ROAPE’s Mike Powell introduces a selection of Amílcar Cabral’s writings, speeches, and interviews. Cabral was one of the most important revolutionaries of the 20th century who led and founded a movement which not only led to the liberation of Guinea Bissau but prepared the ground for a revolution in the colonial power itself. This selection of Cabral’s speeches and interviews, and other writings, is provided in the hope that some readers will find in them inspiration and hope for the revolutionary struggles to come.
By Mike Powell
In this author’s opinion, Amilcar Cabral was one of the most important figures of the 20th Century. He created and led a revolutionary movement in his country which not only led to its liberation against almost impossible odds but did so in a way which prepared the ground for the subsequent democratic revolution in the colonial power itself. For the purpose of this struggle, he developed and shared profound and original understandings of the process in which he was engaged and what, in terms of social and cultural progress, was necessary, both during the liberation war and beyond it, for the struggle to be ultimately successful.
Cabral was assassinated in January 1973 by disaffected members of his own party, the PAIGC, in collusion with the political police of the Portuguese dictatorship. The subsequent history of the struggle was not without its successes but an (essentially internal) coup in 1980 or, depending on your opinion, the demise of the subsequent revolutionary council in 1984 effectively saw the end of Guinea Bissau’s efforts to become a revolutionary new society. The history of that period is well covered in the books by Carlos Lopes and Antonio Tomas and is not covered further here.
Cabral will retain recognition as an historical figure and a driving force of the revolutions in Guiné and the Lusophone world more widely. The fate of his ideas and their continuing relevance to revolutionary change in Africa and beyond is far less secure. The purpose of this primer is to give a brief taste of the breadth of Cabral’s ideas along with some reference to how they have been understood or experimented with.
As stated in the related interview, Cabral’s work is little known, especially in the Anglophone world. It may not have helped that it was not really designed to be read in any organised form. What exists is a mix of speeches he made at major international events, which were thoughtfully scripted in advance (with parts of one sometimes used in another), recordings of political orientation sessions with party members (again with parts used from previous talks), which probably followed a planned structure but were, according to witnesses, spoken live, some formal party documents and some interviews. Some were originally in Creole, some in Portuguese, some in French, others were presented in English and published in various versions and permutations in a series of collections in Portuguese, French (Éditions Maspero) and English.
Much of the work I refer to is no longer in print, little is well curated in libraries or online collections, it is rare to find it given prominence in the curricula of even quite specialist courses. It therefore seemed a good idea to offer a direct insight into his words, and those of some of his contemporaries, on a spectrum of those issues which have the greatest continuing relevance.
Obviously, I have had to select the quotes that I think will contribute best to that aim and have provided some brief linkages between them. Occasionally, I have quoted more recent commentators for what I see as relevant contextualisation. The main focus, however, is on the words of Cabral himself in the hope that some readers at least will find them as inspirational as I did, one afternoon in a quiet, sunlit library in Cambridge, 48 years ago.
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Cabral’s Thought
General Approach
‘Tell no lies, claim no easy victories’, (Cabral, Revolution in Guinea, 1974, p.70)
‘Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children…’ (Cabral, Revolution in Guinea, 1974, p.70).
‘Above all, we want to decentralise as much as may be possible. That’s one reason why we’re inclined to think that Bissau will not continue to be our capital in an administrative sense. In fact, we are against the whole idea of a capital. Why shouldn’t ministries be dispersed? After all, our country is a small one with passable roads, at least in the central areas. Why should we settle ourselves with the paraphernalia of a presidential palace, a concentration of ministries, for clear signs of an emergent elite which can soon become a privileged group?’ (B. Davidson, 1969, quoting Amilcar Cabral, p.137).
And, for those of us behind our screens many lifetimes away, who may struggle to imagine the dynamic of isolated militants confronting the realities of guerilla war on a daily basis:
‘But this means that everything has to be explained not by “staff appreciations” or other written briefings, useless amongst a largely illiterate people but useless anyway as a means of invoking active and intelligent participation: it has to be explained by oral statement and debate. For this is the kind of warfare in which individual thought and action count for more than anything else and count all the time. This is a kind of warfare in which the volunteer….is there not only to fight for himself but also to think for himself. This is a kind of warfare, accordingly, in which orders which seem to make no sense will probably be ignored.’ (B. Davidson, The Liberation of Guinea: aspects of an African Revolution, 1969, pp.130-131).
Gender
The rules for governance in the liberated areas, established at the first party congress, in February 1964, stipulated that at least two of the five members of every tabanca (village committee) must be women. Women played many military support roles, including as members of local area militias, but were not fighters in the regular armed forces. Several, including Carmen Pereira and Titina Sila, served as political commissars on the various fronts.
‘We are not fighting for a piece of the pie. The men control the pie. We don’t want men to give us a piece of their pie. For if we accept something that is given to us, even if it is half, we will never have the same power as those who gave it. They will still control it. What we want to do is destroy this pie so that men and women, together, can build a new pie where women will be totally equal with men.” Maria Santos, young PAIGC cadre (quoted in Urdang, 1979, pp.283-284).
