minority regimes in Zimbawe, Namwas based on the premise that the Whites are here to stay and the only The policy involved, as NSSM 39. put it, la selective relaxation of our detente manoeuvres) a bid to'convince the black states...... that their only hope for a peaceful and prosperous future lies in closer relations with white-dominated states. Tar Baby's line was to maintain public patriot' opposition to racial repression but relax political isolation and economic In line with this policy, the US First there is evidence that the US may not have confidence in the ability of an MPLA regime to defend its interests - though the MPLA leaders have on many occasions stressed their rejection of socialism and Marxism. Repudiating the Marxist label often falsely pinned on the MPLA leaders by western journalists, Agostinho, Neto, the MPLA's president has said that l dislike these classifications. I am not a Communist, 1 am not a Socialist, I am first of all a But the US knows that many of the MPLA's supporters in the muceques (townships) of Luanda, Angola's largest industrial area and the 'politically conscious elements in the leadership and under the direct control of the MPLA's military hierarchy. Any armed groups outside the FAPLA (the MPLA army) were declared illegal.
REPRESSION Left-wing opposition is being repressed in the MPLA areas. The 21 October Times of Zambia, for example, reported that 'the MPLA has arrested six of its leading left-wingers and closed down two leftis publications. Neto, in an independ ence address, declared on 10 November that the Poeples Republic of Angola would be a one-party state
January 1976 Constituent Assembly and has widely curtailed democratic rights. It is unclear, however, whether the US has confidence in the ability of the MPLA leaders to police their own rank-and-file supporters and halt the radicalisation process that broke out in the Luanda area after the Lisbon coup.
URANIUM The defence of white rule in Namibia - and the strengthening of Vorster's detente offensive - also ranks high in the policy objectives of Washington and Pretoria. Namibia has vast mineral deposits of both economic and military value to the imperialists. The uranium to be used in South Africa's nuclear programme will be mined from the vast Rossing uranium mine in Namibia (owned by the British multi-national RioTinto Zinc) where production is set to start in July 1976.
Both Ford and Vorster appear to calculate that the MPLA Government (like other bourgeois nationalist regimes such as Congo and Tanzania) would be willing to aid the Namibian freedom fighters. The Frelimo regime in Mozambique, by contrast, is economically dependent on South Africa (unlike Angola) and is now coperating closely with Pretoria, in particular by participating in the detente manoeuvres over the future of Zimbabwe. 'GUARANTEES Speaking on 1 January, Vorster indicated that South African withAfrican invasion, the 2 May issue of Portuguese Africa, reporting an interview with Savimbi, noted UNITA's willingness to participate in Vorster's bid for 'dialogue with black Africa. 'Dr Savimbi said he was in favour of detente and of dialogue as a means of solving problems, and that he did not believe, in the present South African context, that armed liberation wars were necessarily the solution for the problems of Namibia and Zimbawe' The US's third concern is the Soviet Union's success in winning diplomatic gains through its association with a victorius MPLA regime in Angola. This has nothing to do with the Soviet Union breaking from its commitment to the detente, as some observers have suggested. A front-page leading article in Izvestia on 6 January said that the USSR's support for the MPLAin no way contradicted the policy of detente and lessening tension'.
DETENTE On 16 December, at the end of a two-day conference in Moscow, the foreign ministers of the Warsaw Pact countries issued a communique calling for a continuation of the detente, urging further advances along the road found and built jointly by the 33 European countries, the United States and Canada'. Reaffirmation of the detente line (collaboration with world imperialism for the maintenance of class peace on a global scale) is one of the key objectives of the Kremlin at the forth-coming congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as Idi Amin of Uganda. The Soviet bureaucracy knows full well that the MPLA has no intention of carrying through a socialist revolution in Angola.
positive in so far as it is needed to defend the Angolan people from the imperialist aggression, is aimed at raising Soviet prestige and winning diplomatic successes in a strategic part of Africa. However the MPLA has every right to accept aid from the Soviet Union in order to defend Angola's independence from imperialist intervention.
The opportunist nature of Soviet aid for the MPLA is shown by the Kremlin's backing for such dictators Soviet military aid to the MPLA, The US ruling class has shown itself to be deeply divided over Ford's Angolan strategy. The Angolan operation threatens, in the view of some capitalist politicians in the US, to upset domestic stability while achieving nothing in Angola itself.
OPPOSITION In voting against funds for the FNLA and UNITA, the US Senate expressed ruling class fears about the depth of anti-war sentiment in the country in the wake of the Vietnam war. Many Democrat and Republican leaders also fear that US involvement in an African country like Angola could spark widespread opposition from the black movement in the US - while undermining the US's prestige and diplomatic position in Africa itself.
With 23 African Governments now Angola 7 recognising the People's Republic of Angola set up by the MPLA (and the recent OAU summit in Addis Ababa only narrowly failing to do the same), US imperialism's intervention in the Angolan war runs the risk of backfiring Opponents of the US and South African involvement cannot, however, place any reliance on the ruling class 'doves' to get this intervention stopped and Angola's independence safeguarded. Mass mobilisations -demonstrations, pickets and teach-ins are urgently needed.
The message needs to be loud massive and clear: Get the US and South Africa out of Angola now, and end all British collaboration with the US and South African war drive.
TONY HODGES