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Angola Beginning of Revolution
After 1959, as several African states won their
independence,
anticolonial sentiment intensified in Portugal's overseas
territories. The Portuguese met this sentiment with
stiffening
opposition characterized by increasing surveillance and
frequent
arrests. In December 1959, the Portuguese secret political
police,
the International Police for the Defense of the State
(Polícia
Internacional de Defesa de Estado--PIDE), arrested
fifty-seven
persons in Luanda who were suspected of being involved in
antigovernment political activities. Among those arrested
were a
few Europeans, assimilados, and other Africans.
After this
incident, the Portuguese military in Angola reinforced its
position, particularly in the northwestern provinces, and
became
increasingly repressive.
In the first months of 1961, tensions came to a head. A
group
of alleged MPLA members attacked police stations and
prisons in an
attempt to free African political prisoners. Then, a group
of
disgruntled cotton workers in Malanje Province attacked
government
officials and buildings and a Catholic mission. In the
wake of
further sporadic violence, many wealthy Portuguese
repatriated.
They left behind them the poor whites who were unable to
leave on
short notice but who were ready to take the law into their
own
hands.
The violence spread to the northwest, where over the
course of
two days Bakongo (thought by some to have been UPA
members) in Uíge
Province attacked isolated farmsteads and towns in a
series of
forty coordinated raids, killing hundreds of Europeans.
Also
involved in the rural uprisings were non-Bakongo in parts
of Cuanza
Norte Province. During the next few months, violencespread
northward toward the border with the former Belgian Congo
as the
Portuguese put pressure on the rebels. Although it had not
begun
that way, as time passed the composition of the rebel
groups became
almost exclusively Bakongo.
The Portuguese reacted to the uprising with violence.
Settlers
organized into vigilante committees, and reprisals for the
rebellion went uncontrolled by civilian and military
authorities.
The whites' treatment of Africans was as brutal and as
arbitrary as
had been that of the Africans toward them. Fear pervaded
the
country, driving an even deeper wedge between the races.
The loss of Africans as a result of the 1961 uprisings
has been
estimated as high as 40,000, many of whom died from
disease or
because of famine; about 400 Europeans were killed, as
well as many
assimilados and Africans deemed sympathetic to
colonial
authorities. By summer the Portuguese had reduced the area
controlled by the rebels to one-half its original extent,
but major
pockets of resistance remained. Portuguese forces, relying
heavily
on air power, attacked many villages. The result was the
mass
exodus of Africans toward what is now Zaire.
In an effort to head off future violence, in the early
1960s
the Salazar regime initiated a program to develop Angola's
economic
infrastructure. The Portuguese government increased the
paved road
network by 500 percent, stimulated the development of
domestic air
routes, provided emergency aid to the coffee producers,
and
abolished compulsory cotton cultivation. To reestablish
confidence
among Africans and among those who had been subject to
reprisals by
white settlers, the military initiated a campaign under
which it
resettled African refugees into village compounds and
provided them
with medical, recreational, and some educational
facilities.
The uprisings attracted worldwide attention. In
mid-1961 the UN
General Assembly appointed a subcommittee to investigate
the
situation in Angola, and it produced a report unfavorable
to
Portuguese rule. The events also helped mobilize the
various
liberation groups to renewed action.
Data as of February 1989
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