Colonial Wars, Colonial Alliances

Images of violence have marked the political landscape of southern Africa since the independence of Portuguese and British colonies. The recent discovery of secret documents attest to the alliance linking white supremacist governments in South Africa and Rhodesia with Portugal’s corporatist-fascist regime. This article focuses on the roots of so much of this violence: the formation of a little-known but crucial white alliance in the subcontinent, code-named ‘Exercise Alcora’, which aimed to perpetuate the minority regimes in the region. South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal, with its two colonies of Mozambique and Angola, thus constituted a political project that sought to frustrate African liberation movements. A critical approach to the (re)construction of national memories is then crucial to understanding the roots of present-day social and political crises in southern Africa, as well as to recognising how important Exercise Alcora, as revealed in confidential documentation, was for the maintenance of white hegemony in this region until the very end of the 20th century. While South African-Rhodesian relations have been extensively dealt with in the literature, the relations between those countries and Portugal were more tenuous and shadowy

Alliance · Archaeology · Colonialism · Context (archaeology · Hegemony · Independence (probability theory · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Portuguese · Sociology · White (mutation · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Gender Studies · History · Law · South African History and Culture

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  Open Access•Elizabeth Schmidt•African Studies Review•2026

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• The foundations of Exercise Alcora

  Open Access•Evert Kleynhans•Small Wars and Insurgencies•2025

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• Rebellion, insurgency, and counterinsurgency in Southern Africa, 1945–1994

  Evert Kleynhans, Antonio Garcia•Small Wars and Insurgencies•2025

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• Memorias cruzadas de la guerra colonial portuguesa y las luchas de liberación africanas

  Open Access•Miguel Cardina, Bruno Sena Martins•ENDOXA•2019

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• Reeducation Camps, Austerity, and the Carceral Regime in Socialist Mozambique (1974–79)

  Open Access•Benedito Machava•The Journal of African History•2019

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• Aldeamento de guerra no colonialismo português na Guiné-Bissau

  Open Access•Rui Aristides Lebre, Tiago Castela•e-cadernos CES•2022

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• Unsung Heroes

  Vladimir Shubin•Cold War History•2007

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• The Sustenance of Salisbury’ in the era of Decolonization

  Christopher R W Dietrich•The International History Review•2013

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• The diplomacy of isolation

  Sam C Nolutshungu•International Affairs•1985

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• The Great Betrayal

  Samuel M Makinda, Ian Smith•Foreign Policy•1997

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• The 1970s

  Christabel Gurney•Journal of Southern African Studies•2009

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