In many Third World states, the president was the paramount leader, and in this regard Angola was no exception. Its president, José Eduardo dos Santos, combined strong party loyalty with political pragmatism. This loyalty had political and personal bases. Dos Santos owed much of his success to the MPLA, which he had joined in 1962 at the age of nineteen. The party sponsored his study at Baku University in the Soviet Union from 1963 to 1970. In 1974 MPLA leader Neto appointed dos Santos to the Central Committee, which elected him to its elite Political Bureau; this group elected him to succeed Neto, who died in 1979. Dos Santos traveled to the Soviet Union a few weeks later to confirm his revolutionary agenda as president.
Dos Santos's loyalty to Marxism-Leninism was founded in his student years in the Soviet Union, where he also married a Soviet citizen (who later returned to her homeland). There, he developed his belief in the vanguard party as the best strategy for mobilizing Angola's largely rural population. At the same time, however, he professed belief in a mixed economy, some degree of decentralization, an expanded private sector, and Western investment. Like many African leaders, he did not equate political eclecticism with internal contradiction, nor did he view Angola's political posture as an invitation to Soviet domination.
Dos Santos did not embrace Marxism for its utopian appeal; his view of Angolan society after the envisioned socialist transformation did not lack internal conflict. Rather, he viewed Marxist-Leninist organizational tenets as the most practical basis for mobilizing a society in which the majority lacked economic and educational opportunities. A small vanguard leadership, with proper motivation and training, could guide the population through the early stages of national development, in his view, and this approach could improve the lives of more people than capitalist investment and profit making by a small minority. During the 1980s, because trade with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe failed to develop and because Western technical expertise appeared vital to Angola's development, dos Santos favored improved political relations with the West as a step toward peace and greater prosperity. Although he had scorned his predecessor's shift in the same direction in the late 1970s, dos Santos denied that his move signaled a weakening commitment to Marxism.
Despite his strong party loyalty, in the late 1980s dos Santos was known as a political pragmatist. He sometimes spoke out against the MPLA-PT's most extreme ideologues and took steps to limit their influence. He openly criticized the results of the rectification campaign of the late 1970s, which, in his view, had removed too many loyal members from the party's rolls. He also recognized that the campaign had alienated much of the nation's peasant majority, that they remained indifferent toward party programs in the late 1980s, and that they had not benefited from many MPLA-PT policies.
Political pragmatism was not to be confused with a liberal style of governing. In response to security crises and public criticism, dos Santos ordered arrests, detentions without trial, and occasional executions. He concentrated power in his office and narrowed his circle of close advisers. He enlarged the executive branch of government by appointing new ministers of state to coordinate executive branch activity and convinced the MPLA-PT Central Committee to entrust him with emergency powers. Dos Santos also persuaded party leaders to empower him to appoint regional military councils that had sweeping authority over civilian and military affairs in unstable regions of the country and that were answerable only to the president.
Dos Santos further consolidated his hold on executive authority in April 1984 by establishing the Defense and Security Council. In 1985 he enlarged the party Central Committee from sixty to ninety members and alternates, thus diluting the strength of its staunch ideological faction.
Undermining potential opponents was not dos Santos's only motivation for consolidating power within the executive branch of government. He was also impatient with bureaucratic "red tape," even when justified in the name of party discipline. Accordingly, the primary qualification for his trusted advisers was a balance of competence, efficiency, and loyalty. Rhetorical skills, which he generally lacked, were not given particular priority; ideological purity was even less important. His advice for economic recovery was summed up as "produce, repair, and rehabilitate." The direct, relatively nonideological governing style exemplified by this approach earned dos Santos substantial respect and a few strong critics.
Economic and security crises worsened during the first nine years of dos Santos's presidency, draining resources that might have been used to improve living standards and education. The president rejected advice from party ideologues, whose primary aim was to develop a sophisticated Marxist-Leninist party apparatus. Rather than emphasize centralized control and party discipline, dos Santos embraced a plan to decentralize economic decision making in 1988. He then appointed Minister of Planning Lopo do Nascimento to serve as commissioner of Huíla Province in order to implement this plan in a crucial region of the country.
The 1985 Second Party Congress assented to the president's growing power by approving several of his choices for top government office as party officials. Among these was Roberto de Almeida, a member of the Defense and Security Council in his capacity as the MPLA-PT secretary for ideology, information, and culture and one of dos Santos' close advisers. Party leaders elected Almeida, a mestiço, to both the MPLA-PT Central Committee and the Political Bureau.
Demoted from the top ranks of the party were the leading ideologue, Lúcio Lára, and veteran mestiço leaders Paulo Jorge and Henrique Carreira (nom de guerre Iko). The split between ideologues and political moderates did not render the party immobile, in part because of dos Santos's skill at using Angola's internal and external threats to unite MPLA-PT factions. The everpresent UNITA insurgency provided a constant reminder of the frailty of the nation's security.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
MASS ORGANIZATIONS AND INTEREST GROUPS
Three mass organizations were affiliated with the MPLA-PT in 1988--the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola-Youth Movement (Juventude do Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola -- JMPLA), the Organization of Angolan Women (Organização da Mulher Angolana--OMA), and the UNTA. Each was founded as an anticolonial social movement during the 1960s and transformed into a party affiliate when the MPLA-PT became a vanguard party in 1977. Although these groups were formally subordinate to the party in accordance with Marxist-Leninist doctrine, they continued to operate with relative autonomy. Strict party ideologues objected to this independence and sometimes treated organization leaders with contempt. The resulting tensions added to public resentment of party discipline and became a political issue when Neto accused leaders of the JMPLA, the OMA, and the UNTA of supporting the Nitista coup attempt of 1977. Alves, the coup leader, had criticized MPLA-PT leaders for bourgeois attitudes and racism, and many people in these organizations supported Alves's allegations.
In the late 1970s, mass organizations became an important target of the rectification campaign. Their role in society was redefined to emphasize the dissemination of information about party policy and the encouragement of participation in programs. Throughout most of the next decade, MPLA-PT officials continued to criticize the lack of coordination of organizational agenda with party needs. The mass organizations became centers of public resentment of MPLA-PT controls, but these groups were not yet effective at organizing or mobilizing against MPLA-PT rule.
Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola-Youth Movement
The JMPLA was founded in 1962 and converted into a training ground for MPLA-PT activists in 1977. It claimed a membership of 72,000, mostly teenagers and students, in 1988. The JMPLA conducted military exercises and political study groups, measuring success within the group primarily by an individual's commitment to the socialist revolution. The Second Congress of the JMPLA was held on April 14, 1987, a date that was also celebrated as National Youth Day.
