Africa's Contemporary Challenges

The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral

Carlos Lopes

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317987925
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

This book reviews Cabral's intellectual contribution to current debates on race, identity, nation building, democracy, leadership and ethics. The key leader of the national liberation movements of former Portuguese African colonies is considered to be one of their foremost intellectuals the continent has produced. This rare combination of freedom fighter, operational campaigner and astute political scientist justifies the academic interest in his contribution.

Africa's Contemporary Challenges reviews the impact of Amilcar Cabral's thinking, and its relationship with contemporary debates about race, identity, nation building, democracy, leadership or ethics. The complexity of Cabral's vision and hopes for Africa continues to incite curiosity and interest. Cabral's tragic assassination in 1973 has removed the possibility of analysing his impact on post-independent Lusophone Africa, but his thoughts continue to be the most important reference.

This book was published as a special issue of African Identities.

Amilcar Cabral: a contemporary inspiration

Carlos Lopes

In 2004 Amilcar Cabral, the revolutionary hero for the emancipation of African people, founder and leader of the independence movement in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, would have been 80 years, had he lived. Unfortunately Cabral was assassinated in Conakry 20 January 1973 by some of his own companions who betrayed him, acting on behalf of the Portuguese colonial regime.

Looking back from the distance of more than 30 years of liberated Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, it is inspiring to realize how unique Cabral’s contribution has been, and how contemporary his thinking still is. The world has changed considerably, both in terms of geopolitics as well as the historical and sociological understanding of nationalism, nation-building and democratic values. Yet the key dimensions confronted by globalization — inequality and poverty reduction, sustainability of the planet, power differentials, ethical and religious challenges — so present in the nationalist movement of the 1950s and 1960s remain familiar.

Cabral has been a reference point for many people: from the passionate activists who saw him as a role model, to scholars, thinkers and statesman who admired his vision and capacity to reconcile theory and practice. A great many works have been devoted to his memory and contribution. None of them is too many. However the time has come for a different type of celebration — one that will bring Cabral into our contemporary circle of concerns. Given his personality Cabral most likely would have despised any hagiographic manifestation directed towards him, valuing, certainly, much more, the chance to participate in a debate that confronts today’s realities.

‘Reality’ was a word always present in Cabral’s pedagogic discourse. A celebration of Cabral’s inspiring contribution has, therefore, to be grounded in reality. Cabral used to say that one must remember that people do not fight for ideals or for things on other people’s minds. People fight for practical things: for peace, for better living conditions in peace, and for their children’s future. Liberty, fraternity and equality are empty words for people if they do not mean a real improvement in their lives.

An inspirational life

Amilcar Cabral was born in 1921 in Bafata, Guinea Bissau. His father Juvenal Cabral, a teacher, and his mother Dona Iva Pinhel Evora, an independent small businesswoman, were Cape Verdians who migrated to Guinea Bissau in search of a better life. They left behind drought and despair, but they eventually returned to the islands, giving Amilcar a chance to begin his highly rewarding study. In 1944, at the time of the Second World War, Amilcar completed his secondary studies at S. Vicente and was already looking for ways of expressing love for his country, manifested in poems and cultural interventions. In the autumn of 1945 he secured, with great difficulty, a fellowship to pursue university studies in Lisbon: Cabral wanted to be an agricultural engineer. Apart from being a brilliant student, Cabral was extremely active in the emerging nationalist movement for the liberation of the Portuguese colonies. He quickly became a reference point amongst the small group of African intellectuals residing in Lisbon who soon established a Centre for African Studies.

When he returned to Guinea Bissau, in 1952, his purpose in life was clear and his focus known even by the feared Portuguese political intelligence and repressive police force, PIDE.¹ Cabral was appointed as a public servant engineer in Pessube. He used his professional position to engage in research that allowed him to deepen his knowledge of the country. His participation in an agricultural census would have given him the chance to get closer to the ground and establish an extensive network. However, based on friendly advice, Cabral left Guinea, returned to Lisbon and travelled extensively to Angola where he participated in the foundation of the MPLA.² In 1956 Cabral founded the PAIGC.³ This represented the consolidation of an uphill clandestine battle and a landmark for the nationalist movement in the Portuguese colonies. The generation that led the struggle would be known as the ‘Cabral generation’ in recognition of his intellectual and strategic leadership and his personal investment on the consolidation of unitary movements.

In 1960, the year of ‘African independence’, Cabral formally denounced Portuguese colonialism and made the nationalist movement more visible to the world. What followed during the 1960s associated Cabral’s name to the likes of Che Guevara, General Vo Nguyen Giap, not to mention Fanon, Nasser, Lumumba and Nkrumah.

