The implications of the
Cuban troop withdrawal
SOUTHERN AFRICA
T HE TRANSITIONAL period in
Namibia begins on April 1, with the coming into force of UN Resolution 435, which was adopted in 1978 to dictate the terms for the granting of independence to this South African colony. In November 1989, elections for a constituent assembly are to be held under the surveillance of thousands of UN observers. This assembly will adopt, by a two-thirds majority, the constitution of the independent state that is to come into being at the
AFTER eight months of hard negotiating and many beginning of 1990.
In exchange, South Africa gets an assumeetings in London, Brazzaville, Cairo and Geneva, a rance that the Cuban forces will be redetripartite agreement between Angola, Cuba and South ployed toward the north of Angola, before leaving the country once and for all on July
Africa was finally signed on December 22 in New York at
1, 1991. This gradual withdrawal will be the United Nations. This 14-point document put an end to spread out over a period of 27 months. A first contingent of Cuban soldiers has al-
South African aggression in Angola, opened the way for ready left Luanda. Quite rapidly after the the independence of Namibia - the continent's last signing of the tripartite agreement, it becolony — and set in motion the gradual withdrawal of came clear that dismantling the ANC's bases in Angola was also part of the deal.
The United States, represented directly at the negotiating table by Chester Crocker;
and the Soviet Union, operating behind the
Cuban forces from Angola.
CLAUDE GABRIEL & VINCENT KERMEL scenes, made a considerable contribution to the success of these talks. A "United Nations Group to Assist the Transition" was given responsibility for Namibia's accession to independence. At the same time, a "United Nations Oversight Mission for Angola" is monitoring the Cubans' application of the accord.
South African defeat at
Cuito Cuanavale
This apparent détente in southern Africa reflects a diplomatic turn by all the parties concerned. These negotiations in fact come in the context of American-Soviet collaboration to de-escalate regional military conflicts. The Angolan and Namibian dossier has been on the agenda in several meetings between US and Soviet authorities over the past two years. But the final materialization of the agreement was also the result of the military setback South Africa suffered in Angola in the spring of 1988.
At the end of 1987, Cuba decided to beef up its military support to Luanda to counter the South African invasion of the southern part of Angola that was launched under the code name of "Operation Modular." Three thousand South African troops had come to the aid of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), Jonas Savimbi's Angolan rebel movement, in order to save it from defeat at the hands of the government forces. The South African general staff's objective was to install UNITA in the most important city in the CuandoCabango province, Cuito Cuanavale, and to have it proclaim a "provisional government" there.
South Africa suffered its first major military defeat in the Angolan theater since the 10 failure of its 1976 invasion. Logistical problems - the loss of supremacy in the International Viewpoint #158 • March 6, 1989 air to the Angolan army's MiGs and the commitment of the Cuban forces - explain the defeat of the South African forces at Cuito Cuanavale. Not only did this bring about a change in its entire strategy toward its Angolan protégé Savimbi, but Pretoria also had to face political risks from its military intervention. Dozens of young whites killed in the fighting were a spur to the anti-conscription movement. This movement was, to be sure, quite limited, but it was precisely such developments that could help it extend its influence.
Black troops — South African Black battalions, veterans of the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) or members of the Namibian territorial forces (SWATF) — were put into the front ranks in the fighting, sometimes in UNITA uniforms. And during some of the most intense moments of combat at Cuito Cuanavale, some members of the SWATF refused to go into battle.
### Paradox of tripartite negotiations
Pretoria's troops thus failed in their attempt to take this major south Angolan city in order to support their protégé, UNITA. All the press at the time stressed the importance of this Cuban-Angolan victory. The contrast between this military success and the ambivalent content of the accord signed in New York is the principal paradox of these long tripartite negotiations. The talks that produced an agreement for the departure of Cuban troops from Angola have, in fact, had very contradictory effects, starting with the ANC being compelled to withdraw its bases from Angola.
