What a good analysis on the national democratic
revolutionary struggle of Guinea Bissau.Gassama, it
was Saikss samateh who introduce me to the book of
Amilcar Cabral:- Unity and struggle.As a marxist, he
also understand the historical realities of his
country.I also belief because of his agronomic
research background on Guinea Bissau at that
time.Cabral is an intellectual who had vision and mean
to liberate his people from the yoke of colonialism.It
is sad that the imperialist agent who killed him in
January 1975 don't do justice to our continent.My
Brother the legacy of Amilcar Cabral will continue.
Abdou Karim Sanneh
Manchester UK
--- MOMODOU BUHARRY GASSAMA <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> RETURNING TO THE AFRICAN CORE: CABRAL AND THE
> ERASURE OF THE COLONIZED ELITE
>
> Charles Peterson
>
> I.
> the bourgeoning bourgeoisie behind A. U. C.1 gates
> bristled and forgot all the promises
> that I. B. M. and Harvard Law had made
> recognized into the streets
> running like niggers set free
> burning cop cars and tumbling struggle buggies
> Morehouse men progressed to renegades
> and Spelman ladies soiled their white gloves
> on sharp daggers of American blackness . . .
> "Graduation Day"
> An individual who can't relate to the Black
> community, understand and be understood by
> her [/his] own people, isn't well educated.2
>
> Call your congress woman, your senator, your mayor
> It's time for all the scholars to unite with the
> players.3
>
> On the surface anti-colonial and independence
> struggles within continental Africa and its Diaspora
> benefit(ed) from the participation of colonized
> elites. Akin to western bourgeois classes that
> strove to overturn western European monarchical
> regimes in order to establish national dominance and
> liberate their productive powers, western educated
> and trained colonized petit bourgeois classes
> marshal(led) their energies and join(ed) with mass
> popular movements to liberate themselves from
> colonial subjugation.4 Highly articulate and
> passionate leaders travelled the globe speaking for
> the right of the African masses to live self-
> determined lives, free of colonial imposition and
> domination. Yet, upon the realization of nominal
> political independence (and in the case of African
> Americans the implementation and enforcement of
> Civil Rights legislation), the limits of freedom and
> the meaning of liberation took on different tones
> under the auspices of colonized elite predominance.
> The central questions of this line of thought are:
> what was/is the resulting form taken by
> post-colonial regimes in particular, and black
> liberation movements in general, under the
> rule/influence of the former colonized elite? How
> can the resulting political-economic and social
> formations be explained? What are the causes of
> these residual social, political and economic
> formations? And how can these formations, given what
> we now know as their untoward consequences on the
> lives of the previously colonized masses, be
> avoided? These questions are raised and spoken
> directly to by the Guinean thinker and
> revolutionary, Amilcar Cabral. Cabral's responses to
> these questions will be the focus of this paper and
> they will provide insight into the questions raised.
> This will be done via a presentation of Cabral's
> analysis of class, culture, anti-colonial
> organization and its relationship to elite liminal
> identification.
>
> Tsenay Serequerberhan, in his work, The Hermeneutics
> of African Philosophy: Horizon and Discourse,5
> discusses, from a hermeneutic perspective, the
> ground and circumstances of post-colonial African
> philosophy in neo-colonial times. Serequerberhan
> enlists the aid of Michel Foucault in his attempt to
> understand the failure of post-colonial governments
> to establish self- determination beyond mere nominal
> independence. Taking up Foucault's idea of the
> "practice of freedom," Serequerberhan looks to
> Amilcar Cabral's theory and practice to understand
> the genesis of the problems in post-colonial
> societies. For Foucault, the practice of freedom is
> the series of behaviors, activities and beliefs
> among communities that demonstrably establish the
> pattern of democratic relationships that should
> follow in the wake of liberation movements.
> Serequerberhan sees an absence of the practice of
> freedom ethos as the origin of the undemocratic
> nature of post-colonial regimes (i.e. neo-colonial
> states). As Serequerberhan puts it, "'The practice
> of freedom' or liberty is grounded on the . . .
> self-formative ethos of a people. . This presupposes
> the liberation struggle as it unfolds within the
> context of specific and particular histories, and
> with it the concrete implementation-the practice-of
> liberty."6 The absence of such an ethos is the
> result of the failure of anti-colonial movements to
> resolve the ethnic, class, cultural, and economic
> tensions of the pre-colonial and colonial era.