Despite the symbolic and practical importance of the political role of the nation's youth, MPLA-PT officials generally had a derisive attitude toward JMPLA leaders during the 1980s. At the MPLA-PT congresses of 1980 and 1985, party officials criticized youth leaders for their failure to encourage political activism. They also remonstrated against youth group officials for the bourgeois attitudes, materialism, and political apathy they detected among children and teenagers. One measure of these problems was the continued urban influx among young people, which impeded MPLA-PT efforts at rural mobilization.
MPLA-PT leaders assigned the JMPLA the task of guiding the national children's organization, the Agostinho Neto Organization of Pioneers (Organização dos Pioneiros Agostinho Neto--OPA). The goal of the OPA was to educate all children in patriotic values, socialism, and the importance of study, work, and scientific knowledge. Founded as the Pioneers in 1975, the group took the name of the nation's first president at its second conference in November 1979, following Neto's death. JMPLA leaders generally viewed the OPA as a recruiting ground for potential political activists.
National Union of Angolan Workers
The UNTA was organized in 1960 in the Belgian Congo (presentday Zaire) to assist refugees and exiled MPLA members in their efforts to maintain social contacts and find jobs. Managing the UNTA became more difficult after independence. The UNTA headquarters was transferred to Luanda, where the shortage of skilled workers and personnel for management and training programs became immediately evident. UNTA leaders worked to transform the group from an adjunct to a national liberation army to a state labor union, but encouraged by the "people's power" movement, many workers thought the MPLA victory entitled them to assume control of their workplace. UNTA leaders found that workers' rights were sometimes given a lower priority than workers' obligations, and at times industrial workers found themselves at odds with both the government and their own union leadership. These tensions were exacerbated by the demands of militant workers who favored more sweeping nationalization programs than those undertaken by the government; some workers opposed any
compensation of foreign owners.
During the early 1980s, Cuban advisers were assigned to bring industrial workers into the MPLA-PT. With their Angolan counterparts in the UNTA, Cuban shop stewards and union officials undertook educational programs in technical and management training, labor discipline and productivity, and socialist economics. Their overall goal was to impart a sense of worker participation in the management of the state economy--a difficult task in an environment characterized by warfare and economic crisis. By late 1988, the Cubans had achieved mixed success. Some of the UNTA's 600,000 members looked forward to the prosperity they hoped to achieve through MPLA-PT policies; many others felt their links to the government did little to improve their standard of living, and they were relatively uncommitted to the construction of a socialist state. UNTA officers did not aggressively represent worker interests when they conflicted with those of the party, and the fear of labor unrest became part of Angola's political context.
Organization of Angolan Women
The OMA was established in 1963 to mobilize support for the fledgling MPLA. After independence, it became the primary route by which women were incorporated in the political process. Its membership rose to 1.8 million in 1985 but dropped to less than 1.3 million in 1987. The group attributed this decline to the regional destabilization and warfare that displaced and destroyed families in rural areas, where more than two-thirds of OMA members lived. In 1983 Ruth Neto, the former president's sister, was elected secretary general of the OMA and head of its fifty-three-member national committee. Neto was reelected secretary general by the 596 delegates who attended the OMA's second nationwide conference on March 2, 1988.
During the 1980s, the OMA established literacy programs and worked to expand educational opportunities for women, and the government passed new legislation outlawing gender discrimination in wages and working conditions. MPLA-PT rhetoric emphasized equality between the sexes as a prerequisite to a prosperous socialist state. At both the First Party Congress and the Second Party Congress, the MPLA-PT Central Committee extolled contributions made by women, but in 1988 only 10 percent of MPLA-PT members were women, and the goal of equality remained distant. Through the OMA, some women were employed in health and social service organizations, serving refugees and rural families. More women were finding jobs in teaching and professions from which they had been excluded in the past, and a very small number occupied important places in government and the MPLA-PT. However, most Angolan women were poor and unemployed.
In addition to leading the OMA, Ruth Neto also served on the MPLA-PT Central Committee and as secretary general of the PanAfrican Women's Organization (PAWO), which had its headquarters in Luanda. The PAWO helped sponsor Angola's annual celebration of Women's Day (August 9), which was also attended by representatives from neighboring states and liberation movements in South Africa and Namibia.
In the late 1970s, mass organizations became an important target of the rectification campaign. Their role in society was redefined to emphasize the dissemination of information about party policy and the encouragement of participation in programs. Throughout most of the next decade, MPLA-PT officials continued to criticize the lack of coordination of organizational agenda with party needs. The mass organizations became centers of public resentment of MPLA-PT controls, but these groups were not yet effective at organizing or mobilizing against MPLA-PT rule.
Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola-Youth Movement
The JMPLA was founded in 1962 and converted into a training ground for MPLA-PT activists in 1977. It claimed a membership of 72,000, mostly teenagers and students, in 1988. The JMPLA conducted military exercises and political study groups, measuring success within the group primarily by an individual's commitment to the socialist revolution. The Second Congress of the JMPLA was held on April 14, 1987, a date that was also celebrated as National Youth Day.
Despite the symbolic and practical importance of the political role of the nation's youth, MPLA-PT officials generally had a derisive attitude toward JMPLA leaders during the 1980s. At the MPLA-PT congresses of 1980 and 1985, party officials criticized youth leaders for their failure to encourage political activism. They also remonstrated against youth group officials for the bourgeois attitudes, materialism, and political apathy they detected among children and teenagers. One measure of these problems was the continued urban influx among young people, which impeded MPLA-PT efforts at rural mobilization.
MPLA-PT leaders assigned the JMPLA the task of guiding the national children's organization, the Agostinho Neto Organization of Pioneers (Organização dos Pioneiros Agostinho Neto--OPA). The goal of the OPA was to educate all children in patriotic values, socialism, and the importance of study, work, and scientific knowledge. Founded as the Pioneers in 1975, the group took the name of the nation's first president at its second conference in November 1979, following Neto's death. JMPLA leaders generally viewed the OPA as a recruiting ground for potential political activists.
