Angola: Communist or Not?

[The Vegan Marxist]

I've been looking into Angolan politics & what all goes on in there, but if you get your information through wiki it doesn't say anything about them being Communist or Socialist, whatsoever. Though their flag hints Communist rule. So, I was wondering if anybody could give me some background info on Angola, if possible. Thanks!

[The Vegan Marxist]

Angola is a hard topic because my dad fought there in 1980 against the cubans..
It is not a communist country as such it did however draw support from where ever it could get it, and in this case the USSR and her allies

It is most deffentilaty not a communist country, however it WAS untill the end of the border war in 1989. It was geting support from cuba/Warsaw Pact and generally was a communist country for that period, after the fall of the USSR and the pact, the support for the angolans dried up and it has started to become more democratic, in africa it is a hard change but its slowly getting there. Things are looking up for the country, i went there in 2000 and again in 2007 and its getting a lot better.

The angolan war with south africa was a convential war with each side supported by a super power. The war was a very close run affair but in the end the country went to hell.

The reason why it has a communist hinted flag is the cubans backed up the goverment and a lot of the politicians and members of parliment were trained in the warsaw pact/USSR etc etc.

If you want to know anything about the war I have studied it

Any info on it would be great, Comrade. So would you say, since it's been getting better, that there are hints of a possible socialist/communist rule coming out of the ashes or is it merely a democratic revisionist rule?

[red cat]

I've been looking into Angolan politics & what all goes on in there, but if you get your information through wiki it doesn't say anything about them being Communist or Socialist, whatsoever. Though their flag hints Communist rule. So, I was wondering if anybody could give me some background info on Angola, if possible. Thanks!

Angola's international line indicates that it was never communist. I will try to find out more about the MPLA, but always keep in mind that no organization can turn Marxist-Leninist overnight.

[Small Geezer]

So you're basically saying you support apartheid South African millitary adventurism?

[Tablo]

I know little to nothing about Angola, but they have one awesome flag. It certainly looks to have some kind of Communist influence. Based on election results the largest party in the country, the MPLA, appears to be a Socialist party.

[AK]

I didnt say that, i said i lean towards the south african side because my father fought there. In all reality it was a small part of the cold war, neither side won both withdrew and then the civil war happened.

do i support the apartied no, do i support my fellow troopers, yes

JUST WANT TO MAKE IT CLEAR I DO NOT SUPPORT APARTHEID!!! I SUPPORT MY FELLOW TROOPERS OF ANY NATION
Fellow indoctrinated killers... poor bastards, really.

[Dimentio]

I've been looking into Angolan politics & what all goes on in there, but if you get your information through wiki it doesn't say anything about them being Communist or Socialist, whatsoever. Though their flag hints Communist rule. So, I was wondering if anybody could give me some background info on Angola, if possible. Thanks!

They have basically been run by a nominally communist party since the 70's. The reason why so many third world nations are run by communistish or socialistish parties is that it is impossible to win elections on right-wing platforms in such countries, and that liberation movements often called themselves socialist in order to get monetary and logistical support from the USSR.

[Ismail]

"When the Portuguese left in 1975, Gulf Oil Company had refused to abandon its offshore platforms in the Cabinda region. A contract with the MPLA government was arranged... President José Eduardo dos Santos assigned squads of Cuban soldiers to guarantee the safety of Gulf and the other Western oil giants based in Luanda, including Chevron's new office tower [on the Avenida Lenin]. And thus, Angola became the only place in the world where Cuban troops, supposedly sworn to the destruction of capitalism, were protecting U.S. multinational oil companies against attacks from U.S.-backed guerrillas."
(Tom Zoellner. The Heartless Stone: a Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit and Desire. New York: St. Martin's Press. 2006. p. 180.)

Angola was a state capitalist (or, well, pretty much just capitalist) country and it is certainly market capitalist today. The MPLA is "socialist" in the same way the Socialist Party of Chile or any other neoliberal social-democratic party is "socialist." The MPLA did have genuinely Marxist currents in the 50's and 60's, but I would say UNITA, which condemned Soviet social-imperialism and imperialism in general, and which launched an insurgency against all odds and won the support of the peasantry, was able to maintain the support of a great deal of the people of Angola, as evidenced by the fact that UNITA's leader, Jonas Savimbi, was often de facto leader of great expanses of Angolan territory until the 90's.

Now of course Savimbi made deals with the South African apartheid regime and made concessions to the Americans, and of course in the end was, whatever his personal views, a capitalist.

