Things fall apart: South Africa and the collapse of the Portuguese Empire, 1973–74

Abstract

The April 1974 coup in Lisbon and the ensuing rapid decolonisation of Portugal's colonies marked the birth of the Southern African theatre of the Cold War. It also heralded the steady decline of Pretoria's apartheid regime. This paper seeks to illuminate why South Africa was so profoundly affected by the collapse of Lisbon's authority and the upheaval of the regional status quo that occurred as a result. It argues that in contrast to its creative and formative foreign policy endeavours in Africa, by 1974 South Africa's national security hinged fundamentally on a profound reliance on Lisbon to combat radical black nationalism and on Washington to provide diplomatic cover for their joint efforts. The primary impact of the coup, therefore, was to undermine South Africa's entire security and thereby produce the sense of acute isolation that drove its shift towards the more radical security policies of the late 1970s and 1980s.