What I did not know yesterday is that the independence of
*Guinea-Bissau* was *unilaterally* declared on this date, *24
September*, which is also by chance our South African "Heritage Day", in
1973, nine months and four days after the political assassination, by
agents of the defeated Portuguese colonial power, of its great
revolutionary leader, *Amilcar Cabral*.
On 2010/09/22 03:38 PM, DomzaNet wrote:
*African Revolutionary Writers, Part 4*
<http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_D4UK2kWf5ik/TJoFKJCjq-I/AAAAAAAACqA/b6-au1WjSGM/s1600/Am%C3%ADlcar+Cabral+Stamp,+edited.jpg>
*Amilcar Cabral, 1924 - 1973*
We are not meeting this week, because of the Public Holiday on Friday,
immediately after our meeting day. When that happens, we don’t meet;
but in this case, we will post the week’s text anyway.
Very appropriately, the holiday is _Heritage Day_. The text for this
week (download linked below) is Amilcar Cabral’s speech on *National
Liberation and Culture
<http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/cabralnlac.html>*. This speech
was originally delivered on February 20, 1970; as part of the Eduardo
Mondlane Memorial Lecture Series at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New
York; that is more than forty years ago. Yet it is as fresh and
relevant as if it had been written yesterday, based on appraisal of
our present circumstances.
Foreign domination /“can be maintained only by the permanent,
organized repression of the cultural life of the people concerned,”/
wrote Cabral. Attempted assimilation is /“a more or less violent
attempt to deny the culture of the people in question.”/ It does not
work. In fact there are no ways in which the coloniser can succeed.
/“…it is generally within the culture that we find the seed of
opposition, which leads to the structuring and development of the
liberation movement,”/ says Cabral.//
/“…national liberation takes place when, and only when, national
productive forces are completely free of all kinds of foreign
domination. The liberation of productive forces and consequently the
ability to determine the mode of production most appropriate to the
evolution of the liberated people necessarily opens up new prospects
for the cultural development of the society in question, by returning
to that society all its capacity to create progress,”/ says Cabral.
Cabral develops the idea that /“…we must take into account the fact
that, faced with the prospect of political independence, the ambition
and opportunism from which the liberation movement generally suffers
may bring into the struggle unconverted individuals. The latter, on
the basis of their level of schooling, their scientific or technical
knowledge, but without losing any of their social class biases, may
attain the highest positions in the liberation movement.”/
Cabral concludes /“…the liberation struggle is, above all, a struggle
both for the preservation and survival of the cultural values of the
people and for the harmonization and development of these values
within a national framework.”/
So, on Heritage Day, we have to conclude that the struggle continues,
or in Portuguese: /A luta continua!/
*_African Revolutionary Writers’ Series_*
In this fourth part of our series, which is concerned with the several
rebellions against the Lusophone colonists, we would aim to have text
from Eduardo Mondlane, Agostinho Neto and Samora Machel at the very
least. So far, we have not located any electronic reproductions of
original texts of these revolutionaries on the Internet. Nor has
anyone sent in any such soft-copies of original texts.
We have time. The next time we will be running this course, if we
stick to our draft schedule, will be in the first half of 2011. All
original African Revolutionary Writers’ texts will be welcome. Please
send any that you may have, of these or of other authors.
*_Please download and read the entire text via this link_:*
*Amilcar Cabral, National Liberation and Culture
<http://communist-university.googlegroups.com/web/2004+Amilcar+Cabral%2C+National+Liberation+and+Culture.doc?gda=YaLo-HEAAAAxNG6J8klef1F7wuUlsMFrDmzbXIo-QdErJcw15gBrFkH9a2wGEKDW9dlMHyp1eu34r2HSTaIXYMOPVJ0wiGJ1N6Y0duJlD-BkaaFifiOWzBYeFUrTRjdKiGGVHmFFTEO-Z5AS>*
--
Posted By DomzaNet to Communist University
<http://domza.blogspot.com/2010/09/amilcar-cabral.html> on 9/22/2010
03:38:00 PM --
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