Imperialism Parades Ts Impotence in Africa

Scan page 3

on behalf of the rapidly worsening fortunes of imperialism.

Africa was the last continent to emerge from direct colonial rule.

Before, and then after, "independence" it has been policed for imperialism largely by its historical imperialist states-by Britain, France, Portugal and Belgium.

But the growing weakness oi these imperialist states and Ine involvement of the United States in its imperialist wars in Indo-China has left Saring the 1970s a political opening in Africa which the Soviet Union and its allies nave been quick to fill.

Crucial

Castro's government in Cuba has played a crucial role in this.

In the first place the Cuban leadership maintained links with various African liberation movements, offering military training and other material support, even when, in deference to Moscow, they had cut off support to such movements in Latin America.

Among the African movements assisted by the Cubans were Frelimo in Mozambique the MPLA in Angola, the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau and the Eritrean liberation movement.

Partly as a result of this, the collapse of Portuguese colonialism in 1974 and 1975 produced a crucial change in the international political configuration of Africa.

Cuba's large-scale military intervention in the Angolan war of independence in 1975 more than anything else showed up the weakness of the imperialists, who could in practice do little more than sand and watch as their lients were defeated.

Bureaucratic

Under the protection of = Cuban forces, the MPLA cadership under Agostinho Veto set up a bureaucratic egime increasingly modelled - that of Cuba.

Cuban soldiers continue to =: a crucial support to this =ș me against both imperial*-acked and genuine = aular opposition.

Thus a defeat for imperial* was prevented from being i ended any further than MPLA, Cuban and ultiat the Sovict bureau:: wanted it to go.

• gotheless, the formal *: theration of Angola ". cambique was one of .... i which lead to the :. setback for the = * stimulds In Africa Rio Carter with Nigerian dictator ation movement in Zimbabwe and to the black anti-apartheid forces building up in South Africa after years of demoralisation.

This dramatically shortened the time which the imperialists had expected to have to devise some compromise neo-colonial regime in Zimbabwe and even (they hoped, in their most optimistic moments) in South Africa, to replace the increasingly provocative white racists under Smith and Vorster.

Inability

Meanwhile, in both the North-west and North-east of the continent two more struggles were developing which were also affected by the inability of the imperialists to intervene decisively.

In the Spanish colony of Western Sahara, the Francoists whose power was under growing threat at home did a hasty deal in 1975 in which, for a share of the economic spoils of the territory's rich phosphate deposits, Spain handed sovereignty over to Morocco and Mauritania.

Thus began the increasingly successful struggle of the West Sahara liberation movement (the Polisario Front) which threatens to upset this neo-colonial deal.

Sudden end

the North-east 'horn where the So had a friends! ip tre military dictatorship in Somalia, the medieval despotism of the pro-imperialist emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia came to a sudden end in a revolution which threatened to move in a socialist direction.

The main forces holding this back were the "radical" military leaders who formed an alliance with the United States.

But, still licking its Vietnam wounds, the US was unwilling to commit its forces in sufficient strength to protect its client generals against a growing number of enemies within.

A coup inside the ruling military junta (the Derg) brought to power the unscrupulous Colonel Mengistu who, though trained in the USA and initially pro-imperialist, responded rapidly to offers of aid from the Soviet Union and Cuba. and left wing armed oppositions as well as from national liberation movements in the Somali populated areas of Ogaden and in Eritrea in the north.

The Soviet and Cuban aim in allying with Mengistu was to contribute to the setting up of a pro-Soviet alliance in the area consisting of Ethiopia, Somalia and perhaps a partly autonomous Contradictory In the short run at least, however, this aim proved internally contradictory.

The Soviet Union suffered the embarassment of being sent packing by the Somalian regime in retaliation for its support to Mengistu in putting down the Somalisupported guerrillas in Ogaden.

But the embarassment looks like being very short lived. Once again the paralysis of the imperialists showed itself in their unwillingness to send any significant aid to Somalia.