How should this gap between the situation on the ground and the contradictory outcome of the negotiations be interpreted? Of course, Namibia is supposed to get independence. But this is in the framework of a wide-ranging scheme for settling the conflicts in southern Africa apparently based on a tacit agreement between Moscow and Washington.
In fact, did not the Soviet Ministry for Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Anatoli Adamishin, pay homage to the United States for its "major contribution" to concluding the agreement on Angola and Namibia? And Chester Crocker returned the favor by pointing out, "There is no doubt that the Soviets have indeed used their role and influence, not on two, but on the three parties to the agreement." (International Herald Tribune, December 15, 1988.)
All those directly involved in the December 22 accord in fact had an interest in trying to find a way out of this conflict. South Africa's government is involved in a reform policy. It has to reduce the costs of apartheid and of its military commitments in the region as quickly as possible. It needs to win back a part of liberal public opinion, get the approval of certain business circles, and expand its export market as soon as possible. Keeping thousands of soldiers on the Angolan and Namibian fronts for an interminable conflict no longer made any sense, given the international commitments that could be obtained both from the Americans and the Soviets.
For symmetrical reasons, the Angolan regime could hardly hope for a total military defeat of the UNITA/South Africa coalition. War had ravaged the country, making its popular support narrower and narrower 1. Le Monde, November 25, 1988.
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from Angola
ZAIRE
Uige den change in the situation after the coup in Portugal brought it abruptly up against political and
SOUTHERN AFRICA Soviet air bridge bringing in urgently needed military equipment. The Cuban general staff saved the MPLA from defeat and stabilized the front. Very quickly, the Cuban expeditionary corps grew to 35,000 men, and then to 40,000.
Luanda LUNDA NORTH
LUANDA' MALANGE )
• Malanı BENGO
Atlantic Ocean KWANZA SOUTH -ANGOLA LUNDA SOUTH
Huambo BIE BENGUELA NAMIBE CUANDO CUBANGO CUNENE NAMIBIA and increasingly precarious. Moreover, Luanda is engaged in a major reform designed to liberalize its economy in order to obtain Western financing and membership in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The war was an obstacle to the progress of these reforms.
Cuba's grave economic crisis
National reconciliation became a central theme of the regime's propaganda, leading to an amnesty law in early February for all those who have been involved in armed opposition to the regime of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola
Finally, Cuba has been experiencing a grave economic crisis. Since 1975, it has sent about 300,000 troops for terms of duty in Angola. It also had to find a way out. Otherwise, the internationalist enthusiasm of the first years could give way to doubt
But the political and military impasse could only be overcome because the Soviets, prompted by Mikhail Gorbachev's new political thought, included southern Africa in their program for settling "regional conflicts." Soviet diplomacy in Africa thereby broke from the Brezhnev orientation, which in the mid-1970s consisted of taking advantage of the conflicts in Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia to extend its influence on the continent.
At the moment of the coup d'état in Portugal on April 25, 1974, the MPLA controlled liberated zones but was not in a position to challenge the colonial regime, especially in the cities. It had also to confront the existence of two other "liberation movements," the FNLA and UNITA, which in reality were only right-wing nationalist factions that had long been manipulated by the American secret services.
The MPLA essentially had a military tests in the cities, for which it was totally unprepared. A part of the Portuguese left put pressure on it to come to an amicable settlement of the question of power. On January 1975, the three Angocoalition government. According to and UNITA pledge to respect the property and legitimate interests of the Portuguese resident in Angola." It stipulated that "only the liberation movements, the sole legitimate representatives of the Angolan people, will be able to present candidates in the elections to the constituent assembly."
