Embedded Files
Volume 1 | Issue 3 - Colonialism
Article by Dane Close. Edited by Harriet Di Francesco. Additional Research by Lauren Puckey.
In retrospect, anti-colonial movements are viewed in a positive light; in simple terms their opposition to foreign domination is generally considered to be a justified force against exploitation and discrimination. The New Left of the 1960s were not alone in their endorsement of anti-imperialist national liberation movements. The developed states themselves argued that the growth of national consciousness was a ‘wind of change’ which would help solidify the principles of freedom across the world. Furthermore, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which arose from decolonised nations, argued that a better future could be achieved from anti-colonial movements by adhering to mutual respect of national sovereignty and non-aggression.
It would be hard to argue that national liberation movements fulfilled these broad hopes. Not only did members of the NAM regularly clash during the Cold War, but those nations which fall below the average on the Human Development Index are nearly all creations of national liberation movements and institutions, such as the World Bank, which are still regularly criticised for their interactions with the Third World. This article will not examine why this ‘exploitation’ continues to exist, but instead it will analyse how the tactics, ideology and organisation of national liberation movements led to such an outcome.
Although Portugal had begun colonising Angola since before the 16h century, it was not until the 1950s, with the increase of white immigration, that a conscious resistance developed. The MPLA that grew out of this dissatisfaction were driven out of the country and engaged in a guerrilla war until a military coup in Portugal allowed them to take control of Angola. After independence the country was plunged into a civil war supported by various external powers until 2002. By the end of the conflict Angola was dependent on the oil trade with the USA and, more recently, China. Since the civil war the Angolan state has continued to resist moves to improve working conditions in diamond mines in order to keep costs low for foreign investment. In addition to this, 65% of the population live on less than $1 a day.
It can be argued that the destitution and exploitation of the Angolan working class were the direct result of the methods that the MPLA employed in its struggle for independence. Throughout the early 1970s the liberation effort waged by the MPLA was overseen by the MPLA Central Committee rather than resulting from local struggles. It was argued that the battle against imperialism required a co-ordinated effort and centralised command, creating a party which separated from the people at large.
MPLA itself continued to believe that Portuguese rule could only be overcome by a united mass movement of all classes and political groups. Nonetheless it viewed itself as a socialist organisation with the ultimate goal of establishing a socialist state; a contradiction that can be viewed in other leftist national liberation groups. One of MPLA’s leaders articulated these intentions clearly by stating that should Angola become ‘an independent country there is only one way to follow – the socialist way’. However, through its commitment to a ‘neutral’ national-state, MPLA increasingly found itself overseeing a mass movement that represented sectional and ‘tribal’ interests that contradicted its main aims. The leadership thus sought to increase their concentration of power and argued for a ‘New Direction’ in 1962. This was an attempt to purge its associations with rival movements and assert that the MPLA was the sole ‘United Front’ against Portugal.
This was enabled by an ideology that focused all campaigns against foreign intervention. Thus the MPLA argued that the poverty of some Angolans was not due to labour practices but Portugal, and that all it would take to improve conditions would be to remove Portugal rather than reform the social system. In this way the MPLA were able to defer concrete social improvement until after their victory; first over Portugal and then over their own rivals. The struggle over Angola was increasingly seen as an end in itself rather than a struggle to improve social conditions. As such the MPLA increasingly ensured that it could command full control of such a change and improve its own position. It was argued that ‘Full’ national sovereignty was required before the state could seek to improve Angola.
This view of social change was not limited to Angola, or limited to times of outright struggle themselves. A notable example of this worldview being extended into the present is Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe who argues that the poverty of Zimbabwe is entirely due to the ‘neo-colonialism’ of the west. Although there may be some truth in this view it nonetheless assumes that a domestic African state would, by its very nature, not exploit or harm its population, regardless of how authoritarian or self-serving it was. The belief that African states would automatically be better than Western rule has allowed groups such as the MPLA to exploit its own people while placing the blame elsewhere.
It is clear that national liberation movements have helped perpetuate social inequality. The attempt to manipulate the direction of mass movements isolated the party’s committee from the very people it had intended to lead. Commitment to national liberation generated a climate in which injustice was tolerated and seen as only possibly the result of foreign interference. Although these trends are not absolute, they are potentially problematic when applied to the situation in countries such as Palestine, where national liberation movements threaten to leave a similar legacy.
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