Counting the cost in Portugal

John Biggs-Davison

One reason why Dr Alvaro Cunhal and his fellow-Stalinists could make a humiliating mess of their revolution without threat to their leadership was that for the Kremlin the Portuguese revolution was of lesser importance than the revolution in Portuguese Africa. Moscow's objective there has substantially been gained, thanks to the naïveté of General Spinola—not so much Kerensky as Prince Ivov—and the mixture of Marxism and immature idealism within the Movement of the Armed Forces (MFA) whose original manifesto did not even mention decolonisation.

Current exponents of the conspiratorial interpretation of history allege that the global Metternich, Dr Henry Kissinger, conceded Angola to the Russians, while reserving for the Rockefeller interest the exploitation of the oil of Cabinda, the 'Kuwait of Africa,' and that on its side Moscow gave ground in the Iberian peninsula. However this may be, I recall a conversation with a high official of the Foreign Office, not uncongenial to the Labour Government, who was hoping for the decolonisation of Portuguese Africa. Portugal could then be tucked neatly into Western Europe.

No doubt; but Portugal now makes advances to the Community like a suitor without a dowry. For: 'the Ultramar is the indispensable condition to our survival as a free and independent nation; without the African territories, Portugal will be reduced to an unimportant corner of a European super-power.' General Spinola wrote that in his book, Portugal and the Future. He proposed the transformation of the Ultramar into a federalised commonwealth a la portugaise. He believed in a 'true decolonisation,' by which he meant that there should be no abandonment of the African populations for whom Portugal was trustee to 'new dictatorships.' If, the General argued, a decolonisation of that order were not achieved, there would be poverty, bloodshed and slavery.

But Portugal is not France. She had no Senghor, no Houphouet-Boigny—and no de Gaulle. General Spinola had the charisma but not the capacity. It was a splendid 'soldier's general'—his monocle, cane and cavalry officer's gloves were to him what the beret was to `Monty'—who flew me in his helicopter across the Portuguese province of Guine, touching down in steaming clearings to lift the spirits of his multi-racial troops. 'I am a revolutionary,' he said. Nationalist intellectuals rallied to hispropaganda service in Bissau, where efficiency reigned as not in Lisbon.

Study the map of the inundated and insalubrious enclave that is now GuineaBissau and you may think it something of a strategic miracle that, squeezed between Senegal and the militantly Marxist Republic of Guinea, the Portuguese held on. It was the centre, in Lisbon, that gave in. Could the explanation have been that the Portuguese had the consent or acquiescence of the people? They had land and justice. Their trivial life and traditions were little inter fered with. The Moslems were flown to Mecca for the Haj.

Portugal, then, was not defeated overseas. The base crumbled in Europe. In Angola the guerrilla war was but flickering embers. Certainly, Angola still had its trouble spots, as India its North-West Frontier. In Mozambique Frelimo had suffered heavily and numbers of its leaders and Maconde partisans had returned to their allegiance. Whole districts were never penetrated bY Frelirno. In May 1975 the Cuban writer and journalist Gabriel Garcia admitted that Frelimo did not conquer the Portuguese Army but it gained acceptance for its ideas. `I think that Portugal will be the European Cuba.' Dr Agostinho Neto, the Frani° Secretary-General, described the MFA not as Portugal's first movement of liberation from 'fascism' but as its fourth, the first three being in Africa. But the Cuban was closer to the truth. Nor is it certain that General Spinola was right to despair of military victory.

