Al Mayadeen English

  • Ar
  • Es
  • x
Al Mayadeen English

Slogan

  • News
    • Politics
    • Economy
    • Sports
    • Arts&Culture
    • Health
    • Miscellaneous
    • Technology
    • Environment
  • Articles
    • Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Blog
    • Features
  • Videos
    • NewsFeed
    • Video Features
    • Explainers
    • TV
    • Digital Series
  • Infographs
  • In Pictures
  • • LIVE
News
  • Politics
  • Economy
  • Sports
  • Arts&Culture
  • Health
  • Miscellaneous
  • Technology
  • Environment
Articles
  • Opinion
  • Analysis
  • Blog
  • Features
Videos
  • NewsFeed
  • Video Features
  • Explainers
  • TV
  • Digital Series
Infographs
In Pictures
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Asia-Pacific
  • Europe
  • Latin America
  • MENA
  • Palestine
  • US & Canada
BREAKING
Israeli media: Intense US efforts are being made to resolve differences, such as the issue of the Israeli presence on Mount Hermon and in southern Syria
Israeli media: The security agreement means amending the disengagement agreement, which will also address the Druze issue
Israeli media: Attempts to reach a security agreement between 'Israel' and Syria were among the topics discussed at the Paris meeting
Israeli media: Sheikh Muwaffaq Tarif rejected a US proposal to join the recent tripartite meeting between Tom Barrack, al-Shaibani, and Dermer
Saba News Agency: Two martyred, five injured in a preliminary toll of the Israeli aggression on the Yemeni Oil Company station on Al-Sitteen Street in Sanaa
Senior Yemeni military source to Al Mayadeen: We observed a state of confusion among the enemy's aircraft squadron after Yemeni air defenses intercepted the attack
Senior Yemeni military source to Al Mayadeen: The Yemeni air defense forces succeeded in neutralizing a squadron of enemy aircraft and prevented airstrikes on some governorates
Senior Yemeni military source to Al Mayadeen: Our air defenses and missile forces forced a formation of enemy aircraft to flee the airspace
Member of the Ansar Allah Political Bureau, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti: The Israeli aggression on Yemen will not deter us from continuing to support Gaza, no matter the sacrifices
Al Mayadeen's correspondent: The Israeli aggression targeted the Yemeni Oil Company station on Al-Sitteen Street, southwest of the capital, Sanaa, with several raids

Amilcar Cabral and the World to Come

  • Hanna Eid Hanna Eid
  • Source: Al Mayadeen English
  • 1 Sep 2024 14:26
6 Min Read

The articles, speeches, and communiqués of Amilcar Cabral are required reading for revolutionaries today who are struggling with the agrarian question and the current wave of revolutions.

Listen
  • x
  • Amilcar Cabral and the World to Come
    How the struggle of the people of Guinea and Cape Verde is related to the revolution in Cuba, Vietnam, and Palestine (Illustrated by Zeinab al-Hajj; Al Mayadeen English)

Inkani Books, a publishing house from South Africa, has released a number of remarkable titles in recent years. These books include Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy Victories; a collection of the writings of Amilcar Cabral, as well as other books which correlate with the Zulu and Xhosa concept of Inkani – a stubborn determination, here, particularly the resolve of the oppressed to fight for liberation. The aforementioned text includes speeches and articles delivered by Amilcar Cabral; some of which are being translated into English for the first time. These articles, speeches, and communiqués are required reading for revolutionaries today who are struggling with the agrarian question and the current wave of revolts and revolutions in the peripheries of the capitalist world system. Cabral was a Cape Verdean revolutionary who played a pivotal role in founding the PAIGC, along with other forums and institutions dedicated to the overthrow of Portuguese colonialism in Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Angola, and Mozambique. Although he was assassinated before the brief unification of Guinea and Cape Verde could be realized, his ideas continue to resonate with relevance and potency today.

Economic, cultural, political, and armed resistance are themes explored in the majority of Cabral’s essays and speeches. All of these types of resistance revolve around a central axis: the question of land. Cabral knew that people do not fight for ideas alone, it is the resolution of the immediate contradictions and struggles in their lives that drives them toward revolution. In a speech delivered in London, someone asked Cabral if PAIGC is a Marxist-Leninist party. Cabral’s answer was revealing of the kind of revolutionary he was:

People here are very preoccupied with the questions: ‘Are you Marxist or non-Marxist? Are you a Marxist-Leninist’. Just ask me, please, whether we are doing well in the field. Are we really liberating our people, the human beings in our country from all forms of oppression? Ask me simply this and draw your own conclusions.

While this brilliant answer cuts away at ideological dogmatism and fanaticism, Cabral also knew that theory is a weapon in the hands of the oppressed. In an interview with a Portuguese journalist, Cabral puts forward a clear analysis of why his people are determined to resist. He relates the struggle of the people of Guinea and Cape Verde to the revolution in Cuba, Vietnam, and Palestine while also highlighting the clear distinctions in strategies and tactics of struggle in each locale. Many of the answers given by Cabral in this interview are relevant even today.