National Union of Angolan Workers
The UNTA was organized in 1960 in the Belgian Congo (presentday Zaire) to assist refugees and exiled MPLA members in their efforts to maintain social contacts and find jobs. Managing the UNTA became more difficult after independence. The UNTA headquarters was transferred to Luanda, where the shortage of skilled workers and personnel for management and training programs became immediately evident. UNTA leaders worked to transform the group from an adjunct to a national liberation army to a state labor union, but encouraged by the "people's power" movement, many workers thought the MPLA victory entitled them to assume control of their workplace. UNTA leaders found that workers' rights were sometimes given a lower priority than workers' obligations, and at times industrial workers found themselves at odds with both the government and their own union leadership. These tensions were exacerbated by the demands of militant workers who favored more sweeping nationalization programs than those undertaken by the government; some workers opposed any
compensation of foreign owners.
During the early 1980s, Cuban advisers were assigned to bring industrial workers into the MPLA-PT. With their Angolan counterparts in the UNTA, Cuban shop stewards and union officials undertook educational programs in technical and management training, labor discipline and productivity, and socialist economics. Their overall goal was to impart a sense of worker participation in the management of the state economy--a difficult task in an environment characterized by warfare and economic crisis. By late 1988, the Cubans had achieved mixed success. Some of the UNTA's 600,000 members looked forward to the prosperity they hoped to achieve through MPLA-PT policies; many others felt their links to the government did little to improve their standard of living, and they were relatively uncommitted to the construction of a socialist state. UNTA officers did not aggressively represent worker interests when they conflicted with those of the party, and the fear of labor unrest became part of Angola's political context.
Organization of Angolan Women
The OMA was established in 1963 to mobilize support for the fledgling MPLA. After independence, it became the primary route by which women were incorporated in the political process. Its membership rose to 1.8 million in 1985 but dropped to less than 1.3 million in 1987. The group attributed this decline to the regional destabilization and warfare that displaced and destroyed families in rural areas, where more than two-thirds of OMA members lived. In 1983 Ruth Neto, the former president's sister, was elected secretary general of the OMA and head of its fifty-three-member national committee. Neto was reelected secretary general by the 596 delegates who attended the OMA's second nationwide conference on March 2, 1988.
During the 1980s, the OMA established literacy programs and worked to expand educational opportunities for women, and the government passed new legislation outlawing gender discrimination in wages and working conditions. MPLA-PT rhetoric emphasized equality between the sexes as a prerequisite to a prosperous socialist state. At both the First Party Congress and the Second Party Congress, the MPLA-PT Central Committee extolled contributions made by women, but in 1988 only 10 percent of MPLA-PT members were women, and the goal of equality remained distant. Through the OMA, some women were employed in health and social service organizations, serving refugees and rural families. More women were finding jobs in teaching and professions from which they had been excluded in the past, and a very small number occupied important places in government and the MPLA-PT. However, most Angolan women were poor and unemployed.
In addition to leading the OMA, Ruth Neto also served on the MPLA-PT Central Committee and as secretary general of the PanAfrican Women's Organization (PAWO), which had its headquarters in Luanda. The PAWO helped sponsor Angola's annual celebration of Women's Day (August 9), which was also attended by representatives from neighboring states and liberation movements in South Africa and Namibia.
Interest Groups
Peasant Farmers
In the early 1970s, rural volunteers were the backbone of the MPLA fighting forces, but after independence few peasant fighters were given leadership positions in the party. In fact, most farmers were purged from the party during the rectification campaign of the late 1970s for their lack of political commitment or revolutionary zeal. Criteria for party membership were stricter for farmers than for urban workers, and a decade later MPLA-PT leaders generally conceded that the worker-peasant alliance, on which the socialist transformation depended, had been weakened by the rectification campaign. When debating the reasons for this failure, some MPLA-PT members argued that their urban-based leadership had ignored rural demands and implemented policies favoring urban residents. Others claimed that the party had allowed farmers to place their own interests above those of society and that they were beginning to emerge as the rural bourgeoisie denounced by Marxist-Leninist leaders in many countries.
Policies aimed at rural development in the early 1980s had called for the establishment of state farms to improve productivity of basic foodstuffs in the face of shortages in equipment and technical experts. Cuban and Bulgarian farm managers were put in charge of most of these farms. These advisers' objectives were to introduce the use of mechanization and chemical fertilizers and to inculcate political awareness. By the mid-1980s, however, the salaries of foreign technical experts and the cost of new equipment far outweighed revenues generated by these state enterprises, and the program was abandoned.
Many farmers reverted to subsistence agriculture in the face of the spreading UNITA insurgency and what they often perceived as government neglect. Convincing them to produce surplus crops for markets presented formidable problems for party leaders. UNITA forces sometimes claimed crops even before they were harvested, and urban traders seldom ventured into insecure rural areas. Even if a farmer were able to sell surplus crops, the official price was often unrealistically low, and few consumer goods were available in rural markets even for those with cash.
In response to the apparent intransigence of some rural Angolans, the MPLA-PT attempted another strategy for mobilizing political support by creating farmers' cooperatives and organizing them into unions to provide channels of communication between farmers and party leaders. In late 1988, these unions represented only a small percentage of the rural population, but some party leaders still expected them to succeed. Rural resentment of the urban-based MPLA-PT leadership was still fairly widespread, however, and this resentment contributed to the success of UNITA in Angola's southern and eastern provinces.
Traditional Elites
In the late 1980s, President dos Santos was working to strengthen his support among the nation's traditional leaders. Every few weeks, he would invite delegations of provincial and local-level representatives to meet with him, and Angop would headline these meetings with "the chiefs." Their discussions focused on regional economic and social concerns and served the important political purpose of demonstrating the government's desire to avoid confrontation and to secure support in rural areas.
The MPLA had a neutral relationship with traditional elites before independence, in part because the urban-based party had little contact with ethnic group leaders, whose following was strongest in rural areas. After independence, in its determination to improve the national economy and infrastructure, the MPLA called on people to rise above ethnic and regional loyalties, labeling them impediments to progress in the class struggle. Early MPLA rhetoric also condemned many religious practices, including local African religions. Such policies provoked the contempt of some traditional leaders.
Crises were dampened somewhat by the party's often confrontational relationship with the civil service during the early 1970s. Civil servants, as representatives of the colonial regime, had often clashed with traditional leaders or had otherwise subverted their authority. The MPLA, in contrast, condemned the elitist attitudes of bureaucrats who were employed by the colonial regime, thus gaining support from traditional rulers. At the same time, however, the party drew much of its support from the petite bourgeoisie it condemned so loudly, and much of the civil service remained intact after independence.
