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The Revolutions of ‘Portuguese’ Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Paul M. Whitaker
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Extract

To try to summarise in a few pages the present situation in ‘Portuguese’ Africa is at best a difficult task. Briefly, the three ‘Overseas Provinces’ (since the Portuguese constitutional revision of 1951 they are no longer called ‘colonies’) are in rebellion against continued Portuguese rule. Or, rather, elements in these territories are in rebellion. Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau are the sites of increasingly violent conflict as African nationalists intensify their guerrilla campaigns against a hardening Portuguese military resistance.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , April 1970 , pp. 15 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1970

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References

Page 16 note 1 Dissidents were sent off to institutions of higher learning in South Africa and Portugal to be cured of their ‘embryonic spirit of black nationalism’. Kitchen, Helen, ‘Conversation with Eduardo Mondlane’, in Africa Report (Washington), XII, 8, 11 1967, p. 31.Google Scholar

Page 16 note 2 The uprising was widely covered at the time by a number of correspondents who were in Luanda for the anticipated arrival there of the Portuguese liner, Santa Maria, hijacked on the high seas by a former Angolan colonial official, Henrique Galvão, who sought to draw attention to the deplorable conditions in Angola.

Page 17 note 1 Cf. Duffy, James, Portugal in Africa (Baltimore, 1962), pp. 220–1.Google Scholar

Page 17 note 2 See Wheeler, Douglas L., ‘The Portuguese Army in Angola’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), VII, 3, 1969, especially pp. 431–2.Google Scholar

Page 17 note 3 Much of the data cited throughout the article comes from personal interviews. This is especially true of statistics and information on current developments. Unfortunately, one of the requirements for my continuing access to candid and informed sources is that they should not be cited. I have attempted to indicate some of the secondary sources available; but frequently I disagree with the accuracy of certain published reports, between which there is substantial disparity, depending upon whether they rely upon ‘official’ Portuguese reports or ‘official’ nationalist accounts. On this problem, see Mondlane, Eduardo, The Struggle for Mozambique (London, 1969), pp. 140–1Google Scholar. Moreover, Mondlane does not fully acknowledge that both sides intentionally distort virtually all statistical reports of their activities.

Page 18 note 1 On 19 November 1969 the Portuguese Government announced that P.I.D.E. had been abolished and replaced by a new agency under the Minister of the Interior. See The New Tork Times, 20 and 21 November 1969.

Page 19 note 1 For the best account of the early phases of nationalist development and the beginning of the war, see Marcum, John, The Angolan Revolution, Vol. I: The Anatomy of an Explosion, 1950–1962 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969).Google Scholar

Page 19 note 2 Interview at M.P.L.A. office, Dar es Salaam, August 1968.

Page 20 note 1 Cf. Barnett, Donald, ‘Angola: report from Hanoi II’, in Ramparts (San Francisco), VII, ii, 04 1969, pp. 49–54Google Scholar, for a pro-M.P.L.A. account of his brief trip into the eastern fighting zone.

Page 20 note 2 M.P.L.A. communiqué, March 1968.

Page 20 note 3 Letter of 24 May 1968 from the Brazzaville office of M.P.L.A.

Page 20 note 4 In addition to the 350,000 refugees who had fled to the Congo between March 1961 and December 1963, there was a large pre-war community of Angolan émigrés; informal estimates of their numbers range between 400,000 and one million.

Page 20 note 5 Kwacha-Angola (Lusaka), U.N.I.T.A. bulletin, 6, 01–02 1967.Google Scholar

Page 22 note 1 Chilcote, Ronald H., Portuguese Africa (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967), examines this phase of the nationalist movement; see especially pp. 78–9.Google Scholar

Page 23 note 1 Kwacha-Angola, June 1966.

Page 23 note 2 Published figures on the total military strength of the Portuguese, at home and abroad, also vary considerably. Apparently accepting the information released by the Portuguese Government, the Institute for Strategic Studies in London suggests a total figure which nonPortuguese sources consider more appropriate to the total in Africa alone.

Page 24 note 1 The Daily Telegraph (London), ii 05 1969Google Scholar. The report was the last in a series written by the paper's special team after several weeks of travelling through the Portuguese terntories, and may be credited as an accurate estimate of the Portuguese forces.

Page 24 note 2 Cf. Wheeler, op. cit. p. 438.

Page 24 note 3 Cf.Chilcote, Ronald H., ‘The Political Thought of Amilcar Cabral’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, VI, 3, 1968.Google Scholar

Page 25 note 1 See Zartman, I. William, ‘Guinea: the quiet war goes on’, in Africa Report, xii, 8, p. 67Google Scholar; also Davidson, Basil, The Liberation of Guiné (London, 1969).Google Scholar

Page 25 note 2 Marcum, John, ‘Three Revolutions’, in Africa Report, xii, 8, p. 17.Google Scholar

Page 27 note 1 Cf. Chilcote, ‘The Political Thought of Amjlcar Cabral’, loc. cit. p. 376.

Page 27 note 2 The Governor General of Guinea recently stated frankly that the war cannot be won by force. Diario (Lourenço Marques), 2 10 1969.Google Scholar

Page 28 note 1 See Mondlane, op. cit. pp. 130–3.

Page 29 note 1 Mozambique Revolution (Dar es Salaam), Frelimo bulletin, 33, 02–03 1968.Google Scholar

Page 29 note 2 Since the time of writing, Simango has been suspended from the presidential committee, and speculation followed that his expulsion or resignation from Frelimo was imminent. But Frelimo's field effectiveness does not appear impaired by the split.

Page 30 note 1 Mondlane, op. cit. p. 132.

Page 32 note 1 The first South African death was reported only at the beginning of August 1968.

Page 32 note 2 Dodson, James M., ‘Dynamics of Insurgency in Mozambique’, in Africa Report, xii, 8, p. 55.Google Scholar

Page 33 note 1 For a fuller treatment, see Whitaker, Paul M., ‘External Aid and the Portuguese African Liberation Movements’, in Africa Report (New York), xv, 5, 1970.Google Scholar