Process: realism, complexity, flexibility, and emergence
‘We can proceed to discuss the following principle of our party: we advance towards the struggle secure in the reality of our land (with our feet planted on the ground)…It is impossible to struggle effectively for the independence of a people, it is impossible to establish effective armed struggle, such as we have to establish in our land, unless we really know our reality and unless we really start out from that reality to wage the struggle.’ (Amilcar Cabral, Unity and Struggle, 1980, p. 44)
‘Man is part of reality; reality exists independently of man’s will. To the extent to which he acquires consciousness of reality, to the extent in which reality influences his consciousness, or creates his consciousness, man can acquire the potential to transform reality, little by little. This is our view, let us say the principle of our party on relations between man and reality.’ (Amilcar Cabral, Unity and Struggle, 1980, p.44)
Some of the key texts in which he expounds on the reality they are acting upon are ‘The Agricultural Census Of Guiné’ (written by Cabral when he was working as an agronomist for the colonial government in the early 1950s) and ‘Unity and Struggle’ (both in the Unity and Struggle book), ‘Brief analysis of the Social Structure in Guinea’ (Revolution in Guinea) and ‘Analysis of a Few Types of Resistance’ (in Resistance and Decolonization).
‘But only during the struggle, launched from a satisfactory base of political and moral unity, is the complexity of cultural problems raised in all its dimensions. This frequently requires successive adaptations of strategy and tactics to the realities which only the struggle is capable of revealing.’ (Cabral, ‘National Liberation and Culture’ in Return to the Source, 1973, p.53)
Modes of production
‘The ideological deficiency, not to say the total lack of ideology, within the National Liberation movements – which is basically due to ignorance of a historical reality which these movements claim to transform – constitutes one of the greatest weaknesses of our struggle against imperialism, if not the greatest weakness of all.’
‘Those who affirm – in our case correctly – that the motive force of history is the class struggle would certainly agree to a revision of this affirmation to make it more precise and give it an even wider field of application if they had a better knowledge of the essential characteristics of certain colonised peoples, that is to say peoples dominated by imperialism. In fact, in the general evolution of humanity and of each of the peoples of which it is composed, classes appear neither as a generalised and simultaneous phenomenon throughout the totality of these groups, nor as a finished, perfect, uniform and spontaneous whole. The definition of classes within one or several human groups is a fundamental consequence of the progressive development of the productive forces and of the characteristics of the distribution of the wealth produced by the group or usurped from others. That is to say that the socio-economic phenomenon class is created and develops as a function of at least two essential and interdependent variables – the level of productive forces and the pattern of ownership of the means of production. This development takes place slowly, gradually, and unevenly, by quantitative and generally imperceptible variations in the fundamental components; once a certain degree of accumulation is reached, this process then leads to a qualitative jump, characterised by the appearance of classes and of conflict between them.’
‘This leads us to pose the following question: does history begin only with the development of a phenomenon of class, and consequently of class struggle? To reply in the affirmative would be to place outside history the whole period of life of human groups from the discovery of hunting, and later of nomadic and sedentary agriculture, to the organisation of herds and the private appropriation of land. It would also be to consider – and this we refuse to accept – that various human groups in Africa, Asia and Latin America were living without history, or outside history, at the time when they were subjected to the yoke of imperialism. It would be to consider that the peoples of our countries, such as the Balantes of Guinea, the Coaniamas of Angola, and the Macondes of Mozambique, are still living today – if we abstract the slight influence of colonialism to which they have been subjected – outside history, or that they have no history.’(Cabral, ‘Weapon of Theory’ in Revolution in Guinea, 1974, p.75).
He goes on to argue that the common element between periods of class struggle and periods before and after class struggle is indeed the mode of production, that is the dialectic relationship between the level of productive forces and the patterns of ownership of the means of production. (Cabral, ‘Weapon of Theory speech’ in Revolution in Guinea, 1974, pp.75-77).
Philosophies of Knowledge
Identity, culture and an (ecological) ontology
‘We are in a flat part of Africa…the manuals of guerrilla warfare generally state that country has to be of a certain size to be able to create what is called a base and, further, that mountains are the best place to develop guerrilla warfare… obviously we do not have those conditions in Guinea, but this did not stop us beginning our armed liberation struggle. As for the mountains, we decided that our people had to take their place, since it will be impossible to develop our struggle otherwise. So, our people are our mountains.’ (Cabral, Our people are our mountains, 1971, p.11).
This is quoted in ’Meteorisations: Reading Amilcar Cabral’s Agronomy of Liberation’ by Filipa Cezar. As she writes:
‘In Guinea, the PAIGC had succeeded in uniting the people within a horizontally organised anti colonial movement that prioritised education and humility as weapons of militant struggle; where peasant work and intellectual labour were of equal value instead of being submitted to a hierarchical valorisation. The mountains were the people made potent, the multitude. Furthermore, and less metaphorically, this pattern – looking at masses of militants and seeing the potential strategic force of mountains – reflects his understanding of the world in “ecosophical” terms, i.e. a holistic understanding of ecology. This resonates with the less known and often neglected dimension of Cabral’s practise as an agronomist and how his research on soil and erosion informed his political formation’, and ’In Cabral’s thought the geological is not separated from human history, the soil is not an inert and static ground subjected to human agency, but rather has a dynamic relation to human social structures, evident in its different responses to forms of colonial extractivism.’ (Cesar, 2018, p.255).
