Slipping the U.S.-South Africa Noose

The People's Republic of Angola was born on November 11, 1975, in the midst of civil war. Six weeks before, on September 25, it was revealed that the U.S. was helping, through the CIA, two groups fighting for control of the country. The U.S. government had secretly sent at least $60 million to the FNLA and Unita that spring.

Secretary of State Kissinger claimed the arms and money were sent because of Angola's strategic significance. William Colby, head of the CIA, later told Congress that Angola has no such importance. The question remained: Why had the U.S. gotten involved in this small African country?

Some Background to U.S. Involvement

When the April 1974 coup in Portugal took place, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola--MPLA--controlled large areas of Angola. In these areas it set up cooperatives, while in the towns it organized trade unions. The FNLA, which the CIA had supported since 1962, was "virtually inactive" by 1972. (1) FNLA was based almost entirely in the Bakongo tribe. Unita retained a little more credibility, but was also small and tribally based. The U.S. government showed its opinion of Unita when it said in a top secret memorandum (NSSM 39) that the Portuguese allowed Unita to exist mainly to "offset" the MPLA. Unita reportedly controlled some small areas in Angola at the time of the Portuguese coup.

Soon after the April 1974 coup it became clear that Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau were going to be granted independence. MPLA was the strongest group in Angola; it was also the most independent and nationalist.

Kissinger, who strongly objects to the MPLA, authorized greatly increased CIA aid to the FNLA and Unita. In doing this, he overrode the Africa Desk of the U.S. State Department. The Africa Desk staff knew that U.S. support, through NATO, of the Portuguese colonialists against the African liberation movements would make it hard for the U.S. to present itself as the defenders of freedom in southern Africa. Nathaniel Davis, head of the Africa Desk, resigned in protest.

Through the spring, reports reached the Zambian press of FNLA/Unita attacks on MPLA cadres and supporters. FNLA reportedly imprisoned, tortured and massacred anyone who opposed it. By independence last November, full-scale war had broken out.

The situation was complicated further by the presence of South African troops in Angola. The South African army moved in to take over the Cunene Dam project, just over the border from Namibia, during the summer. A few months later, South Africa's defense minister admitted it was much further inside Angola, giving "tactical support to Unita. Its numbers have been estimated at somewhere between 2500 and 6000.

White mercenaries also fought on the side of the FNLA/Unita coalition. No hard figures are available; the lowest figure given is about 1000. An unknown number of Zairois is also helping the FNLA--estimates go up to 10,000.

In response to South Africa, U.S. and Zairois aid to the FNLA and Unita, the MPLA asked socialist countries for aid. The aid given was quite sufficient: over 10,000 Cuban troops (according to the U.S. press) and advanced equipment. The U.S. government tried to paint this as wanton aggression, but it finally admitted, as reported in The New York Times, that Soviet aid to the MPLA started after the massive increase in U.S. aid to FNLA and Unita last spring.

Despite United States, Zairois and South African aid however, Unita and FNLA soon folded. The Unita/FNLA coalition never had the popular support needed to win; that is why they had to ask for aid in the first place. And they quickly lost the support they had as they massacred and looted their way through Angola. For example, London Times reporters saw mass graves of MPLA supporters in Luanda; in a Unita prison which once held 140 MPLA cadres, only seven were alive when the MPLA took over. (2)

By contrast, in MPLA-controlled areas, worker and peasant committees were organized to resume production in the countryside and towns. These committees also form communication links between MPLA leadership and the people. (3)

Southern African Connections

To understand U.S. involvement with the unpopular FNLA and Unita, it is necessary to understand the overall situation in southern Africa.

The dominant, and by far the most industrialized country in southern Africa is South Africa. South Africa is also the most repressive country on the continent, perhaps in the world. It rules through the apartheid system, a system of institutionalized racism.

Apartheid is based on the Bantustan and migrant labor system, and the color bar. The government declares that only 13 per cent of the land (the "Bantustans" or "homelands") is African, though three-quarters of the 24 million population is black. Africans may be citizens only of these areas, which are poor and eroded and contain neither towns nor mineral resources. This poverty forces them to find work in the "white areas." But as non-citizens in these areas they have no rights. They may not, in most cases, bring their families; they must stay in segregated "townships" and may be deported at any time.

Conditions in the Bantustans are so bad--for example, 60-70 per cent of children die before age six (4)--that thousands of Africans go, leaving their children to be looked after by wives or relatives. Africans must accept any wage offered just to be able to send something home to their families.

The system is enforced through pass laws. Every adult African must at all times carry a pass with his picture in it, properly signed and stamped. If he loses or forgets it, he is liable for several months in jail and deportation to the starving homelands. To remain in the white areas, the pass must be signed by a white employer.

The color bar reserves better paying jobs for whites. As increasing industrialization demands more skilled workers, Africans have been moved up the job scale, but their wages are kept to a fraction of whites'.

