Amílcar Cabral

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20 Pf - special stamp of the GDR Post 1978 with Amílcar Cabral

Amílcar Lopes Cabral (born September 12, 1924 in Bafatá , Portuguese Guinea ; † January 20, 1973 in Conakry , Guinea ) was a Guinea-Bissau politician , poet, intellectual, theorist, diplomat, agronomist and independence fighter.

Life

Early years

He was born on September 12, 1924 in Bafatá to Cape Verdean parents. His mother Iva Pinhel Évora had followed his father Juvenal Lopes Cabral to Guinea-Bissau, who worked there as a teacher.

When Amílcar was eight years old, the family returned to Cape Verde. Thus Mindelo , the port city of São Vicente , which here in 1943 with its international flair and its openness to the formative environment Cabral, the matriculation examination took off. As a student he worked at the local radio station, wrote poems and political writings in support of a Cape Verdean, Creole identity.

The following year the family moved to the capital, Praia , where he worked for the national printing company until he received a scholarship to study tropical agriculture and hydraulic engineering at the Instituto Superior de Agronomia in Lisbon , the capital of the then colonial power Portugal , in 1945 . In 1951 he helped establish the Centro de Estudos Africanos (German: "Center for African Studies") and advocated the "re-Africanization of the mind". Political circles formed here in the African student body, to which numerous later independence fighters from Cape Verde , Guinea-Bissau , Angola and Mozambique belonged, especially in the Casa dos Estudantes do Império . He came into contact with Agostinho Neto and Eduardo Mondlane . After completing his studies in 1950, he worked in Santarém (Portugal) for two years .

Political life

Amílcar Cabral and Nicolae Ceaușescu

In 1952 he returned to Guinea-Bissau as an agricultural engineer to work in the colonial agricultural and forestry administration ( Serviços Agrícolas e Florestais da Guiné ). Here he had the opportunity to carry out the first agricultural analysis of the country under the aspects of soil topography and agricultural production. This activity gave him the opportunity to come into contact with the local problems of the country and its inhabitants.

His political activities among the peasants were a thorn in the side of the colonial administration and the political police (PIDE) . When the conflict with the governor came to a head after two years of service, Cabral had to flee to Angola. With Aristides Pereira , his brother Luís Cabral and other young people Amílcar Cabral founded in 1956, the PAI, because of confusing the same name with a Senegalese was renamed soon party Partido Africano para a Independencia da Guiné e do Cabo Verde (PAIGC, Portuguese for "African party for the independence of Guinea and Cape Verde ”).

Amílcar Cabral soon realized that the war effort could only be continued if his troops learned about agricultural life alongside the local population.

In Ghana he set up training camps with the approval of Kwame Nkrumah to prepare for the struggle for independence. In 1963 the party left the underground and opened an office in neighboring Guinea, which, under Ahmed Sékou Touré, followed a dictatorial , strictly anti-colonial course. In the same year, after the bloody smashing of a strike by the port workers of Pidjiguiti (Guinea-Bissau) by Portuguese colonial troops, the PAIGC began the armed uprising, which expanded into a colonial war that lasted from 1963 to 1974. During the conflict, Cabral became the de facto head of the area that later became Guinea-Bissau.

At the same time, Cabral promoted the political confrontation on an international level. He represented the Cape Verdean and Guinea cause before the United Nations , in 1970 in a private audience with Pope Paul VI. , in front of European parliaments and African politicians as well as in the media. His anti-colonialist attitude combined with a clear commitment to non-alignment as well as his convincing intellectual personality made him a respected partner of the Socialist International and a personal friend of Olof Palmes and François Mitterrand .

The Portuguese military and the PIDE political police tried several times to kill Cabral, including in November 1970 in a raid on Conakry known as the Portuguese Raid or Mar Verde . This action aimed at the deaths of Cabral and the Guinean President Ahmed Sékou Touré as well as the destruction of the Guinean fighter planes on the ground. While Cabral's wife Maria Helena and the children got away with the horror, a doctor's family in the neighboring apartment was seriously injured and a child was killed.

From 1972 the Portuguese colonial army got more and more on the defensive and sometimes had to flee.

Death and aftermath

Fundação Amílcar Cabral, Praia

On January 20, 1973 , part of the PAIGC army launched a coup against the Cape Verdeans at the head of the party. Cabral and his wife were stopped in front of their apartment and when Amílcar Cabral refused to be handcuffed, Inocêncio Cani , an officer in the Navy , shot him . Ultimately, the intervention of the Guinean President and his troops thwarted the coup. Even if the immediate killers are known, the background to the attack remains in the dark to this day.

In the months that followed, the PAIGC took control of most of the country and unilaterally declared Guinea-Bissau's independence in 1973.

In Portugal , a coup d'état by sections of the military , supported by the political opposition, put an end to the authoritarian-corporate regime on April 25, 1974 in the “ Carnation Revolution ”. The new government immediately announced the withdrawal of Portugal from its colonies. In the case of Guinea-Bissau, it was recognized by the PAIGC government, which could now start building an independent country.

Honors

Selected Works

  • National liberation and culture . In: Occasional paper . Program of Eastern African Studies, Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University , 57 (1970)
  • Return to the source. selected speeches . New York (Monthly Review Press) 1973, ISBN 0-85345-345-4
  • La descolonización del Africa portuguesa: Guinea-Bissau . Buenos Aires (Ediciones Perieferia) 1975,
  • Unity and struggle. speeches and writings . (Transl.), New York (Monthly Review Press) 1979, ISBN 0853455252
  • Estudos agrários . Lisbon, Bissau (Instituto de Investigacão Científica Tropical, Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa) 1988.

See also

Web links

Commons : Amílcar Cabral  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Guy Martin: African Political Thought . Ed .: Springer. 2012, ISBN 978-1-137-06205-5 , pp. 77 .
  2. ^ A b Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo: Amilcar Cabral - Outstanding Leader of African Liberation Movement - A Tribute . on www.sahistory.org.za (English)
  3. Ronald H. Chilcote: Amílcar Cabral's Revolutionary Theory and Practica: A critical guide . Boulder, Colo .: L. Rienner Publishers, 1991, ISBN 1555870589
  4. ^ Republic of South Africa. The Presidency: Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973) ( Memento from October 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). on www.thepresidency.gov.za (English)