UNITA 1976
Source: The Workers’ Advocate [U.S.] Volume 6, Number 2, February 1, 1976;
Extracted from The Workers’ Advocate for the MIA Africa pages: by Paul Saba.
-By UNITA Information-Office, London, W.1. (partial text only)
UNITA realizes that the longer the fighting goes on in Angola, the greater the dangers of further international involvement in it. Already Russia, Cuba, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and other East European countries on the one hand-and 'South Africa on the other-have actual physical presence in Angola. We also know that, if the Soviet Union continues its established path of continued imperialist intervention, the physical presence of other foreigners is a virtual certainty - not because UNITA invites it, but because superpower politics will make it inevitable. Therefore, UNITA realizes that it is an urgent necessity that the mass destruction of Angolan people on the Angolan terrain be halted as quickly as possible-consistent with UNITA's determination to win the total independence of Angola from foreign rule.
It is with this goal in mind that UNIT A continues its just siruggle and is pressing for enough military victories to force Soviet dominated MPLA to the bargaining table in recogriition that no one group alone can militarily dominate our country,. which geopolitically is controlled by three forces-UNITA, MPLA and FNLA, There must be this recognition on all sides of the Angolan reality-that each of these movements, like it or not, controls certain areas of the country where the majority population at this point in our history will only accept a government in which the people feel that they have some representation. To ignore this is to deny the geopolitical realities of Angola and to predict the future of Angola on hopeless lies and dangerous myths which will keep our country in turmoil for generations to corne.
If no one group can control the whole of our country without resorting to military force to kill, maim and otherwise subdue the Angolan people in the regions where its political support is non-existent, how then can Angola now realistically be governed and unified?
UNITA, from the time it succeeded in bringing the three movements together to build a platform from which it could negotiate with the Portuguese for the transfer of power, has tried to devise a formula that recognizes the Angolan political realities. In this spirit it has sought and diligently worked for an interim arrangement that would allow the total Angolan population to be represented through a coalition-type government, which would include equal or proportional representation from the three liberation movements.. At a mutually agreed upon point in time, elections could be held, again giving proportional representation to the three Angolan parties.
At the same time, however, UNITA is realistic enough to realize that no country- at any time in history-has ever been run effectively in that fashion. We know that from such a coalition a dominant party will eventually emerge to lead the people down the long road of freedom, revolution and reconstruction. UNITA believes that, during the period of peaceful transition, all three parties should patriotically collaborate on national programmes and projects to help unify the country by involving all of its people from all of the regions in mutual efforts designed to demonstrate the need and purpose of a national consciousness and national unity.
Angola's history of ethnic, regional and political division - a legacy of five centuries of Portuguese colonialism, demands such an approach. UNITA recognizes the continuing need to heighten the national conciousness of the people as ANGOLANS - not Bankongo, Chokwe, Kimbundu, Ovimbundu or Kwanyama: not mestilo. Assimilado or indiginene: not Protestant, Catholic or animist - but as ANGOLANS first and formost. To fail to recognize this need for the building of a national conciousness among all of our people is to fail in a great part of our historic mission to lead our people in the struggle for liberation, independence and progress. This is a goal ferverently to be desired, but one which cannot be imposed upon our people. Angolans did not suffer the terrible centuries of colonialism and the horrors of the most recent 15 years of continued colonial war to be subjected again to the iron-fist rule of people who do not truly represent them. Angolans will never again submit to the domination of people they see as enemies. whether they be domestic or foreign. Neither UNITA, nor FNLA, nor MPLA, nor the powerful Soviet Union itself can defeat the will of the Angolan people to be free. All forces must come to recognize. as UNITA always has, the limits of military force and work for a political solution to Angola's crisis.