It was not this accord in itself that was to create the conditions for the civil war between the MPLA on the one side and the reactionary alliance of the FLA and UNITA on the other. But, on the other hand, it was to create all the conditions for helping the latter two movements get a foothold in the regions, especially in the capital Luanda, and to gain unhoped-for opportunities to mount attacks on the people's movement. The MPLA leadership, headed by Agostinho Neto, hailed a period of national understanding that was supposed to be ushered in by the accord. South African troops come to aid of UNITA
The government born out of the Alvor accords began a normalization of the mass movement, banning rallies and strikes. However, the internal tensions remained strong. The FNLA and UNITA militias were gaining confidence, and the MPLA leadership recognized the danger. In July 1975, it decided to move. Its troops confronted those of the FNLA, which they expelled from Luanda on the grounds of "failure to respect the Alvor accords, mainly by the FNLA but often in collusion with
A few weeks later, South African troops invaded Angola and offered decisive aid to UNITA on the southern front. The MPLA was not prepared for such a confrontation, and the reactionary forces advanced very rapidly, coming even to threaten the capital, Luanda. It was in that context that Cuba decided to intervene, for its own reasons, but with the help of a very large-scale
If the Cuban troops had not come in, the progressive wing of Angolan nationalism would have been defeated, and a regime favorable to South Africa would have emerged in Angola. But although when in power the MPLA adopted "Marxism-Leninism" as its official ideology, it by no means set out on a revolutionary path. The MPLA itself was a product of Angolan society. Hue and cry about Cuban military presence
The experience of the liberated zones, far from the cities and often in isolated regions, was not sufficient to clarify the social stakes of the national liberation struggle. The urban mobilizations of 1975-77 had, to be sure, produced some forms of people's organization (neighborhood committees and embryonic trade-union structures). But all these were quickly tamed.
The MPLA never based itself on this movement in order to deepen the social and political mobilization of the masses. Moreover, a dozen years of existence in exile caught up in the machinery of African and international diplomacy had promoted bureaucratic tendencies within the organization. The clique conflicts that seriously divided the leadership of the movement, even before April 1974, sharpened in the context of rebuilding the Angolan state, which had been thrown into disarray by the
The Cubans, but also the Soviets and the East Germans, joined in with the Angolans in building the new state. They were in the storm center of all the contradictions and clique battles. The first test was an attempted internal coup in May 1977 by a group in the Angolan leadership around Nito Alves. The Cubans helped to defeat it.
For 13 years, Havana displayed a line totally in keeping with its initial choice. The Angolan government had asked for military aid to defend itself against the South Afri cans, and this help could only be stopped when the Angolan authorities requested it. Pretoria, in response, took this as a pretext to justify its aid to UNITA and its involvement on the Angolan front.
The international press raised a big hue and cry in the early years about the Cuban military presence in Angola. It raised the spectre of some great expansionist scheme of Fidel Castro extending from Ethiopia to southern Africa. Washington, which was seeking to stall on the Namibia question, created the concept of "linkage" in order to tie independence of this territory to a withdrawal of Cuba troops from Angola and to have an excuse for not applying Reso-2lution 435 on Namibia. Up until the recent
SOUTHERN AFRICA negotiations, the Cubans and Angolans refused to accept such a tying together of the two problems.
The Cuban military intervention was certainly justified by the South African danger. But it was possible in a very special international context, marked by the US defeat in Indochina and very strong Soviet pressure on all those regions where Washington could not regain the military initiative. Thus, without violating the rules of peaceful coexistence, Moscow tried to improve its own positions.
In April 1977, Podgorny made an important tour of Africa. Soviet pressure on US imperialism and its diplomatic offensives were, among other things, relayed through a whole series of "progressive" regimes.
At the beginning of the 1960s, when many African countries gained independence, the Soviets in fact introduced a new theoretical category based on the experience of nationalist regimes such as those of Nasser in Egypt or Nkrumah in designed to help the people but, to the contrary, to get the approval of the existing regimes. They could only lead to failure Moscow, moreover, suffered some spectacular setbacks, such as the virtual overnight expulsion of its 1,500 advisors from Somalia in 1977, after the Mogadiscio regime shifted its alliances.
