Shared this with Gambia-L some years ago:
West Africa Review (2001)
ISSN: 1525-4488

RETURNING TO THE AFRICAN CORE: CABRAL AND THE ERASURE OF THE COLONIZED ELITE
**

Charles Peterson

*I.*

the bourgeoning bourgeoisie behind A. U.
C.1<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#1#1>gates
bristled and forgot all the promises
that I. B. M. and Harvard Law had made
recognized into the streets
running like niggers set free
burning cop cars and tumbling struggle buggies
Morehouse men progressed to renegades
and Spelman ladies soiled their white gloves
on sharp daggers of American blackness . . .
"Graduation Day"

An individual who can't relate to the Black community, understand and be
understood by
her [/his] own people, isn't well
educated.2<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#2#2>

Call your congress woman, your senator, your mayor
It's time for all the scholars to unite with the
players.3<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#3#3>

On the surface anti-colonial and independence struggles within continental
Africa and its Diaspora benefit(ed) from the participation of colonized
elites. Akin to western bourgeois classes that strove to overturn western
European monarchical regimes in order to establish national dominance and
liberate their productive powers, western educated and trained colonized
petit bourgeois classes marshal(led) their energies and join(ed) with mass
popular movements to liberate themselves from colonial
subjugation.4<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#4#4>Highly
articulate and passionate leaders travelled the globe speaking for
the right of the African masses to live self- determined lives, free of
colonial imposition and domination. Yet, upon the realization of nominal
political independence (and in the case of African Americans the
implementation and enforcement of Civil Rights legislation), the limits of
freedom and the meaning of liberation took on different tones under the
auspices of colonized elite predominance. The central questions of this line
of thought are: what was/is the resulting form taken by post-colonial
regimes in particular, and black liberation movements in general, under the
rule/influence of the former colonized elite? How can the resulting
political-economic and social formations be explained? What are the causes
of these residual social, political and economic formations? And how can
these formations, given what we now know as their untoward consequences on
the lives of the previously colonized masses, be avoided? These questions
are raised and spoken directly to by the Guinean thinker and revolutionary,
Amilcar Cabral. Cabral's responses to these questions will be the focus of
this paper and they will provide insight into the questions raised. This
will be done via a presentation of Cabral's analysis of class, culture,
anti-colonial organization and its relationship to elite liminal
identification.

Tsenay Serequerberhan, in his work, *The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy:
Horizon and Discourse*,5<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#5#5>discusses,
from a hermeneutic perspective, the ground and circumstances of
post-colonial African philosophy in neo-colonial times. Serequerberhan
enlists the aid of Michel Foucault in his attempt to understand the failure
of post-colonial governments to establish self- determination beyond mere
nominal independence. Taking up Foucault's idea of the "practice of
freedom," Serequerberhan looks to Amilcar Cabral's theory and practice to
understand the genesis of the problems in post-colonial societies. For
Foucault, the practice of freedom is the series of behaviors, activities and
beliefs among communities that demonstrably establish the pattern of
democratic relationships that *should* follow in the wake of liberation
movements. Serequerberhan sees an absence of the practice of freedom ethos
as the origin of the undemocratic nature of post-colonial regimes (i.e.
neo-colonial states). As Serequerberhan puts it, "'The practice of freedom'
or liberty is grounded on the . . . *self-formative ethos* of a people. .
This presupposes the liberation struggle as it unfolds within the context of
specific and particular histories, and with it the *concrete
implementation*—the
practice—of liberty."6<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#6#6>The
absence of such an ethos is the result of the failure of anti-colonial
movements to resolve the ethnic, class, cultural, and economic tensions of
the pre-colonial and colonial era. Sadly, at the attainment of independence
from the colonizers, the possibility of real, concrete liberation has passed
as the circumstances of the anti-colonial struggle remained within the
colonial model. This prepares the ground for post-colonial disparities that
trickle down from the new state's leadership. Quoting historian Basil
Davidson, Serequerberhan states, "old inequalities from the pre- colonial
heritage . were enlarged by new inequalities from the colonial heritage, and
to this extent the regimes of the late 1950's and early 1960's were, 'the
oppressors and the exploiters of the many by the few' in African
guise."7<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#7#7>However,
Amilcar Cabral and the African Party for the Independence of Guinea
and Cape Verde (PAIGC), having the benefit of observing the evolution of the
early regimes of the African independence movement, had taken steps to
create a truly *new democratic* state for Guineans and Cape Verdeans as
opposed to an elaborate ceremonial transfer of colonial powers from
Portuguese hands to Cape Verdean or Guinean hands.

