Angola welcomes butcher Mobutu
Socialist Press1978 1978-10-25Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 3 →
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No one knows more certainly than the masses of Angola the vicious counter-revolutionary nature of Colonel Mobutu's military dictatorship in Zaire.
• During the Angolan war of independence Mobutu, acting as the direct agent of imperialism, opposed the Mobutu Angolan national liberation movement, the MPLA, by backing the rival FNLA.
He has continued to back the reactionary FNLA since independence and has thereby imposed huge suffering on Angolan workers and peasants forced to endure a civil war.
At the same time the Portuguese colonialist regime, and then the MPLA regime led by Agostinho Neto, harboured the exiled Katangans from South East Zaire, who have re-entered Katanga twice over the last two years.
Client
The Angolan-backed Katangans were repulsed by French, Belgian and US forces who came to the aid of their client Mobutu. Neto then fiercely and quite correctly) denounced Mobutu: as an imperialist agent. And so did Neto's backers, the USSR and Cuba.
Such words were used by some self-styled «revolutionaries" to argue that Fidel Castro, if not Leonid Brezhnev, was playing a revolutionary role in Africa.
New deal Events during the last week have given clear evidence that the truth is the opposite: Cuba is using its toe-hold in Africa to make a new deal with imperialism and its agents.
Last week Mobutu ceased-in the utterances of the Angolan regime-to be an agent of imperialism.
He became instead an honoured guest in Luanda, the Angolan capital, to which he paid a friendly state visit.
Neto and Mobutu both talked of a new era of cooperation between the two countries-positions which would be impossible without the approval of the two regimes' backers in Washington, Paris, Moscow and Havana.
Exploiters
Simultaneously Neto's regime announced : ı new deal for European cap italists wanting to invest in exploiting Angola's vast mineral wealth.
Industry and Energy Minister, Major Alberto Bento Ibeiro, speaking to European capitalists in Brussels, guaranteed potential investors against Castro