Africa-Press – Angola. Pre-publication of “Return to Europe – The International Position of Portuguese Democracy”, a book by Carlos Gaspar which also tells how Angola fell into the hands of the MPLA with the full complicity of the MFA.
“The end of the first global empire is the end of the last European empire, which closes the cycle of decline opened by the Great War with the fulfillment of Paul Valery’s prophecy about Europe’s return to its starting position as a small cape of Asia”. This is the beginning of Carlos Gaspar’s latest book “Regresso à Europa – A Estácio Internacional da Democracia Portuguesa” (Return to Europe – The International Position of Portuguese Democracy), which has just been published by the Instituto de Defesa Nacional (National Defense Institute).
In it, this researcher from the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI) at Universidade Nova de Lisboa covers the period from the last years of the previous regime to the consolidation of democracy, analyzing Portugal’s international repositioning and the way in which it was framed within the dynamics of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union.
The process of decolonization naturally occupies a central place in this work, from which we publish an excerpt today, precisely the one that focuses on that short period that runs from March 11 to November 25, 1975, a period during which the future of Angola, the former colony that still today arouses the most debates, and passions, in Portugal, was also determined. Here is that excerpt.
The last phase of the post-authoritarian transition was dominated by a parallel escalation in the revolutionary crisis in Portugal, culminating in the counter-coup of 25 November 1975, and in the decolonization crises in Angola and East Timor, which led to their internationalization, with the intervention of external powers, including the Soviet Union and the United States.
Following March 11, the PS, the democratic parties and the Catholic Church, as well as the United States, the European allies and the People’s Republic of China, fear the establishment of a leftist praetorian regime in Portugal, which could jeopardize its continued membership of NATO, jeopardize the post-Franco transition in Spain and provoke a civil war in the far west of Europe. On the fringes of the Portuguese crisis, the PCI, the PCE and the PCF fear that the PCP’s strategy of taking power in alliance with the MFA against the democratic parties could jeopardize the credibility of its commitment to the rules of pluralist democracy and exclude the “Eurocommunists” from the circles of power in Western Europe. For their part, both the PCP and the parties of the CONCP and their allies in the socialist camp fear that the shift to the left in the revolutionary transition will not last and could jeopardize both the establishment of a neutralist regime in Portugal and the transfer of power to the MPLA in Angola, which is the key to decolonization, along the Soviet line.
The Portuguese military elite, from Soares Carneiro to Melo Antunes, consider the MPLA to be their chosen partner in Angolan decolonization. Unlike the FNLA and UNITA, the MPLA is not a tribal and racist force, nor is it dependent on any of Angola’s neighboring states, and its main leaders were trained in Portugal, where they belonged to the opposition. In Lisbon, the authorities postponed talks with the Angolan parties until Neto managed to consolidate his position as President of the MPLA. In Luanda, the CCP of the Angolan MFA and Admiral Rosa Coutinho, President of the Governing Junta, neutralized the white separatist forces to consolidate the MPLA’s dominant position in the capital; they installed MPLA forces alongside Portuguese forces in the enclave of Cabinda, which was threatened by the separatists of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC); and transferred to the MPLA the Katangese forces integrated into the Portuguese military apparatus.
The Portuguese military elite, from Soares Carneiro to Melo Antunes, consider the MPLA as their chosen partner in Angolan decolonization. Unlike the FNLA and UNITA, the MPLA is not a tribal and racist force, nor is it dependent on any of Angola’s neighboring states, and its main leaders were trained in Portugal, where they belonged to the opposition.
The Portuguese authorities cannot ignore the division between Angolan parties in the decolonization process, but the MFA’s political leadership clearly prefers the MPLA, as it considers it the only force that: can guarantee continuity in relations between Portugal and the future Angolan state, including the permanence of the white community; is prepared to stop the FNLA, responsible for the massacres of Portuguese settlers in 1961; and can defend the national independence and territorial integrity of Angola, including the enclave of Cabinda, against neighboring states.
Mário Soares at the Alvor Summit
The quadripartite summit in Alvor was preceded by a bilateral summit in Algiers between Agostinho Neto and Melo Antunes. Immediately afterwards, in Moscow, the President of the MPLA informed Soviet leaders that he had made a secret agreement with the MFA against the FNLA and that this support guaranteed him a unique position in the decolonisation process. However, the FNLA, supported by the United States, China, South Africa and Zaire, had a military advantage on the ground, and the MPLA urgently needed military assistance from its allies. In January 1975, the Soviet Union decided to renew its support for the MPLA and resumed, on a large scale, its strategy of intervention in the Congo crisis of 1961, mobilised the socialist camp, including Cuba and the GDR, and began a programme of military training for the People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA) and the transfer of weapons to Angola.