Guinea Bissau, or Portuguese Guinea as it was once called, under PAIGC
organizing became a unique experiment in revolutionary struggle, as early in
its life, the PAIGC came to the conclusion that external anti-colonial
(revolutionary) theories and practices were unfit for the Guinean struggle.
After the Pijiguiti Massacre of August
3,1959,8<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#8#8>Amilcar
Cabral and the PAIGC determined that any theory and practice of
struggle must be borne of a strict analysis of the material conditions of
the people and land in question, as opposed to abstract theoretical
speculation. A central tenet of Cabral's theorizing was that revolutions can
neither be imported nor exported and thus must be home grown. Cabral, an
agronomist by training, utilized the research on the topography and
geography of Portuguese Guinea done by he and his
wife9<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#9#9>for the
Portuguese colonial government. Utilizing his familiarity with the
land and contact with the various ethnic
groups,10<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#10#10>Cabral
was able to formulate a class analysis of the indigenous population
of Guinea that did not rely on irrelevant Marxist categories but was an
original reflection on Guinea Bissau's class structure. In "Brief Analysis
of the Social Structure in
Guinea,"11<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#11#11>Cabral
thoroughly examined the intricate arrangement of Guinean society
under Portuguese colonialism. The specificity of Cabral and the PAIGC's
analysis revealed that the case of Guinea Bissau demanded particular
theorizing and practice. The comparatively small population of Guinea Bissau
(in comparison with other Portuguese holdings in Africa, especially Angola
and Mozambique) without a notable settler population meant that it was a
colonial territory that remained almost exclusively indigenous in its social
and cultural orientation. Cognizant of the weak Portuguese
Assimilado12<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#12#12>colonial
system, the PAIGC found native Guinea to be a society which
maintained much of its indigenous cultural structures; one that evinced
little or no Portuguese influence beyond the urban centers, various degrees
of social cultural influence among its urbanized populations and a colonial
system with little contact with the rural populations beyond the economic
exploitation of the Portuguese indigena tax system. Under these
circumstances, the PAIGC and the Guinean people were able to recognize the
need for and possibility of national liberation. "It was the actual internal
conditions," Cabral affirmed, "the realities of their daily life, which
decided the people of Guinea to undertake the struggle for national
liberation and for the speedy and total liquidation of Portuguese
colonialism."13 <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#13#13>

Cabral's view toward Guinean liberation stressed the contemporary relations
within indigenous Guinean society for the purposes of transformation and its
mechanics. The question of organization and leadership became most apparent
after the Pijiguiti Massacre. Having focused their activities among the
minuscule urban working class, the PAIGC realized the limited scope of their
organizational membership and influence. Despite the limited impression that
Portuguese colonialism had made upon Guinean culture and society, the
colonial authorities maintained sufficient ideological and physical control
in the cities to nearly destroy the PAIGC. It was outside the urban centers
and in the rural body of Guinea that Cabral would find a larger field of
support and a place virtually untouched by colonial culture and ideology. As
Cabral pointed out: "repressed, persecuted, betrayed, . . . African culture
survived all the storms, taking refuge in the villages, in the forests and
in the spirit of the generations who were victims of
colonialism."14<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#14#14>For
Cabral, this "African culture" is the retained collective identity of
the colonized masses, further strengthened over and against colonial
domination and ripe as a base of resistance in anti-colonial
struggle.15<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#15#15>Cabral
asserted that "in the face of destructive action by imperialist
domination, the masses retain their identity . . . it becomes necessary to
assert or reassert in the framework of the pre- independence movement a
separate and distinct identity from that of the colonial
power."16<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#16#16>Observing
the liberatory possibilities within the autonomy of Guinean rural
populations versus the limitations of liberation from within a colonialist
framework (i.e. colonialist based ideology and practice), Cabral anticipated
Audre Lorde's understanding that "the master's tools will never dismantle
the master's house."17<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#17#17>

The question of colonial influence in Portuguese Guinea loomed large, as it
was an indicator of the relative strength or weakness of the colonial
regime, a clear line of demarcation in Guinean political, economic and
social life and the ground upon which the anti-colonial struggle could be
launched. A weak Portuguese colonial system or, rather, one unable to bring
under control the various aspects of Guinean mass popular life, allowed for
the continued existence of what Cabral considered the most fundamental
aspect of human life and resistance to all forms of domination of that life:
culture.

