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<h1 class="sh-heading-content size-xxxl"><span>Culture, power
and resistance - reflections on the ideas of Amilcar Cabral</span></h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Author Firoze Manji</div>
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<p>Amilcar Cabral and Frantz Fanon are among the most
important thinkers from Africa on the politics of
liberation and emancipation. While the relevance of
Fanon’s thinking has re-emerged, with popular movements
such as Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa
proclaiming his ideas as the inspiration for their
mobilizations, as well as works by Sekyi-Otu, Alice
Cherki, Nigel Gibson, Lewis Gordon and others, Cabral’s
ideas have not received as much attention.</p>
<p>Cabral was the founder and leader of the Guinea-Bissau
and Cabo Verde liberation movement, <em>Partido
Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde</em>
(PAIGC). He was a revolutionary, humanist, poet,
military strategist, and prolific writer on
revolutionary theory, culture and liberation. The
struggles he led against Portuguese colonialism
contributed to the collapse not only of Portugal’s
African empire, but also to the downfall of the fascist
dictatorship in Portugal and to the Portuguese
revolution of 1974-’75, events that he was not to
witness: he was assassinated by some of his comrades,
with the support of the Portuguese secret police, PIDE,
on 20 January 1973.</p>
<p>By the time of his death, two thirds of Guinea was in
the liberated zones, where popular democratic structures
were established that would form the basis for the
future society: women played political and military
leadership roles, the Portuguese currency was banned and
replaced by barter, agricultural production was devoted
to the needs of the population, and many of the elements
of a society based on humanity, equality and justice
began to emerge organically through popular debate and
discussion. Cultural resistance played a critical role
in both the defeat of the Portuguese and in the
establishment of the liberated zones.</p>
<p>Cabral understood that the extension and domination of
capitalism depends critically on dehumanizing the
colonial subject. And central to the process of
dehumanization has been the need to destroy, modify or
recast the culture of the colonized, for it is
principally through culture, “because it is history”,
that the colonized have sought to resist domination and
assert their humanity. For Cabral, and also for Fanon,
culture is not some aesthetic artefact, but an
expression of history, the foundation of liberation, and
a means to resist domination. At heart, culture is
subversive.</p>
<p>The history of liberalism has been one of contestation
between the cultures of what Losurdo<a
class="sdendnoteanc"
href="about:reader?url=https%3A%2F%2Froarmag.org%2Fessays%2Familcar-cabral-revolutionary-anticolonialism%2F#sdendnote2sym"
name="sdendnote2anc"> </a>refers to as the sacred and
profane spaces. The democracy of the sacred space to
which the Enlightenment gave birth in the New World was,
writes Losurdo, a “<em>Herrenvolk</em> democracy”, a
democracy of the white master-race that refused to allow
blacks, indigenous peoples, or even white women, to be
considered citizens. They were regarded as part of the
profane space occupied by the less-than-human. The
ideology of a white, master-race democracy was
reproduced as capital colonized vast sections of the
globe. Trump’s victory in the US and the establishment
of his right-wing, if not fascist, entourage, is in many
ways an expression of the growing resentment and
antagonism among significant sections of white America
towards the perceived invasion and defiling of the
sacred space by indigenous people, blacks, “latinos”,
Mexicans, gays, lesbians, organized labor, immigrants
and all those profane beings that do not belong in that
space. We can safely predict that Trump’s presidency
will see efforts to mount an assault on the cultures,
organizations, and organizing capacities of those they
view as the detritus of society, to remove them from the
privileges of the sacred space and to “return” them to
the domain of the dehumanized. At the same time, we can
predict that there will be widespread resistance to such
attempts, in which culture will be an essential element.</p>
<p>In this context, Cabral’s writing and speeches on
culture, liberation and resistance to power have
important implications for the coming struggles not only
in the US, but also in post-Brexit Britain, and in
continental Europe, where fascism is once again raising
its ugly head in several countries. Drawing upon
Cabral’s works, I look at how colonialism established
and maintained its power through attempts to eradicate
the cultures of the colonial subject, and how culture as
a liberatory force was essential for African people to
reassert their humanity, to invent what it means to be
human, and to develop a universalist humanity. I discuss
how neocolonial regimes have attempted to disarticulate
culture from politics, a process that neoliberalism has
exacerbated. But as discontent after nearly forty years
of austerity (a.k.a. “structural adjustment programs”)
in Africa rises, as governments increasingly lose
popular legitimacy, there is a resurgence of uprisings
and protests, and once again culture is re-emerging as a
mobilizing and organizing force.</p>
<p>The philosophers of the Enlightenment, such as Hegel,
considered that Africans had no history. But what was
the “African” that they were referring to? It was only
in the 15th century that Europeans began to use the term
“African” to refer to all the peoples who live on the
continent. The term was directly associated with the
Atlantic slave trade, and the condemnation of large
sections of humanity to chattel slavery in the Americas
and the Caribbean. To succeed in subjecting millions of
human beings to such barbarism depended on defining them
as non-humans.</p>
<p>The process of dehumanization required a systematic and
institutionalized attempt to destroy existing cultures,
languages, histories and capacities to produce,
organize, tell stories, invent, love, make music, sing
songs, make poetry, create art — all things that make a
people human. This was carried our by local and European
enslavers and slave owners and all those who profited
from the trade in humans, not least the emerging
European capitalist class.</p>
<p>In essence, the word that encapsulates this process of
dehumanizing the people of this continent is <em>African</em>.
