In the first quarter of 1974 the advance of African independence that began in Ghana in 1956 had ground to a halt in southern Africa. It had come up against a seemingly impenetrable wall of white and colonial rule: the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique, the UDI regime in Rhodesia, South African rule in South West Africa (Namibia), and the apartheid government in South Africa itself. And then, on April 25, 1974, the wall cracked. A coup dtat overthrew Portugals dictatorship. Portuguese defense against the guerrilla movements in their colonies collapsed. In the next nineteen months Angola and Mozambique fell into bloody anarchy from which emerged tottering new regimes struggling to survive their own civil wars.