This conviction is the guiding force behind UNITA's current determination to match MPLA's Russian-exported military strength as represented by the hundreds of tons of sophisticated armaments, tanks, missiles and MIGs that the Soviet Union has brought or sent to Angola since the time of the formation of the transitional government last January. (UNITA estimates that Russia and its client states and allies have already delivered enough arms and weaponry to wipe out every Angolan town and village, destroy each of Angola's few schools and hospitals, kill every Angolan man, woman and child 20 times over - and still the Soviet weapons pour in. They come by shipload and planeload day after day, week after week, into the ports of Luanda. Congo-BrazzaVille, Guinea-Conakry and Dar-es-Salaam, where they are expeditiously put in the hands of MPLA and its 3,000 Lumumba-killing Katangese mercenaries. 3-4,000 Cuban, 1500 Mozambican war veterans, 400 Russian "advisers" and East German and other East European and other ill-assorted, misguided, adventurous counter-revolutionary forces from other parts of the world. (Here it would be fitting to point out that of the 3-4,000 Cubans dutifully dispatched by Castro at the Soviet's behest, most are Black Cuban infantry-men, who, in the prevailing racist class structure in Cuba, are usually led by white Cuban officers and technicians. Is Castro sending our Black brothers to Angola to defend the revolution of the Angolan people, or is he, while following the Soviet imperialist line, also opportunistically ridding himself of part of his worrisome "race problem" in the so-called "classless" state of Cuba? Is it an accident that it is the Black Cubans who are doing most of the fighting and dying on Russia's behalf in Angola, while the White officers, advisers and technicians live to fight another day?
Background of the Current War
Prior to the January 1975 Alvor agreement with Portugal, in which conditions were hammered out for the establishment of a transitional Angolan government prior to independence then set for November 11th,1975, UNITA had worked increasingly to bring the three movements together to build a common platform from which we could together negotiate with Portugal for the orderly transfer of power.
By early March, 1975, the mutual distrust and antagonism between MPLA and FNLA had begun to manifest itself in armed confrontations in the streets of Luanda, marking the beginning of the wanton killing of 20,000 Angolans who have died since that time - most of whom have been innocent civilian victims. Meanwhile, MPLA had begun to secretly stockpile weapons for the armed struggle for power that it was determined to win. Then, as now. UNITA did not believe that a military solution was the answer to Angola's historical. Geo-political, ethnic and ideological divisions. During this time (early March, late July) UNITA patriotically and repeatedly tried to mediate between the other two movements at Kakura. During this same period, UNITA continued to prepare for the previously agreed upon October elections by going throughout the country further organizing peasants and workers. while emphasizing UNITA's programmes for national unity, socialist development and national reconstruction. Incidentally, UNITA, unlike MPLA, has since its inception talked with the people in their traditional languages about the need for national unity, the need for socialist development, the need for the struggle against colpnialism, as well as the dangers of both right and left neo-colonlalism and imperialism. We have continued to do so. speaking the languages of the people, using terms, references, analogies and comparisons and examples that are a part of their own experiences of foreign oppression and exploitation. Therefore, UNITA's socialist principles and anti- imperialist stance is readily comprehended and accepted by the people because they can see how their own everyday lives are affected' by these concepts and practices. During the process of waging this political education campaign, UNITA already enjoying nearly a 60 per cent majority support of the Angolan people, began to get more and more popular support in places other than our traditional southern areas. which had been liberated during the guerrilla warfare against the Portuguese. As an example of this kind of popularity UNITA …
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Finally, MPLA's war acts against UNITA reached their climax in the August 5th firing upon President Savimbi's plane in the southern city of Silva Porto. UNITA could then no longer delude itself with the wishful thought that it would be possible to have a peaceful settlement between the three Angolan liberation movements. We took the shooting upon our President's plane as the sign that UNITA must, however regretfully, declare war on MPLA and enter the fighting. To do less would have been a betrayal of the masses of Angolans who see UNITA's revolutionary principles and deeds as the hope of justice, peace and progress in our country.
