ANGOLA
RESOLUTION OF THE
INTERNATIONAT
EXECUTIVE
COMMITTEE
OF THE FOURTH
INTERNATIONAT
The following text on Angola was approved by the
February 1976 meeting of the International Executive
Committee of the Fourth International.
Lo
The formation of an independent state in Angola is the outcome of a political and military struggle waged by many social and political forces. In spite of the existence of an anticolonialist tradition and the scope of the forces mobilized in the armed confrontation, the struggle went on for fourteen years, because of the following specific factors:
a) Portuguese imperialism's interest in controlling the very considerable resources of the country, especially since it could not seriously rely on a neocolonial reconversion because of its economic and political weakness;
b) the necessity for the fascist regime in Lisbon to maintain its colonial empire or suffer the breakdown of the overall sociopolitical equilibrium on which it was based;
c) the presence in Angola of a significant contingent of colons who were propelled by their racial interests and privileges to defend the traditional colonial structures to the very end;
d) the character of the Angolan socioeconomic structure, which was more developed than that of the other Portuguese colonies, which implied more substantial potential for a dynamic of permanent revolution;
e) the absence of a national bourgeoisie of any degree of solidity:
f) the difficulty for the United States to play the card of neocolonialism at the expense of the old colanial power and to contribute to a relatively peaceful reconversion; this was a result both of Washington's politico-military links with the Lisbon regime in the framework of the Atlantic Pact (which involved aid to the Portuguese army) and of the U.S. desire not to endanger the political equilibrium of the Iberian peninsula (the events following April 25, 1974, confirmed just how well founded this concern was from the standpoint of the imperialists). that accentuated the weight of some of these factors In the course of the war, transformations occurred and, in the final analysis, reduced imperialism's politIcal maneuvering room. In the countryside the traditional structures were shaken, especially in certain regions, by military operations, "preventive" repressive measures ("strategie hamlets"), and massive immigration (mainly to Zaire). At the same time, capitalist agriculture based on production for the world market was increasingly strengthened, at the expense of subsistence agriculture. As for the industrial economy, very important foreign investment was made in basic sectors (oil), in the small- and middle-sized transformation industry, and in the commercial network. This process was stepped up at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s.
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ANGOLA
The result of these combined developments-was that the relative weight of the capitalist structures increased, the working class became more numerous, as did other wage-earning sectors, the urban pefty bourgeoisie was also strengthened, and the bourgeoisies of capitalist countries other than Portugal became increasingly interested in controlling Angola (the United States and the West European powers, mainly Britain). The war was also prolonged because the anticolonialist movement was deeply divided and the neighboring neocolonial states played an extremely ambiguous role. On the one hand, they could not avoid aiding the liberation movements; on the other hand, they tried to control them and fit them into their own political projects, going so far as to become vehicles for imperialist pressure. (The Congolese governments aided the FNLA to the detriment of the MPLA, fostering the wait-and-see military attitudes and equivocal political attitudes of the Holden Roberto leadership; Zambia vacillated in selecting its main ally.)
The defeat of Portuguese imperialism was not solely military. In reality, it was determined by the colonial army's inability to crush the armed struggles of the Angolan people, by the major military defeats suffered by the imperialists in Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, by the fact that the economic burdens of the war were becoming increasingly intolerable for Lisbon, and by the increasingly serious political consequences in the metropolis of the unending prolongation of the conflict. During the first phase after April 25 the Spinolist project was to accept the accomplished fact of the complete victory of the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau, to acquiesce to Frelimo's control of Mozambique (while not abandoning attempts at blackmail and pressure or rearguard batfles), and to maneuver in Angola with the aim of preserving more direct influence and more substantial control than in the former colonies. Such an attitude was linked to the far greater importance of Angola to Portugal and to imperialism in general, both economicaily and strategically. But the decisive element was the division of the Angolan national movement and the possibility of exploiting this division politically and militarily. Because of the revolutionary crisis in the metropolis and the paralysis of the Portuguese bourgeois army, the Portuguese government was unable to carry its operation through successfully and found itself compelled to pull out. But other imperialist and neocolonialist forces (United States, South Africa, the countries of capitalist Europe, Zaire, Zambia) plunged into the open breach, thus contributing more or less directly to the outbreak of the civil war.
