The Last Throw of the Dice: Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa, 1970–74

portrayed as no longer having any definite strategy when it came to her colonial possessions by the late 1960s and early 70s. The country is depicted as hanging on to them for no obvious reason other than the fact that the regime’s fate was tied to the wars in Africa and so these had to continue, whatever the cost to the local and metropolitan population, to Portugal’s finances (even if the recent discovery of oil in Angola, among other positive developments, promised to ease this particular question), and to the country’s international reputation. Against this immobility there grew, with time, the notion that there could be no military solution to Portugal’s predicament and that, since no political steps were being taken by the government to end the war, the government had to be overthrown — or it must be turned away from its present course.1 This political imperative was, of course, a real one: Salazar’s nationalistic New State could not admit the loss of the African colonies (or overseas provinces, as they were designated) and continue to exist as if nothing had occurred — even after Salazar’s retirement in 1968 and his replacement by Marcello Caetano, who had, earlier in his career, defended a transformation of the empire along federal lines. Thus, all attempts at foreign mediation were rebuffed, and all negotiation with the nationalist movements was curtailed by Lisbon..