By 1980 MPLA-PT efforts to consolidate support in outlying regions were evident. Party officials appointed ethnic group leaders to participate in or lead local party committees in many areas. Merging traditional and modern leadership roles helped strengthen support among rural peasants who would have otherwise remained on the periphery of national politics. Although success was limited to a few areas, this program allowed dos Santos to maintain a balance between national and regional interests. Even some party ideologues, initially inclined toward strict interpretations of Marxist-Leninist dogma, voiced the belief that populist elements might be appropriate for a Marxist regime in an African context.
Religious Communities
The MPLA-PT maintained a cautious attitude toward religion in the late 1980s, in contrast to its determination in the late 1970s to purge churchgoers from the party. A 1980 Ministry of Justice decree required all religious institutions to register with the government. As of 1987, eleven Protestant institutions were legally recognized: the Assembly of God, the Baptist Convention of Angola, the Baptist Evangelical Church of Angola, the Congregational Evangelical Church of Angola, the Evangelical Church of Angola, the Evangelical Church of South-West Angola, the Our Lord Jesus Christ Church in the World (Kimbanquist), the Reformed Evangelical Church of Angola, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, the Union of Evangelical Churches of Angola, and the United Methodist Church. Roberto de Almeida, the MPLA-PT Central Committee secretary for ideology, information, and culture, admonished church leaders not to perpetuate oppressive or elitist attitudes, and he specifically warned that the churches would not be allowed to take a neutral stance in the battle against opponents of the MPLA-PT regime.
The official attitude toward religion reflected the ideological split in the party leadership. Staunch party ideologues, who had purged almost all churchgoers during the rectification campaign of the late 1970s, opposed leniency toward anyone claiming or recognizing moral authority outside the regime. But as they had done in regard to traditional leaders, the president and his close associates weighed the balance between ideological purity and political necessity and soon moderated their antireligious stance. Political opposition had not coalesced around religious leaders, and, in general, the fear of religious opposition was weakening in the late 1980s.
Employing Marxist-Leninist diatribes against the oppression of the working class, only the most strident ideologues in the MPLA-PT maintained their opposition to religion. The Roman Catholic Church was still strongly identified with the colonial oppressor, and Protestant missionaries were sometimes condemned for having supported colonial practices. More serious in the government's view in the late 1980s was the use by its foremost opponent, Jonas Savimbi, of the issue of religion to recruit members and support for his UNITA insurgency. Savimbi's Church of Christ in the Bush had become an effective religious affiliate of UNITA, maintaining schools, clinics, and training programs.
Small religious sects were annoying to MPLA-PT officials. The ruling party suspected such groups of having foreign sponsors or of being used by opponents of the regime. To the government, the sects' relative independence from world religions was a gauge of their potential for political independence as well. Watch Tower and Seventh-Day Adventist sects were suspect, but they were not perceived as serious political threats. However, the Jehovah's Witnesses were banned entirely in 1978 because of their proscription on military service.
During the late 1980s, security officials considered the small Our Lord Jesus Christ Church in the World to be a threat to the regime, despite the fact that the Mtokoists, as they were known, were not particularly interested in national politics. Their founder, Simon Mtoko (also known as Simão Toco), had been expelled from Angola by the Portuguese in 1950 for preaching adherence to African cultural values. He returned to Angola in 1974 but soon clashed with MPLA leaders over the regime's authority over individual beliefs. He opposed the party's Marxist rhetoric on cultural grounds until his death in 1984. After his death, officials feared the group would splinter into dissident factions. The church was legally recognized in 1988 even though Mtokoists clashed with police in 1987 and 1988, resulting in arrests and some casualties.
In the early 1970s, rural volunteers were the backbone of the MPLA fighting forces, but after independence few peasant fighters were given leadership positions in the party. In fact, most farmers were purged from the party during the rectification campaign of the late 1970s for their lack of political commitment or revolutionary zeal. Criteria for party membership were stricter for farmers than for urban workers, and a decade later MPLA-PT leaders generally conceded that the worker-peasant alliance, on which the socialist transformation depended, had been weakened by the rectification campaign. When debating the reasons for this failure, some MPLA-PT members argued that their urban-based leadership had ignored rural demands and implemented policies favoring urban residents. Others claimed that the party had allowed farmers to place their own interests above those of society and that they were beginning to emerge as the rural bourgeoisie denounced by Marxist-Leninist leaders in many countries.
Policies aimed at rural development in the early 1980s had called for the establishment of state farms to improve productivity of basic foodstuffs in the face of shortages in equipment and technical experts. Cuban and Bulgarian farm managers were put in charge of most of these farms. These advisers' objectives were to introduce the use of mechanization and chemical fertilizers and to inculcate political awareness. By the mid-1980s, however, the salaries of foreign technical experts and the cost of new equipment far outweighed revenues generated by these state enterprises, and the program was abandoned.
Many farmers reverted to subsistence agriculture in the face of the spreading UNITA insurgency and what they often perceived as government neglect. Convincing them to produce surplus crops for markets presented formidable problems for party leaders. UNITA forces sometimes claimed crops even before they were harvested, and urban traders seldom ventured into insecure rural areas. Even if a farmer were able to sell surplus crops, the official price was often unrealistically low, and few consumer goods were available in rural markets even for those with cash.
In response to the apparent intransigence of some rural Angolans, the MPLA-PT attempted another strategy for mobilizing political support by creating farmers' cooperatives and organizing them into unions to provide channels of communication between farmers and party leaders. In late 1988, these unions represented only a small percentage of the rural population, but some party leaders still expected them to succeed. Rural resentment of the urban-based MPLA-PT leadership was still fairly widespread, however, and this resentment contributed to the success of UNITA in Angola's southern and eastern provinces.
Traditional Elites
In the late 1980s, President dos Santos was working to strengthen his support among the nation's traditional leaders. Every few weeks, he would invite delegations of provincial and local-level representatives to meet with him, and Angop would headline these meetings with "the chiefs." Their discussions focused on regional economic and social concerns and served the important political purpose of demonstrating the government's desire to avoid confrontation and to secure support in rural areas.
The MPLA had a neutral relationship with traditional elites before independence, in part because the urban-based party had little contact with ethnic group leaders, whose following was strongest in rural areas. After independence, in its determination to improve the national economy and infrastructure, the MPLA called on people to rise above ethnic and regional loyalties, labeling them impediments to progress in the class struggle. Early MPLA rhetoric also condemned many religious practices, including local African religions. Such policies provoked the contempt of some traditional leaders.