The Nkomati accord between Mozambique and South Africa in 1984 showed the precariousness of the Soviet positions in the region. The few economic advantages that Moscow could draw from its involvement in Africa proved so expensive that the Gorbachev era was to see a questioning of this whole policy.4
The prophet of perestroika, in fact, laid out the main lines of this review in a few succinct pages. According to him, his coun try has no specific interests to defend on the continent and pledges not to compromise the economic relations long established between this region and the West. At most, of the fall in the price of oil, Luanda was already no longer "paying a kopek", and that "is making things expensive." In the same vein, a representative of the official agency Novosti recently pointed out that the Kremlin intends to "be more careful with money and pay attention to the economic cost of political solutions."
It is known, moreover, that Moscow is involved in a scheme for very wide-ranging negotiations with South Africa itself. Do Fidel Castro's remarks reveal another episode in the conflict between Havana and Moscow? In this case, it should be noted that the Cuban's margin for independent
On December 5, 1988, Fidel Castro spoke again about the conditions prevailing before the battle of Cuito Cuanavale: "When this situation was created, because in truth, our military projects were not taken into consideration...everyone asked us to act and expected Cuba to solve the prob-
Zlem. But today, as we can see, Cuban forces and Cuban logis-
Ghana. The "non-capitalist ViETNAM. YOU LOVE THIS ONE! road" was supposed to express IF YOU LIKED the nature of these regimes, which had broken with imperialism but were not communist. Moreover, for reasons related to the history of African nationalism, the 1970s saw a proliferation of regimes proclaiming a socialist or "Marxist" ideology.
The seemingly radical but fundamentally deeply confused line of Brezhnev called for consistent military aid for these regimes, even when the economic aid often still came essentially from the imperialist countries. For example, in the oil business Angola has never stopped dealing mainly with the Western world, and in particular with the tical support were not sufficient to solve the problem."
Fidel Castro acknowledged, therefore, that a political solution was needed in Angola. The economic pressures on Cuba, both imperialist and Soviet, no doubt made it impossible to continue such a war effort. The lider maximo [supreme chief] also knows that the initial enthusiasm has flagged among an Angolan population weary from so many years of war and privation. It has at times even been led to express irritation at the foreign military presence, and sees clearly that the MPLA regime is sinking into crisis. The Cuban youth itself saw the
PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY RONNIE REAGAN
United States.
STARRING THE SOUTH AFRICAN ARMY
Between 1975 and 1979,
Ethiopia got $1.2 billion in military aid. But in 1987, Africa still accounted for less than 2.5% of the
USSR's overall foreign trade. Diplomatic interests were the main motivation for the
Soviet moves. For this purpose, such reactionary and repressive regimes as those of the Congo and Madagascar found themselves elevated to the rank of the Soviet
Union's allies. And some bloodthirsty dictators, such as Idi Amin, were accorded the accolade of "patriotic military officers"
according to the twists and turns of Soviet
The serious problems began with the sharpening of the economic crisis. The African "progressives"
sobered up, toned down their Marxist declarations of faith and looked for openings to Washington.
The debt of African countries to the USSR mounted up, without much hope that they would ever be paid off. Just one example is the S4 billion owed by Luanda.
12
The Soviet doctrines proved to be wrong and opportunist. They were by no means
International Viewpoint #158 • March 6, 1989 the USSR might seek to cooperate with the African countries on the basis of real mutual economic interest. It is in this new international context that the Cubans are retreating from Angola.
On July 26, 1988, Fidel Castro took up the Angolan question in his speech for the anniversary of the Cuban revolution. "At the end of last year," he said, "a difficult, a critical situation, arose in Angola. I am not going to explain what caused it. Let history speak for itself, and I think that one day history will reveal what was involved, where the mistakes were made, why they were made. I will limit myself to saying that Cuba was not responsible for these errors."