Cabral understood that the fundamentals of the national liberation struggle were political and therefore victory would only be possible if the liberation movements could articulate political positions first and only thereafter justify military action. Cabral developed the concept that the liberation struggle was an act of culture. He catapulted the PAIGC into a series of innovations that made its struggle for independence renowned and credited for being a central element in the downfall of the fascist regime in Portugal, in April 1974. But Cabral was no longer alive when the independence of Guinea-Bissau, in September 1973, followed by the Carnation Revolution in Portugal one year later, created the space for the independence of all remaining Portuguese colonies.

On the tragic night of 20 January 1973, a few months before his dream of proclaiming unilaterally the independence of Guinea Bissau was fulfilled, infiltrated PIDE agents assassinated Cabral in Conakry. However, as Mario de Andrade put it, Amilcar Cabral’s life story had already become history!

An inspiring theoretical contribution

Amilcar Cabral is associated with a successful liberation struggle, innovative guerrilla tactics, effective participatory governance structures in liberated areas, but also an important intellectual contribution. Cabral never chose the easy route. According to Basil Davidson he saw independent nations as the necessary evolution of an African history which regains command of itself and is therefore able, with due time and effort, to move forward into a full post-colonial society. The emphasis is on due time and effort as he strongly believed that a mere extension of the colonial heritage, whether political or economic or cultural, would be disastrous. According to Cabral only through a continued process of social and structural revolution, capable of drawing whole peoples into an arena of active participation, would create the conditions for Africa to realize its potential. Arguably most parts of Africa failed to attain such goals — a fact that can be explained, to a large extent, by the lack of clear objectives and will, Cabral’s definition of ideology. He considered the lack of ideology to be the most pervasive characteristic of the African elites. To counter this obstacle Cabral invested a great deal in the analysis of different types of resistance.

Resistance was seen as the engine that could motivate Africa’s transformation. Resistance could be political, economic, social or cultural. For instance the main context of the national liberation movement’s resistance was the use of the positive traits of the people’s culture along with similar traits of imported cultures. By providing people with direction it was possible to motivate them to take their destiny into their own hands, fuelling their cultural intuitive resistance into a transformation capable of expanding choices.

Cabral’s other significant conceptual contributions include: the factors behind imperialist domination (which may take either of two well-known forms: direct domination and colonialism, or indirect domination — neocolonialism); the concept of what is the historical motivational force (which leads Cabral into outlining the theory questioning the centrality of class struggle as the determining factor); the argument in favour of post-independence petty bourgeoisie class suicide (recognizing the petty bourgeoisie as a determining lever of African societies, indispensable for its transformation); and the view of the national liberation struggle as not only a product of culture but also a factor of culture.

A focus for the future: citizens, citizenship and civic engagement

The best way to honour Cabral is to relate his preoccupations, intellectual questioning and inspiring example to contemporary realities.

Globalization is a conventional designation for a wave of significant changes in the world’s landscape. Never has humankind been so able to deal with the shortcomings of traditional patterns of growth and accumulation. We possess today the potential to reduce inequality, deal with major communicable diseases, regenerate the environment and create a better future for all. In order to achieve it we need to expand people’s freedoms and choice, we need to be responsible together in the safeguarding of the planet and the sharing of precepts of life. However, this is not, necessarily, the way many perceive globalization. There is a need to embrace alternative and inclusive globalization; it is within reach as demonstrated by important political gains, the most significant of which was the campaign that brought down apartheid.

Communications, participation, ownership, empowerment are concepts that have galvanized some of the current political transformations. Territorial borders are shrinking while new borders are being erected. The call is for an understanding of key factors that hamper the expansion of democratic freedoms. In the current debate a set of issues appear as central for the understanding of African dilemmas and conflicts: how to define citizenship, the role of citizenry, and the promotion of civic engagement.

Renowned scholars have been offering important historical readings on the above issues. Countries as far apart as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Zimbabwe, Zambia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, Tanzania, Chad, Morocco-Western Sahara, Mali or Niger have witnessed or are engulfed in conflicts that originate in different interpretations, or political utilization of citizenship. Very few African countries can claim an inclusive and participatory constitutional process that embraces citizenship as a matter of expansion of rights to all. Petty power struggle, ethnicity, as well as economic interests often find their way in this axis, undermining solidarity, the promotion of civic engagement and social capital.

Africa has witnessed in the last 30 years a proliferation of armed movements without ideology (in the sense Cabral defined it), intent on taking power, molesting rather than constructing, capable of some of the worst massacres in history, and even able to destroy the entire foundations of the state. African youth is growing, both demographically and politically, often without the space to channel its energy in the right direction. Important social movements have created new forms of activism.