In a February 1970 speech at the Eduardo Mondlane Memorial Lecture Series at
Syracuse University, in Syracuse, New York, Cabral delivered his most
definitive statements on the role of culture in anti-colonial struggle.
Abridging the Marxist definitions of the place and role of culture in human
social and economic life, Cabral postulated that culture is "the more or
less dynamic expression of the economic and political activities of [a]
society . the dynamic expression of the kinds of relationships which prevail
in that society . between man . and nature, and . among individuals, groups
of individuals, social strata or
classes."18<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#18#18>Culture's
development, for Cabral, is a manifestation of human material
life, but he sidesteps the strict base/superstructure determinism of Marxist
orthodoxy by formulating a dialogical exchange between material conditions,
consciousness, and its subsequent expression. Culture is the relationship
between the means and mode of production (material conditions) and human
consciousness, which results in a historical process and entity that is
"simultaneously the fruit of a people's history and a determinant of history
.."19 <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#19#19>

For Cabral, a people's culture serves as the touchstone of their identity.
Historical attempts at foreign domination have the single goal of the
suppression and exploitation of indigenous peoples. Through its relation to
material conditions, culture is an indicator of the degree of control over a
society; the maintenance or diminution of indigenous culture under colonial
oppression is an indicator of the relative effectiveness or weakness of the
colonial enterprise. According to Cabral, the destruction of culture is an
indicator of the degree of control of the colonial effort, thus, cultural
decimation is a necessary part of colonial domination. This attempt at
control can be carried out through the erasure of a people's national
identity (culture), which effectively takes place by (a) exterminating the
people (which undermines a central mechanism of foreign domination, the
exploitation of labor) and (b) various attempts at acculturation and
assimilation (i.e. the disruption of the social, cultural and material
organization of a people thus erasing the foundation and expressions of
their culture (the capacity for self determination)). If foreign domination
must necessarily suppress national culture, then, "national liberation is
necessarily an act of
culture."20<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#20#20>In
this light, national culture takes on eminent importance, as it
becomes a
repository of resistance in the face of foreign domination. Cabral concluded
that culture is a singularly dangerous tool in the hands of an oppressed
people.

Having defined culture and its role in colonized life, Cabral explored the
ambivalent spaces of culture and class in anti-colonial struggle. Cabral
offered a complicated analysis of the variegated dispersion of culture and
cultures across colonized peoples. He wrote: "the cultural characteristics
of each group in society have a place of prime importance. For, while
culture has a mass character, it is not uniform, it is not equally developed
in all sectors of society. The attitude of each social group toward the
liberation struggle is dictated by its economic interests, but is also
influenced profoundly by its
culture."21<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#21#21>Cabral
and the PAIGC realized the cultural and revolutionary strength gained
by the rural masses (mass popular forces) through their limited contact with
Portuguese colonialism. Conversely, they realized that the interaction and
engagement of colonized elites with colonial ideology and structures greatly
limits, if not completely eliminates, their cultural and revolutionary
potential. In geometric terms, we can imagine the relations between the
rural masses and the colonial authorities on the one hand, and those between
the colonized elite and the colonial authorities, on the other, as a set of
concentric circles. At the center of circle A is colonial cultural influence
and each expanding circle represents the diminishing level of that
influence. The center of circle B is colonized culture. Each expanding
circle represents the diminishing level of that influence. Within the
interstice of the outer levels of circles A and B lay the colonized elite.
Akin to the DuBoisian
subject22<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#22#22>trapped
between existing as Negro and as American, the Cabralian colonized
elite is a liminally identified social- cultural and political being.
Enmeshed in and excluded from the structures of colonial dominance, the
elite, at the same moment, is relegated to colonized status and locked out
of mass popular culture. "[The elite are] prisoners of the cultural and
social contradictions of their lives," Cabral stated. I quote Cabral at
length:

[The colonizer] provokes and develops the cultural alienation of a part of
the population, either by so-called assimilation, or by creating a social
gap between the indigenous elites and the popular masses. As a result of
this process of dividing or of deepening the divisions in the society it
happens that a considerable part of the population, notably the urban or
peasant petit bourgeoisie, assimilates the colonizer's mentality, considers
itself culturally superior to its own people and ignores or looks down upon
their cultural values.23<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#23#23>

Cabral recognized the colonizer-created social, political and cultural split
within colonized society. Through programs of assimilation and
"acculturation" (i.e. educational and employment systems) the colonizer
detaches a segment of colonized society from its mass popular base, thus
creating a social stratum that is impotent in the political arena, socially
derivative and culturally marginal to the two primary factions within
colonial society: the mass of the colonized and the colonizer.
Paradoxically, despite the intimacy with colonialism, this elite position is
one seeded with reactionary or revolutionary potential as a result of this
same position. The everyday contact of the elite with the colonizer, the
suffering of insult and derision topped off by the recognition of their
limited space within colonial society leads to a "frustration complex" that
can potentially lead to a critical view of colonial domination. The elite
position, unlike that of the colonizer (who must by definition maintain
control) or that of the colonized masses (who must find ways to remedy the
conditions of their lives), is one of choice. At the doorway to either side
of the anti- colonial struggle, the elite must determine where their
allegiances lie. For Cabral, this determination, if done out of a sincere
desire to liberate the nation from colonial domination, must arise out of a
reorientation of the elite's social, cultural and political identity and
identification.

