The Facts about Portugal's African Colonies

Eleven million Africans suffer under Portuguese colonial domination. The Portuguese colonies cover an area of about two million square kilometres (about five per cent of the entire continent and larger than the combined areas of Spain, France, Germany, Italy and England). The African population of these colonies has been enslaved by a small country, the most backward in Europe.

These two million square kilometres are rich in natural resources. The land supports agriculture and livestock breeding. The sub-soil contains iron, coal, manganese, oil, bauxite, diamonds, gold, precious metals, etc. The variety and beauty of nature offer possibilities for tourists.

Side by side with these natural riches, some of which are exploited by the colonialists, Africans live on a sub-human standard – little or no better than serfs in their own country.

Contempt for Africans

After the slave trade, armed conquest and colonial wars, there came the complete destruction of the economic and social structure of African society. The next phase was European occupation and ever-increasing European immigration into these territories. The lands and possessions of the Africans were looted. The Portuguese ‘sovereignty tax’ was imposed, and so were compulsory crops for agricultural produce, forced labour, the export of African workers, and total control of the collective and individual life of Africans, either by persuasion or violence.

As the size of the European population grows, so does its contempt for Africans. Africans are excluded from certain types of employment, including some of the most unskilled jobs.

Racial discrimination is either openly or hypothetically practised. Africans have been driven from the remaining fertile regions left to them in order that colonatos for Europeans could be built there.7 Political, social or trade union organisation is forbid-den to the Africans, who do not enjoy even the most elementary human rights.

When the United Nations Charter was adopted, giving all countries the right of self-determination, the Portuguese constitution was hastily changed. The name ‘colony’ was replaced by ‘overseas territory’, thus enabling Portugal to claim that she had no colonies and could not therefore make reports on her ‘African territories’.