There is little evidence to indicate that the African population that makes up 90 per cent of the people in Angola supports the ruling Portuguese 10 per cent. The fact that the Portuguese cite most as evidence of their support is their ability to stay in Africa. "We are not a very mighty county," explained Vasco Vieira Garin, the former Portuguese ambassador to the United Nations. "If the people did not support us, how could we remain in Africa for the past 11 years fighting wars in three territories?"

"As Mao Tse-Tung said, the guerrillas must be like fish in the sea," he said, quoting as uneasy ally. "If the sea is inhospitable, the fish cannot swim."

IT IS DIFFICULT to gauge who the Angolan people support, Angola, like all of Portugal and its possessions, has a tightly controlled press and strictly limited freedom of assembly. Without free public expression, an accurate measure of public sentiment is impossible.

Private expression is equally limited, not by law but by fear. They Portuguese secret police, known as the DGS or General Directorate of Security, has an omnipresent influence. The very fact that the DGS is so active and widespread is to some extent a measure of anti-Portuguese sentiment. In the cities, roundups of dissident intellectuals and political organizers occur every few months. The DGS works through a network of agents and informers, as often as not black African, induced to volunteer through financial psychological pressure.

There are other facts that belie the Portuguese assertion that the Angolan people are on their side. First, there is the number of troops--this year about 60,000--that Portugal feels are necessary to keep in Angola.

Another indication that the Portuguese do not have a large is given by the policies they feel compelled to follow in the countryside. The government has concentrated small rural villages into larger hamlets, called aldeamentos, and thus made contact and cooperation with independence movements more observable and more easily disrupted. In each aldeamento, the government appoints a regedor, who serves as a liason with the authorities and sets up a hamlet-militia.

The Portuguese explain that the aldeamentos are intended to help the villagers defend themselves against the guerrillas, whom they refer to as "terrorists." At the same time, however, the aldeamentos help the Portuguese keep a close watch on the countryside.

The drain on Portugal is enormous. The wars in Africa consume nearly half of the country's budget and require a standing army of 140,000. Portugal's total population is about 7 million. If proportionately sized army were drawn from the United States, it would be like having four million American soldiers in Vietnam.

Even with so much spent on keeping its overseas empire, Portugal does not look on the colonies as a heavy millstone around its neck. "With its African colonies, Portugal is a world power," one diplomat commented. "Without them it is only the poor man of Europe."

Portugal is one of the poorest nations in the West, with an average annual per capita income of only $460. Forty per cent of the population is functionally illiterate. Emigration out of the country--both to find better paying jobs and to escape the four years' compulsory military service--has reached alarming proportions. In the last ten years, 1.5 million people--a third of the total labor force--has left, causing a shortage of manpower and a rise in production costs.

The only source of pride, and one of the few sources of stability for Premier Caetano's regime, is the African empire.

Angola has been in the hands of the Portuguese since Prince Henry the Navigator commanded the empire's fleets from Lisbon in the fifteenth century. In 1482, Diogo Cao became the first Westerner to set eyes on the land now called Angola.

From these days comes the contention that the African territories are Portuguese because Portugal created them. "The Guinean, Angolan and Mozambican people lack national traditions," Premier Caetano says, "since it is only the Portuguese language and Portuguese sovereignty that confer personality and unity on them."

The time of Prince Henry, the days of empire building, were the height of Portugal's national splendor. It is no surprise that the Portuguese cling to their African possessions as a last vestige of former grandeur.

A less psychological motive for continued presence in Africa is the markets the colonies provide. The African territories absorb about a quarter of Portugal's exports.