Reflecting on his experiences as a student in Lisbon, Portugal, Cabral
recalled the steps which led him and his companions (among whom were future
leaders of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA),
Augustin Neto and Front for the Liberation and Independence of Mozambique
(FRELIMO), Eduardo Mondlane
24<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#24#24>) to
fight Portuguese colonialism in Africa. States Cabral, "I remember
well
how some of us, still students, got together in Lisbon, influenced by the
currents which were shaking the world, and began to discuss one day what
could today be called the *re-Africanization of our
minds*."25<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#25#25>Cabral's
reflection indicates important components of his theory and
practice, that is, (a) the intensely specific nature of his formulations and
(b) his use of grounded experience to postulate general theorems. As Cabral
analyzed the movement of the colonized elite through the colonial terrain,
he centered himself and his experiences as the subject of discussion.

Cabral, born in Bafata, Guinea Bissau in 1924, was raised in Cape Verde
where he had to contend with a dual liminality of Guinean mass popular
culture. The son of a schoolteacher and shopkeeper, Cabral was beneficiary
of the fact that his parents were, in the conditions of Guinea, socially
privileged. As well, his Cape Verdean background fed into the historic
tensions between mainland Guineans and the island-based Cape Verdeans.
Migrant workers from Portugal and mainland African slaves initially settled
an originally uninhabited string of islands, Cape Verde. The occurrence of
miscegenation between the two groups led to later privileges for their
descendants and was the basis of the Portuguese colonial fiction known as
"Lusotropicology."26<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#26#26>As
Ronald Chilcote puts it,

Miscegenation between immigrants from southern Portugal and recruited black
African workers from the continent resulted, according to the official view,
in . *culture different from and superior to* the rest of Africa. As a
result, Cape Verdians were considered 'civilised' and Portuguese citizens.
Speaking a creole Portuguese and proud of an indigenous literature, they had
access to education. Mulatto Cape Verdeans served as administrators in the
lower echelons of the African colonial service.
27<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#27#27>

Based on his effort to rid himself of colonial influence and re-unite with
mass popular culture, Cabral's idea of "re-Africanization" speaks from
personal experience as to the possibility of colonized elite social,
political and cultural transformation.

Frantz Fanon in *The Wretched of the
Earth*28<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#28#28>and
*Black Skin, White
Masks*29<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#29#29>described
the attempt of the colonized elite to regain a positive
identification by embracing pre-colonial and mass popular cultural and
historical identities. In *Black Skin, White Masks*, the immersion in
histories describing the glories of ancient African civilizations or Negro
achievements are attempts, on the part of the elite, to affirm a Black
selfhood in reaction to the negation of self within the colonial system.
Fanon remarked, "I rummaged frantically through the antiquity of the Black
man. . All of that [African history], exhumed from the past, spread with its
insides out, made it possible for me to find a valid historic
place."30<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#30#30>The
quest for a Negro past serves as a salve to the wound of European
rejection. For the Fanon of 1952, this cultural renaissance was the
colonized man's attempt at self-affirmation in the face of *being
rendered*Black by colonialism. Coming to grips with him or herself
within colonial
society, the colonized fought a psycho-discursive battle to negate the
negation of Black being. Writing as a man transformed in 1961, Frantz Fanon
again visited the colonized man in search of his history. Responding to the
denial of his humanity by the colonial power, the "native intellectual"
wages retaliation on the same scale that colonialism does. As colonialism
does not degrade and exploit particular nations, rather it generalizes
across the colonized world, the native intellectual does not celebrate his
or her own land. Seeing a continent, a race demeaned, Fanon's native
intellectual takes up cultural arms to embrace and defend a *racial* nation.
In Fanon's view, "the Negro, never so much a Negro as since he has been
dominated by whites, when he decides to prove that he has a culture . never
does so in the name of Angola or of Dahomey . comes to realize that history
points out a well defined path to him: he must demonstrate that a
*Negro*culture exists."
31 <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#31#31> This
racialization of knowledge stands to combat the racialism of colonial
domination. Recognizing the use of racial chauvinism as a psychological
support to replace the lost colonial chauvinism, Fanon observed, "the
unconditional affirmation of African culture has succeeded the unconditional
affirmation of European
culture."32<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#32#32>Fanon's
concern is with the romantic and uncritical appropriation of pre-
colonial history and the discursive and political lull that it can create
among the colonized. In light of Fanon's insights into the role of cultural
nationalism as a step in the development of anti- colonial consciousness we
must interrogate Cabral's notion of the "Re- Africanization of the mind."

