Claim No Easy Victories :The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral

360 Pages·2016·5.21 MB·English

Published by
Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA)
www.codesria.org
and
Daraja Press
www.daraja.net
Copyright © 2013 Firoze Manji & Bill Fletcher Jr
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or in any manner, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication is available from the Library of Congress
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 2869785550
ISBN-13: Print: 9782869785557;
e-book: 978-2-86978-556-4
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Author Biographies
Preface
Section 1: Introduction
1. Introduction
Amílcar Cabral and the Struggle of Memory
Against Forgetting (Firoze Manji and Bill
Fletcher Jr.)
Section 2: The Legacy of Amílcar Cabral
2. No Easy Victories
Some Reflections on Amílcar Cabral’s Legacy
(Nigel C. Gibson)
3. Class Suicide
The Petit Bourgeoisie and the Challenges of
Development (Samir Amin)
4. Amilcar Cabral and the Pan-african Revolution (Ameth Lo)
5. Amilcar Cabral
An Agronomist Before His Time (Carlos
Schwarz)
6. The Cabral Era
Strategic and Foreign Policy Objectives (Richard
A. Lobban, Jr.)
7. The Weapon of Theory
Amílcar Cabral and Africana Critical Theory
(Reiland Rabaka)
8. “Weapons of Theory”
Employing Amílcar Cabral in the Present (Nigel
Westmaas)
9. Sons of the Soil
Cabral and Saramago (Grant Farred)
10. Cabral
His Thoughts and Actions in the Context of Our
Time (Mustafah Dhada)
11. In the Space of Amílcar Cabral (Helmi Sharawy)
12. ‘The Cancer of Betrayal, which We Must Uproot from Afrika …’
(Aziz Salmone Fall)
Section 3: Reflections on Cabral
13. To Want and to Live
Thoughts for Today, Inspired by Amílcar Cabral
(Lewis R. Gordon)
14. Cabral and the Dispossession (Dehumanization) of Humanity
(Jacques Depelchin)
15. Thinking with Our Own Heads and Walking with Our Own Feet
Interview with Augusta Henriques and Miguel
Barros of Tiniguena, (Molly Kane)
16. The Significance Today of the Charismatic Figure, Amílcar Cabral
(Filomeno Lopes)
17. On Shooting the Body and Not the Shadow
Honouring and Learning from Cabral Forty Years
Later (Wangui Kimari)
18. Amílcar Cabral: With Us Today (Adrian Harewood)
19. Revolutionary Democracy, Class-Consciousness, and Cross-Class
Movement Building
Lessons from Amílcar Cabral (Maria Poblet)
20. Telling No Lies is Not Easy
A Reflection on Following Cabral’s Watchwords
(William Minter)
21. Amílcar Cabral
Tribute to an Original and Revolutionary Thinker
(Demba Moussa Dembélé)
Section 4: Cabral, Women, and Emancipation
22. “But We Have to Fight Twice”
Reflections on the Contribution of Amílcar Cabral
to the Liberation of Women (Stephanie Urdang)
23. From Theory to Practice
Amílcar Cabral and Guinean Women in the Fight
for Emancipation (Patrícia Godinho Gomes)
Section 5: Cabral and the Pan-Africanists
24. Walter Rodney and Amílcar Cabral
Common Commitments and Connected Praxi
(Patricia Rodney, Asha Rodney, Jesse Benjamin,
Hashim Gibril, and Senai Abraha)
25. Class and Struggle
Cabral, Rodney, and the Complexities of Culture
in Africa (David Austin)
26. Remembering Cabral Today (Amrit Wilson)
27. Cabral’s Theory of Struggle and Caribbean Revolutionary
Parallels (Perry Mars)
28. Amílcar Cabral and Pan-Africanism (Explo Nani-Kofi)
Section 6: Cabral, Culture, and Education
29. Cabral, Culture, Progress, and the Metaphysics of Difference
(Olúfémi Táíwò)
30. Cabral and Freire
The Importance of Cultural Capital in Rebuilding
a Successful Education System in Guinea-Bissau
(Brandon Lundy)
31. Cabral, Culture, and Education (N. Barney Pityana)
32. RAP KRIOL(U)
The Pan-Africanism of Cabral in the Music of the
Youth (Miguel de Barros and Redy Wilson Lima)
Section 7: Cabral and African American Struggles
33. Amílcar Cabral and the Transformation of the African American
Left in the United States (Bill Fletcher, Jr.)