The Angolan national movement dates back to the
1920s; ideologically, it goes back even fo the end of the past century, and it has its roots in anticolonial struggles extending over four centuries. But it was in the middle and late 1950s that this movement began to 22 acquire considerable influence and to express itself in organized forms. The armed struggle began after the colonial regime rejected any concessions and under the
Impetus of African and world events (Formation of a series of independent states on the continent, the Algerian war, the victory of the Cuban revolution, etc.). Varied social and political forces participated in the movement: the urban petty bourgeoisie, the radicalized intelligentsia, militants and cadres coming out of the proletariat and peasantry, emigrés in the Congo, elc. It is almost symbolic that the initiatives that marked the opening of hostilities (in February and March 1961) were taken by the two social and political components that were active at the time (nuclei emerging from the petty bourgeoisie and poor masses in the cifies, essentially under the influence of the MPLA, and nuclei emerging from the peasantry and the emigrés in the countryside, under the influence of the UPA, predecessor of the FNLA). From the beginning, both the breadth of the layers mobilizing or susceptible to mobilizing in the anti-imperialist struggle and at the same time the difficulty in esfablishing a united political and organizational framework were felt.
•During the period 1961-1966 the FINLA, led by Holden Roberto, succeeded in establishing a relationship of forces clearly in its favor. The MPLA, whose original base was essentially urban, was harder hit by the repression unleashed in the wake of the 1961 actions and did not succeed in developing a base outside of the Cabinda enclave. Especially between 1961 and 1964 the MPLA went through a very critical phase during which, among other things, it maneuvered with small questionable groups and was seriously affected by a crisis of leadership that even led to the departure of the Viriato de Cruz group (a group claiming adherence to Marxism and to Maoist conceptions). Because of its orientation and its international links, the MPLA was particularly hampered by the action of the Congolese government, which sabotaged its activities and tried to eliminate it from the political scene. The FNLA was in a better position to resist the repression because of its peasant base. It was able to take advantage of its presence in the border regions and the base it had among the masses of emigrés. It enjoyed aid from or tolerance of the successive governments of the Congo. In face of U.S. rejection of requests for material aid, it tried to take advantage of the Sino-Soviet conflict by initiating an opening toward Peking; it succeeded in getting the Organization of African Unity to recognize the government it had set up, the GRAE (Revolutionary Angolan Government in Exile). Even the tribal component (Bakongo) - always stronger in the FNLA than in the MPLA - represented a factor of strength at the time, since it assured, among other things, the vital links with the emigration and the Congo.
The situation started to change beginning in 1966.
The MPLA took the initiative again and, utilizing the forces it had consolidated in Cabinda and enjoying the tolerance if not active support of Zambia, opened up new zones of operation (in the East, the North, and later in the Northeast). In 1968 the MPLA declared that it held control of one-third of the territory. The strengthening of the MPLA was aided by its more flexible conception of guerrilla warfare and its efforts at organization in the liberated zones, where popular bodies arose in the form of village committees. Thus, it succeeded in overcoming the narrow framework of its previous sphere of action and in emerging as a force operating on a national scale. During the same period, the FNLA adopted a fundamentally wait-and-see attitude, relying almost exclusively on its bases in the North and its Congolese "rear areas. " Pressure from the Kinshasa government contributed to this orientation. Further, the FINLA suffered a split with the departure of Savimbi, who then formed the UNITA. For a long period, UNITA remained very weak, but its existence, under the leadership of a man with very important tribal connections like Savimbi, in any case represented a major obstacle to a national extension of the influence of the FNLA (and, likewise, an obstacle to a supplementary extension of the zone controlled by the MPLA). The change in the relationship of forces in the field was not without international repercussions: the MPLA strengthened its links with the workers states and the so-called progressive governments (while the FNLA established relations with China); the MPLA achieved a rectification of the attitude of the states of the OAU, a number of which established special relations with the MPLA and, in fact, assured it a status equal to that of the FNLA-GRAE. 7 When the fascist regime in Lisbon collapsed, the
Angolan national movement was still divided into three major tendencies. On several occasions, especially in 1972, attempts at unification had been made under the impetus of certain African governments, but without achieving any real results. There were new attempts in this direction in 1974. But it was only at the beginning of 1975 that the Alvor accords permitted the formation of a single government, under the auspices of the former colonial power. The MPLA was threatened with being put in the position of paying the price for this operation, for three reasons:
