First Published: People’s World, [West coast newspaper of the CPUSA], Vol. 39, No. 10, March 6, 1976.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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According to New Dawn, newspaper of the J. Town Collective, the main danger in the current struggle in Southern Africa is the “Counterrevolutionary role of the Soviet Union.” According to this group the Soviets are responsible “even more so” than U.S. imperialism. According to New Dawn, the Soviet Union “has proved to be a more accomplished saboteur of Angolan independence and freedom.” The Soviets, the paper says, “singlehandedly” created the Angolan “civil war.”
As if simply stating these utterly foolish propositions was not itself a sufficient assault on the truth, the newspaper announced in its February edition that “a wide range” of organizations in the Bay Area have come together in a coalition to wage a “six to eight-week campaign” to convince other people that the moon is made of green cheese.
Someone apparently has not got the message that the versions of the situation in Southern Africa, as described by New Dawn, are counter to the understanding of the Angolan revolutionary forces and the views of every other national liberation movement in the world.
It may seem silly for me to put forward the following proposition but I’m going to do so anyway because some silly people don’t seem able to grasp it: I am involved in a fight on the street. A friend stops to help me. A third person comes up, proclaiming himself to be my ally, and attacks the one who has come to my aid. I can only conclude that the third party is not only my enemy but must sustain a strong suspicion that he is in league with my attacker. Whether he is consciously or not, I may never know but if I’m at all wise I will never trust that person in life.
What have the Angolans said about the situation? Agostinho Neto, president of the People’s Republic of Angola and chairman of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), said in a Feb. 23 interview with the Soviet newspaper Izvestia:
“Nobody doubts now that the progressive forces of the Angolan people will win an ultimate victory. It is evident already now. Life is returning to normal in the liberated areas, the population supports everywhere the measures of our party and government. And we say once again today:..the heavy sacrifices that our people made in the 15-year struggle for national liberation were not in vain.
“Of principal significance is the fact,” Neto went on to say, “that our struggle was supported by all the progressive forces in the world. From the very outset, the united front of Angola’s anti-imperialist forces received unconditional support from the Soviet Union. Both on the days of victories and those of bitter defeats we invariably had the political and material support from the countries of the socialist community. When international reaction sent against the People’s Republic of Angola the regular army of the South African Republic, and mercenaries and fascists of different kinds, the Soviet Union gave us effective aid. Its support contributed to the strengthening of our young state. It is thanks to it that we could repel the imperialist aggression and liberate the greater part of the Angolan territory. No strings were attached to the fraternal aid that was given to us.
“It is the more strange to hear accusations by imperialist powers against the Soviet Union, which, allegedly, has some special interests in Angola,” the President said. “We stress that not in a single field of our activity–party, state and diplomatic spheres–has the Soviet Union ever brought pressure to bear on us. The Angolan people is proud of the firm bonds of disinterested friendship with the Soviet Union sealed in the joint struggle against imperialism.”
All this New Dawn nonsense about Angola will quickly be exposed. The people of Africa are learning from day to day experience who their friends are and who their enemies are – both on the continent, in the world and in the United States. Struggling people in the United States already know from long years of experience that anyone who says they are your ally while undermining your position is a fraud. The problem here is much more fundamental than what affects the immediate situation.
There is something developing which is of critical importance during this election year. Strange alliances are being formed, both the spoken and unspoken kind. The fact that different groups and forces arrive at the same position from different starting points is not nearly as important as the fact that they have arrived at the same position. A formerly hazy – now becoming much clearer – picture is emerging, internationally and domestically, of a 1976 alliance between the anti-Soviet forces on the Left and the anti-Soviet forces on the Right; between the social democrats and Zionists on one hand and the ultra Left and Maoists on the other.
According to this little collection of Bay Area grouplets, U.S. imperialism “is declining and clearly on the defensive.” What’s more “its true nature has been unmasked to Third World people and Third World people have been steeled in the struggle against imperialism.” However, “Soviet social-imperialism in on the rise and is the main danger.”
One does not have to be a political wizard to figure out that once you have declared the nations of the socialist world the main danger, the possibilities opened up to you for new alliances are fantastic, even if you end up shooting at your joint enemy from different trenches. For oppressed and revolutionary people this is a serious matter. It will be very hard to wage the struggle in Southern Africa when the liberators are being attacked from two directions. Either way they turn, somebody’s shooting them in the back.