There was an interesting contrast in the way British diplomats and decision-makers assessed the implications of a 'Marxist' triumph in Maputo and in Luanda. After a brief description of London's expectations regarding the different 'roadmaps' for a transfer of power in Portuguese Africa, the article will focus on the two cases which possessed the greatest relevance to British interests: Mozambique and Angola. It will start by sorting out the reasons behind the United Kingdom's policy of even-handedness with regard to the conflicts in Lusophone Africa up to 1974, which is essential to understand some of the limitations which the Labour government had to face in the period following the collapse of Portugal's colonial regime. In this article, I will draw on the literary images and descriptions of the cities of Luanda and Maputo to demonstrate a design of inequality that their urbanism determines.Īlthough some research into the nature of the United Kingdom's involvement in the final years of Portuguese rule in Africa has been recently carried out, the British role in the hazardous transition to independence in some of the Portuguese colonies immediately after the Carnation revolution of 1974 has until now received little or no attention, at least as far as historical literature in English is concerned 1. 1 Through these literatures, a language of oppression and colonialism transformed into a language of emancipation, writing the cultural difference that would engender the political independence of nations. African literatures, particularly those expressed in the languages of the former colonizers, arose to expose and denounce the inequality underpinning the colonial system. Finally, I argue that a struggle for terrain and citizenship-in the conquest of space by colonizers and the reconquest of lost places by the colonized-draws the lines of that inequality. In particular, I draw on the literary images and descriptions of the cities to demonstrate a design of inequality that their urbanism determines. In this article, I provide an overview of literary portrayals of the cities of Luanda and Maputo over the course of their histories from the colonial period to the post-independence era.