A central element in the story of southern Africa during the early 1970s is the quietly persistent penetration in to neighboring countries of dominant interests—whether economic, political or even military—of the Republic of South Africa. As the motives for this expansion have become clearer, so too has the crucial nature of the importance to the South African system of the Portuguese colonialist positions in Angola and Mozambique, and, by an inseparable extension, in Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde archipelago.

This significance to South Africa of the “Portuguese territories” is now observable in all major fields of public policy and action, and ranges from the military-logistical to the very interstices of the South African economic structure. An understanding of the South African government's relations with these territories, as well as of its relations with the Portuguese regime in Lisbon, must therefore be essential to a realistic estimate of likely developments in the subcontinent, and bears, accordingly, a direct meaning for the policies and intentions of the United Nations.