"It was impossible to know what he [Savimbi] really believed, if anything. He claimed to be a supporter of free markets, but observers noted the lack of any functioning businesses in UNITA territory and the leadership's control of all money... he continued to wear Mao-style headgear in the bush and made his lieutenants carry a book of dialectical materialist sayings called Practical Guide for the Cadre."
(Ibid.)

There are two good articles on Savimbi, one in Russian, and one in Portuguese:
http://africana.ru/science/Tokarev/Tokarev_2002_Sawimbi.htm (http://anonym.to/?http://africana.ru/science/Tokarev/Tokarev_2002_Sawimbi.htm)
"The Secret History of the Ideology of UNITA" (http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fmacua.blogs.com%2Fmoambique_para_to dos%2Ffiles%2Fa_histria_secreta_da_ideologia_da_un ita.doc&sl=pt&tl=en) (translated from Portuguese via Google Translate)

In any case, whether a flag looks awesome or not, or whether a party is genuinely Marxist-Leninist in orientation, does not make a state led by the class dictatorship of the proletariat, and to say that the MPLA was genuinely Marxist in the 70's and 80's (rather than dependent upon Soviet social-imperialism to survive) is being generous. They immediately ditched "Marxism-Leninism" as the party's ideology after 1991 and Savimbi went from being funded by the US to being compared to Pol Pot by the US.

[khad]

Objectively UNITA was on the wrong side of humanity. All glory to the MPLA. All glory to Cuba.

Now, carry on.

[chegitz guevara]

There were two Marxist factions fighting for independence in Angola, the MPLA and the FNLA. The USSR armed and aid the MPLA, the PRC the FNLA from 1964 onward. UNITA started out as a Maoist organization, but after the South Africans and Americans began supporting them, they supported free market ideology ... basically, UNITA was a personal army for the warlord Savimbi.

After the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, Portugal signed a peace agreement with the three parties and pulled out. The three parties agreed to not fight each other, but fighting soon broke out between the other two parties and the MPLA. After that, South Africa invaded Angola, but was defeated by the Cuban military, which sent 20,000 "volunteers."

The FNLA was backed by Zaire, a client state of the U.S. and the PRC. In the U.S., this splintered the Maoist movement, with the RCP condemning the MPLA as agents of the social-fascist, social-imperialist USSR, while other Maoists became disillusioned that Mao and the PRC was aiding the United States against people's revolution. It was pretty much all downhill for Maoism in the U.S. after that.

UNITA, which was backed by the U.S. and South Africa did manage to hold large swaths of Angola, because the U.S. and South Africa (which regularly invaded Angola) were actively helping them. Over a million people were killed by the Savimbi army, and the people of Angola hate them. In the 2008 elections, they won 16 seats out of more than 200 total.

As to Cuban soldiers guarding an American company, the comrade from the ALP ought to remember that Angola did not have engineers to run those oil operations. To have seized the companies would have meant shutting them down. Even the Soviets under Lenin had deals with foreign imperialists and protected their corporations in order to get foreign hard currency. The MPLA would have been fucking idiots to have shut down their income stream.

I cannot speak to whether or not Angola under the MPLA was socialist. I don't know the policies of that government. I do know that their policies, however, so impressed the CIA station chief in Angola, John Stockwell, that he later defected to the American public, and told all.

[Ismail]

Funny how you're calling FNLA "Marxist" when it was supported by reactionaries from the outset of the anti-colonial struggle. Its leader was a lifelong anti-communist, whereas after 1991 Savimbi condemned the CIA for trying to disrupt UNITA.

Also Angolan elections are not exactly what one could call reliable. The MPLA is a rightist party with much corruption in its ranks, and UNITA is to the 'left' of them as it stands (even if UNITA itself isn't Marxist anymore).

[Barry Lyndon]

The MPLA was Marxist-Leninist when it took power in Angola in 1974, and maintained that position until 1992, when it adopted free-market economics after a devastating civil war and the loss of its Soviet ally. It was also allied to Cuba, which sent thousands of doctors, engineers, and soldiers to build the country's infrastructure and fight off the CIA mercenary army UNITA and its ally, apartheid South Africa.

In my view, the MPLA government, especially under the leadership of Augustino Neto, made a genuine effort to build socialism, collectivizing the farmland and setting up public healthcare and literacy campaigns. It never got the chance because the revolutionary baby was strangled in its cradle by a massive reactionary military campaign which deliberately targeted the civilian infrastructure, much like the Contra campaign against the Sandanistas in Nicaragua.

