests in Luanda, Malange, and Lobito. The regime took advantage of contact between the OCA and elements of an old tendency of the MPLA that had emerged at the MPLA's second congress (the Active Revolt tendency) to make an amalgam between the two. All the former members of this tendency were compelled to make personal self-criticisms if they wanted to come back to the organization or even Find jobs in the state sector or the odministration. It appears that many of them did not accept this humiliation. Finally it came the turn of the former members of the Henda Committees, for example Betigno, the leader
of these committees, who was deprived of responsibilities within the apparatus. Cut off by a fraction of the movement, these militants lost their radio station, Qudia Baguela, which was extremely popular because it was antibureaucratic. Subsequently, there was an attempted demonstration of several hundred people in Luanda, which was reported by the international press. This clash led to a new wave of arrests. Betigno can no longer work af the radio station and has lost any possibility of finding a job in the state sector. Is it supposedly necessary to close one's eyes to this repression under the pretext that it involves an opposition to a very respectable progressive anti-imperialist movement? This is precisely the attitude that seems to have been taken by a number of militants who supported the MPLA completely uncritically during the struggle. The choice of silence in order "not to weaken the anti-imperialist camp" has been the sad reasoning of some organizations, such as the PSU (Parti Socialiste Unifie - United Socialist party) and Revolution, two centrist Formations in France.
NETO The best response has been offered by the mass movement itself. This repression has not been aimed solely at a few "ultraleftists." It has served to reestablish a grip on the neighborhood committees, to place them under the heel of the MPLA and reduce them to simple fransmission belts. It was thus that after a series of inter-foctional negotiations in the MPLA Political Bureau it was decided to officially elect the leaders of the neighborhood committees in Luanda last June. During this campaign it was carefully stressed that "infiltrators" had to be ousted, whether they were former Salazarist secret police members or ultraleftists. It was an election in which an MPLA commission proposed a single slate of candidates for each neighborhood. The biographies of the candidates were carefully apolitical and all those branded as "infiltrators, " in particular the former members of the AmiIcar Cabral Committees and the Active *Revolt tendency, were denied the right to vote. What was the result of this election, highly representative of "people's power"? A total of 10 percent of the people cast votes!
The urban movement, the force which was responsible for the MPLA's victory and which provided Africa with its best experience of struggle, was subjugated on the day of that election, in which even the neighborhood of the cadres and bureaucrats of the movement did not produce a better turnout. "What good are your committees? " Lucio Lara is reported to have said to his opponent Nito Alves. "It is through the MPLA that we will construct the state." The management committees in the factories have been subjected to complex rules of elections and division of responsibilities. In any event, people appointed by the MPLA play an important role in these committees, which is especially easy since the task of the committees is to "apply the policy of the MPLA." The latter has thus been able to quickly assert itself as the backbone of the administrative system of the country, especially through its Action Groups, its army (the F APLA), the Popular Defense Organization, and the DISA (the political police). Authoritarianism has taken the place of the old relationship of forces between the MPLA and the workers. The campaign for the coffee and cotton harvest, a sort of mini-Zafra, (2) Is such that the "jobless" people in the cifies are sometimes transferred forthwith to work in the north in order to make up for the shortage of labor there, In the past the Portuguese used to run their plantations with people who came from the south. Since independence these populations have understood their right no longer to emigrate to sell their labor-power. The state takes form Once independence was won, the nationalist leadership of the MPLA monopolized power. The government was formed in a meeting of the MPL A Political Bureau and the Central Committee has not met since independence. Neto became president of the republic as well as president of the MPLA. In exchange, the Lucio Lara group got Lara appointed secretary of the MPL A Political Bureau, which is the second highest post in the hierarchy of the country, higher than the prime minister. The rest - the ministries, the key posts, and so on — was shared out among Nito Alves, Iko Carera, (3), and others. The inter-clique tension over the division of power is sometimes serious. There has been some talk of shakeups in the ministries and it is not known what has become of the project of transforming the MPLA into a party. Some speak of a worker-peasant alliance, while others, no doubt with greater prudence, prefer the formula "anti-imperialist front of workers, peasants, petty-bourgeoisie, and bourgeois patriots. "But there is nothing very decisive here. What is under discussion are alternative institutional structures for a state whose very forms and functioning have always been bourgeois. The fact that nationalist petty-bourgeois layers are now in control of this state changes nothing in this political and social reality.