- The FLA and UNITA made a common front, utilizing tribal factors ogainst the MPLA;
- The FNLA and UNITA were favored by the alliance with the neighboring neocolonial governments (with the sole exception of the Congo-Brazzaville, whose influence was necessarily limited);
- The FINLA and UNITA enjoyed the priority support of the imperialist powers. The MPLA hoped to take advantage of the sympathy of a wing of the MFA - which led it to sow illusions in the MFA and the Vasco Gonçalves government - but in practice it won only very limited and ephemeral advantages in this sphere during the administration of Rosa Coutinho. In oddition, it suffered a very deep internal crisis, which divided it into three tendencies and exposed it very dangerously to the influence of neocolonial governments during a certain period. In this context, the Alvor accords, later confirmed in Nakuru, were the basis of a broad neocolonial operation, at least potentially. But the outbreak of the civil war placed everything in question. 3210 : The concretization of the Alvor proiet implied the constitution and maintenance of delicate balances among many interested forces, both Angolan and foreign (compromises among various social layers and different ethnic groups and regional formations, among various political and military apparatuses, conflicts of interest among various neocolonial states and various imperialist powers). Directly or indirectly, the Portuguese situation introduced other elements of disequilibrium and contradiction on several levels. But in the final analysis, it was the dynamic of the movement of the masses in the cities, especially in Luanda, that played the decisive role in the outbreak of the crisis. The socioeconomic changes that had gone hand in hand with the colonial war had strengthened the specific weight of the urban layers. With the fall of the Caetano regime, all the previous balances were overturned, Petty-bourgeois layers occupied or hoped to occupy the positions abandoned by the fleeing colons. The intelligentsia wanted to seize the opportunity to play an important role in the administration and in the management of the country in general. The working class, whose numerical strength had been increased consequent to the relative industrialization, organized and mobilized to assert its rights and to achieve less miserable conditions. The proletarian and plebian masses of the urban slums in turn organized and mobilized in selfdefense against the desperate actions of the hardline colonialists and racists. Strikes, demonstrations, and mobilizations came one after another up to the great demonstration that assembled tens of thousands of people in Luanda and up to the holding of a national assembly of rank-and-file committees (a general strike had already occurred in Luanda in September 1973). It was precisely the dynamization of these exploited urban layers, who were unable to be integrated into a neocolonial framework, that blew up the structure erected by the Alvor accords.
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ANGOLA
The mobilization of the Luanda masses was not the result of a deliberate political initiative by the MPLA. In large measure it developed independent of the will of the MPLA leadership and largely outside its organizational framework (in fact, the MPLA's apparatus was not yet established when the mass mobilizations broke out). But because of its troditions, its previously developed roots, the character of at least some of its cadres, and its character as a national and not regional or tribal movement, the MPLA was in the best position to benefit from such a movement by enormously: expanding its audience. Moreover, the MPLA faced a very concrete choice: either follow the Alvor orientafion through to the end by fighting for a strict application of the accords, which would have implied, among other things, the disarming of "civilions" and entering into conflict with the movement of the masses, or integrate itself into this movement and take over leadership of it in an attempt to channel it at the same time. Given all the other elements acting against it and given that it lacked a sufficiently broad base among the peasantry, the MPLA could only chose the second solution. The ENLA, on the other hand, which has no real base in the cities and which counted on being the main beneficiary of the Alvor accords, if not immediately at least in the medium term, launched an offensive against the movement of the masses, accompanied by a bloody repression. The aim was to impose its own control in the capital by cutting the ground from under the feet of is rival organization. For its part, UNITA completed the turn that led it to drop its socialistic demagogy, abandon any attitude of neufrality, present itself to the Portuguese as the partner in the best position to aid in neocolonial reconversion, and line up with the FNLA. Its regional character, which permitted it to win a significant base, also made it easier for it to take positions against the movement of the urban masses in Luanda and to commit Itself against the organization that enjoyed the confidence of these masses.