Soviet weapons, as well as Cuban military advisers, began to arrive in mid-March to ensure that MPLA forces were in a position to counterbalance FNLA forces. In the same vein, they made it possible to neutralize the FNLA in Luanda, where the fighting that took place on the eve of May Day confirmed the inability of Portuguese military forces to separate the rival parties and control the capital, at the same time as the military began to withdraw, with the gradual withdrawal of positions throughout the territory, including the borders and the main ports of Angola.
Soviet weapons, as well as Cuban military advisers, begin to arrive in mid-March to ensure that MPLA forces are able to counterbalance FNLA forces.
The United States was lagging behind. At the end of April, Ford and Kissinger received Kaunda, who expressed concern about the growing strength of Agostinho Neto’s MPLA, aligned with Moscow. Kinshasa and Lusaka, which supported the FNLA – reinforced by the forces of Daniel Chipenda, who had since been expelled from the MPLA – and UNITA had every interest and the means necessary to facilitate decolonisation in Angola, especially since Zaire and Zambia depended on the Angolan railways to guarantee access to the Atlantic and the export of their raw materials. China also supported the two anti-Soviet Angolan movements, and South Africa, whose strategic and military position was dominant in southern Africa, was not prepared to accept a pro-Soviet regime in Angola, on the border with South-West Africa (Namibia). Following Kaunda’s visit, Ford approved a proposal by Kissinger to significantly increase support for the FNLA and UNITA.
In May, the MPLA and FNLA battled for control of Caxito, a critical position for controlling access to Luanda. In June, at the Naukuru summit, Kenyatta met with Neto, Holden Roberto, and Savimbi for the last time. A tripartite agreement was impossible, and instead, Kaunda and Marien Ngouabi, President of Congo-Brazzaville, advocated a common front between the MPLA and UNITA against the FNLA. Melo Antunes is prepared to revise the Alvor agreements, including the formation of a single army, based on a coalition between the MPLA and UNITA, which the OAU considers the likely winner of the Angolan elections.
The MPLA is unprepared to share power with any of its rivals and, on July 9th, goes on the offensive to secure exclusive control of the capital. The Portuguese military forces do not oppose the MPLA offensive, which expels the FNLA and UNITA from Luanda and makes it impossible to fulfill the Alvor agreements.
For the Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs, the agreement between the two movements is essential, both to ensure the peaceful transfer of power and avoid civil war and the internationalization of the Angolan conflict, and to reduce Neto’s dependence on the Soviet bloc, which could compromise the future of relations between Portugal and Angola.
However, the MPLA is not prepared to share power with any of its rivals and, on July 9th, goes on the offensive to secure sole control of the capital. The Portuguese military forces do not oppose the MPLA offensive, which expels the FNLA and UNITA from Luanda and makes it impossible to fulfill the Alvor agreements.
On the same day, in Lisbon, Mário Soares and the Socialist Party (PS) withdrew from the Fourth Provisional Government, whose continuity was called into question, even before Emídio Guerreiro’s PPD followed in its partner’s footsteps a week later. The resignation of the Socialist ministers, on the eve of the mass demonstrations in Porto and Fonte Luminosa, completed the PS’s split with the PCP and Vasco Gonçalves and solidified its convergence with Melo Antunes and the more moderate wing of the MFA, which would be the origin of the “Group of Nine” manifesto.
Differences between the PS and PCP have been mounting since the first Socialist Congress and the split of the Popular Socialist Front (FSP). The Law on Trade Union Unity, which strengthens communist control over the Intersindical and the trade union movement, is approved by a majority in the Council of Twenty, confirming the convergence between the PCP and the leftist currents of the MFA. The PS and its Maoist allies in the PCP (ML), which control the Chemical Workers’ Union, organize a first mass rally in Lisbon against trade union unity, at which Soares and Salgado Zenha take the floor to criticize their coalition partners.
▲ The day after March 11th, the driver of this car would end up being killed after passing this group of soldiers. They accused him of being a “fascist.”