Indeed, anthropologists, scientists, philosophers and a
whole industry developed to “prove” that these people
constituted a different sub-human, biological “race”.
Africans were to be considered as having no history,
culture, or any contribution to make to human history.
As slaves, they were mere chattel — property or “things”
that would be owned, disposed of and treated in any way
that the “owner” thought fit.</p>
<p>This attempt to erase the culture of Africans was a
signal failure. For while the forces of liberalism
destroyed the institutions, cities, literature, science
and art on the continent, people’s memories of culture,
art forms, music and all that is associated with being
human remained alive, and were also carried across on
the slave ships to where African slaves found
themselves, and where that culture evolved in their new
material conditions to become a basis for resistance.</p>
<p>The Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery were the
cornerstones of capital accumulation that gave birth to
capitalism, as were the concurrent genocides and mass
killings of indigenous populations of the Americas and
beyond. The systematic dehumanization of sections of
humanity — racism — was intimately intertwined with the
birth, growth and continued expansion of capital, and
remains the hallmark of its development.</p>
<p>Cabral understood that separating Africa and Africans
from the general flow of common human experience could
only lead to the retardation of social processes on the
continent. “When imperialism arrived in Guinea it made
us leave our history … and enter another history.” This
process was to continue from its origins in the European
enslavement and forced removal of people from Africa to
the expansion of Europe’s colonial ventures to the
present day. The representation of Africans as inferior
and sub-human justified the terror, slaughter,
genocides, imprisonments, torture, confiscation of land
and property, forced labor, destruction of societies and
cultures, violent suppression of expressions of
discontent and dissent, restrictions on movement, and
establishment of “tribal” reserves. It justified the
division of the land mass and its peoples into
territories at the Berlin Conference in 1884-’85 by
competing European imperial powers.</p>
<p>The faith in the superiority of the culture of the
sacred space combined with Christianity’s missionary
zeal laid the foundations for empire and the spread of
Christendom. “After the slave trade, armed conquest and
colonial wars,” wrote Cabral, “there came the complete
destruction of the economic and social structure of
African society. The next phase was European occupation
and ever-increasing European immigration into these
territories. The lands and possessions of the Africans
were looted.” Colonial powers established control by
imposing taxes, enforcing compulsory crops, introducing
forced labor, excluding Africans from particular jobs,
removing them from the most fertile regions, and
establishing native authorities consisting of
collaborators.</p>
<p>Cabral pointed out that whatever the material aspects
of domination, “it can be maintained only by the
permanent and organized repression of the cultural life
of the people concerned.” Of course, domination could
only be completely guaranteed by the elimination of a
significant part of the population as, for example, in
the genocide of the Herero peoples in southern Africa or
of many of the indigenous nations of North America, but
in practice this was not always feasible or indeed seen
as desirable from the point of view of empire. In
Cabral’s words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The ideal for foreign domination, whether imperialist
or not, would be to choose: either to liquidate
practically all the population of the dominated
country, thereby eliminating the possibilities for
cultural resistance; or to succeed in imposing itself
without damage to the culture of the dominated
people — that is, to harmonize economic and political
domination of these people with their cultural
personality.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By denying the historical development of the dominated
people, imperialism necessarily denies their cultural
development, which is why it requires cultural
oppression and an attempt at “direct or indirect
liquidation of the essential elements of the culture of
the dominated people.”</p>
<p>“Of the African population of Angola, Guiné and
Mozambique, 99.7 percent are classified as uncivilized
by Portuguese colonial laws,” wrote Cabral in an
assessment of the Portuguese colonies. “The so called
‘uncivilized’ African is treated as a chattel, and is at
the mercy of the will and caprice of the colonial
administration and the settlers. This situation is
absolutely necessary to the existence of the Portuguese
colonial system. He provides an inexhaustible supply of
forced labor for export. By classifying him as
‘uncivilized’, the law gives legal sanction to racial
discrimination and provides one of the justifications
for Portuguese domination in Africa.”</p>
<p>The use of violence to dominate a people is, argued
Cabral, “above all, to take up arms to destroy, or at
least neutralize and to paralyze their cultural life.
