New Citizens

The Portuguese army had boasted that it would smash the six-month-old rebel lion in Angola before the rainy season began. Last week, as the rains approached, the army was in control of all

Angola's airfields and had daylight command of the roads. But the barefoot guerrillas possessed a 100-mile stretch of the border with the Congo, and are still making hit-and-run attacks on Portuguese convoys.

Since guns have clearly failed to quell the rebellion, the Portuguese government last week tried words: it announced the repeal of the native statute which divided the population of the colonies in Africa into "civilized" (i.e., Europeans and the few educated natives) and "noncivilized" categories. From now on, all inhabitants of the colonies will be granted Portuguese citizenship "without distinction of race, religion or culture."

Citizenship does not automatically mean the right to vote. Like even the homeland Portuguese, Africans must first pass a literacy test and prove they have paid an annual tax of at least $7. Few can meet these requirements. But they will obtain, for the first time, the rights to judicial trial and the full protection of the law. The government removed some of the bloom from this offer by adding that Angola and the other African territories will receive greatly increased immigration from Portugal, including "the young men now doing their military service there." In short, the Portuguese solution to the colonial problem is more colonization.

Angola newspapers hailed the announcement with banner headlines, but, from the safety of the nearby Congo, Angolan Rebel Leader Holden Roberto snapped that the offer came too late, adding: "But it shows we are winning--this is Portugal's first reform in 500 years." His guerrillas, armed with muzzle-loading flintlocks and a few modern weapons captured in ambushes, confidently await next month's rains, when the roads will be impassable to Portuguese armor and the isolated army outposts can be surrounded and picked off one by one.

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