The March 11 countercoup clearly demonstrates the PCP’s determination to seize power with the MFA. Its offensive strategy is confirmed the day after the April 25 elections, when the Intersindical (Union of Workers’ Party) attempts to prevent Soares and the PS from entering the 1o de Maio Stadium to participate in the official Workers’ Day celebrations, alongside President Costa Gomes, Prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves, and other left-wing parties, including forces without parliamentary representation, such as the Popular Socialist Front (FSP).
The Constituent Assembly elections mark a crucial turning point in the post-authoritarian transition, which is now dominated by the tension between the opposing principles of democratic legitimacy and revolutionary legitimacy. To assert its political status as the leading democratic party, the PS needs to isolate the PCP, split the MFA, and translate its electoral majority into an effective mass mobilization capacity to challenge the revolutionary legitimacy of the military in power. To assert its status as the revolutionary vanguard, the PCP needs to marginalize the PS, neutralize internal opposition within the MFA to its allies from the Gonçalvista wing, and institutionalize the “People-MFA Alliance” to challenge the democratic legitimacy of the Constituent Assembly and the parliamentary parties.
The Revolutionary Council and the MFA Assembly are unable to define a common praetorian strategy, and internal currents are exhausted in an “epidemic of plans,” which serve to confirm the divisions within the MFA elites.
The Political Action Plan, approved by the CR, describes the MFA as the “Movement for the Liberation of the Portuguese People” and seeks to initiate a process of internal decolonization to guarantee national independence through the construction of a socialist society through a “pluralistic path”. The Guiding Document of the People-MFA Alliance, presented by the Army Dynamization Office (GDE), was approved by the MFA Assembly on July 8. The document rejects any external hegemony over the Portuguese revolution; defends “the independent future of Portugal” based on relations with the former colonies; and defines the creation of a national power structure in which the Revolutionary Council becomes the “highest body of sovereignty” and in which the assemblies of the military units and the residents’ and workers’ committees will form, with the revolutionary vanguard of the MFA, a National Popular Assembly to delegitimize the elected Constituent Assembly. The “Document of Nine” was written by Melo Antunes and its first signatories were the nine members of the Council of the Revolution who had broken with the Gonçalvist wing. The document, published on 8 August, rejects both the “Eastern European-style socialist model of society” and the Western European social-democratic model; it defines itself against the “Leninist theory of the vanguard” and defends a “socialist society” inseparable from democracy and political pluralism, taking into account that “the geopolitical and strategic context” of Portugal in Europe, as well as its past and culture, prevent the separation between freedom and the construction of socialism. Although it does not mention NATO, the document emphasises relations with EFTA and the European Communities, with the Third World and former colonies, with the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and with the European and Arab countries of the Mediterranean. The “COPCON Document”, adopted by Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, distances itself from both the PCP, aligned with the Soviet bloc, and the “Group of Nine”, which leans towards EFTA and the European Communities, in order to defend national independence, based on relations with the Third World and former colonies. The document presents its own version of the “MFA-People Alliance” and “people’s power”, including the formation of revolutionary armed forces, in which soldiers must elect their representatives in military units by class to defend their interests.
The Western allies are divided: Ford and Kissinger do not want to accept a “Marxist government” in NATO, but the German Social Democratic Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, as well as Prime Minister Wilson – who, as leader of the Labour opposition, had demanded Portugal’s expulsion from NATO following the Wiriyamu massacre – understand that all is not lost.
The MFA’s internal divisions are accentuated both by the PCP’s strategy of excluding the socialists from the political-military power bloc and by the PS’s strategy of isolating the communists and the Gonçalvista wing within the MFA. While Cunhal accepts the Guiding Document of the People-MFA Alliance, Soares considers it unacceptable that the MFA Assembly, chaired by Costa Gomes, could approve a document that directly undermines the constitutional platform between the MFA and the political parties and the very raison d’être of the Constituent Assembly. The following day, the socialist ministers launch a government crisis, which is prolonged by the impossibility of reconstituting a coalition between the PS and the PCP and leads to the formation of the V Provisional Government, a “non-partisan” government led by Vasco Gonçalves, dominated by the PCP, and presented by the President of the Republic as a “transitional government.”
In 1975, US President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger did not want to accept a “Marxist government” in NATO.