Now, when Somali troops have been forced to withdraw from the Ogaden altogether, it is reported that the disillusioned Somali junta is contemplating making the best of a bad job and renewing its ties with the Soviet Union, whose material aid is regarded as better than the guarded words of encouragement offered by the USA.

Into battle

It remains to be seen to what extent the thousands of Cuban troops now in Ethiopia will be thrown into battle against the Eritrean liberation forces, many of whom were trained in Cuba.

In any case the 'friends' of the Eritreans are as few and as unreliable as those of the Somalian regime.

Despite their almost complete control of the territory, the Eritrean liberation forces must now be facing the possibility of physical liquidation.

The apparent ability of the presence of Cuban troops to permit the Soviet Union to become the arbiter of events in Africa has, not unnaturally sent the imperialists into a state of panic.

They look next Zimbabwe where undoubtedly conditions exist in which a similar Cuban intervention could have a decisive effect, though Castro has insistently denied any such intention.

This is even more threatening to Carter and Callaghan since imperialist economic threatened in Southern than in the Horn.

That accounts for David Owen's sharp anti-Cuban and anti-Soviet speech last week, though in spite of the 'sound and fury' it signified, if not nothing, then very little in terms of a real material threat.

Adverse effect

The worst that Owen could think of to threaten was that Cuban military intervention in Zimbabwe would be bound to have an adverse effect on East-West relations.

Their weakness leads the imperialists into a rather pathetic diplomatic offensive in which their chief representatives are the British 'reformist' Foreign Secretary Owen and the American 'reformist' former civil rights activist Andrew Young.

It is only by liberally flashing their "reformist' credentials that these two men can hope to rescue anything for imperialism Southern Africa.

Last year, Ier instance, the Nigerian foreign minister obligingly described Young as "the new black conscience who comes to us from America... a symbol of the new and constructive policy of the United States towards Africa"

Mengistu That accounts for the launching, simultaneously with the verbal attack on Cuba and the Soviet Union, a new effort to impose the Anglo American solution in Zimbabwe, as well as a new effort to force South Africa not to introduce a unilateral solution to Namibia, excluding SWAPO.

After a couple of weeks of hesitancy the US and British governments have now seemingly decided that the 'internal settlement' in Zimbabwe between Smith, Muzorewa and Sithole has no chance of long run survival against the more radical sections of the black liberation movement.

Their main aims, therefore (as in Namibia) are to preserve capitalist interests by retaining the confidence of the present leaders of the guerrilla movements, and forcing the whites and the more overtly collaborationist Nkomo mise deal which concedes a: least a portion of political power to the guerrilla leaders.

Offensive

This strategy is backed up with more and more bullying and verbal warnings 10 Havana and Moscow not to intervene, along with a diplomatic offensive to get the support of other black African • states for this solution.

That was the objective of Carter's visit to Nigeria where he behaved with humiliating deference toward the Nigerian dictator General Obasanjo (like Carter a fervent Bonapartist).

At Obasanjo's request Carter beefed up the anti-apartheid section of his prepared speech; without public comment he agreed to Obasanjo's insistence that no reference to human rights should appear in the final communique after their talks.

Carter's tour, far from re-establishing the power of imperialism in Africa has simply given further evidence of its weakness.

Weakness

This weakness, however. is not directly reflected in the advance of socialism.

The Cuban and Soviet presence and its alliances with petty-bourgeois leaderships is a major obstacle to that, aimed at heading off independent revolutionary struggles by the black masses of Africa.

Although in Angola Cuban forces have fought against the agents of imperialism and racism, the Stalinist presence in Africa is an opportunistic and counter-revolutionary one.

It marks not a genuinely anti-imperialist strategy but an attempt to redraw the boundaries in a world which the Stalinists accept should be divided between themselves and imperialism and in which they see no place for communism.

Eritrean TIg:

Scan page 4

SÜCIALIST FRESS. a:trac.