Angola
Sir: Has Mr Trevor Bloom ever quite recovered from reading Ballantyne's The Gorilla Hunters or perhaps Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs? To some English people—but to notably few others —the Portuguese are always the villains compared with the pure clean living Briton who would never but never sleep with an African girl ! These people are at heart far more racial than the Portuguese have ever been since they came to Africa in the fifteenth century. They really treat Portu- guese and Africans on the same level—which is right of course— while keeping a top shelf for them- selves—which is wrong!
Mr Bloom might note that the Portuguese have no colour bar, practise inter-marriage, have inte- grated schools, and in their current task of protecting Africans against terrorists have kept Angola and Mozambique clear of these nui- sances who would not survive at all without bases outside the terri- tories.
Part of the anti-Portuguese myth stems from the old chestnut that they fostered the slave trade in earlier times. They did more to abolish and control it—in the teeth of opposition from African chiefs who found it highly profitable to deal with enemies and undesir- ables in this manner—than the British who of course began it in a particularly brutal way with Hawkins and Drake—our national heroes.
The real 'fault' of the Portuguese in some eyes is to practise a multi- racialism which British and Ameri- cans have so far been quite unable to follow or to understand. They- are therefore hated in principle— less in fact—by some Common- wealth Africans who because of their early indoctrination by the British are more race-conscious and more racialist than French- speaking Africans; are deplored by a few vociferous and inhibited Anglo-Saxons; and opposed for excellent political reasons by the Corrnnunists who see that Portu- guese Africa is more advanced than any other part of the continent. To be on the side of the angels is always unpopular.
Cosmo Russell Clevedge House, North Warn- borough, Hants
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