Portugal as colonial ruler appears in the book through the unravelling of its authority in Angola: independence is approaching, Portuguese residents are leaving, and the institutions of everyday life are vanishing. The withdrawal is neither a clean transfer nor a settled reconciliation; it unfolds amid fear, contested public order, and the narrator’s recognition that personal loyalties do not fit neatly into political categories.

The end of colonial rule

The transition begins after the dictatorship in Portugal as colonial ruler is overthrown. The new rulers grant Angola and Portugal’s other former colonies the right to independence, while armed political parties in Angola struggle for power. The narrator describes the conflict as cruel and uncertain, a war in which former compatriots may become enemies and people do not know who will die, or at whose hands. Against this danger, he chooses to travel to Angola when many others are trying to escape.

The approaching end of Portuguese rule is visible in the movement of people toward Luanda. Portuguese residents arrive from distant parts of the country in heavily loaded cars and travel in groups they believe will be safer. As hotel rooms fill, refugees gather around the airport, where a makeshift encampment forms in the rain. The evacuation has to carry half a million people across an air bridge; in the meantime, no one knows when they will leave or where they will go.

Departure and the breakdown of civic life

The airport crowd has no accepted rule for deciding who should board. Priority for pregnant women expands to include women with infants and then women with children, prompting disputes from people who believe their own circumstances also justify a place. When stronger passengers board, women with children lie on the tarmac to prevent the plane from taxiing. Soldiers remove the men and direct the women onto the aircraft. The episode shows evacuation turning from an administrative process into a contest over access, in which order is imposed only after collective obstruction.

The retreat of public services makes the city’s abandonment tangible. When the narrator hears that all the police have left, Luanda is left without its regular police force. The few remaining white residents fear an assault on the stone city by people from the surrounding African quarters, and circulate rival proposals for defending it, but no plan prevails. The account presents these visions as the fears of exhausted Portuguese residents, not as a confirmed attack.

Sanitation fails as well. The garbagemen have left only the day before the discovery is made, but rubbish soon accumulates across streets, squares, entrances, and former marketplaces. With clinics, hospitals, and pharmacies no longer open, the ordinary supports of urban life have receded alongside colonial authority. The narrator’s description moves from a city emptied by departure to one visibly overtaken by what its absent services no longer remove.

Independence and an unsettled inheritance

On the eve of independence, the last platoon of the Portuguese garrison boards a ship and sails away. The narrator goes to say goodbye to officers he knows. He acknowledges that years of colonial war have left no basis for easy understanding or friendship between the two sides, yet he believes many of these officers behaved loyally and that Angolans owe some of them gratitude. He also recalls that they did not attack the Cubans, who had arrived while Angola was still formally Portuguese territory. His own debt to the officers is personal: they treated him sympathetically and helped him generously.

As the garrison departs, a truck removes statues of Portuguese conquerors from their pedestals and gathers them in rows by the citadel. The plazas look emptier after their removal. The juxtaposition gives the end of rule a physical form: the colonial figures are taken down even as the last soldiers leave, while the town’s immediate future remains uncertain. A rumor that forces from Zaïre may bomb the airport keeps foreign delegations away; the danger, the narrator later learns, had been averted only at the last moment.

At midnight on November 11, 1975, Agostinho Neto proclaims the People’s Republic of Angola before a crowd gathered in darkness. The audience applauds and cheers, then disperses quickly when the platform lights go out. Shooting in celebration follows in the town, while artillery on the northern front remains silent. In the hotel, champagne and whisky mark the occasion, but the exhausted residents do not experience independence as uncomplicated triumph. The final mood holds together the declaration of a new state and the disorientation of people who have lived through the departure of the colonial power without knowing what stability will follow.