Africa and the world commemorate Cabral, 100 years on

Former PM and President of Cape Verde Pedro Pires. The struggles waged by Cabral and the PAIGC continue to be incredibly relevant today. The ongoing and increasing brutality of Western imperialism in the 21st century necessitates a return to the ideas of Cabral to chart a way forward, the writer says. – Picture: Desmond Fonseca

By Desmond Fonseca

September 12, 2024, marked one hundred years since the birth of Amílcar Cabral, the great revolutionary leader of the liberation struggles of both Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde. Centennial celebrations have been underway since the beginning of the year, spearheaded by the Amílcar Cabral Foundation based in Praia, Cabo Verde, with numerous organisations and individuals taking part in official programming which has spanned continents.

Born one hundred years ago in what was then Portuguese Guinea to Cabo Verdean parents, Cabral would go on to found the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cabo Verde at thirty-two years old, which would become the principal instrument used by the people of Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde to liberate their homelands from Portuguese domination.

Trained as an agronomist in Portuguese universities, opting to study in this field after having seen and lived through terrible colonial-famines in Cabo Verde as a teenager, Cabral became intimately familiar with the land, labour and lives of his fellow countrymen during his employment as an agricultural census-taker and agricultural consultant for the Portuguese colonial regime.

Rather than serve his own personal interests and pursue what would have been a very lucrative career as a colonial engineer, Cabral dedicated his life to the liberation of his people and the broader struggle for the liberation of humanity from capitalist rule and imperialist domination.

The centennial has been an opportunity for organisations, intellectuals, journalists, cultural workers, and activists to revisit the life, thought and action of Cabral and interrogate what his significance is today.

Cabral’s contributions to agronomy, culture, philosophy, political economy, military strategy historical study and history itself make the possible scope of reflection a wide one, as has been reflected by the range of centennial activities held across various continents, from the release of new translations of work on and by Cabral from publishers such as 1804 Books in the United States and Expressao Popular in Brazil. Throughout the month of September there are highly anticipated cultural festivities planned in Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde.

Return to the source: Honouring Cabral in Cape Verde

Between September 9-12, however, hundreds of politicians, diplomats, intellectuals, academics, organisers and former liberation fighters, gathered in Praia, the capital of Cabo Verde, and Bissau, the capital of Guinea, to participate in the International Symposium on Amílcar Cabral. The symposium opened with messages from Ana Maria Cabral, the wife of Amílcar, Pedro Pires, former President and Prime Minister of Cape Verde who was a leader in the people’s revolutionary armed forces of the PAIGC during the liberation war in Guinea and later served as the secretary-general of the PAICV, and current president of Cabo Verde, José Maria Neves.

Pires emphasised the centrality of Cabral and the party’s struggle against neo-colonialism during and after the liberation struggle and carried this idea throughout his comments during the symposium. President Neves spent part of his reflection commenting on the state of the world at the moment of Cabral’s assassination in 1973, noting that it was a period of global crisis — from the ongoing Vietnam War, and the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile to the normalisation of Egyptian-Israeli relations to the rapprochement between Nixon and Mao — similar levels of instability to what we are living through today.

Following the opening ceremonies, featuring a virtual message from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the symposium’s first panel began, featuring Carlos Reis, the first Minister of Education of independent Cabo Verde, Layan Sima Fuleihan, the Education Director of The People’s Forum in New York,Sean Blackmon, a Washington DC-based broadcast journalist and member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Antero Veiga, the former Cape Verdean Minister of the Environment, Housing and Planning.

The opening topic was “Cabral’s Theoretical Legacy 50 years after his death” where panellists contextualised the national liberation struggles of Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde, before moving into a reflection on Cabral’s current influence on international movements, such as the Palestinian solidarity movement in North America, and the Black liberation struggle.

Fuleihan highlighted four critical areas from which we can pull lessons from Cabral:

conducting concrete analyses of our concrete conditions 2) understanding the dialectical motion of history 3) developing the subjective conditions for liberation; and 4) the primacy of building revolutionary organisations, which for Cabral was a socialist party.

Former President Pires participated in debate following the panels, at one point reflecting on the incomplete process of the revolution led by Cabral following his assassination, metaphorically stressing that everyone had a hand in the “killing of Cabral”. One hundred years after his birth, Pires called for those in the room and beyond to “stop killing Cabral”, a reminder to live up to the principles he laid forth in his time as a leader of the African liberation movement from colonial domination.

Antonio Pedro Lima’s discussion during the second day on “World Geopolitics, Africa’s Destiny and the Universal Thought of Cabral”, addressed Nato’s war in Ukraine, the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, the rise of multipolarity through the BRICS+ formation, and the importance of the growing anti-imperialist Alliance of Sahelian States (AES) formation in West Africa.

Many took the opportunity to remind of Cabral’s fundamental commitment to struggle against imperialism, which he saw the PAIGC fight against Portuguese colonialism as one small but major component. The proceedings in Cabo Verde closed with a youth roundtable, where local activist Paulo Umaro spoke in Cabo Verdean Creole on the contemporary importance of continuing the struggle against foreign exploitation in Cabo Verde, speaking to the continued relevance of Cabral’s legacy.

The Amilcar Cabral Foundation has been instrumental in keeping alive the legacy of Amílcar Cabral for decades, organising its first international symposium in 1983, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the revolutionary leader’s assassination. It has also been instrumental in maintaining the archives of Cabral’s work, and publishing the work of Cabral into Portuguese, some of which is being and has been published by 1804 Books based in New York City, bringing new dimensions of Cabral’s legacy to English-speaking audiences.

The day of Cabral’s 100th birthday, a public celebration was held outside of the presidential palace and the Amílcar Cabral Foundation in Praia, attended by diplomats of Angola, China, Cuba and more, where President Neves took the stage and expressed his pride in being Cape Verdean and being in the company of Cabral’s comrades during the liberation struggle.

Revolutionary poems were read, and cultural performances highlighting the African traditions of Cape Verde – namely Tabanka and Batuku — closed the ceremony, as Cabral’s maxim that “national liberation is necessarily an act of culture” was stressed.

The struggles waged by Cabral and the PAIGC continue to be incredibly relevant today. The ongoing and increasing brutality of Western imperialism in the 21st century necessitates a return to the ideas of Cabral to chart a way forward.

Many ideas on what Cabral represented or who Cabral was were discussed during the international symposium and will continue to be put forward. The centennial celebration is thus a time for reflection and debate on the manner most suited to commemorate Cabral, one which is surely tied to struggle and the creation of a better, more just world.

In a message to a meeting held in Praia during the leadup to the symposium Pedro Pires summarised the importance of Amilcar Cabral: “Amílcar Cabral has been distinguished and confirmed, universally, as a thinker, theorist, strategist and symbol of the struggles for political, social and cultural liberation of societies and peoples still oppressed and neo-colonised.”

Cabral Ka Mori!

Cabral’s Lives!

* Desmond Fonseca is a doctoral candidate in History at the University of California, Los Angeles where he is writing a dissertation on Amilcar Cabral, the PAIGC and the struggle for Cabo Verdean and African sovereignty. He is also a member of the Amilcar Cabral Foundation and an editor with 1804 Books.

** This article was published on Peoples Dispatch