Independence--But for Whom?

Portugal's 500-year-old colonial empire in Africa comes to an end this week. In accordance with instructions from Lisbon, the last Portuguese high commissioner in Angola, Admiral Leonel Cardoso, will lower his country's red, yellow and green flag at the 16th century stone fort of S`ao Miguel in Luanda, the territory's capital. Then he plans to tuck it under his arm and--much to the annoyance of Angolans--sail off with it to Lisbon on a waiting Portuguese frigate. His unwillingness to hand over the flag with the reins of power is not a last vestige of colonial arrogance. It is just that he would not know whom to give it to.

On the eve of independence, Angola last week was sinking farther and farther into a vicious civil war involving three independence movements, each of which claims to represent the people of this new non-nation. The three:

> The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (M.P.L.A.), a Soviet-backed group which controls Luanda and is headed by Agostinho Neto, 53.

> The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (F.N.L.A.), led by Holden Roberto, 52, with strong support from Zaire, France and reportedly the U.S.

> The moderate socialist National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), headed by Jonas Savimbi, 40, which has been backed by Portuguese business interests.

The F.N.L.A. and UNITA are in uneasy alliance against M.P.L.A. The three longstanding Angolan liberation movements have been so violently divided that no one has been able to form a new national government to accept independence. The Organization of African Unity, under the prod of Uganda's Idi Amin, claimed that last-minute efforts had forced a coalition, but no one believed the hollow boast.

Rapacious Neighbors. One measure of the prevailing confusion was uncertainty about the fate of Cabinda, a tiny (2,800 sq. mi.) oil-rich enclave that is geographically disconnected from the rest of Angola and wedged between Zaire and the Congo. Last week Zaire announced that Congolese troops had invaded Cabinda. When there was no confirmation from inside Cabinda, suspicions grew that Zaire was merely preparing a justification for mounting its own invasion. At week's end Zaire announced it was massing troops on its border with Cabinda, and a full-scale invasion of the enclave seemed imminent. In Cabinda itself, distrust of its rapacious neighbors and disgust with Angola's divisions were building pressure to go it alone and declare independence.

Given the gloomy realities in Angola, that did not seem irrational. At least 10,000 people have died in the past year of fighting--more than the total for the entire 13-year guerrilla war for independence. Last week combined F.N.L.A.-UNITA units were closing in on Luanda. To the south, a 1,200-man F.N.L.A.-UNITA force under the command of M.P.L.A. Defector Daniel Chipenda and spearheaded by 150 Portuguese, South African and Rhodesian mercenaries captured the tactically critical towns of Benguela and Lobito. Though the mechanized troops are still 400 miles from Luanda, there were few obstacles left between them and the capital. North of Luanda, meanwhile, F.N.L.A. forces were within 18 miles of the city and scarcely a mortar's lob from the capital's sole source of water. They claimed that they would wait only until the last of the Portuguese were gone before assaulting the city. The M.P.L.A. was ready. "We will succeed in the long run," said one commander, "thanks to Comrade God."

All the same, Luandans were not planning much of an independence celebration. "There will be no fireworks display--unless the enemy provides one by attacking us," said one M.P.L.A. official ruefully. Even that de rigueur rite of passage to independence--the tearing down of statues of Portuguese heroes--was carried out almost absentmindedly.

"The once thriving city is now jittery and almost eerily quiet," reported TIME Nairobi Bureau Chief Lee Griggs from Luanda. "For weeks, residents have been dragooned into daily workouts at a dusty soccer field to practice street-fighting techniques; the sessions include being stomped by instructors to toughen stomach muscles. All Angolan males between 18 and 35 have been declared part of a 'Popular Power Militia.' Meanwhile garbage piles up in the streets, attracting scores of scrawny, scavenging dogs and cats abandoned by their departing owners. Most buses have broken down and roadways are littered with wrecked cars and trucks, many of them cannibalized for spare parts. The docks are piled high with Portugal-bound crates of personal goods of fleeing whites and many of them have already been looted.

