independence

Cabral unblocked the road to independence, the task left to us was to pave it! An interview with Sana na N’hada

He tells us about the important and complex mission that Amílcar Cabral delegated to them and what it was like to learn the crushing news of his assassination in the middle of this process. It fell to him as his first job to film Amílcar Cabral at an exhibition on the struggle in Conakry, in 1972, and then the transferring of his body to Bissau, capturing the commotion of the Guineans at the death of their greatest thinker and anti-colonial resistance leader.

Face to face

17.03.2025 | by Marta Lança

Maria Eugénia: a woman like the others

Despite being financially autonomous and not feeling personally discriminated against, Maria Eugénia was sensitive to the “colonial condition” inspired by her political conscience, motivating her to take action in the face of the circumstances of her time, a fact that makes her an unusual woman, not only in that specific era, but in any era that demands rejection of convention and conformism in the face of an unjust social order. Maria Eugénia was not a guerrilla fighter, nor a nurse, nor a political counselor to the nationalist movement.

I'll visit

10.03.2025 | by Aida Gomes

Anarchy / Autonomy / Utopia

There is a present-day tendency to retreat into the realms of dystopia, of catastrophe and disaster, of failed states and fascism, of environmental collapse and economic apocalypse. This tendency is neither wrong nor mistaken. Yet it is often suffocating, only adding to the pressurized dread of the era, offering no antidote to the plague of cynicism, the chokehold of hopelessness, the drift, or, perhaps, the plunge, into a miasma of pessimism and hopelessness. Of course, there are other tendencies, other possibilities, other ways forward. Here, we briefly mention five recent books, loosely grouped under the banners of anarchism, autonomy, and utopia, that propose better worlds to come – as better must come.

To read

18.03.2021 | by The Public Archive

The untold liberation stories of Guinea Bissau

It is February 1964—one year into the armed struggle for independence in Guinea Bissau against Portuguese colonial rule. Cabral, the independence struggle’s leader, had called a conference in Cassaca for his African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) fighters to re-organize and address inter-party grievances. The Cabral as seen in this and similar photographs, with his defiant stance, dark glasses, and signature knitted stocking cap in spite of the West African heat, would become the iconic image of the West African country. More than fifty years later, the image is still used to signify both Guinea Bissau’s victory in the 11-year independence struggle and the country’s continued hopes for the future. But what about the faces of the young women surrounding the independence hero? Directly to Cabral’s left in the image stands a round-faced, then 14-year old girl, Joana Gomes.

Games Without Borders

04.02.2021 | by Ricci Shryock

Patrice Lumumba, 60 Years Later

On June 30, 1960, at the ceremony for the proclamation of independence of the Congo, there were three speeches: from King Baudouin of Belgium, the former colonizing power, the President of the Congo, Joseph Kasavubu, and Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister, the latter in an intervention not foreseen in the initial protocol. It was a short speech of about twelve minutes, written in an accessible and incisive language, performative and visual, a speech that, as the historian Jean Omasombo Tshonda defends, "founds the independent Congo". The first eight minutes are the clearest definition of what colonialism is from the point of view of a continent, a country, a community, a person.