> Sadly, at the attainment of independence from the
> colonizers, the possibility of real, concrete
> liberation has passed as the circumstances of the
> anti-colonial struggle remained within the colonial
> model. This prepares the ground for post-colonial
> disparities that trickle down from the new state's
> leadership. Quoting historian Basil Davidson,
> Serequerberhan states, "old inequalities from the
> pre- colonial heritage . were enlarged by new
> inequalities from the colonial heritage, and to this
> extent the regimes of the late 1950's and early
> 1960's were, 'the oppressors and the exploiters of
> the many by the few' in African guise."7 However,
> Amilcar Cabral and the African Party for the
> Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC),
> having the benefit of observing the evolution of the
> early regimes of the African independence movement,
> had taken steps to create a truly new democratic
> state for Guineans and Cape Verdeans as opposed to
> an elaborate ceremonial transfer of colonial powers
> from Portuguese hands to Cape Verdean or Guinean
> hands.
>
> Guinea Bissau, or Portuguese Guinea as it was once
> called, under PAIGC organizing became a unique
> experiment in revolutionary struggle, as early in
> its life, the PAIGC came to the conclusion that
> external anti-colonial (revolutionary) theories and
> practices were unfit for the Guinean struggle. After
> the Pijiguiti Massacre of August 3,1959,8 Amilcar
> Cabral and the PAIGC determined that any theory and
> practice of struggle must be borne of a strict
> analysis of the material conditions of the people
> and land in question, as opposed to abstract
> theoretical speculation. A central tenet of Cabral's
> theorizing was that revolutions can neither be
> imported nor exported and thus must be home grown.
> Cabral, an agronomist by training, utilized the
> research on the topography and geography of
> Portuguese Guinea done by he and his wife9 for the
> Portuguese colonial government. Utilizing his
> familiarity with the land and contact with the
> various ethnic groups,10 Cabral was able to
> formulate a class analysis of the indigenous
> population of Guinea that did not rely on irrelevant
> Marxist categories but was an original reflection on
> Guinea Bissau's class structure. In "Brief Analysis
> of the Social Structure in Guinea,"11 Cabral
> thoroughly examined the intricate arrangement of
> Guinean society under Portuguese colonialism. The
> specificity of Cabral and the PAIGC's analysis
> revealed that the case of Guinea Bissau demanded
> particular theorizing and practice. The
> comparatively small population of Guinea Bissau (in
> comparison with other Portuguese holdings in Africa,
> especially Angola and Mozambique) without a notable
> settler population meant that it was a colonial
> territory that remained almost exclusively
> indigenous in its social and cultural orientation.
> Cognizant of the weak Portuguese Assimilado12
> colonial system, the PAIGC found native Guinea to be
> a society which maintained much of its indigenous
> cultural structures; one that evinced little or no
> Portuguese influence beyond the urban centers,
> various degrees of social cultural influence among
> its urbanized populations and a colonial system with
> little contact with the rural populations beyond the
> economic exploitation of the Portuguese indigena tax
> system. Under these circumstances, the PAIGC and the
> Guinean people were able to recognize the need for
> and possibility of national liberation. "It was the
> actual internal conditions," Cabral affirmed, "the
> realities of their daily life, which decided the
> people of Guinea to undertake the struggle for
> national liberation and for the speedy and total
> liquidation of Portuguese colonialism."13
>
> Cabral's view toward Guinean liberation stressed the
> contemporary relations within indigenous Guinean
> society for the purposes of transformation and its
> mechanics. The question of organization and
> leadership became most apparent after the Pijiguiti
> Massacre. Having focused their activities among the
> minuscule urban working class, the PAIGC realized
> the limited scope of their organizational membership
> and influence. Despite the limited impression that
> Portuguese colonialism had made upon Guinean culture
> and society, the colonial authorities maintained
> sufficient ideological and physical control in the
> cities to nearly destroy the PAIGC. It was outside
> the urban centers and in the rural body of Guinea
> that Cabral would find a larger field of support and
> a place virtually untouched by colonial culture and
> ideology. As Cabral pointed out: "repressed,
> persecuted, betrayed, . . . African culture survived
> all the storms, taking refuge in the villages, in
> the forests and in the spirit of the generations who
> were victims of colonialism."14 For Cabral, this
> "African culture" is the retained collective
> identity of the colonized masses, further
> strengthened over and against colonial domination
> and ripe as a base of resistance in anti-colonial
> struggle.15 Cabral asserted that "in the face of
> destructive action by imperialist domination, the
> masses retain their identity . . . it becomes
> necessary to assert or reassert in the framework of
> the
=== message truncated ===


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