The concrete genesis of the civil war, the cleavage among the indigenous movements, and the international alignments shed unambiguous light on the fundamental nature of the Angolan conflict. On the one side are fundamentally ranged the social forces that have objective interests in struggling for consistent national independence and in rejecting neocolonial compromise solutions; this potentially inscribes these forces within a dynamic of permanent revolution, of the growing over of the national revolution into social revolution. These forces are: the decisive layers of the urban working class — both in industry and services -layers of the agricultural wage-earners, the plebian masses cast out of the economic and social structure by colonialism, broad sectors of the petty bourgeoisie af24 fected by the wave of radicalization, sectors of the poor peasantry that participated in the armed struggle directly or indirectly and underwent their first experiences in political mobilization and organization by entering into conflict with the structure of traditional rural society. On the other side stand those forces that cling to the privileges of the past, as ludicrous as these may be, those who have an interest in the establishment of a neocolonial society, those who do not want to sever the imperialist umbilical cord definitively, those who want to defend what remains of traditional society. These forces are: the remnants of the colons, the welloff layers of the petty bourgeoisie, the embryonic nuclei of the national bourgeoisie, the traditional chiefs and their acolytes. The outbreak of the civil war in conjunction with the movement of the urban masses reflects in a condensed - and simplified - form the sociopolitical content of the military confrontation. The fact that the FINLA and UNITA are supported by American imperialism, the major European imperialist powers, the racists of South Africa, and the bloc of the most conservative or even reactionary neocolonial states, while the MPLA enjoys the support of the workers states (with the ignoble exception of China), primarily that of the Soviet Union and Cuba, and the neocolonial governments which are still unable to jettison either the traditions of struggle of their national movements or the mass sentiment that still exists or which want to polish up their "progressive" images confirms and strengthens the analysis of the dynamic of the indigenous forces. Moreover, it is clear that a possible victory for the FNLA-UNITA bloc would not only mark a success for the counterrevolution in Angola, with a tragic consequence of bloody repression, but would also strengthen the positions of imperialism in this region of very great strategic importance, would breathe new life into the South African racists, and would lead to the formation of more reactionary regimes in a series of African con11 The intervention of the imperialists in the Ango lan civil war was inspired by their need to defend their extremely important economic, political, and strategic interests in Angola itself and above all throughout this region of Africa. The U,S. government was subject to controdictory pressures: On the one hand, there were tendencies favoring an intervention because of specific economic interests or political considerations. On the other hand, there was resistance from groups that were concerned about the negative consequences for their interests in a series of African states that could result from a basic commitment to the FNLA-UNITA bloc and to the Pretoria regime; further, some polificians were more inclined to play the card of integrating the MPLA into a neocolonialist project. But the overall political and strategic stakes involved compelled Washington to opt for supporting the FNLA and UNITA, If this support has
so far not been translated into a direct military intervention, it is because of the situation created by the recent defeat in Vietnam and the fear of provoking a rebirth of the antiwar movement, especially among the Black minority. For its part, the South African regime was propelled to intervene because of its desire to defend long-standing economic interests and because of its concern for maintaining its strategic and political ramparts. The Pretoria regime committed itself especially because it is now being undermined by a serious crisis, a crisis that could come to a head in the event of a victory of the anti-imperialist forces in Angola and possibly in other countries of the region, stimulating the struggle of the most important proletariat of all Africa and placing the very existence of the regime in question. The action of the Soviet bureaucracy is explained by its desire to play an important political role both in the region and in Africa in general and its determination not to relinquish at the decisive moment the advantages it may draw from the support it has long-since granted the MPLA. At the same time, the Soviet bureaucracy is motivated by the need to make gains against China in the international communist and workers movement and among the masses of the colonial or semicolonial countries. Nor may it be excluded that the internal situation in the Communist party of the Soviet Union on the eve of its new congress may be involved. The Cuban intervention, while reflecting the basic political accord between Havana and Moscow, has special importance because of the very fact of its massive and direct character; this intervention represents a genuine challenge to American imperialism, in the best traditions of revolutionary internationalism. 1? The definition of the character of the civil war
