Angola's Woes - Part V

Continued from Part IV

Civil War and Foreign Relations

When President Neto died in 1979, the MPLA Central Committee chose Jose Eduardo dos Santos as president of the party and head of state. Santos was born in Luanda in 1942. He escaped to Zaire in 1961 in the wake of the Portuguese crackdown on the MPLA. He went to the Soviet Union and graduated as a petroleum engineer from the Oil and Gas Institute of Baku in Azerbaijan in 1969. He became the first foreign minister of Angola after independence and in 1978; he became the minister for planning.

The Angolan government's foreign policy aimed at having a close relationship with the eastern bloc countries, though the MPLA denied that Angola was a Soviet client state. The MPLA strived to create improved relations with Angola's immediate neighbors as a result of which Zambia expelled UNITA forces operating from its territory. However, relations with another neighbor Zaire worsened during 1977 and 1978, because of two incursions from Angola into the Shaba (Katanga) province of Zaire by forces of the Zairean anti-government Front National pour laLibération du Congo. Western governments insisted that Zaire and Angola should accommodate each other and in 1978, this was achieved.

In 1979, Zaire ordered the deportation of the leaders of anti-MPLA-PT groups. The United Kingdom opened an embassy in Angola in 1977. In 1978 relations with Portugal improved after the two countries resolved most of their remaining differences. France and the Federal Republic of Germany established full diplomatic relations with Angola in 1979. In the same year, Angola introduced legislation offering attractive investment incentives to foreign companies. This bore fruit and Angola and Western multinational corporations jointly developed the country's petroleum industry, whose contributions to Angola's balance of payments and to government revenue came to be of pivotal economic importance.

To be continued...