Angola's independence at midnight, 11 November 1975

Portugal's goodbye came a day early, and it handed power to no one in particular. On 10 November 1975, in Luanda, Admiral Leonel Cardoso, the last Portuguese High Commissioner, read a declaration on behalf of the President of the Portuguese Republic. Angola would be independent from midnight. No Angolan movement received power from his hands.2 sources2 sources

Lisbon had decided to pull its last troops out by independence day. In September the plan was to keep 3,000 picked men in Luanda and take them out on 10 November. The city they left behind belonged to the MPLA, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, which had driven its two rivals out of the capital in July.3 sources3 sources

It was deep night when the MPLA's president, Agostinho Neto, a doctor and poet, spoke in the square now called the Largo da Independência. At midnight he read the proclamation. It called for a minute's silence, kept by “the Angolan people and the Central Committee of the MPLA”, for the heroes who had fallen for independence. Then Neto declared the country the People's Republic of Angola.3 sources3 sources

The speech accused Portugal of breaking the Alvor Agreement by keeping silent while regular armies and mercenaries invaded the country. It also said that the MPLA's struggle “was not, nor ever will be, against the Portuguese people”. That same night Holden Roberto's FNLA proclaimed its own republic in the port of Ambriz, and Jonas Savimbi's UNITA did the same at Nova Lisboa, now Huambo. Angola was born with three governments and a war already under way.3 sources3 sources

Angola was called the jewel in the crown of Portugal's empire. In 1974 it had the second-largest white population in Africa after South Africa, and white settlers ran almost all its farming, transport and administration. Luanda had about 500,000 inhabitants. Lisbon's dictatorship, the Estado Novo, called the colony an “overseas province”, part of Portugal itself.2 sources2 sources

The war began in 1961. On the night of 3 to 4 February nationalists attacked Luanda's prisons to free comrades; the MPLA later claimed the attack as its own. On 15 March fighters of the UPA, the Union of the Peoples of Angola, crossed from the Congo and launched an uprising in the north that massacred white settlers and also mixed-race and African workers. In the Luanda slums, far-right whites organised by men of PIDE, the political police, killed Black and mixed-race residents in reprisal.2 sources2 sources

The fighting spread to Guinea and Mozambique, and Portugal kept conscript armies in Africa until the revolution of April 1974. Tens of thousands of Portuguese soldiers were still in Angola in 1974 and 1975, most of them young men from poor rural families.2 sources2 sources

Unlike Guinea or Mozambique, Angola had no single liberation movement. The historian Malyn Newitt counts at least 58 Angolan nationalist organisations in Léopoldville, the Congolese capital, in 1960. By the 1970s three were left standing, and they fought the Portuguese and each other.2 sources2 sources

Neto was born in 1922 in Icolo e Bengo, near Luanda, trained as a doctor and wrote poetry. PIDE arrested him several times. The MPLA's support lay in Luanda, where most of the African population spoke Kimbundu and Portuguese. FNLA soldiers often spoke Lingala or French, because many came from Zaire, and UNITA's spoke mostly Umbundu.3 sources3 sources

On 25 April 1974 the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) overthrew the Estado Novo. Its programme came down to “three Ds”: democratise, decolonise, develop. In Angola the war had been at a stalemate. The MPLA was split by internal quarrels, and the FNLA and UNITA could not threaten Portuguese rule.2 sources2 sources

The revolution changed that within months. The Portuguese began to leave at once: 9,000 left Angola in May and June 1974 alone, and between May 1974 and May 1975 more than 132,000 passengers flew from Angola to Portugal on ordinary TAP tickets.2 sources2 sources

Admiral Rosa Coutinho, High Commissioner from July 1974 to January 1975, was disliked by many settlers and conservative officers for favouring the MPLA. The last High Commissioner, Leonel Cardoso, later told the American consul that Coutinho's brief had been to strengthen both the MPLA and UNITA against the FNLA, then far the strongest militarily.2 sources2 sources

From 10 to 15 January 1975 the Portuguese government and the three movements met at Alvor, near Portimão in the Algarve. Neto, Roberto and Savimbi signed for their movements, and Portugal's president came for the signing. The agreement has 60 articles. It recognised the FNLA, the MPLA and UNITA as “the only legitimate representatives of the Angolan people”, declared the enclave of Cabinda an inseparable part of Angola, and set independence for 11 November 1975.3 sources3 sources