Jand the comprehension of the potential for a dynamic of permanent revolution, based on the analysis of the social forces and not of the political organizations, are not in contradiction with characterizing the MPLA as a movement with a petty-bourgeois leadership. The nature of the MPLA has been petty bourgeois since its origin, both because of its social composition and because of its political conceptions and orientations. To the extent that it acquired a mass influence, became an important component of the anti-imperialist movement, and commifted itself to a prolonged armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism, the MPLA is, more precisely, an expression of a revolutionary petty-bourgeois nationalist current. The ideological and political influence exercised from the beginning by elements with Stalinist or Khrushchevist training is not in contradiction with the MPLA's ideology as a whole. This is true not only because petty-bourgeois revolutionaries can utilize Marxism, especially a deformed Marxism, as an ingredient in their conceptions, but more concretely because Stalinist theses on the revolution by stages and bureaucratic conceptions of the relationship the dynamization of the urban masses blew up the structure erected by the Alvor accords with the masses tend to coincide with the line of collaboration with the so-called national bourgeoisie, the conceptions of the state and party, and the bureaucratic methods of organization which have characterized and still characterize the MPLA. The fact that the MPLA organized committees in the liberated zones and, immediately after April 25, 1974, called for the creation of committees in the cities must not obscure the fact that these committees were conceived on the basis of paternalist and authoritarian criteria, that the internal functioning of the MPLA itself has always suffered from very serious bureaucratic deformations, that even during the past several months the MPLA's takeover of the mass movement in Luanda has entailed a restructuring of the committees from above, with the elimination of cadres and militants denounced as ultraleftists or anarchists and with severe purge measures.
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ANGOLA
1 army of the People's Republic of Angola are not The rapid and substantial successes won by the the result solely of military superiority; they are explainable politically above all. While the FLA and UNITA proved incapable of mobilizing the masses in their zones of influence or of raising the morale of their troops, the MPLA was able to rely on a solid urban base to start from. Up to now, the peasant masses have not played an active role. Nevertheless, their mobilization remains essential not only for a definitive victory in the civil war, but more generally for the future of the Angolan revolution. The decisive point remains the conquest of a broad peasant base. Any possible underestimation of these problems would have very negative consequences not only on the current military conflict but also and more generally on the future of the Angolan revolution. That is why it is a political priority to struggle for an agrarian reform that breaks the power of the large landlords and capitalist farmers, loosens the vice of poverty of subsistence agriculture and its aids the population of the countryside in resolving the elementary problems created by the colonial war and the civil war. At the same time, measures expropriating imperialist property - in any case a legitimate response to the combined military attacks against the People's Republic of Angola - would have the effect of solidifying the ranks of the anti-imperialist forces through concretely demonstrating to the masses that they are being called upon to fight in defense of their most pressing interests. But the struggle for consistent anti-imperialist objectives must go hand in hand with the revolutionary and democratic rank-and-file organization of the masses. The experiences of the past two years, especially at the height of the urban mobilizations, must be maximally capitalized on by the relaunching of democratic and revolutionary bodies whose leaders are elected by the masses and can be removed if they do not accomplish their tasks, leaders who do not enjoy any material privileges. The strictest respect for democratic rights, including the right of expression of the various political currents and organizations, is a necessity that is particularly felt after centuries of colonization and long years of merciless imperialist repression. A mass democratic revalutionary organization opposing any bureaucratic grip or authoritarian constraint also represents a crucially important instrument for the struggle against traditional reactionary structures and tribal remnants. Militants who have gone through the struggle experis ences of the past two or three years and who have assimilated the lessons of the anticapitalist struggles of the masses of other countries, including East Europe, can and must play an important role in this battle. Finally, the anti-imperialist struggle of the Angolan masses will be strengthened to the extent that tight 26 links are established with the revolutionary movements of southern Africa, which, through their struggle, are weakening the racist regimes of Pretoria and Salisbury, ramparts of imperialism in this part of the continent.