Meanwhile, the Socialist Party (PS) and the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) are mobilizing their external support. Western allies are divided: Ford and Kissinger refuse to accept a “Marxist government” within NATO, but German Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, as well as Prime Minister Wilson—who, as leader of the Labour opposition, had demanded Portugal’s expulsion from NATO following the Wiriyamu massacre—believe that all is not lost, especially after the electoral victory of the PS and the democratic parties in the April 25 election.
Mário Soares and the Socialist Party can count not only on their European allies but also on the United States Ambassador in Lisbon. Ambassador Carlucci argues that the Portuguese crisis is a European crisis and that, therefore, the United States must recognize European leaders as the primary responsible parties for its resolution. Similarly, Carlucci argues that Washington’s open support for the separatist threat of the Azores Liberation Front (FLA) would be extremely detrimental to its Portuguese allies’ fight against the communist threat in Portugal.
Ford wants to expel Portugal from NATO and argues that the North Atlantic Council should publicly recognize the importance of Spain’s contribution to Western defense, but European allies reject his proposal and criticize the President of the United States for not receiving Spanish opposition figures during his next visit to Madrid.
In May, at the North Atlantic Council summit, Western leaders sought to articulate their positions on the Portuguese crisis and the Spanish transition. Schmidt organised a meeting between Kissinger and Melo Antunes, in which the Secretary of State reiterated that the United States’ interest in Portugal was limited to the Azores and criticised the “third-worldist” tendency, which was incompatible with Portugal’s continued membership of NATO: “It is one thing to have a foreign policy like Boumédiène’s, but quite another to have a foreign policy like Boumédiène’s and be in NATO.”
Ford wants to expel Portugal from NATO and argues that the North Atlantic Council should publicly recognise the importance of Spain’s contribution to Western defence, but the European allies reject his proposal and criticise the President of the United States for not receiving figures from the Spanish opposition during his next visit to Madrid. The Federal Chancellor, who wants to secure Western support for the Socialist Party, democratic forces and moderate military forces, tells the US President in a bilateral meeting that he is not prepared to accept a scenario of secession of the Azores, which is the border between Western Europe and the United States in the Atlantic. Schmidt tells Ford that the US priority should be to prevent direct intervention by the Soviet Union in Portugal.
The German line, which prevails in Western strategy, is politically innovative in containing a revolutionary threat that is unprecedented within the framework of NATO. From the very beginning, German party foundations, particularly the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, linked to the SPD, have been decisive in the construction of Portuguese democratic parties and are at the origin of the formation of Portuguese party foundations, which receive the external funding essential to sustain their political and trade union struggle.
At the Helsinki Conference, the main Western leaders – Ford, Schmidt, Wilson and President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing – jointly pressured the General Secretary of the CPSU to convey to him that the Soviet strategy in the Portuguese revolution was incompatible with détente, institutionalized by the Final Act signed in Helsinki on 1 August 1975. The following day, in Stockholm, Mário Soares met with Olof Palme, Willy Brandt, Harold Wilson, Bruno Kreisky, Yitzhak Rabin, Joop van den Uyl and Mitterrand, at a summit in which the main leaders of the Socialist International formed the Committee of Friendship and Solidarity for Democracy and Socialism in Portugal. The Group of Six – Brandt, Palme, Wilson, Kreisky, van den Uyl and Mitterrand – leads the Stockholm Committee, which transforms the Portuguese crisis into a crisis of European détente and mobilizes the ruling parties in Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Austria to support the Socialist Party.
The final phase of decolonization coincided with the Helsinki Conference, which enshrined the principles of “détente”
The strategic convergence between the United States and its European allies gave rise to a NATO Quadripartite Group (QUAD) between the United States, Great Britain, the Federal Republic and France – later known as the transatlantic QUAD – which was formed to address the Portuguese crisis, first at the level of the political directors of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and, later, at the level of ministers, with the presence of Kissinger, Callaghan, Genscher and Jean Sauvagnargues, Minister of Foreign Affairs of France.
For their part, Cunhal and the PCP can count on the support of the CPSU, the SED, and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and on the opposition of the PCI, the PCE, and even the PCF, whose democratic credentials are being questioned by the revolutionary strategy in Portugal. PCE Secretary-General Santiago Carrillo openly supports the PS, and in August, Konstantin Zarodov, editor of the Prague International Review, launches a polemic against the “Eurocommunists,” in which he contrasts “uninterrupted revolution” with respect for the institutions of “bourgeois democracy,” revolutionary “political majorities” with parliamentary “arithmetic majorities,” and the “hegemony of the communist vanguard” with alliances with the socialists.