Pay no heed to these stupid Stalinists who dismiss the MPLA as 'revisionists'. To them, the USSR magically switched over to capitalism overnight when Krushchev made a speech denouncing their idol the butcher Stalin. Therefore, all the besieged Third World socialist movements who had the temerity to reach out for Soviet help post-1956 are automatically also 'revisionists', unlike the 'true socialist' Mao, who gave arms to UNITA and apartheid South Africa in the name of fighting Soviet 'social-imperialism'. And if their Hoxahists, talk to the hand. Hoxha didn't do shit for the Angolans. or anyone else. Feel free to post as many links to Stalinist hack articles you want, and see if I care.

[Barry Lyndon]

Under Cover: Your grasp on histroy is very very very very very one sided, the South Africans didnt loose the war, far from it they lost 1/11th the troops the cubans did and had complete air superiority.

Hell maybe if you actually read a book on the subject you would get that and stop trying to think that the communists won, they didnt... end of story...

The south african army was much much better trained, much better motivated and thier equiptment was of a higher grade...

Hell im left but the cubans didnt win.. not even close.

Yes, that must be the reason that South African apartheid folded like a house of cards a year after the Cubans and MPLA kicked their ass in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale. Maybe that's why Nelson Mandela told Fidel Castro 'you made this happen' at his inaugural ceremony as the first African president of South Africa. Obviously, you would know more about the anti-apartheid struggle then him.

So what if the South Africans were better armed? So were the US imperialists in Vietnam, the French imperialists in Algeria, the British imperialists in Kenya.....that's not an indication of who won.

:hammersickle:

[Barry Lyndon]

Given that you hail from a party that has spent the better part of the last 70 years kissing the Democratic Party's ass, it makes sense that you worship imperialist power and feel obligated to take a piss on a victory for the world's oppressed. :thumbdown:

[chegitz guevara]

Funny how you're calling FNLA "Marxist" when it was supported by reactionaries from the outset of the anti-colonial struggle. Its leader was a lifelong anti-communist

The FNLA was supported by the People's Republic of China from 1964 onwards. This was during the period (or just before) the Cultural Revolution, and one can hardly imagine them giving support to openly reactionary 3rd world movements, though I admit its possible.

As UNITA formed as part of the FMLA and also was a ostensible Marxist Leninist group when it was founded, one has to wonder exactly how anti-communist Roberto (the leader of the FNLA) was.


, whereas after 1991 Savimbi condemned the CIA for trying to disrupt UNITA.

Also Angolan elections are not exactly what one could call reliable. The MPLA is a rightist party with much corruption in its ranks, and UNITA is to the left of them as it stands (even if UNITA itself isn't Marxist anymore).Savimbi was one of the biggest butchers in African history. The U.S. dumped him after the end of the Cold War and the fall of Apartheid. No wonder he switched ideologies and began complaining about how his former backers were no longer backing him.

UNITA may be to the left of the MPLA today (or not). Don't know, don't care. All I know is that for fifteen years it was a proxy army for imperialism and apartheid and it killed a million Angolans.

That the MPLA today has abandoned socialism, like official communist parties the world around, has no bearing on what it was.

[chegitz guevara]

A victory for the worlds oppressed? How does thousands dead during a 14 year civil war make people feel better.

Atleast I am willing to take a stand, and am not so narrow minded, that I can see that the war was not a good thing, it brought death and descrution to tens of thousands and in the end didnt matter because it was worse now then before.

Take zimbabwe as an example, its a shit hole now, but it won its war of inderpendance from the colonial masters, yet more people are dying now then ever and 10000000000000000000% inflation is killing the rest.

Stop trying to push histroy to one side and look at it for what it is!

Ban the fake commie!

[khad]

I've cleaned up this thread. Please notify the mod team of any further suspect posts or users.

I will let Ismail hang his head in shame for being thanked by you know who.

[Vendetta]

@title: Ahahaha, no.

[khad]

@title: Ahahaha, no.
Verbal warning. Don't spam a learning thread.

[Ismail]

As UNITA formed as part of the FMLA and also was a ostensible Marxist Leninist group when it was founded, one has to wonder exactly how anti-communist Roberto (the leader of the FNLA) was.Savimbi left the FNLA because he felt it was not communist. Roberto himself became a vocal anti-communist in the 1970's and onwards, whereas after the 1980's no one really knew what Savimbi believed anymore. You are correct, however, in that the FNLA did initially claim socialism.