The result of the apartheid system is that African wages are extremely low. Most Africans do not get enough to live on. In this, the most industrialized country in Africa, a country which exports food worldwide, cases of disease due to malnutrition--kwashiorkor, rickets, etc.--are common, but only among blacks. In some areas in the Bantustans women and children can afford to eat only three times a week. (5) Four out of five African workers in the urban areas show signs of malnutrition. (6)

Of course, this system can be maintained only through extreme repression. By law, any attempt to change the status quo is "communist" and punishable with long jail sentences, even death. The justice minister can detain anyone in solitary confinement for as long as he likes.

But resistance has risen dramatically. Illegal strikes are common--50,000 Africans struck in 1973 despite brutal government oppression. The African National Congress of South Africa, South Africa's liberation movement has waged an underground struggle for 15 years, but was hampered by a lack of safe bases on South Africa's borders until Mozambique won independence last July.

The seven largest companies in South Africa, all based on gold mining, dominate the South African economy and are closely intertwined with the government. These are the "mining finance houses." They are multinationals in their own right, controlling basic industry throughout southern Africa, and have close links to U.S. and British firms.

After Britain, the U.S. is the largest investor in South Africa. In 1974, U.S. investments in South Africa totalled $1457 million, up from $692 million in 1969. The rate of profit on these investments was over 18 per cent, officially--and probably far higher in fact, as the firms routinely understate profits so as to avoid paying taxes. More importantly, almost 80 per cent of U.S. investment in African manufacturing--which is generally regarded as key to development--is in South Africa. U.S. investors have helped South Africa develop important basic industry. In the rest of Africa, they concentrate on primary production and last-stage processing, with few linkages or benefits for the rest of the economy. As U.S. firms contribute to an advanced technological foundation for the South African industrial sector, they become more and more involved in South Africa's structure of exploitation. Eight of the top ten U.S. firms have major investments in South Africa.

U.S. firms use South Africa as a base for investment throughout southern Africa, often in cooperation with South African firms. For example, Chase Manhattan controls the British bank, Standard, one of the two largest banks in South Africa, through another British bank, Midlands. Standard established a bank in Angola together with Totta Alianca, a Portuguese bank. Angola American, the largest South African company with assets of over $7 billion, has a major share in this bank.

South African and U.S. firms were able to take full advantage of Angola's resources because colonialism shaped the economy to benefit above all the Portuguese and other foreign investors there.

Over 80 per cent of Angola's exports were sold in unprocessed form in 1973, mostly petroleum ($230 million), coffee ($205 million), diamonds ($80 million) and iron ore ($49 million). The major industry is all foreign owned. Gulf produces the petroleum; most of the coffee plantations are Portuguese, but they sell almost entirely to large American companies; diamonds are produced by Diamang, a South African, British and Portuguese consortium. Even the main railroad, which runs from Lobito to Zaire, is British and South African owned.

In colonial economies, it is most profitable for private industry to invest in production of raw materials and agricultural products. Manufacturing requires heavy initial investment with less of a profit margin. Therefore, most transnational corporations invest only in primary goods production in most African countries, leaving the countries vulnerable to economic instability as prices fluctuate. To break this pattern of uneven development, the government must intervene.

To change Angola's economic structure, MPLA has written into its constitution the need for state planning and production. It is this that bothers companies such as Gulf Oil; it is this that Kissinger et. al. label "communist." But all that MPLA wants is for the Angolan people to take control of their own country and economy, to attain higher living standards and levels of employment, and to avoid the results of state capitalist development in South Africa and other African countries.

For South Africa's government, and for several of the largest corporations in this country, the existence of any independent state on South Africa's or Namibia's borders is a threat. Mozambique is independent, but economically dependent on South Africa. Angola, with its rich minerals and relatively large industrial base, has far more potential for independent action.

South Africa therefore threw its support to Unita and FNLA. Savimbi, Unita's president, was sympathetic. He told the South African Financial Mail in May 1975 that he hopes "future leaders of Angola will cooperate with South Africa" and that apartheid "is a South African problem" and much misunderstood. By contrast, the MPLA has already provided a base for the operations of SWAPO of Namibia, the Namibian liberation movement.

Thus, the U.S. role in southern Africa becomes painfully clear. Explicitly to prevent "racial war" in southern Africa (the South African government's synonym for revolution) the U.S. government decided to help South Africa set up a nice black government which would be sympathetic to apartheid and foreign investors and hopefully wouldn't let wages rise too much. What they didn't count on was the response of the Angolan people and the solidarity of the socialist countries.

1. Minter, W., Portuguese Africa and the West, 1972.

2. Times of London, Feb. 16, 1976.

3. See also the contrasting reports of Huambo and Luanda in The New York Times; also Southern Africa magazine, February 1976.

4. CIS, Business as Usual: International Banking in South Africa, 1972.

5. Brian Bunting, Rise of the South African Reich, 2nd. ed., 1970.

6. Ruth First, Christable Gurney and Jonathan Steele, The South African Connection, 1973.

7. Figures on U.S. investment from U.S. Department of Commerce, Survey of Current Business, October 1969 and August 1974.

8. See, for example, the rabidly pro-South Africa article in Barron's, January 1976.

Neva Seidman '78 has spent seven years in Africa, including two in Zambia, and is coauthor of "U.S. Multinationals in South Africa," forthcoming.