He was at one with Salazar in equating the Latraniar with independent national surviva]. But Salazar was the more realistic. In 1958 he described Europe without Africa as a continent to which the USSR could dicr tate. In 1959 he spoke of 'Africa in flames. The incendiaries were from certain outside states and international organisations. Africa was Europe's Complement, indispensable to her defence and economy. Salazar correctly predicted a violent campaign against both Spain and Portugal; for,. Communism was bent on the reduction 0' the West by the disintegration, the balkary isation, of Africa. Reason and justice were, confounded by ideologies. This theme 01 Salazar was taken up in 1973 by his suecessor, Dr Marcell° Caetano, who quoted, the memoirs of Paul-Henri Spaak in whle11 the Belgian pioneer of United Europe tells of the shock of returning to the UN after an absence of some years : 'One can exPeet form that organisation neither justice nor peace and it is not the United Nations that will be able to guarantee any agreement on the transfer of power to the terrorist mo ment which the shrieking [hurlante]majority of that organisation flatter and support.' , The United Nations and its agencies ha° long ceased to be an instrument of the, United States. The blackmailers of the ThIrQ" World had arrived. The majority t'the General Assembly flouted the Charter when it suited them. They most easily found common ground in hostility to Europe. The Americans were often ready to abandon th Europeans; and the Europeans betrayed, each other. British, French, Belgians. aria_ Spaniards leapfrogged each other in 4 Gadarene race to decolonise. Portugal was the one-man awkward squad. The tin,. scramblers of Africa made a virtue out 01

of seeming necessity. For fifteen years

African wars Portugal rejected abdicatiown aas,. neither virtuous nor necessary. But she denied the time and the understanding tto° enable her to show Africa an alternative remaeY,

white or black or Communist sup and to build new Brazils in Africa. Perhaps there was guilt and shame in the pained and

sanctimonious censure of her allies, including her oldest.

They counted the cost of completing their duty to prepare the Africans under their

sovereignty, protection or trusteeship to Shoulder the burden of independence. They flinched and the famous wind of change blew , Millions of those Africans to their death. In many ex-colonial territories to share in the clecolonised has proved more expensive than colonial rule.

According to an estimate made by Salgado Zenha of the conservative CDS in the Diario de Noticias (14 April 1975), the casualties, military and civilian, white and non-white, since Holdon Roberto's invasion

of Angola from the former Belgian Congo on the 11 March 1961 amounted to 11;000 dead and 35,000 wounded. The decolonisation of Angola claimed 150,000 dead and

wounded, of Timor 50,000, of Guine 35,000; of Mozambique, thanks to the flight of most Whites and many blacks, a mere three or

four thousand. In Angola and Mozambique the fighting and the killing go on. It has indeed been 'an exemplary decolon

isatidn'—to quote Major Vitor Crespo, sPeaking as High Commissioner in Mozam bique on 13 September 1974. Portugal, he trumpeted, could be proud of it. In Decem

ber 1974 communiqués both of the MFA and of the Marxist MDP-CDE proclaimed

decolonisation as 'the great victory of the MFA.'

But what are men compared to money ? At least Portugal has spared herself, has she not, the drain and diversion of resources from domestic to colonial conflict? On the Contrary. Close on a million refugees, the retornados, cost Portugal 30 million escudos a day and Lisbon 3,800,000, and the commandeering of hotel accommodation to

has these unfortunates of various colours has helped to cripple the tourist trade. And

What will resettlement cost, whether in Portugal or elsewhere? In 1973 the balance of payments of Portugal at war exceeded six billion (6,000 iaillioo) escudos. In 1974, and in 1975 and 1976 respectively there was a deficit on the balance of payments of 17 and 32 billion

escudos. The deficit for the present year can sc, arcely be less than 50 billion. As for prices,

i,, f,tbey be taken as 100 in 1963, the index for 173, 1974 and 1975 stood at 203.8, 254.9 and 294. Unemployment rose in the same Period from 3 to 15 per cent. Moreover, when the British and French e_mPires became a Commonwealth and a Community old financial and trading links vv. ere continued. When Portugal, however,

d_ Ivested herself of political responsibility or the African territories she also forfeited

economic

Steel, predominance. Their petrol, iron. , zinc, nickel, manganese, diamonds, their coffee, cotton, sugar cane, sisal, maize

and other commodities the new Marxist in. asters prefer to market for hard currency in the United States, France or Japan rather than for depreciating Portuguese escudos. In the first quarter of this year Portuguese exports to Angola fell by 70 per cent, to the African islands of Sao Tome and Principe by 55 per cent, to Mozambique by 39.4 per cent and to Cape Verde by 33.2 per cent. In December 1974 Portugal was spending on the African territories six million escudos (equivalent to the surplus on the balance of payments achieved under Dr Caetano). But on 25 June 1975, when Mozambique was declared independent without benefit of the promised self-determination, the Marxist who was then Prime Minister in Lisbon, General Vasco Goncalves, was looking forward to Portugal receiving aid from Mozambique!