From this (http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF001975/Wright/Wright15/Wright15.html) (written in 1975):

Dr. Savimbi founded UNITA in 1966 after a longstanding feud with the FNLA's Holden Roberto finally forced him to leave that organization. At an OAU meeting in Cairo in 1964 Dr. Savimbi, then FNLA Foreign Minister, announced his resignation and accused Mr. Roberto of "flagrant tribalism," and corruption. He alleged that Mr. Roberto had set up a "commercial empire in the Congo" (now Zaire) and that FNLA administrators were "wage earners and profiteers who enriched themselves on the money of New York financial circles and other international organizations." ....

"We have white specialists, but not necessarily mercenaries or South Africans. Obviously our white Angolan brothers are also fighting in our ranks. Let me tell you that after the Soviet and Cuban intervention on the MPLA side, the MPLA are not entitled to criticize us for whatever outside help we may obtain."
In my view, the MPLA government, especially under the leadership of Augustino Neto, made a genuine effort to build socialism, collectivizing the farmland and setting up public healthcare and literacy campaigns.That's all nice and progressive, but it isn't socialist. Workers control is socialism. You're suggesting that social-democracy (e.g. "oh hey people are better off") is socialism, when in fact it is reformism. It is this same "logic" that leads people to conclude that modern-day China and Vietnam are "socialist."


To them, the USSR magically switched over to capitalism overnight when Krushchev made a speech denouncing their idol the butcher Stalin.Nice (read: ridiculous) strawman, but no. Ever heard of the Liberman reforms (http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/RCSU75.html#s14)? Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" merely signaled a new, revisionist course for the CPSU on an ideological plane.


Therefore, all the besieged Third World socialist movements who had the temerity to reach out for Soviet help post-1956 are automatically also 'revisionists',,If a state cannot exist without massive military intervention to keep down a revolting populace then it is not socialist and is, in fact, reactionary. The MPLA was revisionist ideologically, not because it accepted Soviet aid (although it does generally follow), but because they echoed the Soviet line on Marxism-Leninism.


who gave arms to UNITA and apartheid South Africa in the name of fighting Soviet 'social-imperialism'.No one's praising the funding of UNITA by Mao, who was himself a revisionist with social-imperialist ambitions of his own.


And if their Hoxahists, talk to the hand. Hoxha didn't do shit for the Angolans. or anyone else. Feel free to post as many links to Stalinist hack articles you want, and see if I care.To anyone else? I'd say the MPD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movimiento_Popular_Democr%C3%A1tico) (the government was behind the assassination of its leader in 1999), MLLT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist-Leninist_League_of_Tigray) (fought against the Amhara-chauvinist and state-capitalist regime of Mengistu), PCRCI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party_of_C%C3%B4te_d%27Ivo ire) (persecuted by the government), MAP-ML (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAP-ML) (called for a struggle against both the revisionist Sandinistas and the Contras), KPD/ML (http://www.revleft.com/vb/Communist%20Party%20of%20Germany/Marxists%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%93Leninists) (strong enough for a harassed-by-StaSi section in East Germany) and the PMT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malian_Party_of_Labour) would like to have a word with you.

Now of course Albania, being poor, could generally only give ideological support to the struggle of the international proletariat against capitalism, imperialism, and social-imperialism (as opposed to the Soviet-subsidized Cuba). This is why, as Enver Hoxha noted in 1978:

The Soviet Union also involves its allies, or better, its satellites in its interference. We are seeing this concretely in Africa, where the Soviet social-imperialist and their Cuban mercenaries are intervening on the pretext that they are assisting the revolution. This is a lie. Their intervention is nothing but a colonialist action aimed at capturing markets and subjugating peoples... They have never had the slightest intention of assisting the Angolan revolution, but their aim was and is to get their claws into that African country which had won a certain independence after the expulsion of the Portuguese colonialists The Cuban mercenaries are the colonial army dispatched by the Soviet Union to capture markets and strategic positions in the countries of Black Africa, and to go on from Angola to other states, to enable the Soviet social-imperialists, too , to create a modern colonial empire.... Agostinho Neto is playing the game of the Soviets. In the struggle against the other faction, in order to seize power for himself, he called in the Soviets to help him. The struggle between the two opposing Angolan clans did not have anything of a people's revolutionary character.For what it's worth, Hoxha had good relations with Vietnam under both Ho Chi Minh and succeeding leaders. To say that Hoxha just sat around all day and said that every movement was just as bad as the other is nonsense.