Luanda - Angola celebrates, this Monday, March 15th, the 60th anniversary of the Expansion of the National Liberation Fight, which culminated with the achievement of the country's Independence, on November 11, 1975.
The events of March 15, 1961, marked the expansion of the armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism, which began on February 4, 1961.
The anniversary was instituted on August 10, 2018, following the approval, by the Angolan Parliament, of the Proposed Law Amending the Law on National, Local Holidays and National Celebration Dates.
Framed in the National Celebration Dates, the Day of Expansion of the National Liberation Struggle serves to remember the attacks carried against colonial forces by Angolan patriots organizing the struggle in northern parts of the territory.
In that action, a wave of attack was unleashed in northern Angola, aimed at police stations, administrative posts and farms of Portuguese colonists, where contracted Angolans worked in very demeaning conditions.
The act resulted in the death of hundreds of colonists in the regions of Dembos and Nambuangongo, in the province of Bengo, and on the border with the former Zaíre, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The violent nature of the acts prompted the President of the Council of Ministers of the government of the New State (Portugal), António de Oliveira Salazar, to order a crackdown on any nationalist movement.
The action, which resulted in the death of about 800 people, led to the mass sending of military personnel to Angola, making the phrase then pronounced by Salazar famous: “Para Angola todos e em força” (To Angola all of us and in strength, in English).