For as long as part of that people have a cultural life,
foreign domination cannot be assured of its
perpetuation”.</p>
<p>The reason for this is clear. Culture is not a mere
artefact or expression of aesthetics, custom or
tradition. It is a means by which people assert their
opposition to domination, a means to proclaim and invent
their humanity, a means to assert agency and the
capacity to make history. In a word, culture is one of
the fundamental tools of the struggle for emancipation.</p>
<p>Haiti’s slave revolution in 1804, which established the
independent black republic, constituted one of the first
significant breaches against racial despotism and
slavery. Toussaint Louverture, the first leader of the
rebellion, drew on an explicit commitment to a universal
humanism to denounce slavery. In Richard Pithouse’s
succinct summary: “Colonialism defined race as permanent
biological destiny. The revolutionaries in Haiti defined
it politically. Polish and German mercenaries who had
gone over to the side of the slave armies were granted
citizenship, as black subjects, in a free and
independent Haiti.”</p>
<p>In Guinea-Bissau, Cabral was commissioned by the
colonial authorities to undertake an extensive census of
agricultural production, enabling him to gain a profound
understanding of the people, their culture and forms of
resistance to colonial rule. He recognized that building
a liberation movement required a “reconversion of
minds — a mental set” that he believed to be
indispensable for the “true integration of people into
the liberation movements”. To achieve that required
“daily contact with the popular masses in the communion
of sacrifice required by the struggle”. PAIGC cadres
were deployed across the country to work with peasants,
to learn from them about how they experienced and
opposed colonial domination, to engage with them about
the cultural practices that formed part of their
resistance to it. “Do not be afraid of the people and
persuade the people to take part in all the decisions
that concern them,” he told his party members. “The
leader must be the faithful interpreter of the will and
the aspirations of the revolutionary majority and not
the lord of power.” And, “To lead collectively, in a
group, is to study questions jointly, to find their best
solution, and to take decisions jointly.”</p>
<p>For Cabral, culture has a material base, “the product
of this history just as a flower is the product of a
plant. Like history, or because it is history, culture
has as its material base the level of the productive
forces and the mode of production. Culture plunges its
roots into the physical reality of the environmental
humus in which it develops, and reflects the organic
nature of the society.”</p>
<p>Culture, insists Cabral, is intimately linked to the
struggle for freedom. While culture comprises many
aspects, it “grows deeper through the people’s struggle,
and not through songs, poems or folklore. … One cannot
expect African culture to advance unless one contributes
realistically to the creation of the conditions
necessary for this culture, i.e. the liberation of the
continent.” In other words, culture is not static and
unchangeable, but it advances only through engagement in
the struggle for freedom.</p>
<p>National liberation, says Cabral, “is the phenomenon in
which a socio-economic whole rejects the denial of its
historical process. In other words, the national
liberation of a people is the regaining of the
historical personality of that people, it is their
return to history through the destruction of the
imperialist domination to which they were subject.”</p>
<p>Or, as Fanon put it: “To fight for national culture
first of all means fighting for the liberation of the
nation, the tangible matrix from which culture can grow.
One cannot divorce the combat for culture from the
people’s struggle for liberation.” Furthermore: “The
Algerian national culture takes form and shape during
the fight, in prison, facing the guillotine and in the
capture and destruction of the French military
positions.” And, “National culture is no folklore … [it]
is the collective thought process of a people to
describe, justify, and extol the actions whereby they
have joined forces and remain strong.”</p>
<p>If being cast as African was originally defined as
being less than human, the resounding claim of every
movement in opposition to enslavement, every slave
revolt, every opposition to colonization, every
challenge to the institutions of white supremacy, every
resistance to racism, every resistance to oppression or
to patriarchy, constituted an assertion of human
identity. Where Europeans considered Africans to be
sub-human, the response was to claim the identity of
“African” as a positive, liberating definition of a
people who are part of humanity, “who belong to the
whole world,” as Cabral put it. As in the struggles of
the oppressed throughout history, a transition occurs in
which terms used by the oppressors to “other” people are
eventually appropriated by the oppressed and turned into
terms of dignity and assertion of humanity.</p>
<p>It was thus that the concept of being “African” became
intimately associated with the concept of freedom and
emancipation. The people “have kept their culture alive
and vigorous despite the relentless and organized
repression of their cultural life,” wrote Cabral.
Cultural resistance was the basis for the assertion of
people’s humanity and the struggle for freedom.</p>
<p>With the growing discontent with the domination of the
colonial regimes, especially following the second world
war, many political parties were formed, many of which
sought to negotiate concessions from the colonial
powers. Colonialism had been reluctant to grant any form
of pluralism to black organizations, but as popular
protests grew, so there was a grudging opening of
political space, often involving favors to those who
were less threatening to colonial rule.</p>
<p>But such associations with freedom were, tragically,
not to last for long beyond independence.</p>
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