The catastrophic military defeats of the FINLA and UNITA have compelled the imperialist and neocolonial forces to revise their policy. Some neocolonial governments have already made a turn: They have recognized the People's Republic of Angola and are seeking a compromise with the MPLA, The imperialists of the United States and West Europe could follow them down this road, working out a wide-ranging operation to integrate the People's Republic of Angola more or less quickly into a relatively "progressive" neocolonial project. Well-off petty-bourgeois circles, embryonic nuclei of the "national " bourgeoisie, an entire constellation of profiteers and careerists provide the material base for such an operation. The rightist tendencies of the MPLA, which had already been leaning toward compromise solutions, particularly with UNITA, may play the game through to the end. This project of the MPLA leadership - expressed, for example, in the basic law of the People's Republic - is not at all in contradiction with such a neocolonial operation, as is confirmed, among other things, by the recent overtures toward Zaire and Zambia. In face of such a possibility - and in any case to prevent the rapid defeat of the enemy from paradoxically having negative consequences for the revolutionary struggle - it appears all the more necessary to mobilize and organize the masses into democratic bodies that guarantee mass autonomy of any exploiting class and any bureaucratic apporatus. This task, which will not be accomplished by the petty-bourgeois leadership of the MPLA, will have to be taken up on a priority basis by revolutionaries linked to the mass movement.
The resolution on Africa adopted of the Eighth World Congress of the Fourth International in 1965 declared in regard to Angola: "It is clear that a genuine revolutionary Angolan leadership does not yet exist and that internal conflicts and struggles of the nationalist movement will probably continue to appear for a whole period. In determining which field of action they will give preference, the fundamental criterion for revolutionary Marxists is who at a given stage exercises real mass influence and who is actually fighting, because that is where the logic of the revolutionary struggle most easily permits the formation of a revolutionary vanguard. The line of a leadership or a few leaders cannot be a decisive criterion, all the less so in the case of insinuations or suspicions about this or that person... Without hiding its crit-
icisms and while developing its own concepts on the nature of the Angolan revolution, the Fourth Internafional will continue to solidarize with the forces in actual struggle, which are primarily the peasant forces organized at the present stage essentially in the FLA. The Fourth International holds that the unification of the FLA with other existing forces (which the FLA says it favors in principle) would prove profitable, naturally on condition that it be realized in the struggle, on the basis of a clear anti-imperialist and anticolonialist program, without which the indispensable unity in the armed struggle would suffer. Although the criteria applied were correct and the analysis of the relationship of forces in the field was basically accurate, a self-criticism is nonetheless necessary; it can be synthesized in the following terms:
a) The February 1964 resolution of the United Secretariat and the resolution of the Eighth World Congress overestimated the possibilities of the FLA's overcoming its tribal origins and the consequences of its regional dependence and thus of escaping the influence exercised by the neocolonial Congolese governments, vehicles for imperialist pressure.
b) The same resolutions did not take account of the MPLA's possibilities and capacities of relaunching acfion in other parts of the country and underestimated the role that could be played in that event by its ideology, which is more progressive than that of the FLA.