One of the key texts of Cabral’s thinking about culture and struggle actually appears in two forms. It was first published in English in the Return to the Sourcebook of selected speeches of Cabral as ‘Identity and dignity in the context of the National Liberation struggle’, which was a speech delivered at Lincoln University in October 1972. That is essentially a lengthy extract of longer speech, ‘The role of culture in the struggle for independence’, given to UNESCO in June 1972. These notes come from the UNESCO version, which is translated and published in Resistance and decolonization edited by Dan Wood, except for my preference for ‘source’ to ‘origin’ in the translation of what it is that is being returned to.
Part one of the speech discusses the cultural impact of colonialism on the colonised peoples and explains the nature of a colonial state. The fact that we are talking here of political colonialism rather than settler colonialism, means that there is relatively little cultural impact outside the urban centres.
‘Repressed, persecuted, humiliated, and betrayed by various social groups that have compromised themselves with the foreigner, taking refuge in the villages, the forests, and the minds of generations of victims of domination, culture weathers every storm until, encouraged by the liberation struggles, it can burst forth again in its full flower. This is why the problem of a return to the source, or a cultural renaissance is not posed, nor could it be posed by the popular masses: indeed they are the bearers of their own culture, they are its source, and at the same time, they are the only entity truly capable of preserving and creating culture – in a word of making history’. (p.164).
He continues with a description of the experience of those Africans who become semi-assimilated into the colonial reality, civil servants, employees of various bits of the new economy, some liberal professions, and some property owners and how this native petty bourgeoisie is both moulded by foreign domination and indispensable to the system of colonial exploitation but also constrained from fully joining and being accepted into a colonial elite. It cannot surmount these barriers and it lives in a marginality, as Cabral says:
‘This marginality is the stage on which the sociocultural drama of the colonial elites or native petite bourgeoisie is played out, both in the colony and among the diaspora, a drama experienced more or less intensely according to material circumstances and the level of acculturation, but always individually, never as a collective thing.’ (p.165).
He then goes on to talk about ways in which members of this petty bourgeoisie can attempt to re-orient themselves towards their roots and what this means politically. As he states later, p. 171:
‘When the pre-independence movement is set into motion by the actions of a minority of the native petty bourgeoisie aligned with the popular masses, these masses have no need to affirm or reaffirm an identity about which they have never been unclear, nor could they ever be, nor have they confused it with that of the colonial power. A need of this kind arises only among the native petty bourgeoisie, the elites, who in this phase in the evolution of the contradictions of colonialism are forced to take a position in the conflict setting the popular masses against the colonial power.’
He writes about the difficulties of the reintegration of that part of the petit bourgeoisie that seeks to distinguish itself from the colonial power with the culture of a popular masses. This is both about content and communication, individual angst, and collective organisation. Members of the petty bourgeoisie integrated into the pre-independence movement:
‘…draws on the artefacts of a foreign culture to express, above all through literature and art, more the discovery of its identity than the aspirations and sufferings of the popular masses from which it draws its material. And since it uses the written and spoken language of the colonial power for this expression, it is only rarely that it succeeds in influencing the popular masses, who are generally illiterate and used to other forms of artistic expression’ (p.171).
This all, clearly, has a lot to do with identity. So…
‘The dialectic nature of identity rests in the fact that it identifies and distinguishes, for an individual (or a human group) is identical with some individuals (or groups) only if he (or) it is distinct from others. The definition of identity, individual or collective, is thus at once an affirmation and a negation of a number of characteristics defining individuals or groups as a function of historical (biological and sociological) coordinates at a given moment in their evolution. Indeed, identity is not an immutable quality precisely because the biological and sociological facts that define it are in permanent evolution. Neither biologically nor sociologically, no two beings (individuals or groups) exist in time that are absolutely identical or absolutely different, for it is always possible to find in them some traits that distinguish them and others they have in common. Moreover, the identity of a being is always a relative quality, an imprecise, even accidental thing, for its definition requires a more or less rigorous or restrictive selection for biological and sociological characteristics of the being in question.’ (p.168).
He goes on to argue that, for the present identity of an individual or group, the sociological factors carry more weight than biological factors and also argues:
‘the identity that counts at any moment in the development of a being, individual or group is present identity, and any evaluation of an individual or group made solely on the basis of original identity is incomplete, partial, and laden with prejudices, since it overlooks or neglects the crucial influence of social reality (material and intellectual) on the form and content of identity.’
‘If we postulate that culture is the dynamic synthesis of the material and intellectual reality of society and expresses relations both between man and nature, as well as between the different groups of men within the same society, we can say that and at the individual and collective level, and at the same time beyond economic reality, identity is an expression of a culture.’
