By Brad Sigal

“One of the most lucid and brilliant leaders in Africa, Comrade Amílcar Cabral instilled in us tremendous confidence in the future and the success of his struggle for liberation.” — Fidel Castro

September 12, 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the giants of 20th century African liberation struggle and global anti-imperialist movement, Amilcar Cabral.

Progressive and revolutionary people should take this occasion to celebrate the proud revolutionary legacy of Amilcar Cabral, the national liberation movement he led in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, and the worldwide anti-imperialist movement he was part of.

Cabral: Fighter for the liberation of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde

Amilcar Cabral was the principal leader of the national liberation struggle in Guinea Bissau and the islands of Cape Verde on the west coast of Africa. The national liberation movement that he led declared independence from Portugal on September 24, 1973.

The people of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde had been brutally colonized by Portugal for centuries. The first Portuguese people arrived in Guinea Bissau in the 1440s when the Portuguese monarchy began “exploring” the Atlantic coast of West Africa in pursuit of gold. The Portuguese colonizers enslaved hundreds of thousands of people from this region of Africa through the 1800s, many of whom were taken in chains across the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil, which was a Portuguese colony in the Americas, to work as slaves in mines and on plantations. As a result, to this day Brazil has the largest African-descendent population in the Americas.

Under brutal Portuguese colonialism, by the 1950s the literacy rate was as low as 1%; the few schools were more for the Portuguese colonizers. There were barely any doctors and only 300 hospital beds in the whole country.

A wave of national liberation movements gained steam in Africa in the 1940s and 50s, with powerful inspiration and support from the world’s first socialist country, the Soviet Union. Victories for national liberation movements in China in 1949 and Cuba in 1959, which became socialist countries after liberation, provided further momentum and inspiration. This was part of a broader anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movement that was sweeping not just Africa, but also Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, where the majority of humanity had been subjugated by competing European empires for centuries.

In reaction to this wave, and as rival colonial powers were losing their grip on their colonies, Portugal tried to exert an even tighter and more brutal grip on its African colonies. In 1951, Portugal declared Guinea Bissau a province of Portugal itself. In that context, the movement fighting for national liberation advanced in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde in the 1950s.

Amílcar Cabral was born September 12, 1924 in “Portuguese Guinea” as it was called before liberation, to Cape Verdian parents. He was one of a small number of Africans from Guinea Bissau who was able to pursue higher education in Portugal. He studied agronomy, and while he was there, he participated in the student movement opposing Portugal’s right-wing dictatorship and supporting independence for Portugal’s colonies in Africa.

When he returned home, he carried out a country-wide agricultural census, traveling extensively and learning in great detail about the people, the land and the problems of his country. This deep knowledge of the material reality of his people and his country allowed Cabral to make a materialist assessment of who could be united to fight for liberation, and how they needed to be organized to do so. There is an echo here of Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong’s deep investigation into the material realities of the oppressed peasant majority in China in the 1920s that led to strategic breakthroughs in the Chinese revolution’s path to victory.

In 1956, Amilcar Cabral co-founded the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), the organization that led the national liberation struggle in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde. Cabral was the PAIGC’s secretary-general. After Portuguese soldiers carried out a massacre against dockworkers in 1959, the PAIGC moved toward armed struggle to win liberation. The PAIGC began its armed struggle in earnest in 1962-63, fighting a guerrilla war until they liberated the majority of the country and then declared independence.

Tragically, Amilcar Cabral was assassinated on January 20, 1973, on the eve of the PAIGC liberating Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde and declaring independence in September 1973. According to leaders of the PAIGC, agents of colonialism carried out the assassination on behalf of the government of Portugal, who had as a key objective the decapitation of the liberation movement’s leadership. But despite Cabral’s assassination, the movement still won independence.

Cabral: Anti-imperialist and internationalist

“Either we admit that there really is a struggle against imperialism which interests everybody, or we deny it. If, as would seem from all the evidence, imperialism exists and is trying simultaneously to dominate the working class in all the advanced countries and smother the national liberation movements in the underdeveloped countries, then there is only one enemy against whom we are fighting. If we are fighting together, then I think the main aspect of our solidarity is extremely simple; it is to fight.” – Amilcar Cabral

While primarily focused on building the revolutionary movement in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, Amilcar Cabral also built Pan-African and worldwide anti-imperialist unity. Starting in 1961, the PAIGC united with national liberation movements in Portugal’s other colonies in Africa, creating the Conference of Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies together with the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) in and the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

Cabral also built alliances with socialist countries like Cuba as well as other countries that had won liberation from imperialism. Cabral attended the Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba in 1966, where he expressed strong support for Cuba’s socialist revolution and even offered to send fighters to defend socialist Cuba against imperialism if needed.

Cabral was inspired by Marxism-Leninism’s anti-imperialist theory and practice. In 1970 he wrote, “Whether Marxist or not, Leninist or not, it is difficult for anyone not to recognize the validity, even the genius of Lenin’s analysis and conclusions, which prove to be of immense historical scope, illuminating with fruitful clarity the often thorny and even somber path of the peoples who are fighting for their total liberation from imperialist domination.”

In his writings, Cabral talked explicitly about applying a dialectical and a materialist method, and the need for class analysis and class struggle. Along with Kwame Nkrumah and Franz Fanon, Cabral was an early theorist on the dangers of neo-colonialism after winning independence.

When Cabral would come to the U.S. to speak at the United Nations to gain support for the national liberation movement in Guinea Bissau, he sought out meetings with revolutionaries in the U.S., especially African American revolutionaries. Cabral understood that anti-imperialist struggles in colonized countries and the struggle inside the imperialist countries share a common enemy, and that any blow against imperialism from within or without is mutually beneficial.

In a meeting with around 120 Black revolutionaries in the U.S. in 1972, Cabral said, “We try to understand your situation in this country. You can be sure that we realize the difficulties you face, the problems you have and your feelings, your revolts, and also your hopes. We think that our fighting for Africa against colonialism and imperialism is a proof of understanding of your problems in this continent. Naturally, the inverse is also true. All the achievements here are real contributions to our own struggle.”

Cabral’s understanding of the relationship between revolutionary movements in the colonies and in the imperialist countries themselves ended up being prophetic when the surging revolutionary national liberation movements in Guinea Bissau and Portugal’s other African colonies helped spark a progressive uprising of soldiers and then workers in Portugal in 1974 against the reactionary Portuguese government.

Amilcar Cabral stands among the greatest heroes of 20th century fighters for liberation. He studied the concrete conditions of his country and developed a revolutionary strategy based on that. He built a revolutionary organization to lead the struggle for liberation. He built unity on an anti-imperialist basis with liberation movements around the world. He united with socialist countries. By doing these things, he was able to lead a successful national liberation movement that won independence from Portuguese colonialism. His life and contributions should be remembered and celebrated by revolutionaries the world over.

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