Crises were dampened somewhat by the party's often confrontational relationship with the civil service during the early 1970s. Civil servants, as representatives of the colonial regime, had often clashed with traditional leaders or had otherwise subverted their authority. The MPLA, in contrast, condemned the elitist attitudes of bureaucrats who were employed by the colonial regime, thus gaining support from traditional rulers. At the same time, however, the party drew much of its support from the petite bourgeoisie it condemned so loudly, and much of the civil service remained intact after independence.
By 1980 MPLA-PT efforts to consolidate support in outlying regions were evident. Party officials appointed ethnic group leaders to participate in or lead local party committees in many areas. Merging traditional and modern leadership roles helped strengthen support among rural peasants who would have otherwise remained on the periphery of national politics. Although success was limited to a few areas, this program allowed dos Santos to maintain a balance between national and regional interests. Even some party ideologues, initially inclined toward strict interpretations of Marxist-Leninist dogma, voiced the belief that populist elements might be appropriate for a Marxist regime in an African context.
Religious Communities
The MPLA-PT maintained a cautious attitude toward religion in the late 1980s, in contrast to its determination in the late 1970s to purge churchgoers from the party. A 1980 Ministry of Justice decree required all religious institutions to register with the government. As of 1987, eleven Protestant institutions were legally recognized: the Assembly of God, the Baptist Convention of Angola, the Baptist Evangelical Church of Angola, the Congregational Evangelical Church of Angola, the Evangelical Church of Angola, the Evangelical Church of South-West Angola, the Our Lord Jesus Christ Church in the World (Kimbanquist), the Reformed Evangelical Church of Angola, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, the Union of Evangelical Churches of Angola, and the United Methodist Church. Roberto de Almeida, the MPLA-PT Central Committee secretary for ideology, information, and culture, admonished church leaders not to perpetuate oppressive or elitist attitudes, and he specifically warned that the churches would not be allowed to take a neutral stance in the battle against opponents of the MPLA-PT regime.
The official attitude toward religion reflected the ideological split in the party leadership. Staunch party ideologues, who had purged almost all churchgoers during the rectification campaign of the late 1970s, opposed leniency toward anyone claiming or recognizing moral authority outside the regime. But as they had done in regard to traditional leaders, the president and his close associates weighed the balance between ideological purity and political necessity and soon moderated their antireligious stance. Political opposition had not coalesced around religious leaders, and, in general, the fear of religious opposition was weakening in the late 1980s.
Employing Marxist-Leninist diatribes against the oppression of the working class, only the most strident ideologues in the MPLA-PT maintained their opposition to religion. The Roman Catholic Church was still strongly identified with the colonial oppressor, and Protestant missionaries were sometimes condemned for having supported colonial practices. More serious in the government's view in the late 1980s was the use by its foremost opponent, Jonas Savimbi, of the issue of religion to recruit members and support for his UNITA insurgency. Savimbi's Church of Christ in the Bush had become an effective religious affiliate of UNITA, maintaining schools, clinics, and training programs.
Small religious sects were annoying to MPLA-PT officials. The ruling party suspected such groups of having foreign sponsors or of being used by opponents of the regime. To the government, the sects' relative independence from world religions was a gauge of their potential for political independence as well. Watch Tower and Seventh-Day Adventist sects were suspect, but they were not perceived as serious political threats. However, the Jehovah's Witnesses were banned entirely in 1978 because of their proscription on military service.
During the late 1980s, security officials considered the small Our Lord Jesus Christ Church in the World to be a threat to the regime, despite the fact that the Mtokoists, as they were known, were not particularly interested in national politics. Their founder, Simon Mtoko (also known as Simão Toco), had been expelled from Angola by the Portuguese in 1950 for preaching adherence to African cultural values. He returned to Angola in 1974 but soon clashed with MPLA leaders over the regime's authority over individual beliefs. He opposed the party's Marxist rhetoric on cultural grounds until his death in 1984. After his death, officials feared the group would splinter into dissident factions. The church was legally recognized in 1988 even though Mtokoists clashed with police in 1987 and 1988, resulting in arrests and some casualties.
POLITICAL OPPOSITION
After thirteen years of national independence, Angola's armed forces, FAPLA, remained pitted against UNITA in a civil war that had erupted out of the preindependence rivalry among liberation armies. The FNLA and the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (Frente para a Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda--FLEC) lost popular support during the first decade of independence, and, as a result, in 1988 UNITA remained the only serious internal threat to the dos Santos regime. Few Angolans expected either UNITA or government forces to achieve a military victory, but the political impact of the UNITA insurgency was substantial nonetheless.
Jonas Savimbi established UNITA in 1966. Leading a group of dissident members from the northern coalition that included the FNLA, he established a rival liberation movement that sought to avoid domination by Holden Roberto and his Bakongo followers. UNITA recruits from Savimbi's Ovimbundu homeland and from among the Chokwe (also spelled Cokwe), Lunda, Nganguela (also spelled Ganguela), and other southern Angolan societies sought to preserve elements of their own cultures. Some southerners also maintained centuries-old legacies of distrust toward northern ethnic groups, including the Bakongo and the Mbundu.
Savimbi's legitimacy as a dissident leader was acquired in part through the reputation of his grandfather, who had led the Ovimbundu state of Ndulu in protest against Portuguese rule in the early twentieth century. From his father, Savimbi acquired membership and belief in the United Church of Christ, which organized Ovimbundu villages into networks to assist in mission operations under colonial rule. One of these networks formed the Council of Evangelical Churches, a pan-Ovimbundu umbrella organization that united more than 100,000 people in south-central Angola. They were served by mission schools, training centers, and clinics, with near-autonomy from colonial controls. Local leaders, who staffed some of these establishments, voiced their demands for greater political freedom, and colonial authorities moved to suppress the Council of Evangelical Churches as pressures for independence mounted in the 1960s.
The territory in southeastern Angola controlled by UNITA in the late 1980s included part of the area that had been administered by the Council of Evangelical Churches before independence. Here, many people supported Savimbi's struggle against the MPLA-PT as an extension of the long struggle for Ovimbundu, not Angolan, nationhood. UNITA-run schools and clinics operated with the same autonomy from Luandan bureaucratic control as their mission-sponsored counterparts had before independence.
