Angolan Myths and Realities
In Paul Trewhela's rush to sink the boot into Keith Somerville (his first piece, ‘Africa and the post-imperial British media and academic class', PoliticsWeb, 1 December 2014), he misses a few points of importance in the overall embroglio and in Lara Pawson's recent book. While historical shorthand records a massacre of 27 May 1977, President Agostinho Neto and the ruling MPLA actually carried out a series of massacres down to the eve of Neto's death in late 1979.
The numbers killed are still hidden by the rulers, but Pawson quotes one informant who referred to a total of ‘at least 80,000', or over one per cent of the country's population. Tens of thousands were rounded up. In apparent result of such root and branch killings and purges, the MPLA's membership plummeted from 110,000 to 31,000 at the end of the 1970s, while that of the party's Central Committee fell by one-third.[i]
Somerville's silence was sustained and reprehensible, but as Trewhela well knows it was far from unique. Michael Wolfers' work, with Jane Bergerol, Angola in the Frontline (Zed Books, London, 1983), was arguably more culpable, in its unrelenting bias against Nito Alves, and the other Nitistas, while offering no source references for their harsh judgements.
One big problem for the analyst is the lack of information in English about the aims and intentions of Alves and his comrades. He had been a long time guerrilla on the northern front, and at independence Minister of the Interior: but Pawson pictures him as closely associated with the army rank and file and with youth.
Racism was a frequent element in his public discourse. The Nitistas claimed to speak for the black majority, against the undue influence of the minority in the MPLA composed of both people of mixed race and the tiny group of white Angolans.
Alves wanted to reduce the dominance of the MPLA's ruling elite, and to elevate the role and influence of the new neighbourhood and other popular groups springing up then in Luanda. Such ‘neighbourhood committees' had been prominent in Portugal's Carnation Revolution as it blossomed in 1974-75.[ii]
All this within the context of existential war with South Africa, 1975-89, where the latter enjoyed for most of the period the support of the United States, and Angola survived on the power, determination and sacrifices of non-democratic Cuba. In this hostile environment, the reformist aims of the Nitistas-if such they were-did not stand a chance.
Kenneth Good is Adjunct professor in global studies, RMIT, Melbourne, and visiting professor in politics, Rhodes University, Grahamstown
Footnotes:
[i] References are in my review of In the Name of the People in Politics Web, 29 September 2014.
[ii] Good, Trust in the Capacities of the People, Distrust in Elites, Lexington Books, Lanham, New York and London, 2014, chs 3 and 5.
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