End of Last Empire

End of the Last Empire

Some terrorists came to our camp and said that if we wanted a cease-fire to come to a place they indicated. Our officers went as directed. The Frelimo crept up and surrounded us. I thought we had been tricked, but when they saw we had no arms they threw down their guns and embraced us and called us brothers. Now we are planning a soccer game. --Letter from a Portuguese soldier in Mozambique

It had seemed inevitable and yet, when the moment finally arrived, it came with breathtaking impact: after 500 years of colonialism, the last 13 of them mired in bloody guerrilla warfare, Portugal was leaving Africa. The first, and probably the last of the world's great modern colonial empires was ending. Portugal was "now ready to begin the process of transfer of power to the inhabitants of the overseas territories recognized as ready for it--namely Guinea, Angola and Mozambique."

From the balmy streets of the Mozambique capital of Lourenc,o Marques on the Indian Ocean to the jungles of Guinea-Bissau on the Atlantic to the porticoed halls of Lisbon's presidential palace, the news announced last week by Portuguese President Antonio de Spinola was for the most part greeted with shouts and demonstrations of joy.

Magical Transformations. Thousands of ecstatic blacks danced through the streets of Mozambique, shouting "Viva Spinola! Viva Spinola!" Out in the bush, where there had been bitter fighting only days before, guerrillas and Portuguese soldiers laid down their arms and shook hands in a spontaneous ceasefire. In the northern province of Tete, a stronghold of the Mozambique Liberation Front [Frelimo] and scene of the war's worst civilian massacres, hatred seemed magically transformed into brotherhood. A rebel leader high on Portugal's "wanted" list exhorted a throng of blacks and whites "to live in harmony." Frelimo guerrillas were feted at a dinner party by army officers.

Not everyone was cheering. Even as Spinola was announcing Lisbon's new policy, the liner Infante Dom Henrique pulled out of Lourengo Marques with 1,100 tearful whites and their personal possessions. Airlines flying from Mozambique to Portugal were reported booked up until October. Those who have fled, either because they feared the uncertainties of the months ahead or retribution from a new black government, still represent less than 1% of the white population. But to many onlookers, the sailing of the Dom Henrique seemed a historic Portuguese retreat. Observed Joaquim Peres, a white businessman who will stay: "It is the end of one world and the beginning of another."

Others obviously unhappy were the big business concerns that came to be identified over the years with Portugal's colonialist policies. The Diamang Diamond Co. in Angola, for example, operated for decades like an empire within an empire with its own dreaded police force, which was said to have coerced blacks into forced labor. The tactics have changed since then, but when a high-ranking Portuguese minister was asked if such companies would be allowed to continue operating in the territories, he replied, "I think not."

Lisbon's decision to grant independence to its African colonies had been a much-discussed possibility ever since the April coup in which dissident army officers overthrew the right-wing dictatorship of Marcello Caetano. One of the officers' main goals was to stop the wars in the colonies, which consumed 40% of the Portuguese budget and struck many of the young soldiers as the arrogant actions of a dying empire. But no one thought independence would be achieved quite so soon--or quite so easily. Portuguese right-wingers, and even some Liberals, were religiously convinced of Portugal's mission in Africa.

"It would be a crime to leave, like the Belgians did in the Congo," said a foreign ministry spokesman last March.

"They would just kill and eat each other." Spinola himself had advocated a kind of federation that would give the overseas territories a wide measure of autonomy but keep them under the Portuguese flag.

It was only in recent months, when rebel attacks became increasingly strong and dispirited Portuguese troops in some cases refused to fight any longer, that Portugal recognized that the only solution was the granting of full independence. The government's decision was announced in an emotional address over nationwide television by Spinola. "The moment has come for our overseas territories to take their destinies into their own hands," he told his electrified audience. "This is the historic moment for which Portugal, the African territories and the world have been waiting: peace in Portuguese Africa, finally achieved in justice and freedom."

For Spinola, 64, the announcement climaxed a long struggle of conscience that began in 1968 when, as a brigadier general, he served in Guinea-Bissau as commander and military governor. After returning home to a hero's welcome last year, he wrote a controversial book, Portugal and the Future, in which he argued that there was "no viable military solution" to the problem of the colonies and that continuation of the war would "irremediably compromise the survival" of Portugal. The book became an instant bestseller, and Spinola was fired as deputy chief of the armed forces. A few weeks later the young officers of the Portuguese Armed Forces Movement toppled the Caetano regime and selected Spinola as the new President.

Ensuring a peaceful and just transition to local rule will be difficult, as Spinola observed. The biggest challenge will be keeping order while political factions and blacks and whites vie for power. The territories, moreover, have almost nothing in common, and will require separate settlements. The probable course in each:

> Guinea-Bissau (3,000 whites, 500,000 blacks) is the smallest problem. It will be the first territory to be given independence. The nationalist African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (P.A.I.G.C.) declared a republic last year, which is now recognized by 80 countries, including the Soviet Union. Portuguese authorities said that Lisbon will almost certainly recognize the existing government.

> Mozambique (220,000 whites, 60,000 Asians, 8 million blacks) could have trouble. It has close economic links with South Africa, where apartheid supporters might try to foment a separatist movement among Mozambique's whites. Still, the transition will be greatly eased by the fact that there is only one liberation group, Frelimo, which enjoys recognition in Lisbon as the voice of most Mozambicans.

> Angola (500,000 whites, 250,000 mestizos, 6 million blacks), a coffee-producing territory on the Atlantic, is the richest of the colonies. Although relations between the races have been relatively good, there were recent riots. The territory has three active liberation movements, all vying for power. Lisbon hopes to form a coalition government that includes members of all three as well as the European population.

In the end, a successful transition to independence will depend at least as much on the cooperation of the white minorities as on that of blacks. Right-wing extremists bent on sabotaging Lisbon's policy of self-determination still pose a threat.

But there were also hopeful signs last week. Angolan whites began working to bring about a multiracial government, the territory's hard-core white taxi drivers' union advertised for black drivers for the first time. Meanwhile, Laurengo Marques' liberal white Democratic Union came out in support of a Frelimo government. That organization mapped plans to stem the exodus of skilled whites. As Mozambican Samuel Ihanga put it: "At last Africans can run their own country. But we don't want the whites to go. We need everybody."

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