In the Portuguese crisis, the division of the European communist parties contrasts with the unity of the socialist and social-democratic parties, and tensions in the Soviet bloc increase with the escalation of the PCP’s offensive, which consolidates convergence in the Western camp.
The Communist Party of Romania, and even the Polish United Workers’ Party, have distanced themselves from the PCP’s strategy, which disrupts the European détente policy. For its part, as in the Angolan crisis, Moscow seeks to maintain a secondary position, and no Soviet official advocates military intervention in the Portuguese revolutionary crisis, which would be a casus belli with the United States and its European allies, since Portugal remains a NATO member.
In the Portuguese crisis, the division of the European communist parties contrasts with the unity of the socialist and social-democratic parties, and tensions in the Soviet bloc increase with the escalation of the PCP’s offensive, which consolidates convergence in the Western camp.
The fourth crisis of the post-authoritarian transition, which began with the last MFA Assembly in Tancos and ended with the coup attempt of November 25, is inseparable from the Angolan decolonization crisis, which became irreversibly internationalized following South Africa’s military intervention and the suspension of the Alvor Accords. This crisis culminated in the Soviet-Cuban intervention, which preceded the MPLA’s declaration of Angolan independence in Luanda on November 11 and continued beyond the withdrawal of Zairot and South African forces.
In September, the moderate wing forming around the “Group of Nine” confirmed its dominance in the Army and Air Force at assemblies of the three branches of the Armed Forces, convened to address Costa Gomes’ proposal to replace Vasco Gonçalves as Prime Minister and appoint him Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces (CEMGFA), the key position in the military hierarchy held by the President of the Republic. On September 5, the MFA Assembly, where the Army and Air Force are represented by their respective Chiefs of Staff, rejected the proposal to appoint Brigadier General Vasco Gonçalves as Chief of Staff of the Air Force—denounced by Soares as a “direct affront to NATO”—and initiated the restructuring of the Revolutionary Council.
Melo Antunes is the determining figure in the entire decolonization process
On the Council, the Gonçalvista wing is reduced to representing the Navy (three members) and loses its majority to the “Group of Nine,” which dominates the representation of the Army (six members) and the Air Force (three members). The incumbents include the President of the Republic, the Military Prime Minister, the Chief of Staff of the Navy (CEMGFA), the Chief of Staff of the Navy (CEMA), the Chief of Staff of the Army (CEME), the Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CEMFA), and the Commander of COPCON; Council members who are ministers may combine functions. Eurico Corvacho loses his seat on the Council and is replaced as Commander of the Northern Military Region by Pires Veloso, while Franco Charais and Pezarat Correia, who remain on the Council, continue to command the Central and Southern Military Regions, respectively. Only the Command of the Lisbon Military Region, which Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho combines with COPCON, escapes the new majority of the Revolutionary Council.
The MFA Assembly did not meet again. The changes to the Revolutionary Council were announced on September 18th, and the following day, the Sixth and final Provisional Government took office. Admiral Pinheiro de Azevedo was the new Prime Minister and was accompanied by seven military ministers, including Melo Antunes, Vítor Alves, and Vítor Crespo, and seven civilian ministers representing the PS (four members), the PPD (two members), and the PCP (one member). Electoral representation was taken into account in the composition of the Government to confirm the convergence between the PS and the moderate wing of the MFA: for the first time, the principle of democratic legitimacy was recognized on an equal footing with the principle of revolutionary legitimacy.
The impasse in the conflict between official institutions and the revolutionary movement creates a classic situation of “dual power” – Trotsky’s formula to describe the revolutionary situation in Russia under the provisional governments in 1917.
Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho’s COPCON survives and becomes the epicenter of the revolutionary mobilization of the PCP and most far-left groups, federated in the Revolutionary United Front (FUR), which paralyzes the institutions in an escalation of violence leading up to the coup of November 25th. The Spanish Embassy is assaulted by the FUR, despite COPCON’s inaction; the civilian and military leftist factions are at the forefront of the formation of the United Soldiers Will Win (SUV), which subverts the military hierarchy; the PCP and the Intersindical (Unified Workers’ Party) lead the siege of the Constituent Assembly, which ends with the expulsion of the deputies from the São Bento Palace, without COPCON’s intervention; the Prime Minister is blocked in his official residence; and Terreiro do Paço is occupied, in turn, by demonstrations by the FUR, the Intersindical, the Lisbon Industrial Belt, the SUV, and by demonstrations by the PS, the PPD, and their far-left allies.