This is precisely the reason why it is so opportune for those who value Cabral to pay tribute to him by going deep down the difficult track of understanding current phenomena. When the Amilcar Cabral Foundation, based in Praia, decided to celebrate Cabral’s 80th birth date, CODESRIA and other partners responded to the call. From 9 to 12 September 2004 more than 100 specialists, including an impressive list of African scholars, discussed Cabral’s impact on today’sAfrica. The key papers presented to the conference have been included in this special issue.⁴ Each one of them represents a different angle from which we can assess Cabral’s innovative thinking and relevance for contemporary African political, economic and cultural challenges.

Mendy’s presentation focuses on the colonial situation in Guinea-Bissau that moved Cabral and his like-minded comrades to embark on the high-risk and life-threatening road of armed struggle for the liberation of Guineans and Cape Verdeans, and the lessons learned for effective leadership and democratic governance in twenty-first century Africa.

Contributions from Wick, Rudebeck and Abdullah remind us of Cabral’s originality in dealing with complex concepts with ease and pragmatism. Nzongola-Ntalaja, Fobagong and I focus more on the relevance of Cabral’s formulations for the understanding of long-standing dilemmas, such as state building, pan-Africanism and ethical dimensions.

Abebe’s interest for Cabral’s views on culture are well represented by the contribution about his influence on African literature.

The Praia gathering produced high quality material. This book may be an opportunity for all those interested in the personality of this great African to look for more.

Last but not least let me thank all those that made this book possible in particular Abebe Zegeye, Margaret Jakeman, Carlos Reis and the contributors themselves.

August 2005

Notes

1. Polícia Internacional de Defesa do Estado (International State Protection Police).

2. Movimento Popular para a Libertação de Angola (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), the party that proclaimed independence in that country and remains in power to this day.

3. Partido Afrcano para a Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), the party that proclaimed independence in both countries, Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. Following a coup in Guinea Bissau the two national branches of PAIGC split with the Cape Verdean arm changing its name to PAICV (African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde). After multiparty systems where introduced in both countries PAIGC and PAICV first lost elections but they both staged a comeback and they are currently in power.

4. Except for the paper by Abebe Zegeye and Maurice Taonezvi Vambe.

Amilcar Cabral and the Liberation of Guinea-Bissau: context, challenges and lessons for effective African leadership

Peter Karibe Mendy

Introduction

Amilcar Cabral, the self-styled ‘simple African’ whose commitment, integrity and effective leadership ensured the political liberation of the people of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde from brutal Portuguese colonial domination, was among the foremost revolutionaries of the twentieth century. He also had a well-established track record as a serious intellectual, a professional agronomist, a revolutionary theoretician, an astute politician and a skillful diplomat.

Colonial Guinea-Bissau, or Guiné Portuguesa (‘Portuguese’ Guinea) as designated by the Portuguese, was not only the country of birth of Amilcar Cabral but also the milieu within which he made history. Cabral ka muri, Cabral is not dead, is a popular saying in Guinea-Bissau, to invoke the spirit of struggle and sacrifice he resurrected. Although the tragic drama still unfolding in Guinea-Bissau may seem an affront to the memory of Cabral and his comrades, who paid the ultimate prize for the struggle to liberate Guineans and Cape Verdeans from brutal Portuguese colonial domination, Cabral remains a source of inspiration for the progressive forces of meaningful change in not only Guinea-Bissau, but also in the rest of Africa.

The relevance of Cabral in twenty-first century Africa, particularly in his country of birth Guinea-Bissau, is precisely his very effective visionary leadership. In a continent characterized by deficient leadership, the need for committed leaders with clear vision of stable, just and prosperous societies has become more urgent than ever. Obviously, it is one thing to have a vision of a desired future, quite another to generate the required political will to take t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abstracts
• 1. Amilcar Cabral: a contemporary inspiration
• 2. Amilcar Cabral and the liberation of Guinea-Bisseau: context, challenges and lessons for effective African leadership
• 3. Amilcar Cabral and the fortunes of African literature
• 4. Manifestations of nationhood in the writings of Amilcar Cabral
• 5. Challenges to state building in Africa
• 6. Reading Cabral on democracy
• 7. Culture, Consciousness and armed conflict: Cabral's déclassé/ (lumpenproletariat?) in the era of globalization
• 8. Articulating Cabral's regionalist and pan-Africanist visions
• 9. Amilcar Cabral's legacy in view of the challenges of contemporary ethics
• Index