Until then Angola would be run by a Portuguese High Commissioner and a transitional government led by a Presidential College of three, one member from each movement. Ministries were shared equally between the movements and Portugal's president. A joint army would merge 8,000 fighters from each movement with 24,000 Portuguese troops. A Constituent Assembly was to be elected within nine months, and only the three movements could put up candidates.1 source1 source

Neto replied for all three movements, calling the Portuguese president's presence “an eloquent announcement of political progress” for both peoples. Rui Bebiano, a historian who served in Luanda that year as a conscript in the joint forces, judges that the agreement was “only a tactical moment”. No one made a real effort, he writes, to agree a peaceful transfer of power with Lisbon or with international bodies.2 sources2 sources

All three movements had been welcomed rapturously in Luanda in October and November 1974. In February 1975, within weeks of Alvor, heavily armed and poorly disciplined columns of their fighters marched into the city. Thousands of guerrillas arrived, and weapons were handed out to civilians with no training, organised as “popular militias”. Many police officers had gone home to Portugal or deserted. By the end of March gunfights between the movements' troops had become routine, above all at night.1 source1 source

The MPLA was also divided, between Neto's leadership and the factions of Daniel Chipenda and Mário Pinto de Andrade. In May 1975 Neto's forces seized Chipenda's offices in Luanda by force. On 9 July, shortly after a first contingent of Cuban soldiers and heavy weapons reached the city, open war broke out between the MPLA and the FNLA. Two days later the FNLA was expelled from Luanda and fell back to the north, where Zaire's army supported it. UNITA was pushed out on 29 July.1 source1 source

Portugal's position was weak and contested. On 26 July, after an attack on Portuguese soldiers near the MPLA's office in the Vila Alice district, the army opened fire and killed about 20 people. Bebiano writes that officers close to the MFA armed the MPLA, and that he twice rode in army convoys taking weapons to its barracks.1 source1 source

In September the High Commissioner told the American consul that Portugal followed a policy of “active neutrality” and was not helping the MPLA, though he admitted that individual officers and soldiers had helped all three movements. The consul judged most Portuguese commanders to be hostile to the MPLA.1 source1 source

On 22 August 1975 Lisbon suspended the Alvor Agreement by decree. The preamble blamed frequent violations by the movements, the absence of members of the Presidential College and the transitional government, and a National Defence Commission that had stopped working in practice. Admiral Leonel Cardoso, the last High Commissioner, took office on 28 August.2 sources2 sources

Angola's strategic and economic weight was plain to everyone, and the Cold War soon reached it. The Soviet Union and Cuba backed the MPLA. Zaire sent troops to help the FNLA, and the United States supplied aid and training to both the FNLA and UNITA. UNITA, having lost Luanda, turned to apartheid South Africa.3 sources3 sources

In October 1975 South African forces entered southern Angola and advanced fast towards the capital. Pretoria wanted to stop Angola becoming a base for the guerrillas fighting its occupation of Namibia. The US government had encouraged the intervention but played down its link with the apartheid regime. That same month, Human Rights Watch writes, a massive Soviet airlift of arms and Cuban troops turned the tide for the MPLA. Fidel Castro sent special forces to halt the South African advance.2 sources2 sources

In Washington, Congress refused President Ford's request for more money for the Angolan operation, and the Clark Amendment of 1976 banned covert aid to UNITA. South African troops withdrew in the spring of 1976, and Zaire's withdrew too. The MPLA formed a single-party socialist state that most of the world recognised, though the United States and South Africa did not.2 sources2 sources

From May 1975 hundreds of Portuguese, then thousands, crowded into Luanda's airport to get a flight to Lisbon. By July they slept on the floor without water or food. The airlift, the “ponte aérea”, began on 13 May; Carolina Peixoto dates its official emergency phase from August. Mostly TAP Boeing 747s flew it, seven hours each way, taking off again as soon as they were boarded.4 sources4 sources

Lisbon had created the Institute for the Support of the Return of Nationals (IARN) on 31 March 1975. It chartered planes, met arrivals at the airport, paid for onward travel and lodged people who had nowhere to go at the Caparica holiday camp, at the Quinta da Uraca and in boarding houses. From 16 September a second route flew to Porto, because Lisbon's airport could not cope.2 sources2 sources