The impasse in the conflict between official institutions and the revolutionary movement creates a classic situation of “dual power”—Trotsky’s formula for describing the revolutionary situation in Russia during the provisional governments in 1917. The standstill in Lisbon forces the last Provisional Government and the Constituent Assembly to depart for the North. COPCON, the Gonçalvist wing, and their allies in the PCP and FUR prepare to seize power in the capital, while the operational command of the “Group of Nine,” led by Lieutenant Colonel Ramalho Eanes, is being organized, preparing for the countercoup.
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The November 25th countercoup marked the end of the MFA and the revolutionary transition, too late to contain the internationalization of the decolonization crises in Angola and East Timor, where exogenous forces were proving decisive, unlike the Portuguese crisis, where endogenous forces prevailed.
Portuguese in Luanda trying to recover their money before returning to Portugal
The Portuguese authorities’ last major decisions regarding Angolan decolonization were made in August. Costa Gomes took the initiative to organize, with US support, a humanitarian airlift that would bring tens of thousands of refugees, mostly white settlers, to Portugal, while Vasco Gonçalves suspended the Alvor agreements and paved the way for the internationalization of the conflict, accelerated by the intervention of South African and Cuban military forces in Angola.
In August, the decolonization crisis became an international crisis, the outcome of which was decided within the framework of the strategic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Ironically, at their final meeting in Helsinki, neither Ford nor Brezhnev addressed this issue: the US President, who had just decided to further increase support for the FNLA and Zaire, was confident in the victory of his local allies, as was the General Secretary of the CPSU, who chose his allies better and whose reports confirmed the MPLA’s control of Luanda, Cabinda, and the main Angolan ports.
In Havana, Fidel Castro, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, receives a visit from Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, who advocates sending regular Cuban troops to support the MPLA. The General Staff is finalizing military plans for the intervention in Angola, and the Cuban armed forces plan to organize an airlift.
In Pretoria, Prime Minister Vorster decides to increase support for the FNLA and UNITA, while South African Defence Force (SADF) troops have been occupying Angolan hydroelectric facilities on the border with South West Africa since early August. In Havana, Fidel Castro, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, receives a visit from Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, who advocates sending regular Cuban troops to support the MPLA. The General Staff is finalizing military plans for the intervention in Angola, and the Cuban armed forces plan to organize an airlift, with the indispensable support of the Soviet Union, to transport the Ministry of the Interior’s elite troops to Luanda, where hundreds of Cuban military advisors have been supervising and training the FAPLA for several months.
On October 14, South Africa invaded Angola, beginning Operation Savannah. South African forces organized two separate columns, each with a thousand SADF soldiers: the Zulu column, comprising SADF forces, Chipenda’s FNLA, and former Flechas—Angolan soldiers in the Portuguese Army—will advance from the Namibian border to Lobito, after occupying Sá da Bandeira and Moçâmedes; and the Foxbat column, formed in Silva Porto with SADF and UNITA forces, will advance to Malange, Luso, and Lobito. Both columns have the ultimate goal of reaching Luanda.
▲ Cubans in Angola: Otelo’s request to Fidel Castro for Cuban troops to help the MPLA was decisive in the Soviet Union supporting the operation
The South African invasion not only undermines China’s position, which will suspend its support for the FNLA and UNITA, but also strengthens the MPLA’s position in the OAU and, in a way, legitimizes its request for Cuban intervention in the absence of an African alternative. Cuban forces are prepared to intervene, but must await the Soviet decision. On November 3, Moscow informs Havana that it has decided to recognize the declaration of independence of the People’s Republic of Angola. The following day, Castro orders the launch of Operation Carlota, and the Soviet airlift, with stops in the Azores and Guinea-Conakry, begins transporting Cuban troops to Luanda. They arrive in the Angolan capital before November 11 and immediately depart for the front lines.
On November 10, the FNLA offensive against Luanda, supported by Zairot forces, was halted by the FAPLA and Cuban special forces in Quifangondo. The following day, Neto declared the independence of the People’s Republic of Angola, which was recognized by the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the Soviet bloc states, as well as the new states formed in the Portuguese colonies. Portugal did not recognize the MPLA regime. On November 13, South African forces captured Novo Redondo, 250 km from Luanda, but Cuban forces halted the Zulu column’s advance toward Porto Amboim by destroying the bridges on the Queve River and stopped the Foxbat column before it reached Gabela.