‘It is culture that has the ability (or responsibility) to elaborate or enrich the elements that make for historical continuity and, at the same time, for the possibility of progress (and not regression) of the society. Thus, we see how imperialist domination, as the negation of the historical process of a dominated society, is also necessarily the negation of its cultural process. And the liberation struggle is also an act of culture, above all because a society that is truly in the process of liberating itself from a foreign yoke must make its way back along the paths of its own cultural heritage, thriving on the living reality around it and rejecting all baleful influences and all subjugation to foreign cultures.’
‘Culture is therefore not, nor can it be, a weapon or a method for collective mobilisation against foreign domination. It is much more than that. It is in the concrete knowledge of local realities, particularly cultural realities, that the choice, the organisation, and the development of the best methods for the struggle lie.’
‘In assessing the role of culture in the liberation movement, one must not forget that culture, which is both a product of and a determining factor in history, consists of both essential and secondary elements, strengths and weaknesses, virtues and faults, positive aspects and progressive factors, as well as factors of stagnation and regression, contradictions, and even conflicts.’ (p.169).
‘Culture, the foundation and source of inspiration for the struggle, begins itself to be influenced by the struggle; this is reflected in the conduct of social groupings and individuals, as well as in the unfolding of the struggle itself. Both the leaders of the liberation movement, for the most part from the urban centres (petite bourgeoisie and wage earners), and for popular masses (the vast majority peasants) improve their level of culture; they acquire more knowledge about the realities of their country, free themselves from class complexes and prejudices, extend the horizons of the world within which they develop, break down ethnic barriers, reinforce their political consciousness, become a more integral part of the country and the world, et cetera.’ (Cabral, in Wood, 2020, pp.173-175).
Finally, the cultural struggle also influences the metropole as was particularly the case in the liberation movements of Portuguese Africa…
‘In accepting the identity and culture of the colonised people, and hence its inalienable right to self-determination and independence, as a fact, metropolitan opinion (or at least an important segment of this opinion) achieves a significant cultural advance of its own, freeing itself from one negative aspect of its culture: the prejudice of the supremacy of the colonising nation over the colonised nation. This progress at the cultural level may have some important, even fundamental, consequences for the political life and development of the imperialist or colonial power, as has been amply demonstrated by the facts of recent and current history of the popular struggles against foreign domination.’ (Cabral, in Wood, 2020, pp.177 & 178).
The local, colonial, universal dynamic
Another major text, published in Cabral’s lifetime was that of a speech delivered in February 1970 as part of the Edward Mondlane memorial lecture series at Syracuse University, New York. It overlaps to quite a degree with the ideas of class differentiation within the liberation struggle, of identity, and of culture that are quoted at length above. It mixes a general argument of culture as a battleground between colonialism and resistance with some more pointed remarks about how attitudes towards popular culture reflect and shape political choices. Given this weaving of themes, it is hard to summarise in linear form. These quotes aim to give a flavour of a speech which really requires study in its entirety. The references are to Return to the Source. The same text, including some additional introductory remarks also appears in Amilcar Cabral: Unity and Struggle.
‘Culture is, perhaps, the product of this history just as the flower is the product of a plant. Like history, or because it is history, culture has as its material base the level of the productive forces and the mode of production. Culture plunges its roots into the physical reality of the environmental humus in which it develops, and it reflects the organic nature of the society, which may be more or less influenced by external factors. History allows us to know the nature and extent of the imbalances and conflicts economic, political and social which characterise the evolution of a society; culture allows us to know the dynamic synthesis which have been developed and established by social conscience to resolve these conflicts at each stage of its evolution, in the search for survival and progress…Just as happens with the flower in a plant, in culture there lies the capacity (or the responsibility) for forming and fertilising the seedling which will assure the continuity of history, at the same time assuring the prospects for evolution and progress of the society in question.’ (p.42).
‘Without any doubt, underestimation of the cultural values of African peoples, based upon racist feelings and upon the intention of perpetuating foreign exploitation of Africans, has done much harm to Africa. But in the face of the vital needs for progress, the following attitudes or behaviours will be no less harmful to Africa: indiscriminate compliments; systematic exultation of virtues without condemning faults; blind acceptance of the values of the culture, without considering what presently or potentially regressive elements it contains; confusion between what is the expression of an objective and material historical reality and what appears to be a creation of the mind or the product of a peculiar temperament; absurd linking of artistic creations, whether good or not, with supposed racial characteristics; and finally, the non-scientific or a-scientific critical appreciation of the cultural phenomenon.’ (p.51).
‘It is important to be conscious of the value of African cultures in the framework of universal civilization, but to compare this value with that of other cultures, not with a view of deciding its superiority or inferiority, but in order to determine, in the general framework of the struggle for progress, what contribution African culture has made and can make, and what are the contributions it can or must receive from elsewhere.’ (p.52).
‘They [the leadership] discover at the grassroots the richness of their cultural values (philosophic, political, artistic, social, and moral), acquire a clearer understanding of the economic realities of the country, of the problems, sufferings and hopes of the popular masses. The leaders realise, not without a certain astonishment, the richness of spirit, the capacity for reasoned discussion and clear exposition of ideas, the facility for understanding and assimilating concepts on the part of population groups who yesterday were forgotten, if not despised, and who were considered incompetent by the colonisers and even by some nationals…’ (p.52).
