WHEN WAS THE last time the Reagan Administration called an avowed Maoist a "freedom fighter"?

Try last month. On February 18, Chester A. Crocker, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, unveiled the administration's decision to provide Jonas Savimbi's guerillas, who are fighting against the Angolan government, with at least $15 million in anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.

Of course, Secretary of State George C. Shultz had already denied that such a plan existed on January 25. But Crocker, best known for formulating the adminstration's policy of "constructive engagement" with the racist regime in South Africa, admitted that the Administration had already decided to aid the Angolan rebels.

Hard-core conservatives misconstrue the mission of Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) as an anti-Communist "war of liberation." Savimbi's supporters completely overlook the fact that the leader of UNITA has never professed an ideological preference for "democracy"; in fact, he has freely publicized his own preference for Stalinist-Maoist forms of totalitarianism. Savimbi is willing to ingratiate himself with whomever is stupid enough to help him install his own regime--and it appears that American interventionists have been duped by his disingenuous propaganda.

FOR DECADES, various indigenous factions fought to overthrow Portugese colonialism in Angola and Mozambique. In 1975, Portugal withdrew, and the elections which were supposed to forge a democratic consensus were precluded by civil war. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA)--a Marxist group supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union--prevailed in 1976, but Savimbi's group, a Chinese proxy, failed to secure itself a role in the new government. This despite the Ford Administration's last-ditch commitment of $32 million in CIA aid to another "anti-communist" faction, the now-defunct National Front for the Liberation of Angola.

Since then, Savimbi has foregone any conceivable peaceful resolution of the conflict by accepting aid, arms and even occasional direct military support from South African forces. Angola, which used to boast a vibrant tourist industry and a comparatively energetic economy, has been devastated by the war of attrition that pits the MPLA and 30,000 Cuban troops against UNITA and the South African army.

It is impossible to believe that Crocker, the rest of the State Department, the CIA and the more hawkish members of Congress have been so utterly deceived by Savimbi. However, there is a real reason for the ostensibly plausible yet strategically reckless rationalization for propping up the new interventionist cause celebre: defense of South African hegemony over mineralrich Namibia.

For years, South Africa has violated international law by refusing to withdraw its claim to sovereignty over Namibia--called South-West Africa by the Pretoria government. South Africa vehemently maintains that the aid it funnels to Savimbi, supplemented by occasional invasions of Angola by the South African army, is the only way to ensure that the Cubans and Marxists in Angola don't provide sanctuary and support for the rebels trying to kick the South African army out of Namibia.

The Carter administration strongly urged South Africa to grant the Namibians their independence in exchange for the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola. Diplomatic progress has been made since then--the most recent negotiations saw the Luanda regime concede the withdrawal of all but 10,000 of the Cubans, who would be stationed more than 1000 miles north of the Namibian border. But by aggravating the Luanda government and thwarting the peace process, South Africa has fabricated a pretext for its colonialist extension of apartheid into Namibia.

And the irony of it all is that while "constructive engagement" with the white regime in South Africa has failed miserably, it would be an excellent policy toward the putatively Marxist MPLA. The Angolan government really isn't all that Marxist--it allows American oil companies to conduct business there in exchange for $2 billion a year in tax revenue.

Moreover, the fact that it can command the Cubans to leave represents a considerable degree of freedom. In Senator Stephen J. Solarz's (D-NY) words, "If, in the context of a Namibia settlement, they asked the Cubans to leave, there is every reason to believe they would do so." Clearly then, the Reagan Administration has the means with which to attain a diplomatic solution.

In this context, the Administration's belligerent policy widens the immoral marriage of convenience between Botha and Savimbi into a bizarre menage a trois. If Savimbi can get what he wants, southern Africa will be faced with a radical state far more reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge than any form of democracy, and history will forever associate Crocker and Reagan with not one, but two, of the biggest foreign-policy debacles since the Sudetenland.