WHAT IS DECOLONIZATION REALLY?
We have come to the conclusion of Elite Capture. Now that radical identity politics has been co-opted, deference politics doesn’t cut it despite our good intentions, and identity-reductionism is deployed to uphold systems of uneven power— what can be done?
Throughout the book, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò weaves in the history of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) and their anti-colonial fight as an example of constructive politics. Let’s see what that means.
How the PAIGC Shattered Portuguese Colonial Rule
We start with Cape Verde, a colony of the Portuguese Empire from 1462 until 1975.
In the 1940s, extreme food scarcity due to droughts, plus soil depletion and erosion caused by centuries of unsustainable farming and herding practices on the island’s plantations caused devastating famines. The islanders were prohibited from owning any nautical vessels, so they were barred from food security and economic opportunities.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese Empire was completely indifferent to their suffering and put in zero investment in basic infrastructure or administrative capacity. Those who revolted faced deadly repression.
Táíwò describes the history of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau as having such deep racial, gender, class, religious, and other divisions, that if the revolutionaries had stuck to the social script, they probably wouldn’t have had a revolutionary struggle there at all, much less a successful one.
How did the PAIGC wage a revolution that shattered 400+ years of Portuguese rule and played a role in setting off an anti-fascist revolution in Portugal itself?
One of the PAIGC’s founders was Amílcar Cabral, who led this national liberation struggle. He developed a thought system rooted in an African reading of Marx and approached decolonization as a dialectic task.
PAIGC founder Amílcar Cabral, agronomist, pan-Africanist, poet, diplomat, national liberation organizer, and one of Africa's foremost anti-colonial leaders and thinkers (Wikimedia Commons, 1964).
The PAIGC started with a nonviolent strategy, using demonstrations, workers’ strikes, and negotiation with the Portuguese government. Their nonviolence was met with brutality, culminating in the massacre of peacefully striking dockworkers.
This was a turning point. The PAIGC then prepared for an armed guerrilla campaign of resistance and launched the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence in 1963.
Their multifaceted campaign included:
Effective communication training to mobilize Guinean traditional leaders,
Cultivation of careful, strategic relationships with other countries like Cuba, China, Guinea, and the USSR to receive material and military assistance,
Negotiation with village elders for children to go to both secular schools and religious schools,
Sending people to the Soviet Union for education in nursing,
Training troops to teach local farmers better farming techniques to ensure increased productivity and food security,
Integration in doing agricultural work alongside the local population and scheduling school sessions around the agricultural calendar,
Requiring elected village councils to include women in its membership, and
Militant political education and consciousness-raising were considered training for every aspect of the struggle.
Guinea-Bissau students visiting the Slaviansk Institute of Civil Aviation (1975)
The revolution ended over 400 years of colonization and ensured the independence of Guinea-Bissau in 1974 and Cape Verde, a year later. Yet, the task of rebuilding afterward was grueling.
The Portuguese fascist state, a NATO member, with military support from England, France, Germany, and the U.S., bombed Guinea-Bissau so much that it destroyed infrastructure, devastated the soil, and cut available arable land by a third.
Economic crisis exacerbated social divisions, leading to conflicts.
Amílcar Cabral was clear on what the struggle is about:
The people fight and accept the sacrifices demanded by the struggle in order to gain material advantages, to live better and in peace, to benefit from progress, and for the better future of their children.
National liberation, the struggle against colonialism, the construction of peace, progress, and independence are hollow words devoid of any significance unless they can be translated into a real improvement of living conditions.
Táíwò cites more recent examples of Flint residents fighting for clean water and the Debt Collective working to erase trillions of debt as other examples of constructive politics, which he defines as “focused on outcome over process—the pursuit of specific goals or end results rather than avoiding complicity in injustice or promoting purely moral or aesthetic principles.”
For example, if we’re in a war against imperialist propaganda, we should build institutions and campaigns to gather and share knowledge and information, rather than pedestaling specific spokespersons. We should act out of solidarity instead of guilt.
Whether on a small scale or in a large institution, the political goal is to build things — institutions, infrastructure, or tools, based on specific concrete conditions of each struggle — to facilitate the redistribution of social resources and power.
As Táíwò said, “the PAIGC aimed to literally redraw the map of the world and change its power relations.” That is, in essence, the goal of decolonization, and for constructive politics.
Thank you for following our Elite Capture share-outs. We hope you’ll join us for the next study group!
RESOURCES
https://thetricontinental.org/studies-1-national-liberation-paigc-education/
https://dh.howard.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1040&context=newdirections
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/revolutionary-cut-short