Soothing with Bullets

On the Lisbon docks, long lines of Jeeps and trucks waited for the next ship to Africa. At the airfields, planes loaded with paratroopers took off and headed south. Dictator Premier Antonio de Oliveira Salazar was marshaling his forces to extirpate the black rebels of Angola, Portugal's richest overseas possession.

Although Salazar's censors tried to hide the fact, the revolt in northern Angola smoldered on unchecked. In one month, if reports trickling out from the scene could be believed, terrorists had killed 350 white Portuguese. Gangs of Africans armed with long-bladed panga knives were attacking isolated farmhouses of Portuguese settlers. Excited reports from up-country told of five whites and two Africans holding off a band of attackers at the village of Lucunga until their ammunition ran out and they were overrun and hacked to pieces. The terrorists also were attacking blacks loyal to the regime. In retaliation, Portuguese authorities claimed they had inflicted "heavy" casualties on the attackers.

Across the Border. Angola's troubled area is the sprawling Congo district on the northern frontier. There the rainy season turned roads into quagmires of oozing mud, and the elephant grass grows eight-feet high, making concealment a simple matter for the terrorists who slipped across the border by night from President Joseph Kasavubu's Republic of the Congo. Most are followers of a determined, softspoken, exiled African Angolan named Holden Roberto, 36, who has spent months organizing the revolt from the headquarters of his Union of the Populations of Angola* in Leopoldville, the Congo's capital. His eager recruits are mostly Angolan expatriates who have fled their country to escape the harsh Portuguese regime.

Voice of the Church. The Portuguese authorities have ordered white settlers out of large portions of the Congo province because of lack of enough troops to defend them. The army, aided by Portuguese farmer vigilante groups, has arrested and often shot suspects by the score in other areas. When arrested African Angolans spoke up in their own defense, complaining of the lack of civil rights and freedom of speech, military courts slapped extra charges on them for insulting the state. Portuguese planes bombed and strafed whole villages in revenge for the murders of white men, women and children. "They kill our wives and infants; we kill theirs," shrugged Roberto last week.

Portuguese officials tried to pin the blame for the blacks' terrorism on U.S. missionaries. According to Methodist Mission headquarters in New York, eight African Methodist pastors have been killed, either shot down by armed white civilians or executed by soldiers after hurried trials. A pastoral letter issued last week by five prominent white Roman Catholic churchmen in Angola, four bishops and one archbishop, denounced terrorism but called for "formation of a more perfect social situation, more supported by justice and charity."

To Salazar, this is no time for such "liberal" thinking. Already trouble was brewing in two other Portuguese African territories, Mozambique, on the Indian Ocean, and Portuguese Guinea, a tiny enclave on the continent's western hump. Salazar also faces unrest at home. Last month, when he declared a war to the death against Angola's black nationalists, Salazar's top defense officers protested that the army lacked the material and manpower for such a struggle in distant Africa, that a majority of its soldiers had no wish to fight in defense of a dying colonialism. They pointed out to the Premier that the government was isolated even from its allies, has no real support at home, and demanded that he resign office. Salazar replied by firing the military commanders, took over command of the armed forces himself. But a growing number of Portuguese politicians are determined to force the 72-year-old Salazar--Portugal's ruler for 29 years--to reform his policies or retire.

There was no doubt of Salazar's determination. Said one Portuguese official in Luanda: "This is it. For us this is a matter of life and death. If we lose our African possessions, we lose our nation. We have got to win."

*Which next month will have a Manhattan office. Roberto himself flew in from Leopoldville last week to make the arrangements and to lobby at the U.N. for Angolan independence, watched from the gallery as the General Assembly voted 73 to 2 to create a five-nation Angola investigating committee.

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