Africa

by Guy Arnold

  On 1 August the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) assembled in Lusaka. Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s newly elected Conservative Prime Minister, and her Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington, represented Britain. Under intense Commonwealth pressure, which had been most carefully orchestrated by Australia’s Malcolm Fraser, Jamaica’s Michael Manley, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, Margaret Thatcher was persuaded to agree to hold a constitutional conference in London to resolve the Rhodesia question. This was held in Lancaster House from 10 September to 21 December when an agreement was finally signed. In temporary alliance, Britain, South Africa and the front-line States exerted pressure on the leaders of the Patriotic Front to end the war and on Smith to concede defeat. The Zimbabwe-Rhodesia delegation accepted the British proposals on 21 September and Bishop Muzorewa agreed to stand down as Prime Minister, against the wishes of his delegation. The conference came to the verge of collapse in October but continued on a knife-edge with Mugabe especially distrustful of the British proposals. On 11 December Lord Soames, who had been appointed as the Governor of Rhodesia for the transition to independence, flew to Salisbury. On 14 December Eddison Zvobgo, for ZANU-PF, had said ‘no’ to Carrington, and Mugabe was on his way to catch a flight to New York, to reject the ceasefire and drum up support to continue the war when he was recalled to take a phone call from President Samora Machel of Mozambique. Machel told him bluntly to sign and indicated that if he didn’t all he could expect in Mozambique would be political asylum, for by this time the country was suffering from Rhodesian raids, damaged communications and food shortages and it needed the war to come to an end.27

  The agreement was signed at Lancaster House on 21 December. Legality was restored under a British Governor (Lord Soames) and sanctions were lifted. Elections were to be held the following February/March for a 100-seat parliament in which 80 seats would be contested on an open roll by Africans while 20 seats would be reserved for whites. Immediately, following his arrival in Rhodesia, Lord Soames was dependent upon the Rhodesian military to hold the ring while the guerrillas came in to assembly points and arrangements for the election were made. Calculations in London, as always in relation to Rhodesia wide of the mark, suggested that either Muzorewa could win again or that the Patriotic Front could obtain a narrow victory. The Foreign Office made plain that Mugabe was not their choice. A small Commonwealth contingent was sent to oversee the ceasefire although it had no force at its command had either the Patriotic Front or the Rhodesians decided to return to the bush and renew the war.

  Between January and April 1980, 20,000 guerrillas came to 16 assembly points to accept the ceasefire. For a time ZANU-PF and its armed wing ZANLA ignored the ceasefire and there was widespread intimidation. Lord Soames faced a dilemma and Rhodesian forces were redeployed. On 13 January Nkomo returned to Rhodesia, followed by Mugabe on 27 January. The Governor then took wider powers and ignored Rhodesian requests that he should ban or restrict political parties practising intimidation or continuing to break the ceasefire. Combined Operations, or COMOPs, confronted Soames and the British officials but Rhodesian officials said that events would have to run their course. The elections were held over five days from 27 February and the results were announced on 4 March: ZANU-PF (Mugabe) 57 seats, PF-ZAPU (Nkomo) 20 seats, United African National Congress (UANC) (Muzorewa) three seats, Rhodesian Front (Smith) (on reserved white roll) 20 seats. South Africa reacted to Mugabe’s victory by launching an anti-Mugabe destabilization campaign, which lasted through to independence on 18 April although Pretoria had to decide how far it would go.28 The results led to immediate panic among the white population but on the evening of 4 March Soames, Mugabe and Walls broadcast to the nation. Soames called for no violence and a stable government and Walls appealed for calm and peace. Mugabe said: ‘Let us join together. Let us show respect for the winners and the losers… There is no intention on our part to victimize the minority. We will ensure there is a place for everyone in this country. I want a broadly based government to include whites and Nkomo.’ To the South Africans he said: ‘We offer peaceful co-existence. Let us forgive and forget. Let us join hands in a new amity.’ And to the world: ‘Zimbabwe will be tied to no one. It will be strictly non-aligned.’29 The speech owed a good deal to Kenyatta’s famous address to the white farmers at Nakuru on 12 August 1963. Following this speech many whites who had prepared to leave stayed and members of the civil service who had handed in their resignations now withdrew them. Nkomo, like almost everyone else, had badly miscalculated the tribal factor and the appeal of Mugabe who was generally seen as the man who had done most to win the war; instead, he had relied on his charisma and had rejected the idea of a coalition, believing that ZAPU could win on its own. Mugabe asked Soames, or another British representative, to stay on after independence but Britain said ‘no’. ‘Why did the British refuse?’ asked Flower. ‘It seems that they were so relieved to have fluked a solution that their only consideration now was to get the hell out of Zimbabwe while the going was good and relinquish their responsibility for a country which had been a thorn in their side for a long time.’30 This would seem a just criticism of British conduct.

