Selected speeches by Amílcar Cabral

Introduction

The long and difficult struggle to free Africa from foreign domination has produced many heroic figures and will continue to produce many more. In some instances individuals who seemed to be unlikely candidates emerged as spokesmen for the masses of their people. Often these were individuals who rejected avenues of escape from the realities of their people and who elected instead to return to the source of their own being. In taking this step these individuals reaffirmed the right of their people to take their own place in history.

Amílcar Cabral is one such figure. And in the hearts of the people of the small West African country of Guinea (Bissau), he will remain a leader who helped them regain their identity and who was otherwise instrumental in the initial stages of the long and difficult process of national liberation.

Cabral is recognised as having been one of the world's outstanding political theoreticians. At the time of his assassination by Portuguese agents, on 20 January 1973– Cabral, as secretary-general of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC), was also an outstanding practitioner of these political theories. He had the ability to translate abstract theories into the concrete realities of his people, and very often the realities of his people resulted in the formulation of new theories.

The specific conditions of colonialism in Guinea (Bissau) and on the Cape Verde Islands were instrumental in the political development of Cabral. To his people, Portuguese colonialism meant a stagnant existence coupled with the absence of personal dignity and liberty. More than 99 per cent of the population could not read or write. Sixty per cent of the babies died before reaching the age of one year. Forty percent of the population suffered from sleeping sickness and almost everyone had some form of malaria. There were never more than 11 doctors for the entire rural population, or one doctor for every 45 000 Africans.

In an effort to control the African population, Portugal attempted to create a minimally educated class, the members of which were granted the ‘privilege’ of serving Portugal's interests.