34. Linking the Struggles
Amílcar Cabral and His Impact and Legacy in the
Black Liberation Movement (Kali Akuno)
35. Praxis from the Centre Back to the Margins
Amílcar Cabral’s Method as a Guide for
Reconstructing the Radical Black Political
Subject (Ajamu Baraka)
36. Cabral, Black Liberation, and Cultural Struggle (Makungu M.
Akinyela)
37. The Black Panther Party, African Liberation, and Amílcar Cabral
(Walter Turner)
38. Memories Of Black Liberation
Amílcar Cabral (Angela Davis)
Select Bibliography
Compiled by Chris Webb, Jean-Pierre Diouf and Firoze Manji
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The editors wish to thank Kenny Desain, Maggie Dessain, and the CreateSpace editor for their assistance
with copyediting, Fernanda Mendy, the late Sputnik Kilamba, and Victoria Bawtree for translations, and
to contributing authors for their enthusiasm and commitment to this project.
The publication of this book was made possible by a grant from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation,
Senegal.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Senai Abraha is a PhD candidate at Kennesaw State University’s International Conflict Management
Program. He is currently writing his PhD thesis, entitled “Modeling Peacekeeping: the Case of Canada
Examined.” Senai earned his master’s degree in international development management from the
University of Bradford in the UK and his bachelor of arts in business management. He has conducted
research on various African development and security issues and has presented this work in different
arenas, including the annual China Goes Global conference at Harvard University and the Black History
conference at Atlanta. Senai speaks Amharic, Tigrigna, and English fluently and has a basic grasp on
French, Spanish, and German.
Makungu M. Akinyela, is an associate professor in the Department of African American Studies at
Georgia State University. He is a family therapist practicing in Georgia. He has published and lectured on
critical African-centred theory, critical pedagogy, and cultural democracy, particularly as these issues
relate to mental health. He is the son of Mississippi civil rights activists and came of age during the Black
Power movement in Los Angeles, California. He became a student activist under the mentorship of the
Revolutionary Action Movements House of Umoja and the African People’s Party. As a political activist,
he was a founding member of the Coalition Against Police Abuse (CAPA) in Los Angeles, the New
African People’s Organization, and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
Kali Akuno is an organiser, educator, and writer for human rights and social justice. He is an organiser
for the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) (see www.mxgm.org) and former codirector of the
US Human Rights Network (see www.ushrnetwork.org). Kali also served as the executive director of the
Peoples’ Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) based in New Orleans, Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina and
was a cofounder of the School of Social Justice and Community Development (SSJCD), a public school
serving low-income African-American and Latino communities in Oakland, California. He is the author of
several critical works including, Born of Struggle, Implemented through Struggle, Let Your Motto Be
Resistance, and Operation Ghetto Storm. Kali can be reached at [email protected].
Samir Amin is an Egyptian Marxist economist and director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal.
He is one of the world’s greatest radical thinkers—a creative Marxist who went from communist activism
in Nasser’s Egypt, to advising African socialist leaders such as Julius Nyerere and being a leading figure
in the World Social Forum. Samir Amin’s ideas were formed in the heady ferment of the 1950s and
1960s, when Pan-Africanists like Kwamah Nkrumah, Nasser, and liberation movements thrived across the
continent from South Africa to Algeria. His major works include Capitalism in the Age of Globalization
(1996), Delinking—Toward a Polycentric World (1990), Eurocentrism (1990), Re-reading the Post-war
Period (1994), and The People’s Spring: The Future of the Arab Revolutions (2012).
David Austin is the author of Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal. He is
also the editor of You Don’t Play with Revolution: The Montreal Lectures of C.L.R. James. He currently
teaches in the Humanities, Philosophy, and Religion Department at John Abbott College in Montreal.
Ajamu Baraka is a veteran grassroots organiser whose roots lie in the Black Liberation Movement. An
activist and organiser for over forty years, Baraka has been at the forefront of efforts to develop and apply
a radical people-centred human-rights framework to social justice organising and advocacy in the United
States over the last two decades. Baraka has appeared on a wide range of print, broadcast, and digital
media and is a contributing writer for various publications, including Black Commentator,
Commondreams, Pambazuka, Counterpunch, and Black Agenda Report. Baraka is currently an associate
fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, DC and is editing a new book on human
rights in the United States entitled, The Struggle for People-Centred Human Rights: Voices from the
Field.
Miguel Barros is a research associate at the National Institute of Studies and Research (INEP) of Guinea-
Bissau and the current executive director of Tiniguena. Miguel’s own activism began within Tiniguena’s
youth movement, the New Generation of Tiniguena, for which he served as coordinator from 1999 to
2002. Miguel has represented Tiniguena in national and international networks focused on the struggles
surrounding extractive industries and biodiversity.
Jesse Benjamin is coordinator of the African and African Diaspora Studies Program and an associate
professor of interdisciplinary studies and sociology at Kennesaw State University. He is a sociologist and
cultural anthropologist and is actively involved in a wide range of teaching and research endeavors