Our struggle is not mere words but action; and we must really struggle. You will recall that in the early 1960s, many folk persuaded themselves that struggle meant speaking on the radio. Famous victories were scored on the airwaves of Dakar or of Conakry, even against PAIGC, but not against Portuguese colonialism, because the opportunists never did anything against the colonialists. Those were olden days when persons rushed to see who could be the first to speak on the radio. As if that were the struggle.

In our party we have always considered as basic and correct the following: the struggle is not a debate nor verbiage, whether written or spoken. Struggle is daily action against ourselves and against the enemy, action which changes and grows each day so as to take all the necessary forms to chase the Portuguese colonialists out of our land. And we must wage this struggle wherever it might be necessary. First, inside our land, because rice is cooked inside the pot and not outside. But we must never forget that a struggle like ours must also be waged outside our frontiers, against our enemies and at the side of our friends, to obtain the necessary means for our struggle and to build the potential for supplying the struggle inside our land.

The fact that PAIGC had established the principle that the struggle must be waged seriously and that everyone, no matter who, must struggle, drove many folk away from the party. For some persons approached PAIGC, or even managed to join PAIGC, with the idea that they would have to struggle on the radio and that tomorrow they would take up an appointment as minister. When they discovered that to be in PAIGC's struggle, one had to be inside or outside the country, as the leadership decided, some went away and went so far as to rejoin the Portuguese to have a little enjoyment of the crumbs of colonialism. This is one of the main reasons why the opportunists in Dakar, for example, combat our party! Some of them would dearly love to join our party, but they do not have the courage. They know that the party could tell them: ‘Stick tight, let's go inside’.