Portugal And Angola IRON DICTATORSHIP NOT YET THREATENED

Press, Volume C, Issue 29435, 10 February 1961, Page 12

Portugal And Angola IRON DICTATORSHIP NOT YET THREATENED

IBv BARKY FRANKLIN in “Guardian.” Manchester! (Reprinted by Arrangement)

Any man who can steal a liner merits the astonished respect of the seafaring, but now perhaps the effete, English, who gave up ship stealing long ago to pursue the sordid profits of industry. Captain Galvao. who has purloined the Santa Maria not for gain—in any event receivers are reluctant to deal in stolen liners which are so easily identifiable —but for the purpose of liberating the Portuguese colonies, starting with Angola, will be accorded a good deal of sympathy, besides respect. Captain Galvao cannot possibly succeed in liberating Angola, a country which he knows extremely well, and it is doubtful if he will even try. But he has brought the freedom of Angola one stage nearer by shattering for ever that silence that is the basis for Portuguese colonial policy. Portugal can no longer profit from her unimportance in a world divided and dominated by the Great Powers, by quietly repressing vast areas of Africa without the world really noticing. Galvao has awakened the world. Angola has not changed much since Captain Galvao, at the request of the Portuguese Government, reported upon it in 1947. His report was bitterly critical. This country of sunlit, sandy beaches, costal mountains. and attractive, rolling, inland plateau which is fertile and climatically comfortable, has prospered considerably since 1947. although its economic graph started to curve down again a few years ago. But its prosperity has done little to improve the lot of its 4.000,000 Africans and the sprinkling of Europeans and mulattoes spread out over the half million square miles within its boundaries. Industrial Progress Luanda has become a fine city. The port of Lobito has been modernised. Oil has been discovered and exploited. Mining, especially of industrial diamonds, has been expanded and, above all. agricultural output has very greatly increased. It is the sharp fall in the price of coffee that is mainly responsible for the present downward graph. But the wealth of Angola goes to the few, and most of the few live in Portugal. The Government’s old seven-year development plan—just ended —and its new one just beginning, are typical of the outlook of the Salazar regime towards the colonies. The money for development, ostensibly coming from Portugal—which has not got much and would be virtually bankrupt without Angola and Mozambique—is in reality derived from increased taxation in Angola. Remarkably little of it is spent on the African population for education, health, and the social services, which are so appallingly inadequate. The development programmes have concentrated on two things—both for the benefit of Portugal. One is the provision of facilities to enable the big companies based on Lisbon to profit increasingly from the expansion of their mining operations and plantation agriculture—hence the emphasis on new rail routes. port installations, hydro-electric projects. The other is to settle poor peasants from Portugal on the land, thus relieving the population pressure at home and at the same time rapidly increasing the European population in the hope of maintaining domination over the Africans.

Secret Trials The colonies, according to the Portuguese, are not colonies but provinces of Portugal. They are ruled from Portugal through a Governor-General whose word-dictated from Lisbon—is law. The dictatorship regime is more noticeable and harsher in Angola than in Portugal “But," say the local authorities, "it is a mild dictatorship, which suits us Portuguese. We are too hotblooded for party politics which only brought us a series of miserable and bloody revolutions. All of us like the Salazar regime." This is indeed true of the majority and is one of the factors that would make any Angolan adventure by Captain Galvao quite unprofitable But the fact that ' all" is an exaggeration is demonstrated, not for the first time, by the recen’ secret military trials on a number of professional men (and women) for plotting against the State. Their subsequent fate is unknown to me but. from the unpleasant expression on the face of the chief of the secret police in Luanda when I asked to see them, t is undoubtedly an unhappy one. This same dapper but sinewy little man roared with laughter when I asked why he had put two of his men on to trailing me day and night, but ceased to deny the fact when I took him to the window and pointed one of them cut to him. He then said solicitously that they were for my protection. Their task was in fact to see that I did not speak to a single African. They were only successful because I know the vengeance that would be brought down upon any contact and interpreter that I must use to thwart them. Africans And The Regime According to the authorities the Africans also like the regime. "Ttetr chiefs are more cruel to them than we are. They are used to dictatorship rule. They like to be told what to do and what not to do. They are primitive children and appreciate just punishment." There is. perhaps strangely, a part of truth in these statements though the dictatorship of tribal chiefs is a fallacy—one very commonly held by white men in Africa. But the apathetic, ill-nourished, raw villager is fatalistically in-

clined. likes to be le« alone, and when he is not left alone finds it easier to do what he is told and get it over than to kick against the pricks. And the Portuguese do leave I'm alone, except when they want a spell of labour from him. They certainly do not harass him in the British fashion with well-meant injunctions to build better huts, dig pit clean up the village. “We were here centuries before you came.” say the Portuguese. “and we shall be here centuries after you British have left Africa." If an impenetrable fence could be built around Angola reaching up to the edge of the universe, this might be true. But there are many fallacies in the Portuguese faith. “The secrets of our success." said an expansive Portuguese administrator, “are that we have no colour bar: many of our Portuguese peasants are as poor as the natives, who do not therefore become jealous; and we are the only people who understand Africans. If they are good we pat them on the back. If they are bad we beat them. Also we have a mission to bring them the benefits of our Christian religion and our ancient culture.”

In that the Portuguese do not oppress Africans because they are black but because they are poor and Ignorant, the claim to have no colour bar has validity. The Administration treats the poor Portuguese peasants in Angola little better than the Africans. And mixed marriages among the poor are common. But colour bar is increasing in the cities in two ways. Recent industrial prosperity has brought to Angola an influx of young Portuguese artisans and shopkeepers; they find themselves much better off in Angola, and their new motorbikes seem to give them a “Herrenvolk” complex. Lower down the scale, the recession of the last few years has brought much unemployment, and the competition between white and black for labouring jobs, in which the white are favoured by Portuguese employers on grounds of sentiment rather than colour, is building up a new colour bar. Ready For Change

It Is true that the process of bringing "culture” to the Africans through the assimilado system is pursued so gingerly for fear of creating a revolutionary class that, after 400 years, fewer than one half of 1 per cent, of the Africans have become assigptlados—that is full, civilised. Portuguese citizens. But this by no means signifies that all the rest of the black population are Ignorant savages. The American and English missionaries and the sheer process of industrialisation are producing a rapidly growing class of thinking, and discontented. Africans.

Angola is even now ready - for change. But change can- - not come yet. The Portuguese ruling class are quite charming—until the least breath of challenge to their rule Is felt. - They are then as ruthless and brutal a people as can be found. So far the Army and police have mercilessly - crushed the small sporadic ’ outbreaks of revolt or indiscipline among the Africans. And the P.l.D.E.—the secret . police—constantly and silently roots out any human seeds of discontent and confines them to unpleasant places. Captain Galvao has not got a hope yet. Nothing can bend the iron rod of dictatorship in Angola. It will never bend. It will break, with a nasty crack—but not yet. ,