"Hotels still have caviar and Portuguese wine in stock, but basics are in short supply. Breadlines form at 4 a.m. at the few bakeries still open, and the city is out of soft drinks and beer by noon every day. Most of the stores are padlocked and shuttered. Foreign newsmen have been rousted out of bed at 4 a.m. for identity checks, and several were detained temporarily. Some 70 other foreign civilians have reportedly also been arrested."

The threat of all-out civil war has prompted a wholesale flight of whites. About 250,000 have left in the past two months, most via a massive airlift to Lisbon. There the disgruntled emigres are adding to conservative pressures on the government (see box page 44). Only about 10% of the 500,000 whites who lived in Angola when independence was first promised 18 months ago now remain in the territory.

As a result, the country is in a shambles. Only about 100 doctors are left in a nation twice the size of France with a population of 6 million people. The economy of what had been the second richest nation in black Africa (after Nigeria) is in ruins. In 1974 Angola was the world's fourth largest coffee producer (earnings: $231 million) and fifth largest source of diamonds (nearly $100 million). Its iron ore mines brought in $38 million; and the vital east-west Benguela Railway, which carried most of Zambia's and Zaire's copper ore to the sea, brought in $1 million a week in transit revenues. Because of the fighting and the flight of white settlers, the railroad is closed. So are the iron mines. The coffee crop, most of it rotting on the bushes, will be one-fifth the size of last year's, and diamond production will also drop by more than 50%. Only oil production remains relatively untouched; 120,000 bbl. per day were still being pumped out in the northern enclave of Cabinda --though with last week's reported increase in unrest, that source of wealth also seems likely to dry up.

Flimsy Charade. In light of Angola's rich resources, it is no surprise that parties other than the warring independence movements are deeply involved. The Russians have helped make the 30,000-man M.P.L.A. army the best-equipped of the three forces, providing it with ample supplies of rockets, heavy artillery and missiles (including the hand-held SA-7 to deal with air strikes). Russian technicians, as well as some North Vietnamese, have arrived in Angola, and at least 400 Cubans are serving in combat with the M.P.L.A. as advisers. (The Cubans tried to pass themselves off as mulattoes from the Cape Verde Islands--a flimsy charade since they speak Spanish, not Portuguese.) The Portuguese government, though nominally neutral in the struggle, has also leaned toward the M.P.L.A., partly because M.P.L.A. Leader Neto is a longtime friend of Admiral Antonio Rosa Coutinho, who openly supported the group when he was Portugal's Angolan high commissioner.

F.N.L.A. Chief Roberto has had his own source of foreign strength. His brother-in-law, Zaire President Mobutu Sese Seko, provides the F.N.L.A's 33,000 regular troops with arms, armored cars and personnel carriers sent to Zaire by France and China. Roberto, the most Western-oriented of the Angolan liberation leaders, has also reportedly received CIA backing; it is believed that the Administration's request to Congress for a $35 million increase in military aid to Zaire is mostly ticketed for the F.N.L.A. Until UNITA's military alliance with the F.N.L.A. three months ago, it had the weakest international connections, and its 10,000 troops were poorly armed. Since the alliance, however, Zaire has been flying in guns and armored vehicles in its U.S.-built C-130 transport planes.

Despite the current advances made by the F.N.L.A. and UNITA troops, it seems unlikely that any force can win control of the country in the near future. The three movements, each of which has specific links to Angola's major tribes, have too little in common for any political alliance to survive long. Earlier agreements sealed with hugs and pledges dissolved into warfare within days. UNITA's Savimbi recently predicted "three years of all-out armed struggle before there is a meaningful outcome."

Even then, the outcome may be a partitioning of the country into the three areas where the movements have their greatest indigenous support--the M.P.L.A. along the coastline and in the northern and eastern interior, the F.N.L.A. in the northwest and UNITA in the central and southern part of the country. Angola's resources are divided in such a way that each of the areas could be economically viable. But if it takes three years of bloodletting on the scale of the past twelve months to reach that solution, then everyone will be a loser in the wake of an independence that has already turned into a genuine African tragedy.

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