Colonialism in Angola

...Virtually unknown to Western observers, a vast domain in southwestern Africa is exploited by Portugal and half of its native workers are forced laborers Colonialism in Angola By Keith Irvine "There is no more Africa," a Portuguese administrator exclaimed to an American visitor recently...

...A SOVIET OBSERVER OF AMERICA The following are excerpts from articles in Voprosy Ekonomiki (Questions of Economics) and Kommunist by M. I. Rubenstein, a member of the three-man Soviet delegation sent here to observe the Presidential election: April 1950: "The American imperialists, fearing the forces of democracy and socialism which are growing and becoming stronger throughout the world, join with all the obsolete and obsolescent forces, they support everything that is reactionary, backward, dying and medieval...

...1952 report asserted that, of Portugal's population of 8.5 million...

...Just as elsewhere in Africa, colonial frontiers cut across tribal groupings, dividing clans and even families...

...The absence of political freedom might be felt less keenly if the African were allowed peacefully to enjoy the fruits of his labor...

...Today, there are 100.000...

...Portugal was the first European colonial power to enter Africa...

...this, however, is not the case...

...The fact is, however, that after 400 years only 30,000 '"assimilados" have been produced out of an African population of 4 million...

...Even should the African eventually obtain the vote, moreover, his political influence will remain negligible...

...hence, she will probably deny having any "non-self-governing territories...

...It is only an extension of Europe...

...What progress there is has been made mostly at the price of forced labor: the alienation of land from African to white ownership continues steadily...

...The forced laborers are known as "contradados'' (contract laborers), since, unlike slaves, a limit is set to their period of servitude...

...The qualifications for this are adoption of the Christian faith, completion of military service, the ability to read and write Portuguese, and payment of a fee equivalent to about S150...

...The colony has the second highest illiteracy rate in Africa, 96 per cent, being surpassed in this respect only by Portuguese Mozambique...

...To get it, one must acquire the status of an "assimilado...

...In view of the Government's attitude, the formation of genuine trade unions is out of the question right now...

...The whole so-called "Eurafrican" philosophy is contained in these words...

...Three years ago, the Angola Diamond Company reported that the impoverishment and social conditions of the people of the Lunda district constituted a national problem "calling for urgent remedy...

...Largely because of its theoretically liberal racial policy, the Portuguese administration in Angola has been spared the harsh criticism leveled at the Union of South Africa...

...A vital issue in Angola is that of forced labor...

...it lacks capital, and the deficiencies in power and transport make would-be investors hesitant to commit themselves...

...February 1951: "Following the example of the German-Fascist and Japanese cannibals, the American interventionists assist in the dissemination of typhus and other epidemic diseases...

...Today, some 379,000 men, or nearly half the Angolan labor force, can be described as forced laborers...

...In all Angola, there are only 151 doctors to care for over 4 million Africans...

...the number of Portuguese in Angola almost doubled...

...In Seoul twelve instances have been established of scalping of Korean patriots by American butchers, and the scalps were kept by the American gangsters as 'souvenirs.' " November 1953: "The entire educational system is subjugated to monopolistic capital...

...Its heritage is felt to this day, although in modified form...

...Yet, while most European nations, convinced of their "civilizing mission," have espoused the Eurafrican idea, few have had less justification than the Portuguese...

...The United States will be serving its own interests by bringing pressure to bear for improvement of conditions in Angola, for that Portuguese colony is one of the sorriest advertisements for democracy to be found anywhere in the free world...

...The 4 million Africans, comprising 98 per cent of the population, have no vote and little prospect of obtaining it...

...Should some anti-colonial country press the issue, it would probably be submitted to the World Court for a decision on what constitutes a "non-self-governing territory...

...and—south of the Congo?Angola, which is 16 times as large as the mother country...

...They cluster most densely on the great central plateau, where the Ovimbundu people number over a million...

...The chief hope for progress lies in action by the Western powers...

...3.5 million were "excess...

...the latest is Basil Davidson, who provided a documented account of his findings last year in his book, The African Awakening...

...while the "free" workers are reportedly paid even less and treated worse in many cases...

...Meanwhile, the country stagnates...

...Anti-colonialists have been hopeful that, as a member of the UN, Portugal may be forced to submit information on Angola and her other African possessions, just as Britain, France and Belgium do on their "non-self-governing territories...