Other countries lent aircraft, from both sides of the Iron Curtain. By 4 October 1975, according to Portugal's president as reported in O Comércio do Porto, foreign governments had flown 27,603 passengers free of charge, more than half of them in American planes.1 source1 source

Totals vary. Vanessa Rato, in Público, estimates that 905 flights carried about 250,000 people in four months, 451 of them by TAP. O Comércio do Porto reported that the government ended the Luanda to Lisbon airlift on 31 October, having evacuated about 300,000; other accounts have it ending a few days after independence. Some 30,000 to 40,000 Portuguese stayed behind.4 sources4 sources

Belongings went by sea. The war reporter Ryszard Kapuściński wrote of “wooden cities”, the crates that settlers nailed together in streets and gardens across Angola. By 9 November about 20 cargo ships had carried away 260,000 cubic metres of goods and 16,500 vehicles. Many crates ended up stacked at Alcântara and Belém in Lisbon, looted or left to rot in the rain.1 source1 source

The 1981 census counted 505,078 retornados from all the colonies, about 5 per cent of Portugal's population, and 61 per cent of them had come from Angola. Many arrived with a suitcase or two and nothing else. They came in the middle of a revolution, and many people saw them as “colonialists” competing for scarce jobs. Even the name was disputed: they were also called the displaced, the dislodged or the dispossessed. On average they were better qualified than the population they joined.3 sources3 sources

Independence did not bring peace. UNITA was driven from Huambo and into the bush, then regrouped and fought the MPLA government for decades, with South African forces operating in the south. The MPLA's own feuds turned deadly too: Nito Alves, interior minister after independence, was killed after the events of 27 May 1977. Neto died in 1979, and José Eduardo dos Santos became the second president. In 1985, Human Rights Watch notes, government offensives against UNITA had the help of some 50,000 Cuban troops.4 sources4 sources

As the Cold War ended, Portugal hosted six rounds of peace talks between April 1990 and May 1991, with the United States and the Soviet Union as observers. The Bicesse Accords of May 1991 halted a war that had already killed between 100,000 and 350,000 people.1 source1 source

In elections in September 1992, which UN and other foreign observers judged generally free and fair, dos Santos won 49.57 per cent of the presidential vote and Savimbi 40.07, according to the official results (Human Rights Watch gives Savimbi 40.7). Short of 50 per cent, the result required a runoff, but none was held: UNITA rejected the results and went back to war.2 sources2 sources

The fighting from October 1992 to late 1994 killed an estimated 300,000 people, probably more than the previous sixteen years of war. Human Rights Watch recorded systematic violations of the laws of war by both sides: UNITA shelled starving, besieged cities, and government bombing also killed many civilians.1 source1 source

The Lusaka Protocol of 1994 did not hold either. The war ended only after Savimbi's death in February 2002. On 4 April 2002 the army and UNITA signed a ceasefire at Luena, in eastern Angola. Estimates of the total toll vary widely. Human Rights Watch puts it at about one million killed, 4.1 million displaced and 400,000 driven into neighbouring countries.2 sources2 sources

Relations between Lisbon and Luanda started badly and stayed difficult for decades. In Portugal the end of empire is still argued over. In 1976 a book called Acusamos! (We Accuse!), published with the newspaper O Retornado, put four of the officers and politicians who ran decolonisation on its cover, and that accusing tone has never quite gone away.1 source1 source

The retornados settled in. The government judged the emergency phase of their reception over in May 1977, and the IARN aimed, in the words of one official, not to create “a society of retornados” inside Portuguese society. Fifty years on, the commission marking the anniversary of 25 April devoted a dossier to them in 2025.2 sources2 sources

In Angola, too, the memory is contested. For the 50th anniversary in 2025, the National Assembly approved a commemorative medal for Neto and dos Santos with only the MPLA's votes. Proposals to honour Holden Roberto and Jonas Savimbi, the other signatories of Alvor, were rejected; an MPLA deputy argued that awarding medals was a matter for the president, not parliament. “No one can talk about independence without talking about the Alvor Agreement”, said the FNLA's president, Nimi a Simbi.1 source1 source