Fragile Independence

Security was all but impenetrable last week at the luxurious Penina Golf Hotel in the seaside resort of Alvor on southern Portugal's Algarve coast. A 600-man police and army cordon ringed the building; commandos with Alsatian dogs on short leads guarded the surrounding twin golf courses; armed troops set up checkpoints on all roads within a 20-mile radius; a navy frigate lay anchored in the bay, and frogmen patrolled the water. Within this bastion, delegates from the three major liberation movements met for six days with Portuguese government delegates and worked out a plan for the independence of Angola.

Portugal thus began the last and possibly most difficult phase of a decolonization program that has already led to the independence of Guinea-Bissau and the formation of an African-dominated transitional government in Mozambique. When Angola (pop. 5,725,000)--the largest and wealthiest colony --achieves full independence on Nov. 11, the once vast Portuguese African empire will at last cease to exist.

Three Groups. The extraordinary security precautions at Alvor reflected more the Lisbon government's fear of an attack by discontented whites than their uncomfortable awareness that the three Angolan liberation groups had fought one another as often and as intensely as they had fought Portugal for the past 14 years. The three groups:

The M.P.L.A., headed by Marxist Intellectual Dr. Agostinho Neto;

The F.N.L.A., which is led by Black Nationalist Holden Roberto and backed by Roberto's brother-in-law, President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire;

UNITA, which began as a tribal movement eight years ago. Under the guidance of Moderate Jonas Savimbi, UNITA has won the greatest support among Angola's 500,000 whites by advocating multiracial government.

The factionalism that many feared would disrupt last week's summit did not materialize. All three groups want Portugal out of Angola so that they can settle their disputes without interference. To that end they were willing to proclaim public unity and share power in a provisional government until full independence is granted next November.

The agreement reached at Algarve stipulates that the transitional government--which is scheduled to assume power on Jan. 31--will have a Portuguese High Commissioner and a twelve-member Cabinet, with the three liberation groups and Portugal each allotted three ministers. The chairmanship of a three-member presidential council will rotate among the factions. A Constituent Assembly, which will draft a constitution and choose a President, must be elected within nine months.

At the ceremony climaxing the summit, Portugal's President, General Francisco da Costa Gomes, called the agreement "a realistic solution to the respective interests of [Angola's] people." Less sanguine observers, however, fear that the domestic peace will be fragile and temporary at best. To many in Angola, it smacks of the same slapdash arrangements the Belgians made before handing the Congo over to bloody civil war in 1960. The majority think it is little more than an improvised device to get rid of Angola with meaningless lip service to safeguards for whites.

Back in Lisbon the Socialist Party and Popular Democratic Party were threatening to withdraw from Portugal's coalition. The two parties fear that a proposal to give the country a single trade-union federation would seal the Communists' already strong hold over the labor movement. "Perhaps," jested a black delegate at Alvor, "we should now have a summit in Luanda and help the Portuguese sort out their problems." Perhaps, but Angola is likely to have quite enough of its own.

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