Showdown

In his office in a dirt-floored converted bar in Leopoldville, Angola Rebellion Leader Holden Roberto happily waved a grimy letter on blue airmail paper. The exhausted courier who carried it over the border was already fast asleep in one corner. The letter, said Roberto, reported that rebel operations were now spreading southward in Angola.

Since the rebellion began in the north four months ago, Roberto estimates perhaps 25,000 Angolans have been killed, some 1,000 Portuguese. Neutral observers estimate more conservatively that 4.000 rebels have been killed, some 1.200 loyalists, including 500 whites. 700 loyal blacks. Says Roberto: "We can keep on fighting longer than the Portuguese because there are more than 4,000,000 of us."

The Classic Touch. With the rainy season ending, the tactical advantage shifts to the Portuguese troops, who can now take the offensive without bogging down in the mud. But some 5.000 white soldiers have arrived from Lisbon to beef up Angola's 2,000-man regular garrison. Roberto's forces are also grouping for a showdown. He claims that he is getting financial aid from Tunisia to fuel his revolt but denies that he is getting any help from Ghana (the Portuguese have admitted that they made a mistake in claiming the capture of 71 "Ghanaians"). "The Portuguese have been in Angola for 500 years and have done nothing but kill us." he cries. "We won't rest until every Portuguese is out of the country or under it."

Back in Portugal, Dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar was all calmness and rhetoric last week in his first interview in years with a U.S. newsman, the New York Times's Benjamin Welles. Shod in high-laced boots, relaxing in a leather chair, onetime Economics Professor Salazar might have been lecturing woolly-headed students. Did he plan economic and social reforms for terror-ridden Angola? "The rhythm of implementation of programs of social advancement will not be slowed down but rather the contrary, if possible . . . It is possible we may have erred on the side of excessive caution and tolerance." If. as Salazar claimed, "the terrorist action was instigated and directed from the outside," why were so many natives involved in the uprisings? They are victims, replied the man who has ruled Portugal with an iron fist for 33 years, "of the classic technique of intimidation."

Coming a Cropper? The snowballing revolt has already proved economically crippling. One-fourth of the population of Luanda, Angola's capital city, is unemployed, as are some 16,000 refugees who have streamed into Luanda from the ravaged north. Portugal's $20 million loan to Angola for development is being used to finance the garrisons; there is no foreign investment coming into Angola and no development capital available. Worst of all, next month Angola's $55 million coffee crop, which provides 40% of Angola's national output, comes to harvest. Most of the crop is in the north, accessible by a single 170-mile road currently under rebel control. If Salazar fails to get the harvesters and their equipment through the terrorist enfilade, Angola's economy will be virtually destroyed.

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