Angolan War of Independence - Race and Ethnicity in The Portuguese Armed Forces

Race and Ethnicity in The Portuguese Armed Forces

According to the Mozambican historian João Paulo Borges Coelho, the Portuguese colonial army was segregated along terms of race and ethnicity. Until 1960, there were three classes of soldiers: commissioned soldiers (European and African whites), overseas soldiers (black African "assimilados" or "civilizados"), and native soldiers (Africans who were part the indigenato regime). These categories were renamed to 1st, 2nd and 3rd class in 1960 - which effectively corresponded to the same classification. Later, although skin colour ceased to be an official discrimination, in practice the system changed little - although from the late 1960s onward blacks were admitted as ensigns (alferes), the lowest rank in the hierchy of commissioned officers.

Numerically, black soldiers never amounted to more than 41% of the Colonial army, rising from just 18% at the outbreak of the war. Coelho noted that perceptions of African soldiers varied a good deal among senior Portuguese commanders during the conflict in Angola, Guinea and Mozambique. General Costa Gomes, perhaps the most successful counterinsurgency commander, sought good relations with local civilians and employed African units within the framework of an organized counter-insurgency plan. General Spínola, by contrast, appealed for a more political and psycho-social use of African soldiers. General Kaúlza, the most conservative of the three, feared African forces outside his strict control and seems not to have progressed beyond his initial racist perception of the Africans as inferior beings.

Native African troops, although widely deployed were initially employed in subordinate roles as enlisted troops or noncommissioned officers. As the war went on, an increasing number of native Angolans rose to positions of command, though of junior rank. After 500 years of colonial occupation, not only had Portugal failed to produce any native black governors, headmasters, police inspectors, or professors, it had also failed to produce a single commander of senior commissioned rank in the overseas Army.

Here Portuguese colonial administrators fell victim to the legacy of their own discriminatory and limited polices in education, which largely barred indigenous Angolans from an equal and adequate education until well after the outbreak of the insurgency. By the early 1970s, the Portuguese authorities had fully perceived these flaws as wrong and contrary to their overseas ambitions in Portuguese Africa, and willingly accepted a true color blindness policy with more spending in education and training opportunities, which started to produce a larger number of black high ranked professionals, including military personnel.