  Gen. Peter Walls, who had commanded the Rhodesian Army against the guerrillas, offered to serve the new government at independence, despite being an avowed anti-Marxist, and was retained by Mugabe. After a few months, however, he resigned when Mugabe refused to promote him to full General. He then left for South Africa, after disclosing that he had asked the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, to annul the election result when he learned that ZANU-PF had won. The story is revealing on several fronts. First, it was remarkable that Mugabe was willing to retain his services after an official death toll of 30,000. It also revealed much of Rhodesian assumptions about British attitudes that, after the settlement, he should try to persuade Mrs Thatcher to annul the election. And more revealing still than either of those two aspects, it tells us a great deal of white Rhodesian myopia. The Rhodesians often boasted that they ‘understood the African’ although in company with the British and the Russians they were wholly unprepared for a Mugabe victory. They had made a similar miscalculation about the African ‘they understood’ at the time of the Pearce Commission and their assumption at that time that the Africans would endorse the proposed settlement.

  Joshua Nkomo was deeply humiliated by the election result. He had recently had himself made ‘President for Life’ of ZAPU and now had to argue that Mugabe had won the election by intimidation and rigging by China, Mozambique, Tanzania, Britain and the United States. However, Nkomo had rejected Mugabe’s offer of the presidency of Zimbabwe because he felt the position lacked power. Had he accepted, he might have been able to prevent the loss of life that followed the ZANU–ZAPU compact. The outcome of the election was also a bitter blow for South Africa, which had spent US$300 million supporting the Rhodesian war against the nationalists and then had invested heavily in the election against ZANU. Further, South Africa was then attempting to create a ‘Constellation of African States’ but Zimbabwe would not take part. Mugabe advocated socialist policies and was an outspoken critic of apartheid. He was determined to reduce Zimbabwe’s dependence upon South Africa and on 1 April, prior to independence, had joined the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) whose principal objective was to lessen the dependence of all its members upon South Africa.

  Independence for Zimbabwe represented a major African victory over the forces of white reaction in the southern part of the continent. The war had cost 30,000 lives (official estimate) and probably a good many more while at least one million Africans had been uprooted during the course of the struggle.

  CHAPTER TWENY - ONE

  The End of Portuguese Africa

  As the 1970s began, Portugal only exercised direct control over those parts of its three African territories that were not already under the control of the freedom fighters. The ultra-conservatives were in the ascendant at home, dete
rmined to hold Portuguese Africa, no matter what the cost. Portugal, it is true, did make some moves towards granting a limited degree of autonomy to the territories, and in 1972 altered the Organic Law affecting Africa so as to make the ‘provinces’ of Angola and Mozambique into states; this change would give a limited number of people in the territories a greater say in their internal affairs so long as this did not disrupt the greater unity of the ‘Portuguese Nation’. There was right-wing disquiet at even these modest changes, since the right had no desire to see any form of autonomy granted to the African territories. It might have been argued that Portugal was too poor to sustain the vast expense of her African wars. In fact these wars illustrate the classic argument about colonies: they paid, and for Portugal they were economically so important that she dared not lose them.

  The Portuguese territories of Africa Freedom Movements – the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola), FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Mocambique) and the PAIGC (Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde) met in Rome during June 1970 to focus attention and increase support for their fight to end Portuguese colonialism. In a joint declaration they stated: ‘In order to oppose this situation, the colonialists of Lisbon are facilitating penetration of powerful economic interests of imperialist powers to ensure that their interests should consider their fate as linked to that of Portuguese domination. They become the defenders of the cause of Portugal’s colonialism, expressing themselves through the policies of their governments, and thus create conditions for an increasing internationalization of the confrontation. The direct and massive aid from NATO – not to speak of the military and economic support Lisbon receives from the governments of the United States, West Germany, Britain and France – is a decisive factor in Portugal’s ability to continue her colonial wars.’1

  In 1970 the period of service for conscripts in the Portuguese army was increased to four years. Fatal military casualties admitted by Portugal were 500 a year although the liberation movements claimed the figure was much higher. By this time there was growing opposition in Portugal to a policy that seemed without end: urban guerrillas, the Armed Revolutionary Action Group, used explosives to damage troop-carrying liners about to leave for Africa; and there was growing student opposition to the wars. The biggest drain upon the country was manpower; over 80,000 young Portuguese were living clandestinely abroad to avoid conscription.

