Using. It must mean the liberation of the productive forces of our country, the liquidation of all kinds of imperialist and colonial domination in our country and the taking of every measure to avoid any new exploitation of our people." —Amilcar Cabral; murdered by agents of Portuguese colonialism on January 20th in Conakry, Guinea, West Africa. A milcar Cabral was the founder and leader of the liberation movement of the people of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands, a territory on the West Coast of Africa lying between Senegal to the north and the former French colony of Guinea to the south. In 1956 Cabral founded the Partido Africano da Independencia da Guine e Cabo Verde (the P.A.I.G.C.) and became its General Secretary. Since that time P.A.I.G.C. has been leading the struggle against Portuguese colonialism and its imperialist allies (including Britain). Starting with the organisation of urban workers, particularly the dockers in the capital, Bissau, the P.A.I.G.C. then bagan armed struggle in the rural areas in the early 1960s. Today the movement controls well over two thirds of Guinea - Bissau with only the major townsand garrisons remaining under precarious Portuguese rule. Despite Portugal's continued aerial bombardment (with weapons supplied by its NATO allies) P.A.I.G.C. have developed the social structures of the liberated areas; economic production, education, the organisation of health facilities and political training are all closely integrated into the armed struggle. In the past few months P.A.I.G.C. has been organising elections throughout the liberated areas ( and also as far as possible in the towns) for the first general assembly which would form the basis of a provisional government and demand recognition as the legitimate government of Guine, in which the Portuguese army is an occupying force. There is no doubt that this recognition will be granted by all but those states, like Britain, which are directly involved in propping up Portuguese colonialism and in general imperialist activity in Africa.
The situation for Portuguese colonialism is therefore becoming increasingly desperate. This is particularly so given the growing threat that they face from the other liberation movements, FRELIMO in Mozambique and MPLA in Angola. It is in Southern Africa that there is most pressure on Portugal to maintain its Picture shows frightened Portuguese Consul confronted in his Manchester offices by militants who occupied in response to the news of Cabral's assassination after holding an impromptu meeting at the University Students Union, which was attended by over 100 people. position militarily rather than seek some form of neo-colonial solution. Their assassination of Cabral (and attempt to kidnap other leading members of P.A.I.G.C.) was an attempt to weaken and eventually destroy P.A.I.G.C. thus making it possible to impose a puppet black administration in Guine, retain some military presence in the strategically important Cape Verde Islands and concentrate their military strength in Angola and Mozambique where the economic stakes are higher.
The assassination of Cabral will not weaken P.A.I.G.C, in their future political and diplomatic initiatives nor will it diminish the intensity of their armed struggle. Cabral certainly had political skills which it will be difficult to replace in the short run. But the successes of P.A.I.G.C. are not the result of charismatic individual leadership, - an explanation that bourgeois theorists are so fond of using, thus denigrating the intelligence and self reliance of the peoples that they have colonised and super-exploited. The victories have been achieved by a party with a high level of political development at all levels and strong leadership cadre. Cabral's theoretical contribution, developed in the context of the problems faced by P.A.I.G.C., deserves to be far more widely studied on the left. He has contributed much to developing firstly, the theory of revolutionary strategy in the third world, secondly, the theory of guerilla warfare, and thirdly, an understanding of race and culture in the context of colonial domination.
An important collection of Cabral's writings has been published in Amilcar Cabral: Revolution in Guinea, produced by Stage 1 and available from Red Books at 45p.
German
Trotskyists