What were these mistakes? And who made them? There is more and more talk about the Soviets refusing to continue delivering arms to the Angolans because they were not being paid. An official of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Anatoly L. Adamishin, in fact recognized that because war dragging on without any Undoubtedly, many factors pressed for a political settlement of the Angolan conflict. But the problem is that the political solution in the final analysis is not really to the advantage of the Cuito Cuanavale victors. The independence of Namibia, as positive as it may be for the future of its Black population, fits into a broad political context in which the major active forces are the US administration and the Soviets. Their aim is to pacify the region and find a long-term modus vivendi.
The epicenter of this process is now in South Africa. Exploratory contacts are 2. In the same period, Fidel Castro also toured certain African capitals. 3. The Soviet doctrine was gradually enriched with a vocabulary intended to distinguish a whole gamut of categories. For example, sometimes a distinction is made between "countries of a confirmed socialist orientation" and "countries of a socialist orientation." 4. Other vicissitudes followed — the death of Sékou Touré in Guinea and the tum by the regime there, the difficulties of setting up a single, "worker's party" in Ethiopia and then the beginning of a cooling-off of relations with Moscow.
March 6, 1989 • #158 International Viewpoint undoubtedly already being made. In December, in Brazzaville, Anatoly Adamishin met his counterpart, South African Minister for Foreign Affairs Pik Botha, in order to explain to him the positive implications for Pretoria of the Kremlin's new diplomatic orientation. This evolution comes when the Luanda regime is weaker than ever. Ruined by a civil war that has lasted for more than a decade, the Luanda government has turned to Western backers for the means to reflate its economy.
Imperialism's economic blackmail
Until now, the United States has opposed Angola getting into the IMF and through that finding the means to break its financial logjam. The country is clearly suffering from a high level of debt — $2.46 billion at the end of 1986, not counting the military debt to the USSR. This has been progressively aggravated by the fall in the oil price (90% of exports) over recent years.
International institutions are making implementation of the economic and financial stabilization plan (SEF) adopted in 1988 the sine qua non for opening up lines of credit. The SEF calls for loosening price controls, privatization of some sectors of the economy and opening up the country to foreign capital. The results expected in the coming months of this general reform are a devaluation of the currency, the ending of state-subsidized prices for basic necessities and greater administrative autonomy for various economic sectors.
However, clearly, the inter-effects of economic crisis and military settlement are dividing the Luanda regime over various options regarding the extent and pace of the reforms to be undertaken. Thus, more reform-minded sectors are clashing with more traditionalist ones that are more attached to certain doctrinal reference points.
Many foreign companies are operating in Angola, making Angola the second most important oil producer in Black Africa, after Nigeria. But while major oil production is supporting the trade balance, the concessions granted long ago to the foreign companies are continually shortchanging the state treasury and thereby contributing to the financial difficulties? Angola gets only 56% of oil export receipts, that is, far less than the average for OPEC countries. But the state has to shoulder military expenses that officially amount to 40% of its total spending. And the war has reportedly caused S4 billion in damages and resulted
In recent years, President Dos Santos has complained several times about the irrationalities in the economy and "the incoherent system of leadership that does not permit enterprise managements to respect the conditions of profitability." In this "socialist" society, the regime's economic base is centered around public enterprises and the oil contracts. It is a market economy to which are tacked on state structures copied from the Stalinist model (state stores, hyper-bureaucratic control of commercial channels, privileges for government officials and all the rest). All this has aggravated the social and economic crisis, leading to an enormous growth of the black market and trafficking of all sorts.
The debate over the economic reform is currently dividing the MPLA and overlapping into the question of the war. Last spring, the technocrats responsible for drawing up the SEF were openly chastised for their overzealous reforming, especially for having publicly unveiled all the consequences such a reform would have (especially the fact that they regarded devaluation of the national currency, the kwanza, as inevitable).