UNITA's Military Position Immediately Following Its Entry into the Civil War
Because UNITA had lived and worked among the people and fought the Portuguese from bases inside the country, with no external support or propaganda apparatus, it had never received any significant support from the outside world. Instead it had always rightly practised a Policy of independence and self-reliance; that is relying only on the support of the Angolan people in our guerrilla war against Portugal. Therefore, at the time of our entry into the current fighting in Angola, we did not have a ready source of arms. UNITA had no superpower connections. Thus UNITA, while politically strong, was very weak militarily, having begun only recently to receive modest supplies of weapons from African countries who had begun to recognize UNITA as the Pan Africanist hope for Angola. But, since no African country manufactures weapons, these friendly African states could only share with UNITA the weapons they had secured from the major powers through a variety of trade and aid relationships. By this means, UNITA indirectly received weapons made in Russia, China, the United States, France and other weapon-manufacturing countries. With these modest supplies, coupled with the critical and active support of the Angolan population, principally in the south and centre, UNITA began a counter offensive against MPLA-Soviet Union with their tons of tanks, bombs. bazookas and other heavy and ultra-sophisticated weaponry from the Soviets and their lackey states and clients. But, not only had the Soviet bloc sent all these thousands of tons of weapons, but it also began to pour in "advisers and technicians" of all descriptions - Russian, East German, Czechoslovakian and Cuban mercenaries.
Finally, the Soviet-supported state of Cuba, there-to-for always regarded by the world as a friend and supporter of the socialist aspirations of the world's peoples, allowed itself to be used and/or bullied and coerced by Russia into supplying 3-4000 Cuban infantrymen to fight against the very Angolan people who comprise the huge peasantry and much of the smaller proletariat in our country. Furthermore, these 3-4000 Cuban infantrymen are mostly BLACKS, led by mostly white officers!
Tanzania's Vacillation and Hypocrisy and the Effect It has Had on the Course of the Angolan Civil War
Clearly the conditions outlined have demanded that UNITA begin to quickly seek additional armaments to meet the Soviet threat. Tanks cannot be destroyed by rifles. Carbines will not deflect missiles. And armour plates are no shields for bazookas. Heavier armaments needed to be found.
If UNITA was not to take the reactionary position of meekly accepting military defeat of its revolutionary forces and of surrendering the people of Angola into the waiting clutches of Soviet imperialism, then UNITA had to decide to do whatever is necessary to withstand and defeat the imperialistic Soviet onslaught.
Thus UNITA began scouting the world market for the tanks, bazookas, missiles and anti-missiles needed to match those of the Soviet Union. Where could they be found? Since Africa doesn't manufacture such weapons they must necessarily come from sources outside the Continent of Africa.
UNITA, which had earlier in 1975 sent a goodwill delegation to China, used the good offices of President Julius Nyerere to help secure such armaments from China. (Nyerere, of course, after several long discussions with President Savimbi, had been duly convinced - he said at the time - of the need to support UNITA, which he had by then learned was a revolutionary, Pan African socialist party. China agreed to help UNITA in its revolutionary struggle against Soviet imperialism in Angola and in August, 1975. sent UNITA a vast quantity of badly needed weapons to the port of Dar-es-Salaam, where 15 trucks had been sent overland to pick them up for transport back to UNITA bases in southern Angola.
Meanwhile, MPLA-Soviet Union was on a military rampage in the South and quickly by force gobbled up Luso, Sa da Bandeira, Mocamades, Lobito and other cities where UNITA has always had virtually total political support. These quick military victories, along with MPLA-Soviet bloc worldwide propaganda projecting MPLA as the "party of the people", "controlling 12 out of 16 Angolan provinces", etc., apparently convinced Nyererle that he should not - in spite of his previous agreement with China and UNITA -- should not be seen to be helping UNITA by allowing the use of Dar-es-Salaam for importation and delivery of weapons to us.
When he refused to allow UNITA to pick up its supplies, Nyerere offered us the spurious excuse that he did not want to further the war of brother against brother. This would have been an understandable position, except that at the very same time he was allowing the Russlans and others to deliver hundreds of tons of weapons into Dar-es-Salaam where they were quickly flown to Luanda and other MPLA-Soviet captured cities!
