Episode 9 – The Alvor agreement debacle sends Angola into a civil war tailspin and SWAPO takes advantage

By 1974 the number of desertions from the Portuguese military numbered 25 000 the youngsters of the country were unwilling to fight non-winnable colonial wars in Africa. We heard in episode 10 about what happened during the Carnation Revolution and how expats living in Africa were taking off-guard by the coup. In the end, almost 800 000 Portuguese men and women served in the army in Africa starting around 1959 and ending in 1974. That’s an extremely large group asked to fight in foreign countries for an army that had been warped by a right-wing dictatorship led first by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar and then Marcelo Caetano. Maputo is an eleven hour flight from Lisbon, you can imagine young Portuguese troops arriving in Mozambique in the early 70’s being told to fight against Frelimo – and wondering why. It wasn’t their country, it wasn’t their continent and when the military coup toppled the right-wing dictatorship in Lisbon in April 1974, the wheels came off their former colonies fairly rapidly because of the rush to the exit. Portugal’s African administration had always been about cheap labour which meant ensuring the population was largely uneducated. The ultimate power was based in Lisbon – similar to the South West African experience where the ultimate power lay in Pretoria.