Communism

D

Africa

Although there were experiments here and there with facets of communism in postcolonial Africa, only four African countries made concerted endeavors to build a Soviet-style regime: Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique.

D

1

Republic of the Congo

The first was in the Republic of the Congo, a tiny country that gained its independence from France in 1960. In 1964 President Alphonse Massamba-Débat formed the National Movement for the Revolution along Marxist-Leninist lines and made it the country’s only legal political party. The government obtained foreign aid from the Soviet Union and China. A coup organized by more militant leftists and the army installed Marien Ngouabi as head of state in 1968. Two years later, Ngouabi established the People’s Republic of the Congo, an avowedly socialist state. Ngouabi abolished the national assembly and made a new Marxist-Leninist party, the Congolese Labor Party, the sole legal political party. He also nationalized the railroads and some other sectors of the economy. After Ngouabi’s assassination in 1977, his successors kept the country’s pro-Soviet orientation and brought in Cuban troops as palace guards, but had more and more difficulty handling Congo’s economic difficulties. President Denis Sassou-Nguesso permitted multiparty elections in 1992 and stepped down after losing to an opposition candidate. He ousted the elected president and returned to power in 1997, but by this time he had relinquished his communist convictions.

D

2

Ethiopia

In 1974 the emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, was overthrown in a military coup. The military leadership set up the Provisional Military Administrative Council, known as the Derg, to govern the country. Led by Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Derg declared Ethiopia a socialist state with a one-party system and set about nationalizing all agricultural land and most industry. It closed all schools for a year in order to send students and teachers into rural areas to explain the government’s aims to the peasants and to teach them basic health care and improved farming methods.

For several years after the revolution Ethiopia was racked by war, insurrections, and a major famine. The Derg, while violently putting down opposition from labor unions and Marxist urban guerrillas, was itself divided by internal dissension. Only in 1977 did Mengistu gain full control of the government. Military aid from the USSR and Cuba enabled Ethiopian forces to regain control over the Ogadēn region of southeastern Ethiopia, which Somali separatists had captured. Meanwhile, peasant protest against land reform and severe droughts condemned millions of Ethiopians to hunger and starvation in the 1980s.

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In 1984 Mengistu created the Workers’ Party of Ethiopia as the country’s official Marxist-Leninist party, and in 1987 he renamed the country the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Although a new constitution provided for a civilian government, Mengistu kept power, spending much of his time battling internal and external enemies and coping with the consequences of misconceived economic policies. Mengistu was forced from power in 1991, soon after the USSR ended its support for the government. A coalition of rebel groups formed a transitional government. The province of Eritrea declared independence in 1993 with the new government’s blessing, but border disputes led to a savage war, which officially ended in a peace agreement signed in 2000.

D

3

Angola

In 1975 Portugal, having undergone a democratic revolution, granted independence to its overseas colonies. The two largest of them, Angola and Mozambique, opted for communist-type governments. In Angola, a Marxist group called the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) was predominant in the post-independence government, instituting a one-party regime and a state-centered economy with the assistance of the USSR and Cuba. However, civil war immediately broke out with another Angolan nationalist group, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which received military backing from South Africa and the United States. Cuba came to the MPLA’s rescue, deploying 50,000 troops as well as large numbers of construction workers, doctors, and teachers in Angola. Cuban troops began to withdraw in 1989. In 1991 the MPLA and UNITA signed a peace accord, brokered by both the USSR and the United States, which provided for multiparty elections in 1992. The MPLA and UNITA could not agree on the results of the elections, and consequently MPLA leader José Eduardo dos Santos continued to serve as president. Sporadic fighting continued after the elections.

D

4

Mozambique

Like Angola, Mozambique gained its independence from Portugal in 1975. A Marxist-Leninist group, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) assumed power, led by Samora Moises Machel. Frelimo immediately set out to collectivize agriculture, eradicate nomadic practices, and abridge the power of village elites and of the Catholic Church. It was soon embroiled in a vicious civil war with the Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo), a rural guerrilla movement financed initially by Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) but later by South Africa. Machel negotiated with South Africa and the Western powers to cut off foreign support for Renamo. By the late 1980s Frelimo had disavowed most of its Marxist economic policies and begun to woo foreign investment. A multiparty constitution and other political reforms were adopted in the early 1990s, and Frelimo and Renamo signed a peace accord in 1992.

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