He goes on to say that the experience of participating in the liberation struggle also provides opportunities for cultural progress among the working masses, in particular the peasants. Part of this development in his view offers the opportunity to experience the wider world:
‘They realise their crucial role in the struggle; they break the bonds of the village universe to integrate progressively into the country and the world; they acquire an infinite amount of new knowledge, useful for their immediate and future activity within the framework of the struggle, and they strengthen their political awareness by assimilating the principles of national and social revolution postulated by the struggle. They thereby become more able to play the decisive role of providing the principal force behind the liberation movement’ (p.54).
‘When we consider these features, we see that the armed liberation struggle is not only a product of culture but also a determinant of culture’ (p.55).
‘It can be concluded that in the framework of the conquest of national independence and in the perspective of developing the economic and social progress of the people, the objectives must be at least the following:
development of a popular culture and of all positive indigenous cultural values
development of a national culture based upon the history and the achievements of the struggle itself.
constant promotion of a political and moral awareness of the people of all social groups as well as patriotism, of the spirit of sacrifice and devotion to the cause of independence, of justice and progress
development of a technical, technological, and scientific culture, compatible with the requirements for progress
development on the basis of a critical assimilation of man’s achievements in the domains of art, science, literature et cetera of a universal culture for perfect integration into the contemporary world in the perspectives of its evolution
constant and generalised promotion of feelings of humanism, of solidarity, of respect and disinterested devotion to human beings.’ (p.55).
It is worth noting that whilst both a scientist and a modernist and referring to humans as ‘foremost being’ in nature, Cabral is very clear of the limited value of forcing new concepts on people and generally sought policies where such changes would occur organically from within local cultural processes, which, essentially in his view, included the process of achieving national liberation as a collective endeavour. He also, as explained well in Filipa César’s Meteorizations article, had a very forward looking and ecological understanding of his science (agronomy) as a dialectical interaction between soil, climate and people. He also regularly used natural images of seeds, sowing, harvests, rivers, and mountains to illustrate his political arguments. As Wood argues, he also extends: ‘the concept of struggle to the realm of nature, the earth, and the environment. The land must really be liberated’ p.59.
‘So, our point of view is that we should make resistance in our culture in order to conserve what is in fact useful and constructive, but in the certainty that – to the extent that we move forward – our clothing, our manner of eating, our manner of dancing and singing, and everything else has to change bit by bit. This is even more the case in regard to our minds, our sense of relations with nature, and even our relations with each other.’
Decolonial Thought
‘Cabral argues that imperialism causes a stagnation, paralysis, and at times regression of local histories. In other words, certain aspects of colonised space time – such as productive forces and cultures – slow down, are paralysed, and stagnate when shoved within the inertial frame of colonialist or imperialist space-time………Colonialism does not bring a singular world history to non-historical beings but stifles and suppresses a plurality of already existent histories’ (Wood, 2016, p. 51).
Coloniality ‘refers to longstanding patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labour, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations.’ (Wood, 2016 p.61, quoting Nelson Maldonado-Torres ‘On the coloniality of being: contributions to the development of a concept’ p. 97).
There is a lot more on this and how it relates to Cabral (and Fanon) in Dan Woods, Epistemic Decolonization.
The international domain
Lusophone world
‘Our peoples make a distinction between the fascist colonial government and the people of Portugal: they are not fighting against the Portuguese people. However, the objective situation of the large popular masses in Portugal, oppressed and exploited by the ruling classes of their country, should make them understand the great advantages for them which will flow from the victory of the African peoples over Portuguese colonialism.’ (Cabral, Revolution in Guinea, 1974, p.150).
‘We must reaffirm clearly that while being opposed to all fascism, our peoples are not fighting Portuguese fascism: we are fighting Portuguese colonialism. The destruction of fascism in Portugal must be the work of the Portuguese people themselves: the destruction of Portuguese colonialism will be the work of our peoples.’ (Cabral, Revolution in Guinea,1974, p.16).
In 1961, the PAIGC, along with representatives of liberation movements from Mozambique, Angola and Sao Tomé, founded the Conference of Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies. Mario de Andrade was its first president and Marcelino dos Santos (later Vice President of Mozambique) its secretary general. Aquino de Braganca, who attended the founding meeting representing the Goan Peoples Party and (much) later set up the Centro de Estudos Africanos in Maputo, was another active member. Most of these key members had originally met through their involvement in African cultural and anti-colonial activities in Lisbon. The CONCP had an important role both diplomatically and, through the intellectual reputation and contacts of its key members, in shaping opinion in academic and UN circles.
African Unity
‘My own view is that there are no real conflicts between the peoples of Africa. There are only conflicts between their elites. When the peoples take power into their own hands, as they will with the march of events in this continent, there will remain no great obstacles to effective African solidarity.’ (Cabral quoted by Davidson in introduction to Amilcar Cabral: Unity and Struggle, 1967, p.xvii).