...Mozambique, with its 1,600-mile East African seaboard...

...In reply to criticism, the Portuguese declare that "he who eats must work" and that forced labor is made necessary by the Africans' "laziness...

...This is, of course, the most transparent sort of legal fiction, inasmuch as 98 per cent of Angola's population is excluded from any share in its "self-government...

...To the north live tribes related to those of the Congo basin, while to the south are others related to the Hereros of Southwest Africa...

...and it i-reportedly planned to increase the white population to one million within ten years...

...As the economy expands, moreover, forced labor increases, for Angola's fundamental problem is a labor scarcity...

...who live partly in Angola and partly in Southwest Africa, last year appealed to the UN "to be free from serving two masters...

...The African, it is pointed out, can become an "assimilado"—he is not prevented from acquiring "civilization...

...A most profound moral corruption, decadence, and cynical disregard for man, apology for death and killing are characteristic of contemporary bourgeois belles lettres in the U.S.A., if you can so designate the trash fabricated by mercenary writers on the orders of the monopolistic publishers...

...It significantly went on to note that the central plateau of Angola (now the densest area of African settlement) was larger than all of Portugal and "suitable for European colonization...

...In the meantime, the Portuguese are feverishly if belatedly devoting every spare escudo to railroad construction...

...One such group, the Ukuanyama...

...The tribes of Angola are among the least known in Africa...

...Between 1940 and 1950...

...When the demand exceeds the supply, district officers, aided by the military, raid villages by night to make up their quotas...

...Now that Portugal is a member of the United Nations, a legal basis exists for focusing publicity on the plight of its African subjects...

...Increasing industrialization will mean the creation of a new middle class, but it will clearly be recruited not from the Africans but from Portuguese immigrants seeking to escape from the wretched conditions in Portugal itself...

...The important decisions affecting his country will continue to be made by the Minister for Overseas Territories in Lisbon or by the colonial governors at their triennial Lisbon conferences...

...Angola is primarily an agricultural country, exporting coffee, copra, limber, sugar, cattle, pigs and fish...

...Only 20 Angolan Africans are currently in Portugal for higher education, and two of these are in jail at the moment for "political" offenses...

...In 1954, after four centuries of Portuguese rule, the London Anti-Slavery Society observed: "We have no hesitation in saying that conditions and practices in Portuguese West Africa are among the greatest known causes of misery in the world today...

...This seems unlikely, however, since Portugal declared these areas as long ago as 1933 to be Portuguese "provinces" and "integral parts of the metropolitan country...

...Very little, it would appear...

...Like all Portuguese possessions, however...

...The schools not only do not oppose, but on the contrary they promote the systematic corruption of the child's psyche with militaristic propaganda of violence and destruction and by instilling contempt for other peoples and national minorities...

...Portugal has three African possessions: the West African enclave of Portuguese Guinea...

...Nowhere else, not even in Kenya or Strijdom's South Africa, has the African less hope of advancing economically, socially, politically or educationally...

...The system operates as follows: An employer who wants workers indents for them to the Government, which receives a commission for each man it supplies...

...Angola, the most gigantic and most backward of the three, has long drawn the attention of anti-colonialists throughout the world...

...Over the years, a succession of visitors have testified to the exploitation of labor that still prevails...

...Until 1822, Angola was the primary source of slave labor for the plantations of Brazil, and only in 1878 was slavery officially ended...

...What hope is there of political action by the Africans themselves...

...Since most Africans earn only a few cents a day, the task of becoming an "assimilado'' is roughly in a class with climbing Mount Everest—and the fact that "assimilados" must pay taxes scarcely provides an incentive to those already lacking adequate means...

...In connection with this, they not only do not offer any kind of medical assistance to the population, but on the contrary, as many facts show, they frequently kill people who are seriously ill...

...It also exports diamonds and manganese and is known to have considerable copper and oil resources...

...Elementary education is largely left to the missions...

...and a system of political persecution and economic exploitation has driven many Africans to seek refuge in the Congo, the Rhodesias, and even South Africa...

...This, of course, would open up virtually endless vistas of delay and litigation...

...It would be a tragic irony if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which was set up to protect its members against Communist tyranny, should be used to deny freedom to the people of Africa...