The Soviet Union guarantees the permanent reinforcement of Cuban forces with new troops and heavy weapons, including tanks, artillery, and fighter jets. Diplomatic pressure from the United States, which claims to be surprised by both the South African and Soviet-Cuban interventions, managed to interrupt the airlift for a brief period in December. But its efforts to force the withdrawal of Cuban forces were compromised by the South African withdrawal on December 19th.
“I was sleeping soundly and they come to me talking about Portugal, about which I know nothing. Then they tell me that Costa Gomes wanted to visit the Soviet Union. I received him, you can see the statement. I gave him trade. We do trade with many countries. As for the leader of the PCP, Álvaro Cunhal, I’ve never seen him in my life.”
Brezhnev’s Response to Kissinger
: In the name of détente, Kissinger pressured Moscow to force Cuba’s withdrawal and return to a power-sharing formula among the three Angolan parties. But on January 16, 1976, the Soviet Union and Cuba signed a new military agreement, institutionalizing their strategic cooperation in Angola. Three days later, in Moscow, during a meeting between Brezhnev and Kissinger, the US Secretary of State attempted to link the SALT II talks with the Angolan crisis. The Soviet Secretary General refused to discuss the Angolan crisis and responded with a reference to the Portuguese revolution: “I was sleeping soundly, and they come to me talking about Portugal, about which I know nothing. Then they tell me that Costa Gomes wanted to visit the Soviet Union. I received him; you can see the communiqué. I gave him trade. We trade with many countries. As for the leader of the PCP, Álvaro Cunhal, I’ve never seen him in my life.” And only then does he talk about Angola: “Then the Angolan situation appears. Portugal grants it independence. Neto spoke with Cuba after the aggression, and Cuba agreed to support him. There is no Soviet presence in Angola.”
At that time, thousands of regular Cuban troops were fighting in Angola, supported by over a thousand Soviet military advisors. Georgi Arbatov, one of the Soviet experts who criticized the Soviet-Cuban intervention as a precedent incompatible with détente, recalls that, in the Kremlin, the Angolan War is compared to the Spanish War: in 1936, Moscow lacked the necessary strength to save the Spanish Republic; forty years later, the MPLA Republic survived because the Soviet Union became a superpower and fulfilled its internationalist duty.
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Victims of the clashes in Luanda, photographs that Portuguese newspapers of the time ignored
The end of the empire was a disaster waiting to happen. After the long colonial war, with thousands of civilian and military casualties, the exodus of hundreds of thousands of whites from Mozambique and Angola, mainly to Portugal and South Africa; the execution of native soldiers who fought alongside Portuguese forces on the three fronts of the colonial war; and the outbreak of protracted civil wars in the two former Portuguese colonies in Southern Africa are all the result of a late and hasty decolonization.
The democratic transition was an unexpected success. After the coup d’état on 25 November, it was possible to gradually restore institutional normality in the Armed Forces and redefine a new transition formula, with the Second Platform of Agreement between the MFA and the political parties, whose signature preceded the approval of the new democratic Constitution, with the votes of the PS, the PPD-PSD, the PCP and the MDP. On 25 April 1976, the first Assembly of the Republic was elected, where the PS and the PPD-PSD maintained their two-thirds majority and the CDS replaced the PCP as the third largest parliamentary party. Two months later, General Ramalho Eanes, Chief of Staff of the Army and candidate of the three largest democratic parties, was elected President of the Republic, the first to be chosen by direct and universal suffrage. The institutionalisation of the constitutional regime of pluralist democracy was the decisive step in Portugal’s return to Europe.
André Malraux summed up the feat: for the first time in the history of the 20th century, the Mensheviks defeated the Bolsheviks – the socialists defeated the communists in a revolution initiated by a coup d’état. Samuel Huntington declared April 25th as the starting point of the third wave of democratization that changed the ideological balance between the Western alliance and the Soviet camp. After the post-authoritarian transitions in Southern Europe and Latin America, the democratic wave reached the Soviet bloc, where the post-communist transitions made possible the peaceful reunification of Germany and Europe at the end of the Cold War.
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