‘The building of independent nations must be the prelude to the building of larger constellations of independence. And this too, he saw 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 fully post-colonial society. With time and effort: for this process, in his thinking, could never be achieved by any extension of the colonial heritage, whether political or economic or cultural. It would come, on the contrary, only through a continued process of social and structural revolution capable of drawing whole peoples into an arena of active participation: an arena thereby freed of old servitudes, old inferiority’s, old miseries. Then, but only then, would Africa realise its potentials.’ (Davidson, in introduction to Amilcar Cabral: Unity and Struggle, 1967, p.xvii).
Guinean sociologist, and subsequent executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, Carlos Lopes has argued that Cabral and Andrade, with their awareness of wider diasporan and pan-African discourses, particularly in Andrade’s case the francophone world, developed a distinct philosophical, cultural and political approach to African unity, which remains an active current of thought to this day.
Worldwide
‘I should just like to make one last point about solidarity between the international working-class movement and our National Liberation struggle. There are two alternatives: either we admit that there really is a struggle against imperialism which interests everybody, or we deny it. If, as would seem from all the evidence, imperialism exists and is trying simultaneously to dominate the working class in all the advanced countries and smother the National Liberation movements in all the underdeveloped countries, then there is only one enemy against whom we are fighting. If we are fighting together, then I think the main aspect of our solidarity is extremely simple: it is to fight – I don’t think there is any need to discuss this very much. We are struggling in Guinea with guns in our hands, you must struggle in your countries as well – I don’t say with guns in your hands, I’m not going to tell you how to struggle, that’s your business; but you must find the best means and the best forms of fighting against our common enemy: this is the best form of solidarity.’ (Cabral, Revolution in Guinea, 1974, p.61).
Return to the Source includes a transcript of a meeting in October 1972, attended by over 120 activists from black political organisations in the United States. Cabral had asked for such a meeting to be organised. Entitled ‘Connecting the Struggles’ it consists of a short speech by Cabral, followed by a question-and-answer session. It demonstrates the strong mutual interest in each other’s struggles between Cabral and his audience. (Return to the Source, 1973, pp.75-92).
Some notes on liberation, intellectual labour and pedagogy
Education was a massive priority of the PAIGC and, arguably, the area in which it adopted its most radical and innovative policies. It was seen, both in the content of the curriculum and in the use of the Portuguese language, to be a force for explaining the objectives of the struggle and building national understanding and unity. It was intended to be a route for the empowerment of women and girls in social and economic terms. It was seen as essential to developing the skills – both technical and relational – if independence was to lead to a sustained economic transition.
There were a multitude of competing demands on very scarce resources. At independence there were several hundred rudimentary schools that had been established in the liberated areas, often with untrained teachers and little in the way of teaching materials. There was the urban educational system inherited from the Portuguese, which had more teachers and materials but tuned to a highly reactionary approach. There were a series of boarding schools, for orphans of the war, pilot secondaries and technical formation, which had been the fulcrum of new methodologies. There was the wish to continue to offer practical education to adults, especially in the armed forces, to help people achieve the fruits of liberation. Finally, there were the many programmes with other countries offering university and professional scholarships which both offered new capacity but also took relatively skilled people out of the country. This was not an easy mix to manage.
The resultant policies tried to operate on some basic principles:
- Education should be of value in and of itself to students at any level. The idea that the sole purpose of primary was to get to secondary, then to tertiary and then to the elite was rejected
- Education should be free, to make it a route to social integration not differentiation.
- Education should connect students to the social realities of their societies rather than divide and impose hierarchies on manual and intellectual labour – and, in the process aim to make at least the boarding schools self-sufficient in food.
- Education should reinforce the democratic development of society by practicing open, collective decision making with representation from all relevant parties, including students.
For the early 1970s, this was quite radical! I don’t know how much of what happened has been formally studied. There is useful contemporary description in chapters in Guinea Bissau: 3 Anos de Independencia and in Sowing the First Harvest. Here, I offer first some quotes and comments from Paolo Freire’s work in Guinea Bissau, followed by some reflections of my own on the challenge of linking high quality technical research to the actual realities’ African societies face.
Pedagogy in process
The book Pedagogy in Process is based on a series of letters written by Paulo Freire to Mario Cabral, who was the secretary for education in Bissau in the mid 1970s and to various other colleagues in the ministry about a collaboration between Freire’s team at the World Council of Churches and the efforts to promote adult literacy in Guinea Bissau. There is a lot of very rich material, but I will try and summarise some core points below.
• The aim of the whole exercise is not the mechanical-bureaucratic one of teaching basic literacy reading and writing to illiterate adults but to enable them to read their own reality.
• This requires a respectful relationship between the teachers and the learners. There is no place for class or gender superiority, or for thinking higher education produces more superior people. For this reason, teachers take their place alongside learners in productive work, such as in the fields. Teachers who do not learn at the same time as they are teaching are not doing their job.
• The work is valid in its own right. It is not the first step on an assumed journey to an assumedly more valuable higher education. As President Nyerere said in his work Education for self-reliance:
‘the education offered in our primary schools should be an education complete in itself it should not continue to be simply a preparation for secondary school…The activities of the primary school should constitute preparation for the life which the majority of children will lead.’
