For observers of U.S. policy toward Africa, this has been the fall of the "Nissem."

Newspaper and magazine articles by Tad Szulc and Jack Anderson, based on the text of National Security Study Memorandum 39 of 1969 (NSSM 39), have popularized an alleged Nixon " tilt " toward Southern Africa's white regimes, stemming from a preference for protection of U.S. economic interests over ideals of democracy and decency. The State Department, embarrassed and flustered by the leak of another secret document, has tried to downplay its significance (calling it merely a preliminary study), and has disclaimed any change in policy.

Portugal s occupation of Africa began with violence, it was maintained by violence, and after five hundred years it is coming to an end through violence.

The story of Inhaminga, the bloody events of resistance and reprisal in the war in Mozambique, is the last chapter of the longest and most use/ess colonial ordeal in Africa's history. It is one more measurement of the lives which were lost, the bodies which were sold, and the destruction which was wrought in the course of Portugal's pursuit of gain and imperial dignity in Guinea, Angola, Mozambique.

The diary by five Dutch missionaries stands with the anguished letters of Afonso, sixteenth century African king of the Congo, with the letters of condemnation written by Jesuit and Dominican missionaries, with the reports of occasional Portuguese governors and administrators, with the speeches of the humanitarian prime minister Si da Bandeira, with the accounts of British consuls, with the exposes of Casement, Nevinson, Cadbury, Ross, and in our time, with the works of Davidson and those of African poets and patriots, Neto, Andrade, and dos Santos.

There is nothing in what has been written in protest—and little that has been written in praise—of the Portuguese occupation of Africa which even at the end can give any sense or dignity to an absurd colonial adventure, a violent misappropriation of Africa and Africans.

And it is this force of violence—turned against the Portuguese army and colonial administration—which has led to Lisbon s sudden and frantic attempts to disengage. In these accounts of the last days of empire one distinction stands out from the protest of other times. As much as the story of Portuguese atrocities, this is the story of African resistance to those atrocities and the rule which created them. The Diary of Inhaminga is an extraordinary document in its simplicity of emotion and detail. It is worthy of the resistance it recounts.

There are some things in life that do yield visible, satisfying results; in building a room, painting a picture, or baking a cake, we are able to control most of the elements that contribute to the desired result. But if we try to restore sanctions against Rhodesia, we will find the effort frustrated by countless factors which concerned citizens are powerless to regulate.

At the outset of our endeavors to strengthen sanctions legislation, we knew that Administration support was critical particularly in the House of Representatives. We have always needed Republican votes. In 1973, Senator McGee (who in 1972 had initiated the attempt to repeal the Byrd Amendment to the Military Procurement Bill), was reluctant to try again unless he could obtain assurances from Secretary of State Kissinger that the Administration meant business this time.

Southern Africa earns little press coverage in the United States. Issues which relate to this part of the world are, newsmen feel, of minimal interest to the American news consumer. But the lack of coverage reflects another phenomenon: the nature of the activities of Southern African agents and allies in the U.S. These pressure groups, unlike those of the splashier (domestic) labor, medical and legal lobbies, do not concern themselves with grassroots activity or extensive media attention. Like the Nixon Administration at least until the Watergate debacle the Southern Africa-oriented pressure groups foster and consciously maintain a low profile.