c) The Fourth International delayed considerably in the analytical verification of the situation in Angola and consequently in making the necessary political and factical adjustments. Even the resolution of the Tenth World Congress in February 1974 limited itself to the very general assertion that "the furtherance of the process of permanent revalution ... can only be carried out on the basis of a clarification within the MPLA and Frelimo" and pointed to "the task of building revolutionary Marxist cadres. " fore crime that brine our do the eve r International choses the camp of the People's Republic of Angola founded by the MPLA against the holy alliance of imperialists, racists, and indigenous reactionaries. It stands on the side of the masses who are mobilizing to defend the independence won through a determined armed struggle, to defend their primordial interests against all exploiting layers and classes, both foreign and "national, " for the expropriation of the capitalists and landed proprietors and the formation of a workers and peasants government based on democratic revolutionary committees, direct expressions of the masses. Such an attitude in no way implies that the Fourth International abandons its criticisms of the MPLA leadership, which it characterizes as petty-bourgeois nationalist and not as proletarian communist, and which will not be able to carry out the task of building a workers state. Alignment in the same camp and solidarity in a common struggle are not in contradiction with the indispensable battle for the polifical independence of the working class and revolutionaries and for the construction of a proletarian revolutionary leadership and a revolutionary Marxist organization. Angolan revolutionary Marxists unreservedly commit themselves to the military struggle against the reactionary holy alliance until the definitive victory, for the defense of the People's Republic of Angola, for the complete independence of Angola. In their political campaign they emphasize the necessity for on active and conscious mobilization of the masses, for their organization into democratic and revolutionary committees, the delegates elected and revocable at all times; they further emphasize the defense of democratic rights for all those fighting in the anti-imperialist camp. They carry out an indispensable task of theoretical and political clarification on the nature and strategy of the revolution in Angola by attempting first to regroup the codres and militants who have already undergone experiences in struggle and mass mobilization and have critically reflected on these experiences. I The Fourth International must take an active part in a campaign of solidarity with the People's Republic of Angola organized on a world scale. This campaign should demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all imperialist and neocolonialist forces; it should call for political and material aid from the workers states and the international workers movement, the halt of all shipments of arms and materiel to the FNLA-UNITA bloc, and the recognition of the MPLA and the People's Republic of Angola. The Fourth International denounces the attitude of the Chinese bureaucratic leadership, which, after aiding the FNLA, is now adopting a hypocritical neutral attitude, thus giving a practical demonstration of the nefarious character of its conceptions and analyses anc of a policy based on denouncing the USSR as the main enemy, a policy actually aimed at reaching a compromise with American, European, and Japanese imperialism. African revolutionary Marxists, conscious that the defeat of the Imperialists and neocolonialists in the Angolan civil war would have enormous repercussions throughout the continent, would create favorable conditions for the overthrow of the racist regimes of South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, and would undermine the bases of the reactionary neocolonial regimes, will campaign for militant support to the People's Republic and the Angolan fighters in the circles of the African political vanguard, in the mass organizations, in the trade unions, and in the organizations of workers and students abroad. February 14, 1976
27
The political crisis now affecting Zambia has reached new heights with events in the past month. The UNIP (United National Independence party) government is now recognizably threatened on both left and right. If is probably less popular than ever among the urban population, which constitutes the only significant barometer of political mood. The students at UNZA (the University of Zambia in Lusaka) have been foremost in articulating opposition to the regime. A consistent campaign against the govemment's policy on Angola has been conducted on that campus since the beginning of the new year. Zambian policy on Angola has been determined by a number of considerations, which were outlined at length in the article "Zambia - Repercussions of the Angolan Civil War" (see INPRECOR, No. 43, February 5, 1976). Briefly, these are: 1. The desire to reopen full trade relations with whiteruled Rhodesia and South Africa following the total failure to achieve any significant measure of importsubstitution through attempted industrialization programs. 2. A fear of the dynamic involved in a victory of the MPLA, an event that has already shown that it is likely to accelerate the process of opening full-scale war by the oppressed population against the remaining strongholds of white racism. Such a development could rapmay to testine at option At to. 3. Recently, an actual dependence on South Africa through the now well-known measures of economic support provided by the Vorster regime to Zambia's ailing economyIt was above all this open collaboration with the forces of imperialism and rocism that fueled the protests of Zambia's university students. This generation has been brought up on a diet consisting of constant evocations of the sacrifices the country has supposedly made to support its brothers and sisters struggling against the white regimes. The increasingly obvious contradiction of these principles involved in Zambia's Angolan policy was certain to raise big doubts. When a relatively small group of militants began to explain the roots of this policy and to campaign for its reversal, they met with a mass response that went far beyond their wildest hopes or expectations. This development was a clear lesson in the intrinsic relevance of international issues to the awakening of consciousness in the neocolonial countries of Africa. Events in Angola have demonstrated on a day-to-day level the intimate fies existing between the Zambian ruling group and imperialism. For the more conscious sections of the population, these events have given a clearer picture than a thousand articles could have given of the real class nature of the regime. Serious organizing in solidarity with the MPLA began at the university as soon as the new term opened on January 5. The campaign was initiated largely by supporters of the Franz Fanon Society, a socialist discus28