  In June 1970 Prime Minister Vorster of South Africa visited Portugal: he promised continuing co-operation and Portugal’s Prime Minister, Marcello Caetano, said that, despite ideological differences, they would continue to cooperate. As it was, the increasing inability of the Portuguese to contain the situations in Mozambique and Angola had become deeply worrying for South Africa and Rhodesia. Portugal had been able to maintain its African wars for so long because it was sustained by its Western allies – Britain and the United States, and the other principal members of NATO, especially West Germany and France. The Mozambican Dan van der Vat, writing in The Times at the end of 1970, said: ‘The supreme irony of a war which still remains a thoroughly nasty affair for both sides is that it has taken the creation of FRELIMO to produce, after more than four and a half centuries of stagnation, a sudden upsurge of development by the Portuguese so that they can justify their claim to be able to offer the Africans more than FRELIMO ever could.’2 By 1972, Portugal had total military forces of 204,000 men of whom 150,000 were deployed in Africa: 60,000 each in Angola and Mozambique, and 30,000 in Portuguese Guinea (Guinea-Bissau). Normally, armies are associated with the politics of the right. In the case of Portugal, however, two factors were of crucial importance: first, a significant proportion of the officer class who had spent years of their professional careers fighting in the African wars could see clearly what Lisbon either failed to see or wilfully ignored – that it could not win the wars; and secondly, the bulk of the soldiers were not professionals at all, but young peasant conscripts who found no difficulty in identifying with the peasant aspirations of the Africans they were sent to fight. They simply wanted to go home. In early 1974 Gen. Antonio de Spinola was to focus army discontents, although he was no radical, when he published his book Portugal and the Future, in which he stated that there was no military solution in Africa.

  On 2 December 1970, Caetano announced the creation of local legislatures and administrative structures for Angola and Mozambique. He advanced the concept of autonomous self-governing states united through a central government in Lisbon. This concept was, apparently, to include Brazil to form a Portuguese Commonwealth. FRELIMO’s Marcellino dos Santos denied that the Caetano proposals could benefit the people. They were only designed to reassure Portugal’s allies and make them think Lisbon was introducing reforms. Caetano had tried to reinforce the myth that Angola and Mozambique were overseas provinces of Portugal but his changes would not alter the course of the war. These wars were ruthless affairs, and the Portuguese military, with its huge conscript forces, came increasingly to dominate Portuguese life. Yet, despite the sophisticated weapons, the size of the armies and the high expenditure, Portugal retreated steadily as the 1970s advanced.

  GUINEA-BISSAU

  By the beginning of the decade, most of the interior of Guinea-Bissau was already in the hands of the PAIGC while the Portuguese held the towns and the coast. Gen. Spinola, the Governor-General of the colony, enjoyed air superiority but little else. There was to be heavy fighting throughout the year. Only in 1971 did Portugal admit that a state of war existed: its 30,000 troops were facing 7,000 PAIGC guerrillas and Amilcar Cabral had undisputed control of the only liberation movement in the territory and received widespread backing from Africa. By 1972 Portugal had expanded its forces and the 30,000 white troops had been augmented by 15,000 black or mulatto forces drawn from the local population. There was a steady rate of casualties. By this time the Portuguese were clearly on the defensive: they maintained fortified posts that held between 150 and 1,000 men and these were isolated from each other.

  The PAIGC carried out intensive international lobbying through 1972 in preparation for its intended declaration of independence in1973; it obtained promises of support for such a declaration from Communist, African and Non-Aligned nations. It held elections among 58,000 registered voters in those parts of the country it controlled during April and July for a National Assembly. The PAIGC faced a major setback when on 20 January 1973 Amilcar Cabral was assassinated in Conakry, Guinea, where he had his headquarters. The PAIGC naval commander Innocenta Canida admitted responsibility having been ‘turned’ by the Portuguese. Aristides Pereira, a close colleague of Cabral, was elected Secretary-General of the PAIGC in his place on 28 January. The struggle continued without pause, however, and the Portuguese now lost air superiority as the PAIGC began to shoot down their planes with ground-to-air missiles. In November 1972 the UN General Assembly had described the PAIGC as ‘the sole and authentic representative of the people of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde’. Writing in the Observer at the beginning of 1973, Colin Legum argued that the guerrilla pressures upon the Portuguese were far heavier than upon the Rhodesians or South Africans. ‘After 11 years of fighting three colonial wars – in Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Angola – the Portuguese still show no signs of being able to bring any of them to an end. Their situation in Mozambique had deteriorated considerably in the last 18 months, especially in the strategically important Tete province, which is wedged between Rhodesia and Malawi. It is the Portuguese failure to beat off FRELIMO’s attacks in that sensitive corner of Southern Africa that has caused so much anxiety in recent months to Mr Smith and Mr Vorster. The real threat Portugal faces in the immediate future, however, is not in southern Africa but in its “colonial” extension, Guinea-Bissau. That is the part of Portuguese Africa to watch.’3 By that time the PAIGC dominated life in most of the country.

  On 24 September 1973, Guinea-Bissau declared its independence and was at once recognized by a majority of the OAU and a majority of UN members, including the US
SR and China. On 2 November 1973 the UN General Assembly voted 93 to seven with 30 abstentions to recognize the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, which was admitted to the UN at the end of the year. Thereafter, the General Assembly refused to accept the Portuguese delegation as representing Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau – the latter then had its own UN representative – and voted to this effect by 54 to 14 with 21 abstentions. Guinea-Bissau was then admitted to the OAU as its forty-second member. These developments gave the PAIGC a huge psychological boost while UN recognition was also seen as an encouragement to the independence movements in Angola and Mozambique. On a visit to Lagos, Aristides Pereira told reporters that Guinea-Bissau needed financial aid to consolidate its independence. Nigeria responded with a gift of N500,000 (£320,000). The war, however, continued.