Angola is richer than Mozambique. However, although Dr Neto is brother-in-law to the Red' Admiral Rosa Coutinho, who as Governor-General encouraged the terrorisation of the settlers, the President of the Angola People's Republic has made no secret of the 'secondary'

importance he gives to relations with Portugal.

What matters is the link with Moscow, where Dr Neto was well received in October by Mr Brezhnev. Angola is now officially described in the Kremlin as a 'MarxistLeninist republic.' Its ruling party, MPLA, exercises a 'democratic [sic] revolutionary dictatorship' based on the peasantry and led by the proletariat. MPLA is modelled on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet-Angolan agreement made when Dr Neto was in Moscow covers party as well as state relations. One of the expected consequences is a flow of Soviet advisers. MPLA has pledged support for the 'liberation struggles' of South-West Africa, South Africa, Rhodesia, Western Sahara (where the Algeria-based Polisario movement contests the sovereignty ceded by King Juan Carlos of Spain to King Hassan of Morocco), the Comoro archipelago (where Mayotte has the effrontery to stay French) and East Timor. Only in the latter territory, thanks to Indonesian intervention, was the MFA's design of handing over to Marxists frustrated. In Mozambique the legatee has

been Samora Machel, in Gun* and indeed Cape Verde, Luis Cabral, in Angola Neto, in Sao Tome and Principe Pinto da Costa. Like Neto, Machel has been to Moscow; and, although China has been a model, Frelimo has swung towards Russia. President Machel admits to the ambition of making Mozambique the 'first fully Marxist state in Africa.' He also feels a special responsibility for the 'liberation' of Zimbabwe.

At the time of the Soviet-Angolan agreement Moscow Radio gave warning of a South Atlantic Treaty Organisation in extension of NATO, which perversely stops at the Tropic of Cancer, but possibly embracing such countries as Argentina and Brazil. Doubtless that would be most provocative! After all, there are only Soviet fishing fleets in Angolan waters and so far there is only talk of Soviet facilities in Sao Tome to add to those already enjoyed in Equatorial (formerly Spanish) Guinea, GuineaConakry, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. One gets used to anything and according to the intelligence estimate of the NATO Defence Ministers of 10 June 1976: 'The Soviet navy operates almost throughout the world; the Soviet Indian Ocean Squadron has become a fixture; the naval presence off the west coast of Africa seems to be permanent, and military aircraft operate to and from Cuba, Guinea and Somalia ...'

With an increasingly isolationist government in. Washington and the European Community harassed by its economic difficulties, the West resembles a paralysed rabbit in the face of the Soviet Empire's strategy of envelopment, which, as Mr Brezhnev reaffirmed on 24 March 1976, uses détente in order to create 'more favourable conditions' for Marxist-Leninist expansionism. 'When the ideological war is won,' then, according to the late Marshal Grechko, 'the divisions will march in.'

The West is losing the ideological war; or perhaps it is not even waging it. Ever since 1971, the year of Angola, Soviet foreign policy requires the support of movements and wars of 'liberation.' The word 'liberation' is doublespeak ; but the Russians have long been winning the semantic war, so that only 'imperialists,' neo-colonialists,' 'racists' and 'mercenaries' could presume to suppose that 'liberation' could apply not merely against European 'imperialism' but against Soviet-Cuban imperialism.

Yet the dictatorships in what was Portuguese Africa were imposed without popular vote or endorsement. That is strictly for Rhodesia. It was of Portuguese Guinea that President Sekou Toure said : 'If these people do not want to be liberated, we, who are free and conscious, have a duty to liberate them.' The PAIGC leadership is for the most part not Negro but Cape Verdian and there, as in Angola and Mozambique, the claims of other nationalist organisations have been forcibly rejected. Nevertheless in both Angola and Mozambique, where Machel, with his East German police experts, controls the cities but cannot control the 'countryside,' freedom fighters resist the new and more terrible imperialism.

Does the West care ? Or has it, as Solzhenitsyn asserted, lost the Third World War?