Most of this movie is set in South Africa, in Johannesburg and Cape Town, but due to the political sensitivity of anti-Apartheid, no attempt was made to film there.
Sidney Poitier and Sir Michael Caine were almost seriously injured during principal photography of a chase scene, when a fifty pound camera flew in between them, into the front seat of a Jeep, that Poitier was driving fast. Caine later commented: "It went like a massive bullet, and if it had hit either of us, our head would have been crushed to pulp. Sidney and I took several days to get over the shock of our near deaths, and this incident brought us both down to Earth, with rather more than a bump."
The movie, set in South Africa, often refers to "Kaffirs". A "Kaffir", according to Wikipedia, "...was used in the former South Africa to refer to a black person. Now an offensive ethnic slur, it was previously a neutral term for black southern Africans. The word is derived from the Arabic term Kafir, which means 'disbeliever' or literally, 'one who conceals (the truth)' . . . In South Africa today, the term is regarded as highly racially offensive, in the same way as "nigger" is in other countries. It is seldom used as an isolated insult, but rather is used systematically, by openly racist individuals, when talking about black people, and as such was very common in the Apartheid era. Use of the word has been actionable in South African courts since at least 1976 under the offense of crimen injuria: "the unlawful, intentional, and serious violation of the dignity of another"." The use of the word was a significant plot point in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989).
Sir Michael Caine once said of this movie, that it was his "first foray into that very risky realm of 'message' pictures."