‘The theory of knowledge that serves a revolutionary objective and is put into practise in education is based upon the claim that knowledge is always a process, and results from the conscious action (practice) of human beings on the objective reality which, in its turn, conditions them. Thus, a dynamic and contradictory unity is established between objective reality and the persons acting on it. All reality is dynamic and contradictory in this same way’.
From the point of view of such a theory and of the education which grows from it, it is not possible:
to separate the act of knowing existing knowledge from the act of
creating new knowledgeto separate theory and practise
to separate ‘teaching from learning, educating from being educated’ (p.89).
‘Education as an act of knowing confronts us with a number of theoretical practical, not intellectual questions: What to know? How to know? Why to know? In benefit of what and of whom to know? Moreover, against what and whom to know?’ (p.100).
He goes on to stress that these are political not technical questions.
• The method is based on the identification of a limited number of ‘generative’ words which are chosen for their capacity to unlock wider discussion and understanding of the learner’s realities. For example, one word chosen here was rice. There is then the choice of a channel of communication to be used to code the word chosen. This could be visual, auditory, tactile, or audio-visual. The learners are then asked to analyse what they are presented with so, for example, if there is a photograph of men and women working in the fields, the questions may be asked as to why are they working? Who are they? The aim is to teach the reading of the superstructure around the coded elements. He stresses the need to defend against two risks. One is that we may,
‘reduce the coding simply to a message to be transmitted when it is, in reality, an object to be known, even a challenge, a problem to be revealed. The second danger is that we may transform the code into some kind of puzzle to be solved.’ (p.89).
‘The task of evaluation is a means of training and, as such, is intimately linked to the search for new forms of action. Looking at one’s own practise as a problem provides the critical moment in evaluation. The subjects of a practise can then go back over what has been done in order to confirm or to rectify it in this or that aspect, enriching subsequent practise and being enriched by it.’ (p.97).
He goes on to say that,
‘the important thing is, first, that there be ongoing evaluation of work being realised and, second, that the evaluation never become a type of fiscalisation’. (p.98).
‘The basic challenge is not simply to substitute a new programme for an old one that was adequate to the interests of the colonisers. It is to establish a coherence between the society that is being reconstructed in a revolutionary way and the education as a whole that deserves that revolutionary society. And the theory of knowledge which the new society must put in practise requires a new way of knowing that is antagonistic to colonial education.’ (pp.102-3).
Or, to put it more positively,
‘When persons are active subjects of their own existence, their daily life is oriented toward reality…..The fundamental point is that people not only see the world as “the base from which they carry out their own lives” but they also see daily life as the object of an ever more rigorous knowledge and this knowledge should clarify and illuminate their practical and emotional existence that takes reality as its base’ (p.135).
or
‘the process of liberation of a people does not take place in profound and authentic terms unless this people reconquers its own Word, the right to speak it, to pronounce it, and to name the word: to speak the word as a means of liberating their own language through that act from the supremacy of the dominant language of the colonisers.’ (p.126).
As indicated above, the PAIGC (and Cabral, and many other African countries), believed that in the context of Guiné (with 28 languages spoken in a small country) the unifying force of having a single national language outweighed the benefits of the process Freire describes. (Personally, I am not sure it has to be so binary and that hybrid options could be considered).
Technical higher education, modernisms, and choice
As a (former) nurse who has worked in modern hospitals and in rural areas in Africa and Brazil, I am aware of the massive difference in skill sets required in each environment. The former requires the knowledge to choose and interpret the many hundreds of diagnostic aids available, the latter depends on communication with the patient and relatives (often via an interpreter), deep knowledge of local disease patterns, and hoping that the necessary people and materials for the small laboratory and single x-ray machine to operate are, for once, in place. Elite capture means that most medical training is geared towards the former and the financial rewards of such practice are much higher. The health needs of most of the world’s population are still met, if at all, by the latter.
This is but one example that questions the purpose of higher technical education/ training, how it can advance the struggle, how it can be supported in ways that support developmental aims, whose interests it is supposed to serve.
At one level these are political issues, relating to the dangers of elite formation and also of conflicting individual and societal interests. These were very real in post-independence Guinéa (and in Mozambique) and remain alive to this day. As President Luis Cabral (Amilcar’s half-brother and also founder member of the PAIGC) said in his address to the National Assembly in April 1976:
‘The school is like a double-edged knife because the pupils must be taught what to do when they’re older. If this is not done, things would go on as before, with each individual who learned to read up to the third or fourth year no longer wanting to be a worker, only wanting to go to the city, not to stay in the country. If we allow this to continue as before, our schools will constitute a vast factory of unemployed, for we have not enough jobs for people in the city!’
and
‘Our comrades in national education… are studying ways of providing a programme of studies which will serve our country, instead of a programme designed to form people who will despise our country, despise the very work of their people, their country. We do not want this in our land. We want every individual to study so as to raise the level of our people, each individual who studies more, who learns more, serves his country and his people better. Not to serve his own interests placing himself above his people in his country…We are finding that there are many comrades who do not show this consciousness. Many of them who were educated in the struggle, who were with us in the struggle, after taking a college course are returning to our country as ‘visitors’ and even expect us to give them another scholarship to go and take another course!’ (Cabral, 1976, p.26).