ANGOLA Political power is the source of accumulation of posts of responsibility as well as various fringe benefits. A certain Bires is cabinet director for the minister of foreign affairs, but he is also a judge and a professor. The same is true for the state prosecutor, Manuel Rui Monteiro. Escorcio, presidential protocol chief, is also the owner of the big Luanda restaurant Panque. Neto complains about the lack of cadre in order to justify this situation, but at the same time Angolan cadres who have committed the sin of no longer agreeing with the MPL A leadership are not allowed to work in the public sector. Some people have even been imprisoned in the Sapu camp, without trial. The regime tries the mercenaries of imperialism and executes a few of these dogs of war. It intervenes to stop the excesses committed by some FAPLA soldiers against the population. But it keeps silent about the fact that militants who have fought against reaction by leading committees have been arrested and are being held in prison without trial. There is no longer any force within the MPL A capable of fighting against the right turn now under way. But it is nevertheless probable that new crises will break out among various factions within the regime. While it is not yet possible to predict what the economic differences will be in regard to the state sector and relations with imperialism, it is nonetheless possible to assert that the division of power among factions will inevitably provoke differences over the way in which to construct the Angolan state and stabilize its leadership. The Cubans Without the presence of the Cubans in the administration, the hospitals, the barracks, etc., the disorganization would be such that the MPLA would have much greater difficulty stabilizing its authority in the cities. 18
Castro has announced the departure of the Cubans, but certain signs indicate that the bulk of the Cuban presence will remain, even if its composition must be changed. But this presence is made necessary not only by the period of "national reconstruction. " There are still pockets of resistance led by UNITA, and the FNLA is talking about taking up the armed struggle again. The MPLA has recently recognized these facts publicly, denouncing the infiltration of mercenaries from Zaire. In fact, while retreating from Angola the South African troops established a 70-kilometer-wide band of noman's-land along the Namibian border, displacing populations by their usual methods. It is probably here that the UNITA sanctuaries are located. Some pockets have been recreated in the interior of southern Angola. Last June the FAPLA and the Cubans took a small base in Cagombe, where they discovered a small landing field, undoubtedly used by the South Africans to fly in aid. The FAP. A and the Cubans are now trying to encircle these pockets, where Jonas Savimbi, leader of UNITA, may still be functioning. Thus, the ambushes the UNITA has been organizing may soon come to an end. The bureaucratic grip of the MPLA on the state apparatus and the competition among cliques fosters the peremptory terminology of the ideologues of the official press. A good dose of Marxist verbiage, along with classical and ritualistic thanks to Cuba and the USSR, has become the best recipe with which to justify appeals for discipline and labor. Who then would doubt the socialist convictions of Doctor Neto? Repression and authoritarianism have become the political repercussions of the social processes under way in the People's Republic of Angola just a few months after its formation. The conflict-laden social alliance against imperialist reaction forged during the independence struggle has broken up, and the mass movement has lost its battle against careerism, bewildering bureaucracy, and cliquism. All this was predictable. But it remains more complicated to define the ways in which a possible opposition to the regime might develop. The fight for democratic rights remains at the center of all concerns. Will this battle be launched spontaneously or the occasion of a workers strike or will it be the product of a revolt of disgust on the part of some intermediary cadres of the MPLA and the administration? This is still a difficult prediction to make. FOOTNOTES:
1. This especially applies to the sectors of fishing, textiles, drinks, and canned food. Some factories have not started working ogain; others are running at 25 percent capacity.
2. A reference to the campaign for the ten-millionton sugar harvest in Cuba in 1970.
3. Nito Alves is minister of the interior and rather favors leftist verbiage about "people's power." Iko Carera is the minister of defense.
POLITICAL PRISONERS
We are publishing below excerpts of a letter received from political prisoners who remain incarcerated in the Puerto de Santa Maria prison in spite of the amnesty decreed by the Spanish govemment. The letter describes the deterioration of the living conditions of the prisoners, a phenomenon which is universal throughout all the prisons of the Spanish state. According to official figures, there are still about 300 political prisoners in these jails, among them fifteen militants of the Liga Comunista Revolucionaria/Euzkadi ta Askatasuna-VI (LCR/ETA-VI - Revolutionary
Communist League/Basque Nation and Freedom-Sixth Assembly), a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International. There are twenty-two political prisoners in Puerto de Santa Maria, twenty-one of them Basque militants, among them several members of the LCR/ETA-VI. Some of the Puerto de Santa Maria