Amilcar Cabral and decolonization today
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Portuguese Revolution and the centenary of the birth of one of the most influential leaders of the African decolonization movement. Transatlantically, Cuba played an important part militarily and politically in ejecting the colonizers, while Brazilian educator Paolo Freire was influenced by Cabral’s education for the people. Their ideas are very relevant today.
The 1960s to 1970s was a great wave of liberation movements in Africa, which now seems long forgotten. In Latin America it was brutally repressed by the USA and its clients, and the world is overdue another such wave to free the oppressed peoples of the Arab world – the countries of the Arab Spring as well as those in Palestine held prisoner, ultimately, by decades of Yankee double dealing.
Amilcar Cabral was born in a village in Guiné-Bissau on September 12th 1924, still one of the poorest countries in Africa, and the least developed colony in the Portuguese Empire. As he said in one of his speeches: “The colonialists usually say that it was they who brought us into history: today we show that this is not so. They made us leave history, our history to follow them, right at the back, to follow the progress of their history”. (Return to the source, 1973.)
Memorials should have a purpose, and speeches are more alive than statues, if they make us reflect on the present situation. The countries of Africa have been liberated from the colonialism of the British, French and Portuguese but now they are colonised by the tentacles of international capital, which is still in the hands of today’s Big Powers and the corrupt so-called élites of the continent itself.
Once upon a time colonial possessions were remote, where populations held in ignorance could be exploited far from the eyes of western liberals, and in the 20th Century projected as exotic and titillating dreams for tourists. The persistence of slavery reported in British newspapers used to cause a scandal, as in the case of Cadbury chocolate in 1907. Yet today Palestine is a colony of the Zionist Apartheid state of Israel right here on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Cabral and his times
I spoke to the historian Ângela Coutinho who described how Cabral was a migrant since infancy, like many Africans today. He was born to Cape -Verdean parents in Guiné-Portuguesa. Later they returned to the island of Santiago which was then under the domination of the British Empire because of its coal for re-fuelling steamships on transatlantic voyages.
Coutinho points out that he was influenced by the pan-Africanism of his father Juvenal and teachers, and Antonio Tomás cites his father’s “Memories and Reflections:, where despite his bitter experience of racism he saw Portuguese colonialism as merely incompetent, believing it could be improved. This was already a big step by the standards of the time, and Amilcar too was open to negotiation, but the violence of the colonizers made armed struggle the only route to freedom.
In 1956 he was a founder member of the PAIGC, the Partido Africano para a Independencia de Guiné e Cabo Verde, which he led during the period of armed struggle that began in Guiné-Bissau in 1963 and he was also involved in the beginning of the MPLA party for the liberation of Angola.
His speech at the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in January 1966 was very influential, and the movement for anti-colonial socialism continues today through various UN organizations. He was recognized by Fidel Castro as the leader most capable of bringing about an end to Portuguese colonialism in Africa. This was the beginning of a rebellion against colonial rule in Africa supported by Cuba, which later provided Russian anti-aircraft missiles that ended Portuguese control of the air.
Cuba’s involvement in the war in Angola is described in fascinating detail in the film Cuba – “Une odysée Africaine”, available on Youtube in two parts, and in an English edition, “Cuba the African odyssey”.
Portugal’s refusal to give up its empire made it a pariah at the UN, even Pope Paulo VI gave an audience to three African leaders of decolonization in 1970, outraging Portugal’s Catholic rulers.
When the PAIGC declared independence for Guiné-Bissau in 1973 it was immediately recognized by Cuba and most Arab countries. Cabral had been assassinated in January 1973 by Portuguese agents in the neighbouring country of Guiné-Conakri.
After the Portuguese Revolution of April 25th 1974 brought an end to the colonial wars, a treaty was signed On August 26th in Algiers, securing the independence of Guiné-Bissau and Cabo Verde and recognizing the PAIGC as the legitimate government.
What can we learn from Cabral today?
Cabral together with Frantz Fanon, was an important influence on the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, who visited Guiné-Bissau and saw how Cabral prioritized learning in context. Students were taught African self-determination instead of being anaesthetized with colonial dreams. And socialist education was crucial to stop ‘the mania’ of young people thinking of migrating to get a Western education so they could return to take high status positions in their own country, which continues today. Education is crucial for oppressed peoples to liberate themselves, yet today we have books banned in school libraries in the UK and US, and anti-Zionists are routinely accused of anti-semitism by blinkered UK and US politicians, who were not elected by ‘the people’ with this repressive ideology in mind.
And education in Europe about colonial history is still lacking; whether in the UK where it is only an option at A Level, or in Portugal where only two years ago the Imperial Garden in Belem was renovated and shows coats of arms of former colonies on equal status with mere cities in Portugal. This is promoted to tourists – arguably the petit-bourgeoisie of post-colonialism – as simply another camera click, but a new exhibition tells a different story. In France more effort has been made, and attempts to glorify the past met a strong pushback.
It is curious that today in Britain it’s easier for adults to learn colonial history than for children, now that children’s comics no longer feature tales about explorers and brave Victorian ‘civilizers’.
Cabral understood the need for international links in the struggle, and equality between men and women; he would have been disgusted by the way religion is used to repress women by governments in Tehran and Kabul.
In a speech in February 1970, he emphasized the importance of culture in the development of liberation, and how the leaders “realize with a certain astonishment, the richness of spirit … capacity for reasoned discussion …of groups who were yesterday considered… incompetent …even by some nationals”. In the UK the current development of citizen initiatives and assemblies, which has its roots in Brazil in the 1980s, provides these cultural and social experiences of renewal in the face of bureaucratic and controlling politicians, who don’t dare to trust the people they supposedly represent.
Cabral recognized as do today’s activists that participatory democracy requires freedom to critically discuss proposals. He was a Marxist who understood that political theories cannot be imported and set in motion, they must be discussed, evaluated and adapted. Like Frantz Fanon, he was an engaged intellectual.
Cabral was alert to efforts of colonizers to stifle the growth of national consciousness, to exploit divisions within a society, to buy-off an elite with privileges, and in the case of South Africa turn the country into “the largest concentration camp mankind has ever known”.
In 1969, Cabral acknowledged the Jewish people’s right to live after the holocaust, but not to occupy Palestinian land. He would have sympathized with people who have lived two or more generations in refugee camps.
Cabral pointed out that national liberation only occurs when the economy is free from imposed distortions, countries in Africa and the smaller countries in Latin America are still producing mainly raw materials. Urbanization continues but their industrialization is held back by local power-blockers in cahoots with the West. Meanwhile over a trillion dollars is anchored on little islands in the remnants of British, French and US colonialism, tax havens or paraísos fiscais in Portuguese.
Article originally published in Prisma The Multicultural Newspaper, 9/9/2024.
