Cabinda Ocean Nova Lisboa Porto Alexandre Namibia (SW Africa)
ments, which had the loyalty and support of the overwhelming majority of the population, into the Government.
As a final guarantee, 24,000 Portuguese troops were allowed to remain in Angola under the agreement and the Portuguese High Commissioner was empowered to take control of the security forces in the event of an 'emergency'. The agreement stipulated that the last Portuguese troops would not have to be withdrawn until the end of February 1976, nearly four months after independence.
None of the three nationalist movements in Angula have socialist objectives. The FINLA which has received considerable backing from the Government of Zaire (the second largest recipient of US aid in Africa), is openly anticommunist. The movement's President, Holden Roberto, who is brother-in-law of President Mobutu of Zaire, stated in February that 'the population of Angola, which is Christian, actively rejects Communism'.
UNITA too supports capitalist interests in Angola. In a February interview, UNITA President, Jonas Savimbi declared that 'we must have free enterprise. If we took away the stim ulus of profit then we would have stagnation." UNITA supports detente with South Africa, to send more troops to Angola.
NOT SOCIALIST The MPLA has been widely described as a 'Marxist movement. But the MPLA too denies that its goals are socialist or communist. The movement's president, Agostinho Neto, announced in Lusaka, Zambia, on 20 April .that he wished to make it clear that we appre ciate and recognise the assistance we receive from all our friends including Russia, but do not accept any form of foreign political orientation'. The 28 February issue of the Luanda publication Portuguese Africa reported that two MPLA ministers, while visiting a Luanda oil refinery, 'stressed the role of private initiative in Angola's development'.
The MPLA leaders, like those of the FNLA and UNITA, have opposed strikes and supported a decree published by the Transitional Government at the end of February allowing the Government to ban strikes and place workers under military control. All three movements signed an agreement in Nakuru, Kenya on 22 June, one of whose clauses stated that the Transitional Government should take firm and effective measures to prevent strikes or wage demands which jeopardise the economic stability of the country. The three movements also pledged themselves in the agreement to disarm the civilian population.
The MPLA leadership, despite its anti-imperialist sloganeering, has aided imperialism by supporting the presence of Portuguese -ms Zaire •Malanje •Luso Gaco • Coutinho Botswana Though the MPLA ministers in the Government voted for the disarming of civilians and for the outlawing of strikes, they were incap able of disciplining their own supporters to accept these measures. MPLA leader Lopo do do Nascimento found himself forced to speak out in public support for the Mobilisation Law on 9 April after thousands of MPLA sympathisers had marched through Luanda against SELF-DEFENCE Lucio Lara, a member of the MPLA Cen[tral Committee, explained the difficulty his movement had in attempting to disarm workers in Luanda: *Part of the population has been armed, but that was done in July 1974 to resist aggression from reactionary whites These selt-detence units have placed themsel ves since under the MPLA banner, but we do not control them. It is essential to understand that we are not in a position to disarm them. It is on smashing this independent working class activity, which must be defended against all attacks on it, that the imperialists are concentrating their efforts At the same time, the struggle between the and has called on the Portuguese Government to three nationalist leaderships - which has led to four major waves of fighting since March - has prevented the establishment of a stable pro-capitalist government. The movements have failed to fuse their armies into a unified national army under the control of the Transitional Government, and only three weeks after the 22 June Nakuru agreement (signed by Neto, Roberto and Savimbi to salvage the Alvor agreement and stop the fighting) hundreds more were killed in fighting between the MPLA and the FNLA.
SOLIDARITY
Under inese conditions, the danger of UN intervention or an escalation of Portuguese military intervention is a very real one, using a supposed breakdown of 'law and order as a pretext to put down the independent workers mobilisations and to defend capitalist interests. The imperialists might also throw their backing behind the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) in a bid to set up a breakaway government in the Socialists in Britain have an internationalist duty to prevent continued imperialist intervention in the affairs of the Angolan people, to demand that Portugal's army leaves the country, and to oppose any UN or escalated Portuguese intervention.
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179M Congo
OLUANDA Atlantic
Zambia Rhodesia