But this also raises questions of research agendas, academic funding, and institutional bias. It is not just a question of traditional versus modern. There are choices in the forms of modernism pursued their ideological underpinnings and the social relations they seek with the society they intend to create. These are all implicit in Cabral’s reflections on his work as an agronomist. He did not question the science he was taught but the social, economic, and ecological contexts of its application.
ROAPE’s own Reginald Cline-Cole has examined this issue more explicitly within an academic context, exploring divergent motivations and aspirations, national and international research priorities (and related hierarchies and funding) and largely external processes of disciplinary definition and control.
In Cline-Cole’s ‘Blazing a trail while lazing around: Knowledge processes and wood-fuel paradoxes?’ he tells the story of his (eventually successful) efforts to apply his research skills and knowledge to a real problem (sustainable wood-fuel supply) experienced by real people (in his case a family bakery and domestic household use) in Sierra Leone. I refer to it here because it is a rare effort that looks at the detail of the often absent links between societal need and the organisation (and, increasingly, business models) of intellectual labour and, as such, is directly related to the struggles of Cabral and his comrades to make knowledge and technical capacity communicate with the masses, as a weapon of liberation.
Featured Photographs: all of the photographs are provided by Mike Powell, and they include PAIGC campaign photos, children sorting through rice, work rota from a secondary school, and a montage of publicity photos of Cabral from the 1970s.
Reading
Cabral, Amilcar, 1969, 1974, Revolution in Guinea: An African People’s Struggle, stage 1, London
Cabral, Amilcar, 1971, Our People Are Our Mountains: Amílcar Cabral on the Guinean Revolution, Committee for Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea, London,
Cabral, Amilcar. 1973, Return to the Source: Selected Speeches of Amilcar Cabral, Monthly Review Press, New York and London
Cabral, Amilcar. 1980, Amilcar Cabral: Unity and Struggle, Heinemann Educational Books, London
Cabral, Amilcar. 2016, Resistance and Decolonization, Rowman and Littlefield, London and New York
Cabral, Luis, 1976, ‘Speech to the opening session of the National Assembly, Bissau, April 1976’, published in People’s Power, 1976, MAGIC, London
César, Filipa, 2018, ‘Meteorisations: Reading Amilcar Cabral’s Agronomy of Liberation’ Third Text 32:2.3
Cline-Cole, Reginald, 2006, ‘Blazing a trail while lazing around: Knowledge processes and woodfuel paradoxes?‘ by Reginald Cline-Cole is the final version (2006) of an article, mistakenly published in draft form in Development in Practice 16(6), 2006, pp. 545-558
Davidson, Basil, 1959, Old Africa Rediscovered, Gollanz, London
Davidson, Basil, 1969, The Liberation of Guinea: Aspects of an African Revolution, Penguin, London
Basil Davidson, 1980 ‘Special Operations Europe: Scenes from the Anti-Nazi War’ Gollancz, London
Freire, Paolo. 1987, Pedagogy in Progress: The Letters to Guinea-Bissau, Writers and Readers Ltd, London
Gjorstad, Ole & Sarrazin, Chantal, 1976, Sowing the First Harvest: National Reconstruction in Guinea Bissau, LSM Information Centre, Oakland
Kimble, Judy, ‘The Struggle within the Struggle’ Feminist Review, No. 8 (Summer, 1981), pp. 107-111, Palgrave Macmillan Journals.
Lopes, Carlos. 1987 Guinea Bissau: From Liberation Struggle to Independent Statehood, Zed Press
Lopes, Carlos, 2005, Africa and the Challenges of Citizenry and Inclusion: the Legacy of Mario de Andrade CODESRIA, monograph series
Pereira, Luisa & Moita, Luis, 1976, Guinea Bissau: 3 Anos de Independencia, Edicao CIDA-C, Lisbon
Rudebeck, Lars. 1988. “Kandjadja, Guinea-Bissau 1976-1986: Observations on the Political Economy of an African Village.” Review of African Political Economy 41: 17-29.
Rudebeck, Lars.1990, ‘Structural Adjustment in Kandjadja, Guinea-Bissau’, Review of African Political Economy 49
Rudebeck, Lars. 1997, ‘’To Seek Happiness’: Development in a West African Village in the Era of Democratisation’, Review of African Political Economy 71
Sivanandan, A., 1994, ‘A Celebration of Basil Davidson’, Race and Class, 36:2, Institute of Race Relations, London
Urdang, Stephanie. 1979, Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea-Bissau, Monthly Review Press, New York
Thiong’o, wa Ngugi, 2012, ‘Globalectics: theory and the politics of knowing’, Columbia University Press
Tomas, Antonio, 2008, O Fazedor de Utopias: uma Biografia de Amilcar Cabral, 2nd edition, Tinta-de-China, Lisbon
Wood, D.A. 2020, Epistemic Decolonization, Palgrave Macmillan