In other words, it is all right and "revolutionary" for MPLA-Soviets to kill UNITA militants, supporters and other Angolans; but wrong and "counterrevolutionary" for UNITA to fight back in defence of the people's revolution. (Is this the Nyerere that Pan Africanists everywhere have looked up to? Pan Africanists all over Africa and indeed the world will be taking a harder look at Julius Nyerere and his various vacillations that, as frequently as not, find him on the side of imperialism in Africa.)
At this point, with the weapons we had begun to receive from African countries and other sources, and the weapons captured from MPLA soldiers fleeing after defeat at the hands of now better armed UNITA militants and an aroused populace, we were able to begin to further our counter offensive to recapture some of UNITA's lost positions in the South. Soon also, UNITA began to receive some heavy armaments by another route from China. The increased supplies have been of tremendous importance in helping UNITA recapture all of its southern territory and to advance northwards.
However, armaments alone were not enough to solve the problem of countering the Soviet-MPLA offensive to force their regime on Angola, because the only combat experience that UNITA troops had had was in guerrilla warfare against the Portuguese. Our guerrilla-trained and seasoned army had by and large never even seen a tank or a missile, so it was necessary to quickly secure positional battle technicians and experts on modern weaponry. These technicians were recruited where they inevitably were to be found - among the European community in Africa, and they consist mainly of French and Portuguese who had fled to South Africa following the beginning of armed conflicts between MPLA and FNLA last spring.
It is absolute and total lie that South Africans on Pretoria's payroll are fighting with UNITA troops. UNITA - like MPLA and FNLA - has within its ranks some Whites who for generations have considered themselves Angolans and who cannot be equated with the mercenaries, opportunists and imperialist interventionists who are fighting with MPLA. All other Whites in UNITA's ranks are temporarily there as instructors from our sources of arms suppliers or from friendly African independent states.
South Africa's Involvement in Angola
South Africa, for some reason of its own, invaded southern Angola in July, 1975. Both UNITA and MPLA troops attempted to repel this invasion, and both were militarily defeated in the Cunene. The whole town of Ongiva (Pereira D'ECA) was destroyed by South Africa in its successful battle to secure for itself the area of the Cunene Dam along with the Namibian border. Only one single building remains standing in the town of Pereira D'ECA. This invasion was publicized throughout the world and thus South Africa's presence in Angola since July is a matter of record, and UNITA has never felt called upon to deny this fact.
As a matter of record, it should also be known that one of UNITA's leaders and most valiant guerrilla fighters, Vakalakutu, led UNIT A's forces against the South African invasion in which it established a toehold in southern Angola. At this very moment, brother Vakalakutu is somewhere in southern Angola with his remaining troops making guerrilla attacks against the invaders.
Moreover, contrary to Soviet-MPLA charges of a South African-UNITA alliance, UNITA, since its inception, has always enjoyed fraternal relations with the militants of SWAPO from Namibia, who have long been fighting against the Pretoria regime in Namibia. SWAPO guerrillas have lived in UNITA camps in southern Angola, shared UNITA's food and armed supplies and have launched most of their attacks into Namibia from UNITA bases. When the South Africans engage in "hot pursuit" against SWAPO guerrillas, in the process they have often killed UNITA guerrillas along with SWAPO guerrillas. Therefore, the lie that Soviet-MPLA propagandists are spreading that "UNITA wants an alliance with South Africa, represents the depth of the evil and of contradictory absurdities and lies that these imperialist propagandists are spreading from all corners of the globe.
UNITA fought its battles against the Portuguese on the terrain of Angola and never enjoyed the external metropolitan sidewalk cafe, bar and coffee house associations with European journalists, who now are found mindlessly repeating and propagating MPLA-Soviet propaganda that has been digested by them over a period of years of these kinds of contacts and.associations. Even now, European reporters mainly continue to file their stories from Luanda, where they only have access to the "news" that MPLA gives them. By and Iarge, they have not been to Huambo, Silva Porto, Luso, or Sa da Bandiera to talk with UNITA leaders and militants. UNITA. End Item.