Related News

Resistance and regime change in occupied Palestine

'The State of Gates'... Palestinians’ lives in the West Bank are suffocated by Israeli closures

When asked about Palestine, Cabral had a more lucid analysis than most contemporary analysts, presenting Palestine as a key element of the Arab struggle, rather than constructing Palestine as a black-box nation state separate from the region. “We want the Arab peoples to seek the freedom of the people of Palestine, to free the Arab nation of imperialist disturbance and domination: ‘Israel’." When asked about Che Guevara’s theory of guerrilla struggle and its applicability to the Guinean struggle, Cabral further elucidated the importance of marrying theory and practice.

Cabral points to the importance of understanding armed struggles as one facet of national liberation, while arguing that the people of Guinea must start from their own conditions as a launching point. The people of Guinea could not copy every tactic and strategy of the heroic Cuban people or the Vietnamese, but they could view these struggles as different terrains in the same fight. In this way, the beauty of Cabral’s statement on the Guinean struggle shines through: "Our people are our mountains," he said. While Vietnam had thick jungle cover, and the Cubans fought in the Sierra Maestra mountains, the conditions in Guinea were such that the people became the stand-in for the environment, which was not favorable for clandestine armed struggle, according to the accumulated knowledge of guerrilla movements. This is why, according to Cabral, the Guinean War of Independence was a ‘centrifugal’ struggle. They started in the large cities and then moved outward toward the countryside. This is an inversion of the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban struggles where the guerrilla forces started in the countryside and moved toward the city. Cabral and the PAIGC were master tacticians in that sense, understanding that they could not blindly copy the blueprints of other peoples, but rather could see those people as an inspiration while building a uniquely Guinean revolution.

This independence in our thought and action is relative. It is relative because in our thought we are influenced by the thought of others. We are not the first to wage an armed struggle for national liberation, or a revolution. We did not invent guerrilla warfare–we invented it in our land…we must be aware that no struggle can be waged without an alliance, without allies.

The invention of guerilla warfare on one’s own land, with unique means and ends, contains the final and critical element of struggle: culture. During the Guinean revolution, many people believed that embracing one’s own culture in contrast to the colonial culture meant uncritically reverting to pre-colonial cultural practices. Cabral highlighted the failure of this strategy and urged the peoples of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde to forge a new, revolutionary culture through armed, economic, and political struggle. In this assessment, Cabral was not alone; the late Ghassan Kanafani was not only the spokesman of the PFLP but edited their magazine and produced cultural works himself. The revolution in Palestine—much like the one led by PAIGC in Guinea—has cultivated a people with a strong, resistant mentality and a revolutionary will that maintains cultural values and concretizes them through struggle.

Cultural symbols revolving around land animate the struggles of today. In Palestine, the watermelon, the olive tree, the koufiyyeh, and various tatreez symbols (embroidery) from each locale tie the people to the land and concretize the struggle in the subjective conditions of Palestine. This is the vision Cabral had of struggle in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; only through a profound understanding of one’s own conditions and the study of other revolutionary experiences can a movement advance toward liberation.

All of this is also intimately related to economic struggles against colonialism and imperialism. Cabral pushed for agricultural self-sufficiency, redistribution of land, and other economic forms of delinking from the capitalist world system. This, too, impresses the importance of charting an independent path toward revolution on those of us living in the shadow of Cabral and all the martyrs who came before us. The first task of national liberation, according to Cabral, is the reclaiming of the means of production, which have been usurped by external, colonial forces. From there, the revolutionary forces can take the lessons learned regarding culture and the question of land and go about building a new society, free from colonial domination. Although Cabral is no longer with us, the forces of revolution are alive in Palestine and the Sahel, shining a light on the path to liberation.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Mayadeen’s editorial stance.
  • Occupied Palestine
  • Palestine
  • guinea-bissau
  • Colonialism
  • Vietnam
  • liberation
  • Cuba
Hanna Eid

Hanna Eid

Teacher, political analyst, and judoka

Most Read

All
Declassified: CIA’s covert Ukraine invasion plan

Declassified: CIA’s covert Ukraine invasion plan

  • Opinion
  • 16 Aug 2025
Those in Occupied Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria – directly affected by Israeli occupation and apartheid – can claim their right to armed struggle under a series of UN resolutions. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Zeinab el-Hajj)

Resistance and regime change in occupied Palestine

  • Opinion
  • 17 Aug 2025
Palestine will not be liberated by UN reports, but by pursuing a different strategic horizon: one that does not beg for recognition. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Batoul Chamas)

Economy of Genocide: Albanese's report accuses, but doesn't dismantle system

  • Opinion
  • 18 Aug 2025
The positions of the current regime in Syria are indefensible, not even from a selfish materialist perspective. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Batoul Chamas)

Normalisation is death of Arab sovereignty, Syria is the best example

  • Opinion
  • 14 Aug 2025

Coverage

All
War on Iran

More from this writer

All
The spirit of Bandung: 70 years on

The spirit of Bandung: 70 years on

A Palestinian theory of war

A Palestinian theory of war

In Memory of Sayyed Nasrallah: A Mountain of Resistance

In Memory of Sayyed Nasrallah: A Mountain of Resistance

Palestine, Syria, and the sickness called defeatism

Palestine, Syria, and the sickness called defeatism

Al Mayadeen English

Al Mayadeen is an Arab Independent Media Satellite Channel.

All Rights Reserved

  • x
  • Privacy Policy
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Authors
Android
iOS