Remembering Amilcar Cabral

Amilcar Cabral's Dream In Tatters
Mail and Guardian Johannesburg 18 Dec 1998 00:00

Cameron Duodu: LETTER FROM THE NORTH
There are few countries whose near- destruction, through civil war, has pained me as much as that of Guinea- Bissau. This country fired my imagination in the early 1970s, for although its population was less than a million, it became - together with its sister, the Cape Verde Islands - the stage for one of the most heroic struggles for independence seen this century.

The Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), led by Amilcar Cabral, fought the Portuguese colonialists so bravely that when General Antonio Spinola, Guinea- Bissau’s former governor, was recalled to Portugal, he made it known to his military colleagues that Portugal’s colonial wars in Africa - which also involved the much larger countries, Angola and Mozambique - were not winnable.

When, in April 1974, the Portuguese army struck against the Caetano regime, it made Spinola president. He allowed the socialist leader, Mario Soares, to wind down the African wars. Guinea- Bissau was given its independence in September 1974 - only five months after the Portuguese coup. Cape Verde followed in July 1975.

Although the triumphant PAIGC was a movement with strong grassroots support, it had a few internal contradictions, which were sadly seized upon by the military leader, Major Joao Bernardo Vieira, to overthrow the president, Luis Cabral, in 1980.

The current troubles of Guinea-Bissau have their origins in that coup.

On June 5 this year, an attempted coup was mounted against President Vieira by his army chief, Brigadier Ansumane Mane.

Vieira had sacked Mane after alleging that he was supplying arms to a dissident group fighting for a separate state of Casamance in neighbouring Senegal. He did this under pressure from Senegal President Abdou Diouf, and indeed Senegal bears a great responsibility for the destruction of Guinea-Bissau.

Senegal intervened in the fighting as soon as it became clear that Mane might win. Guinea also sent in troops to help Vieira. Foreign intervention failed, however, and the two sides were forced to the negotiating table.

After talks in Lom, Togo, this week, 1450 West African troops, under Ecomog command, are to be sent to Guinea- Bissau to supervise the formation of a government of national unity. New elections will be held in March next year to determine who should rule.

The reason why I’ve been following events in Guinea-Bissau closely is that I had the privilege of interviewing the founder of the PAIGC, Dr Amilcar Cabral, in Accra, Ghana, when he attended a conference of the Liberation Committee of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1972.

It was a most memorable conference for me, for in addition to Cabral, my interview list was a veritable Who’s Who in African Liberation: the late Mozambique president, Samora Machel (our interpreter was the current president, Joachim Chissano!); Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe; and President Sam Nujoma of Namibia.

It’s been a privilege to be able to see such men in operation as exiled freedom fighters, and to monitor their performance when they achieved their objectives.

Along the route, I’ve lost some of the heroes I met. I remember with particular fondness the late Herbert Chitepo and Josiah Tongogara of Zimbabwe. They were both introduced to me in Lusaka by my colleague from the Zimbabwe edition of Drum magazine, the late doughty journalist Noel Mukono.

But Cabral was a special case. His political genius lay in his ability to translate into theory what he saw on the ground in the Guinea-Bissau struggle, while at the same time directing the struggle on the basis of theoretical knowledge.

This synthesis of praxis and theory made him a formidable opponent of imperialism, and when the influence he exerted over other African freedom fighters became obvious, he was marked for assassination.

In November 1972, the Portuguese army carried out a murderous commando raid on Conakry, where Cabral and the PAIGC leadership were based. The party’s offices in Conakry were attacked and a lot of people slain. Fortunately, Cabral was not in Conakry at the time.

But two months later, in January 1973, the Portuguese secret police, having managed to infiltrate the PAIGC leadership and to “turn” a member of the inner group called Innocente Camil, managed to bribe this evil Camil with a false promise: if Cabral were killed, Guinea-Bissau would be given its independence immediately, with Camil as its ruler.

Camil therefore captured Cabral with the intention of taking him by boat to Bissau. But Cabral struggled and was killed. (According to my friend, the late Angolan poet, Mario de Andrade, Cabral told his captors that “only an animal ought to be trussed up and taken to slaughter”.)

This rings true, for when I interviewed him, Cabral said it would be a grave error for Africans to trust any of Portugal’s allies, such as the United States and Britian, because “it is only in fables that you can cross a river in a canoe paddled by a crocodile’s friend”.

I attended Cabral’s funeral in Conakry as a member of the Ghana delegation. President Sekou Toure of Guinea received us in his office and told us that he believed “racial problems” formed part of the contradictions within the PAIGC that had contributed to Cabral’s assassination.

Guinea gave Cabral a funeral to remember. It went on for about a week, with fiery speeches in Conakry Stadium.

Before returning home, our delegation paid a visit to the Villa Sylla in Conakry, where Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, had spent his days in exile after he had been overthrown by the military in 1966.