Word: neto
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...wrote Agostinho Neto, the poet, doctor and revolutionary who became Angola's first President in 1975. The tom toms pounded for Neto last week when he died in a Moscow hospital at the age of 56, following surgery for cancer of the pancreas and cirrhosis of the liver...
...Methodist minister, Neto had spent years in prison and exile. When Portugal granted independence to the 400-year-old colony in 1975, Neto's Popular Liberation Movement of Angola (M.P.L.A.), backed by Russia and Cuba, became involved in a three-way power struggle with the rival guerrilla forces of Jonas Savimbi and Holden Roberto, both of whom had Western support. After gaining the upper hand with the aid of some 2,000 Cuban troops, Neto embarked on a troubled presidency marred by continued civil war, serious economic difficulties and bitter dissension within his party...
Savimbi claims that UNITA now has wrested effective control of much of south and central Angola from Marxist President Agostinho Neto and the 17,000 Cuban troops fighting on his behalf. Armed largely with captured Soviet-made AK-47 assault rifles, Savimbi's 12,000 guerrillas freely roam the countryside, seizing towns and villages at will, disappearing when the Cubans or government troops appear. Savimbi's soldiers have shut down the vital Benguela railroad, which once carried ore from mines in Zaire and Zambia to the Atlantic Ocean port of Lobito. The disruption of rail service has given...
Four years ago, after Portugal withdrew from its former colony, Neto's Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (M.P.L.A.) and 25,000 Cubans apparently had defeated UNITA and another liberation movement, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (F.N.L.A.). But Savimbi fought on. Since January, his guerrillas claim to have killed 350 government soldiers or Cubans, while suffering only 150 fatalities. Savimbi has recruited heavily among his fellow Ovimbundu (40% of the country's population) and other southern Angolan tribes, which have deep-rooted hostility toward Neto, a mixed-race assimilado, and the Cubans...
Perhaps most indicative of the change in Angola is Neto's open bid for more Western investment. The few Western companies operating in Angola, Neto said, "are doing their work well, have good relations with us, and pay their taxes promptly. We have no reason to complain." Conspicuous by its absence was any reference to capitalist exploitation, neocolonialism and bourgeois imperialism, common catchwords in the socialist Third World?and until recently in Agostinho Neto's troubled capital...