T F SATTAMURTHT Changes in Power Structure in International Relations: Their Implications in Southern Africa RADICAL changes affecting the relationship between imperialism and the newly independent countries have taken place during the last 30 years. These can be understood only by analysing the considerable shifts that have occurred during the last two decades in the general orientation of the international system. This paper is concerned with the shift in general orientation of the international system while focussing on the specific question of the changes that have been taking place in the antagonistic relationship between national liberation movements and world imperialism. The latter theme will be explored in the concrete context of developments that have taken place in southern Africa over the last decade or so. We believe that it is in southern Africa that, at the present juncture, imperialism is in a critical conflict with national liberation. During the nincteen-sixtics and seventies the national liberation struggles in Indo-China ended in the first major defeat of imperialism in the underdeveloped countries of the world since the second world |war. At the same time, the end of the Indo-Chinese wars of liberation against imperialism coincided with the emergence of powerful anti-imperialist national liberation movements in several parts of southern Africa from a stage in which