Ethnic loyalties remained strong in the southeast and other UNITA-controlled areas of rural Angola. Class solidarity, in comparison, was an almost meaningless abstraction. Savimbi was able to portray the class-conscious MPLA-PT in Luanda in terms that contrasted sharply with models of leadership among the Ovimbundu and other central and southern Angolan peoples. He described party leaders as a racially stratified elite, dominated by Soviet and Cuban advisers who also provided arms to suppress the population. The MPLA-PT's early assaults on organized religion reinforced this image. Many rural Angolans were also keenly aware that the party elite in Luanda lived at a much higher standard than did Savimbi's commanders in the bush. And they carefully noted that people in rural areas under MPLA-PT control still lived in poverty and that the government bureaucracy was notoriously inefficient and corrupt.
UNITA's regimented leadership, in turn, presented itself as the protector of rural African interests against outsiders. Through Savimbi's skilled public relations efforts, his organization became known as a local peasant uprising, fighting for political and religious freedom. Savimbi had no headquarters in other countries and took pride in the humble life-style of his command in Jamba, well within UNITA-held territory. On this basis, he won some support in the south and east, gained volunteers for UNITA forces, and slowed government efforts to extend MPLA-PT control into the countryside. In the late 1980s, however, international human rights organizations accused UNITA of human rights abuses, charging that UNITA was intimidating civilians to force them to support UNITA or to withhold support for the MPLA-PT.
For the government, the ever-present threat of the UNITA insurgency served a number of useful purposes. It helped rally support for party unity in the capital and surrounding areas. The government was able to capitalize on the reputation for brutality that grew up around some UNITA commanders and the destruction of rural resources by UNITA forces. Young amputees in Luanda and other towns provided a constant reminder of the several thousand land mines left in rural farmland by Savimbi's troops. UNITA activity also provided an immediate example of the party ideologues' stereotype of destabilization sponsored by international capitalist forces. These forces were, in turn, embodied in the regional enemy, South Africa. The UNITA insurgency also enabled the MPLA-PT government to justify the continued presence of Cuban troops in Angola, and it helped maintain international interest in Angola's political difficulties.
The regional accord reached in December 1988 by Angolan, South African, and Cuban negotiators did not address Angola's internal violence, but in informal discussions among the participants, alternatives were suggested for ending the conflict. Western negotiators pressured the MPLA-PT to bring UNITA officials into the government, and even within the party, many people hoped that UNITA representatives--excluding Savimbi--would be reconciled with the dos Santos government. Savimbi, in turn, offered to recognize dos Santos's leadership on the condition that free elections, as promised by the 1975 Alvor Agreement, would take place after the withdrawal of Cuban troops.
Jonas Savimbi established UNITA in 1966. Leading a group of dissident members from the northern coalition that included the FNLA, he established a rival liberation movement that sought to avoid domination by Holden Roberto and his Bakongo followers. UNITA recruits from Savimbi's Ovimbundu homeland and from among the Chokwe (also spelled Cokwe), Lunda, Nganguela (also spelled Ganguela), and other southern Angolan societies sought to preserve elements of their own cultures. Some southerners also maintained centuries-old legacies of distrust toward northern ethnic groups, including the Bakongo and the Mbundu.
Savimbi's legitimacy as a dissident leader was acquired in part through the reputation of his grandfather, who had led the Ovimbundu state of Ndulu in protest against Portuguese rule in the early twentieth century. From his father, Savimbi acquired membership and belief in the United Church of Christ, which organized Ovimbundu villages into networks to assist in mission operations under colonial rule. One of these networks formed the Council of Evangelical Churches, a pan-Ovimbundu umbrella organization that united more than 100,000 people in south-central Angola. They were served by mission schools, training centers, and clinics, with near-autonomy from colonial controls. Local leaders, who staffed some of these establishments, voiced their demands for greater political freedom, and colonial authorities moved to suppress the Council of Evangelical Churches as pressures for independence mounted in the 1960s.
The territory in southeastern Angola controlled by UNITA in the late 1980s included part of the area that had been administered by the Council of Evangelical Churches before independence. Here, many people supported Savimbi's struggle against the MPLA-PT as an extension of the long struggle for Ovimbundu, not Angolan, nationhood. UNITA-run schools and clinics operated with the same autonomy from Luandan bureaucratic control as their mission-sponsored counterparts had before independence.
Ethnic loyalties remained strong in the southeast and other UNITA-controlled areas of rural Angola. Class solidarity, in comparison, was an almost meaningless abstraction. Savimbi was able to portray the class-conscious MPLA-PT in Luanda in terms that contrasted sharply with models of leadership among the Ovimbundu and other central and southern Angolan peoples. He described party leaders as a racially stratified elite, dominated by Soviet and Cuban advisers who also provided arms to suppress the population. The MPLA-PT's early assaults on organized religion reinforced this image. Many rural Angolans were also keenly aware that the party elite in Luanda lived at a much higher standard than did Savimbi's commanders in the bush. And they carefully noted that people in rural areas under MPLA-PT control still lived in poverty and that the government bureaucracy was notoriously inefficient and corrupt.
UNITA's regimented leadership, in turn, presented itself as the protector of rural African interests against outsiders. Through Savimbi's skilled public relations efforts, his organization became known as a local peasant uprising, fighting for political and religious freedom. Savimbi had no headquarters in other countries and took pride in the humble life-style of his command in Jamba, well within UNITA-held territory. On this basis, he won some support in the south and east, gained volunteers for UNITA forces, and slowed government efforts to extend MPLA-PT control into the countryside. In the late 1980s, however, international human rights organizations accused UNITA of human rights abuses, charging that UNITA was intimidating civilians to force them to support UNITA or to withhold support for the MPLA-PT.
For the government, the ever-present threat of the UNITA insurgency served a number of useful purposes. It helped rally support for party unity in the capital and surrounding areas. The government was able to capitalize on the reputation for brutality that grew up around some UNITA commanders and the destruction of rural resources by UNITA forces. Young amputees in Luanda and other towns provided a constant reminder of the several thousand land mines left in rural farmland by Savimbi's troops. UNITA activity also provided an immediate example of the party ideologues' stereotype of destabilization sponsored by international capitalist forces. These forces were, in turn, embodied in the regional enemy, South Africa. The UNITA insurgency also enabled the MPLA-PT government to justify the continued presence of Cuban troops in Angola, and it helped maintain international interest in Angola's political difficulties.