Recently, the minister of the interior, Kito Van Dunem ("Loy") was elbowed out of his job, and, it is said, put under house arrest. He was accused by President Dos Santos of having formed a militia for the purpose of engineering a coup d'état. It is not easy to discer what is involved in such internal settling of accounts. But it is easier to understand what is at stake in these differences. The tripartite accord stopped South African aggression, but UNITA's
UNITA is a very highly organized guerrilla movement. It is said to have 10,000 troops organized as an army and 15,000 in militias. It has a certain capacity for implantation. Before independence, UNITA already had influence among the Ovambo population. The MPLA's weaknesses on peasant and ethnic questions left UNITA large margins for maneuver between 1974 and 1976. Savimbi's movement managed, in this way, to occupy important positions in the center-south of the country, which served as the point of departure for his guerrilla movement against the central
United States to continue
Said to UNITA
Despite the fact that it signed the tripartite agreement, the United States has announced that it will continue its aid to UNITA. No doubt, it has not given up hope of getting direct negotiations between the MPLA and its protégé Savimbi, or even getting a coalition government — in a way a return to square one, to the Alvor accord. For the moment, there is no indication that the MPLA leadership is ready to take such a path, even if it has declared its readiness to incorporate UNITA members who accept the amnesty into the state apparatus.
Pretoria could not keep up its military intervention in Angola and risk aggravating the political crisis. At the beginning of 1988, when Botha announced a major economic reform involving privatizations and deregulation, his government welcomed Franz Josef Strauss, premier of the state of Bavaria, after a visit by the latter to Mos-
SOUTHERN AFRICA cow. During a press conference, the German rightist leader announced that the Soviets were looking for an accord in southern Africa. "He stated that he had said to [Soviet foreign minister] Shevardnadze that he would convey the latter's views to the South African government. He said that he thought that Russia would be interested in a solution in Angola including UNITA." 9
In the same week, the Angolan president announced that he was ready to negotiate the Namibian problem and that of the Cuban troops in Angola together. On July 13, an initial agreement was concluded between a South African and an AngolanCuban delegation. In this way, the process was set in motion on the South African side. But right up until the end, the Pretoria leaders sought to get the maximum concessions.
Namibia's future full of pitfalls
For example, a few weeks before the conclusion of the accord in New York, they were still refusing to sign, on the pretext that the timetable for the Cuban withdrawal from Angola (27 months) was too long, much longer than the process of Namibia's accession to independence. Even after the signing of the accord, the South African army's journal published a speech by General Malan questioning the sincerity of Cuba and the USSR.
Moreover, in Angola itself, Pretoria seems to want to keep two irons in the fire. On the one hand, its diplomats are playing the independence game. But on the other, South Africa is holding on to major means for putting pressure on the future independent state. Botha has announced his intention of holding on to Walvis Bay, Namibia's only deep-water port, and of maintaining a South African military base there.
Namibia's economic dependence on its neighbor is enormous. Moreover, the South African general staff seems anxious, at any cost, to integrate a part of the armed forces that it has built in Namibia into the future national army of the independent state. Thus, the road ahead for Africa's last colony remains full of pitfalls. * 5. The USSR's trade balance with Angola, which has observer status in COMECON, showed a surplus of 152 million rubles in 1986. Marchés Tropicaux et Méditerranéens, November 13, 1987. 6. Gulf Oil, BP, Fina, Agip, Texaco, Elf, Total, Britoil, Hispanoil, and so on. 7. Angolan crude is of good quality and sells at a good price on the market. 8. UNITA was formed in 1964. Jonas Savimbi left Holden Roberto's organization (the future FNLA), spent a brief period in the MPLA in the Congo, and founded his own organization. Its language was inspired by Maoism, and it formalized relations with Peking afterward. Some months before the April 25, 1974, coup in Portugal, UNITA and Savimbi established ongoing links with the Portuguese military authorities (as documents supplied by socialist sympathizers in Luanda confirm without doubt). 13 9. The Argus (The Cape), January 25, 1988.