IN THE FACE OF mounting public criticism of its role in Angola. Gulf has donned a public relations mask of corporate responsibility, B. R. Dorsey, Chief Executive Officer of Gulf, wrote in an article in Go Gulf, the company magazine. "We've seen too little of the world around us. As business managers, we must now tune in to society's needs, turn on our know-how to tackle those needs, drop into society to help solve them."
What Dorsey means is that Gulf is in need of a better advertising image. For in 1969, this responsible corporation spend four times as much on advertising as it paid in Federal income taxes. In their desire to make the company look good, Gulf's and men have gone so far as to say that not only is Gulf's role in Angola not detrimental to the African population; it is positively to their benefit!
Gulf's major argument for its involvement in Angola has been that it provides good jobs for Africans, thereby raising the standard of living. And yet Gulf's total non-white employment in the Cabinda fields is 33 per cent, according to figures submitted by Gulf to the United Nations. And since all native residents-black or white-are considered Portugese, Gulf's agreement to hire 85 per cent "nationals" by 1978 means very little. Gulf presently employs four times as many white Portugese as it does black Angolans.
Gulf's second claim, that faithful to the "white man's burden" it supports Angolan education, must be understood to mean that it has put aside a little money to help train an elite client class of blacks to do its work. Gulf told the United Nations that it gave $34,965 in 1970 to the Mining Development Fund to train black mining engineers and managers. In addition it donates ten scholarships a year for secondary school and university students.
The MPLA has described its struggle for national liberation in an editorial in its journal: "We are fighting for a right. The right is TO BE FREE. The right is TO PRESENT OURSELVES TO THE WORLD WITH OUR OWN POLITICAL AND SOCIAL PERSONALITY. The right is TO BE RESPECTED AS A PEOPLE who have for centuries contributed to the progress of mankind."
Against their struggle is arrayed all the horrible technology that the Vietnam War has yielded to the science of human slaughter. In an interview with The Standard, a Tanzanian newspaper, Iko Carreira, a member of the MPLA Executive Committee, described recent developments in Angola:
"Since 1968 the tactic has been massive bombing, followed by sending in commandos. They weren't able to stop the advance of our fighters that way either.
"Now they are using the last weapon they have-famine. The destruction of all crops with defoliants. They want to destroy life in the liberated areas through hunger.
"Today two-thirds of our crops in the liberated areas have been completely destroyed, and the destruction is continuing. The bush has lost most of its leaves.
"They are throwing chemicals into the rivers to kill the fish. From helicopters they are shooting wild game, which is the source of meat for our guerrillas...
"The enemy tries but they are not going to succeed. They may burn our crops, but we will grow more....
"What friendly organizations and individuals can do is to help break down the silence around our struggle so we can get the aid we need so much to destroy this colonial monster."
The silence surrounding the struggle of black Angolans against centuries of slavery and colonial rule has been broken at Harvard by the Pan-African Liberation Committee. We have all been made to understand that the phalanx of Portugese military and American economic power arrayed against the Angolan people stretches to Harvard, which owns a substantial holding of Gulf Oil stock. Like the Angolans in 1961, we at Harvard must make a beginning.