The regional accord reached in December 1988 by Angolan, South African, and Cuban negotiators did not address Angola's internal violence, but in informal discussions among the participants, alternatives were suggested for ending the conflict. Western negotiators pressured the MPLA-PT to bring UNITA officials into the government, and even within the party, many people hoped that UNITA representatives--excluding Savimbi--would be reconciled with the dos Santos government. Savimbi, in turn, offered to recognize dos Santos's leadership on the condition that free elections, as promised by the 1975 Alvor Agreement, would take place after the withdrawal of Cuban troops.
MASS MEDIA
The government nationalized all print and broadcast media in 1976, and as of late 1988 the government and party still controlled almost all the news media. Angola's official news agency, Angop, distributed about 8,000 issues of the government newsletter, Diário de República, and 40,000 copies of Jornal de Angola daily in Luanda and other urban areas under FAPLA control. Both publications were in Portuguese. International press operations in Luanda included Agence France-Presse, Cuba's Prensa Latina, Xinhua (New China) News Agency, and several Soviet and East European agency offices.
Under the scrutiny of the MPLA-PT, the media were limited to disseminating official policy without critical comment or opposing viewpoints. The Angolan Journalists' Union, which proclaimed the right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Constitution, nonetheless worked closely with the MPLA-PT and pressured writers to adhere to government guidelines. Views differing slightly from official perceptions were published in the UNTA monthly newsletter, O Voz do Trabalhador, despite active censorship.
Rádio Nacional de Angola was the largest of eighteen mediumwave and short-wave stations operating throughout the country. Radio broadcasts were in Portuguese and vernacular languages, and there were an estimated 435,000 receivers in 1988. In the late 1980s, people in central and southern Angola also received opposition radio broadcasts from the Voice of Resistance of the Black Cockerel, operated by UNITA in Portuguese, English, and local vernaculars. Limited television service in Portuguese became available in Luanda and surrounding areas in 1976, but by 1988 there were only about 40,500 television sets in the country.
Angop maintained a cooperative relationship with the Soviet news agency, TASS, and Angola was active in international efforts to improve coordination among nonaligned nations in the field of communications. Information ministers and news agency representatives from several Third World nations were scheduled to hold their fifth conference in Luanda in June 1989--their first meeting since 1985, when they met in Havana. The Angop delegation was to serve as host of the 1989 conference, and Angolan information officials in the government and party were to chair the organization from 1989 to 1992.
Angola was also a leader among Portuguese-speaking nations of Africa. Students from these nations attended the Interstate Journalism School in Luanda, which opened May 23, 1987, with support from the Yugoslav news agency, Tanyug. In September 1987, journalists from these five Lusophone nations held their third conference in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. A major goal of this group was to coordinate cultural development based on their common language, but an important secondary goal was to demonstrate support for Angola in its confrontation with South Africa. By 1990 they hoped to celebrate the Pan-African News Agency's opening of a Portuguese desk in Luanda.
Under the scrutiny of the MPLA-PT, the media were limited to disseminating official policy without critical comment or opposing viewpoints. The Angolan Journalists' Union, which proclaimed the right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Constitution, nonetheless worked closely with the MPLA-PT and pressured writers to adhere to government guidelines. Views differing slightly from official perceptions were published in the UNTA monthly newsletter, O Voz do Trabalhador, despite active censorship.
Rádio Nacional de Angola was the largest of eighteen mediumwave and short-wave stations operating throughout the country. Radio broadcasts were in Portuguese and vernacular languages, and there were an estimated 435,000 receivers in 1988. In the late 1980s, people in central and southern Angola also received opposition radio broadcasts from the Voice of Resistance of the Black Cockerel, operated by UNITA in Portuguese, English, and local vernaculars. Limited television service in Portuguese became available in Luanda and surrounding areas in 1976, but by 1988 there were only about 40,500 television sets in the country.
Angop maintained a cooperative relationship with the Soviet news agency, TASS, and Angola was active in international efforts to improve coordination among nonaligned nations in the field of communications. Information ministers and news agency representatives from several Third World nations were scheduled to hold their fifth conference in Luanda in June 1989--their first meeting since 1985, when they met in Havana. The Angop delegation was to serve as host of the 1989 conference, and Angolan information officials in the government and party were to chair the organization from 1989 to 1992.
Angola was also a leader among Portuguese-speaking nations of Africa. Students from these nations attended the Interstate Journalism School in Luanda, which opened May 23, 1987, with support from the Yugoslav news agency, Tanyug. In September 1987, journalists from these five Lusophone nations held their third conference in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. A major goal of this group was to coordinate cultural development based on their common language, but an important secondary goal was to demonstrate support for Angola in its confrontation with South Africa. By 1990 they hoped to celebrate the Pan-African News Agency's opening of a Portuguese desk in Luanda.
FOREIGN RELATIONS
Policy Making
Angola's foreign relations reflected the ambivalence of its formal commitment to Marxism-Leninism and its dependence on Western investment and trade. Overall policy goals were to resolve this dual dependence--to achieve regional and domestic peace, reduce the need for foreign military assistance, enhance economic selfsufficiency through diversified trade relations, and establish Angola as a strong socialist state. MPLA-PT politicians described Angola's goal as geopolitical nonalignment, but throughout most of the 1980s Angola's foreign policy had a pronounced pro-Soviet bias.
Two groups within the MPLA-PT and one council within the executive branch vied for influence over foreign policy, all under the direct authority of the president. Formal responsibility for foreign policy programs lay with the MPLA-PT Central Committee. Within this committee, the nine members of the Secretariat and the five others who were members of the Political Bureau wielded decisive influence. The Political Bureau, in its role as guardian of the revolution, usually succeeded in setting the Central Committee agenda.
During the 1980s, as head of both the party and the government, dos Santos strengthened the security role of the executive branch of government, thereby weakening the control of the Central Committee and Political Bureau. To accomplish this redistribution of power, in 1984 he created the Defense and Security Council as an executive advisory body, and he appointed to this council the six most influential ministers, the FAPLA chief of the general staff, and the Central Committee secretary for ideology, information, and culture. The mandate of this council was to review and coordinate the implementation of security-related policy efforts among ministries. The Ministry of Foreign Relations was more concerned with diplomatic and economic affairs than with security matters.
Southern Africa's regional conflict determined much of Angola's foreign policy direction during the 1980s. Negotiations to end South Africa's illegal occupation of Namibia succeeded in linking Namibian independence to the removal of Cuban troops from Angola. The Cuban presence and that of South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) and African National Congress (ANC) bases in Angola bolstered Pretoria's claims of a Soviet-sponsored onslaught against the apartheid state. On the grounds that an independent Namibia would enlarge the territory available to Pretoria's enemies and make South Africa's borders even more vulnerable, South Africa maintained possession of Namibia, which it had held since World War I. Pretoria launched incursions into Angola throughout most of the 1980s and supported Savimbi's UNITA forces as they extended their control throughout eastern Angola.
