ANGOLA: Independence--But for Whom?

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Portugal's 500-year-old colonial empire in Africa comes to an end this week. In accordance with instructions from Lisbon, the last Portuguese high commissioner in Angola, Admiral Leonel Cardoso, will lower his country's red, yellow and green flag at the 16th century stone fort of Sào Miguel in Luanda, the territory's capital. Then he plans to tuck it under his arm and—much to the annoyance of Angolans—sail off with it to Lisbon on a waiting Portuguese frigate. His unwillingness to hand over the flag with the reins of power is not a last vestige of colonial arrogance. It is just that he would not know whom to give it to.

On the eve of independence, Angola last week was sinking farther and farther into a vicious civil war involving three independence movements, each of which claims to represent the people of this new non-nation. The three:

> The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (M.P.L.A.), a Soviet-backed group which controls Luanda and is headed by Agostinho Neto, 53.

> The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (F.N.L.A.), led by Holden Roberto, 52, with strong support from Zaïre, France and reportedly the U.S.

> The moderate socialist National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), headed by Jonas Savimbi, 40, which has been backed by Portuguese business interests.

The F.N.L.A. and UNITA are in uneasy alliance against M.P.L.A. The three longstanding Angolan liberation movements have been so violently divided that no one has been able to form a new national government to accept independence. The Organization of African Unity, under the prod of Uganda's Idi Amin, claimed that last-minute efforts had forced a coalition, but no one believed the hollow boast.

Rapacious Neighbors. One measure of the prevailing confusion was uncertainty about the fate of Cabinda, a tiny (2,800 sq. mi.) oil-rich enclave that is geographically disconnected from the rest of Angola and wedged between Zaïre and the Congo. Last week Zaïre announced that Congolese troops had invaded Cabinda. When there was no confirmation from inside Cabinda, suspicions grew that Zaïre was merely preparing a justification for mounting its own invasion. At week's end Zaïre announced it was massing troops on its border with Cabinda, and a full-scale invasion of the enclave seemed imminent. In Cabinda itself, distrust of its rapacious neighbors and disgust with Angola's divisions were building pressure to go it alone and declare independence.