The MPLA-PT pursued its grass-roots campaign to mobilize peasant support, and UNITA sought to capitalize on the fear of communism to enhance its popularity outside rural Ovimbundu areas. Many Angolans accepted MPLA-PT condemnations of the West but balanced them against the fact that Western oil companies in Cabinda provided vital revenues and foreign exchange and the fact that the United States purchased much of Angola's oil. Moreover, in one of Africa's many ironies that arose from balancing the dual quest for political sovereignty and economic development, Cuban and Angolan troops guarded American and other Western companies against attack by South African commandos or UNITA forces (which were receiving United States assistance).
Angola's foreign relations reflected the ambivalence of its formal commitment to Marxism-Leninism and its dependence on Western investment and trade. Overall policy goals were to resolve this dual dependence--to achieve regional and domestic peace, reduce the need for foreign military assistance, enhance economic selfsufficiency through diversified trade relations, and establish Angola as a strong socialist state. MPLA-PT politicians described Angola's goal as geopolitical nonalignment, but throughout most of the 1980s Angola's foreign policy had a pronounced pro-Soviet bias.
Two groups within the MPLA-PT and one council within the executive branch vied for influence over foreign policy, all under the direct authority of the president. Formal responsibility for foreign policy programs lay with the MPLA-PT Central Committee. Within this committee, the nine members of the Secretariat and the five others who were members of the Political Bureau wielded decisive influence. The Political Bureau, in its role as guardian of the revolution, usually succeeded in setting the Central Committee agenda.
During the 1980s, as head of both the party and the government, dos Santos strengthened the security role of the executive branch of government, thereby weakening the control of the Central Committee and Political Bureau. To accomplish this redistribution of power, in 1984 he created the Defense and Security Council as an executive advisory body, and he appointed to this council the six most influential ministers, the FAPLA chief of the general staff, and the Central Committee secretary for ideology, information, and culture. The mandate of this council was to review and coordinate the implementation of security-related policy efforts among ministries. The Ministry of Foreign Relations was more concerned with diplomatic and economic affairs than with security matters.
Southern Africa's regional conflict determined much of Angola's foreign policy direction during the 1980s. Negotiations to end South Africa's illegal occupation of Namibia succeeded in linking Namibian independence to the removal of Cuban troops from Angola. The Cuban presence and that of South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) and African National Congress (ANC) bases in Angola bolstered Pretoria's claims of a Soviet-sponsored onslaught against the apartheid state. On the grounds that an independent Namibia would enlarge the territory available to Pretoria's enemies and make South Africa's borders even more vulnerable, South Africa maintained possession of Namibia, which it had held since World War I. Pretoria launched incursions into Angola throughout most of the 1980s and supported Savimbi's UNITA forces as they extended their control throughout eastern Angola.
The MPLA-PT pursued its grass-roots campaign to mobilize peasant support, and UNITA sought to capitalize on the fear of communism to enhance its popularity outside rural Ovimbundu areas. Many Angolans accepted MPLA-PT condemnations of the West but balanced them against the fact that Western oil companies in Cabinda provided vital revenues and foreign exchange and the fact that the United States purchased much of Angola's oil. Moreover, in one of Africa's many ironies that arose from balancing the dual quest for political sovereignty and economic development, Cuban and Angolan troops guarded American and other Western companies against attack by South African commandos or UNITA forces (which were receiving United States assistance).
Regional Politics
Most African governments maintained generally cautious support of the Luanda regime during most of its first thirteen years in power. African leaders recognized Luanda's right to reject Western alignments and opt for a Marxist state, following Angola's long struggle to end colonial domination. This recognition of sovereignty, however, was accompanied by uncertainty about the MPLA-PT regime itself, shifting from a concern in the 1970s that spreading Soviet influence would destabilize African regimes across the continent to a fear in the 1980s that the MPLA-PT might be incapable of governing in the face of strong UNITA resistance. The large Cuban military presence came to symbolize both Angola's political autonomy from the West and the MPLA-PT's reliance on a Soviet client state to remain in power. By 1988 the party's role in the struggle against South Africa had become its best guarantee of broad support across sub-Saharan Africa.
Pretoria's goals in Angola were to eliminate SWAPO and ANC bases from Angolan territory, weaken MPLA-PT support for Pretoria's foes through a combination of direct assault and aid to UNITA, and reinforce regional dependence on South Africa's own extensive transportation system by closing down the Benguela Railway. At the same time, however, South Africa's right-wing extremists relied on Marxist rhetoric from Angola and Mozambique as evidence of the predicted communist onslaught against Pretoria. The political ties of Angola and Mozambique to the Soviet Union also bolstered South Africa's determination to strengthen its security apparatus at home and provided a rationale for continued occupation of Namibia. Knowing this important prop for Pretoria's regional policies would diminish with the Cuban withdrawal from Angola, South Africa actually prolonged Angola's dependence on Soviet and Cuban military might by derailing negotiations for Namibian independence.
In 1984 South Africa and Angola agreed to end support for each other's rebels and work toward regional peace. This agreement, the Lusaka Accord, was not implemented, however, as Pretoria continued incursions into Angola, partly in response to new arrivals of Cuban forces.
Pretoria's goals in Angola were to eliminate SWAPO and ANC bases from Angolan territory, weaken MPLA-PT support for Pretoria's foes through a combination of direct assault and aid to UNITA, and reinforce regional dependence on South Africa's own extensive transportation system by closing down the Benguela Railway. At the same time, however, South Africa's right-wing extremists relied on Marxist rhetoric from Angola and Mozambique as evidence of the predicted communist onslaught against Pretoria. The political ties of Angola and Mozambique to the Soviet Union also bolstered South Africa's determination to strengthen its security apparatus at home and provided a rationale for continued occupation of Namibia. Knowing this important prop for Pretoria's regional policies would diminish with the Cuban withdrawal from Angola, South Africa actually prolonged Angola's dependence on Soviet and Cuban military might by derailing negotiations for Namibian independence.
In 1984 South Africa and Angola agreed to end support for each other's rebels and work toward regional peace. This agreement, the Lusaka Accord, was not implemented, however, as Pretoria continued incursions into Angola, partly in response to new arrivals of Cuban forces.
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