"Re-Africanization" is a movement indicative of a removal, by the elite,
from colonial domination and their re-alignment with mass popular culture.
Existing at the margins of mass culture, the elite can re-reinvent
themselves through a divestiture of colonial ideology. Returning to the
analogy of the concentric circles, "Re- Africanization" is a social,
cultural and (inherently) political movement away from the colonial center
towards the mass popular core. Through a systematic critique of the colonial
framework, this critique which serves as a foundation for an anti-colonial
consciousness, the elite comes to gain an understanding of the nature of
colonial domination and its effect on the indigenous nation. This inward
turning is a beginning process in the elite disassociation from the
colonizer and a regaining of a new liberatory identity (i.e., re-association
with the mass populace). For unlike the masses who "have no need to assert
or reassert their identity, which they have never confused," the elites as a
result of their investment in the colonizer's culture, "find [themselves]
obliged to take up a position in the struggle which opposes the masses to
the colonial power."33<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#33#33>Cabral's
thesis moves toward resolving the DuBoisian existential quandary of
"Double Consciousness" and responding to Fanon's critique of the
"racialization of knowledge." Once "Re-Africanization" begins the
realignment and re-discovery of a consciousness beyond colonial frameworks,
the question, "Am I Assimilado or am I Guinean?" is potentially resolved.
However, there are questions to be asked and answered. What is the
connection/difference/relationship between Fanon's "racialization of
culture" and Cabral's "Re- Africanization of the mind"? Is Cabral
participating in an essentializing view of "African culture" as represented
by mass popular forces?

For Fanon, the intellectual's embrace of pre-colonial culture leads up a
"blind alley" of romanticization, exoticism (as the intellectual attempts to
transform mass popular culture into the antithesis of colonial culture
transforming him or her self into, ". a nigger, not a nigger like all other
niggers but a real nigger, a Negro cur, just the sort of nigger that the
white man wants you to
be."34<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#34#34>)
and finally a disconnectedness from the living breathing mass popular
culture staring the intellectual in the face. Though attempting to divest
themselves of the influence of colonialism, the elite's cultural and
historic explorations seek comfort in a life and time which can no longer
exist as a result of colonial contact and are rendered irrelevant to
contemporary mass popular concerns. "I admit," Fanon wrote, "that all the
proofs of a wonderful Songhai civilization will not change the fact that
today the Songhais are underfed and illiterate, thrown between sky and water
with empty heads and empty
eyes."35<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#35#35>Like
the intelligentsia itself, the perspectives of "national culture" are
disconnected from the everyday existence of mass popular life and serve only
the intellectuals as a means to regain the lost sense of self. "This stated
belief in a national culture is in fact an ardent, despairing turning
towards anything that will afford him secure
anchorage."36<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#36#36>

Cabral's social and cultural position in relation to the masses of Guineans
fits the description of Fanon's "native intellectual" who, struggling within
colonialism's bosom ("as students in Lisbon"), begins to explore and assert
a self-consciousness beyond that of "reformed Guinean." Cabral's student
organizing37 <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#37#37>around
issues of Portuguese colonialism involved efforts to explore various
aspects of African culture, history and language. Despite the similarities
to the Fanonian intellectual, Cabral's subject takes different turns.
Whether it was the weakness of the Portuguese colonial structure and its
inability to create a Guinean educated class that was able to create
self-perpetuating structures of cultural exploration, Cabral's direct
exposure to Guinean mass popular life through his work as an agronomist for
the Portuguese state, or his concrete manner of framing theoretical
questions resulting from his professional training or the shock of the
Pijiguiti Massacre, Cabral's subject diverges from the Fanonian construct in
that "re- Africanization" expands beyond discursive circles and necessarily
manifests itself in lived experience and contact with mass popular forces.
Returning to our invocation of Foucault's statements on the "practice of
freedom," we turn to the way in which Cabral extended the process of elite
cultural and social transformation into the sphere of practical grassroots
life and politics.

A question to be asked is, once the elite process of critique and
realization begins, how does it continue and what is its conclusion or goal?
Cabral based elite movement toward the mass populace upon the "frustration
complex" developed through a sense of "marginality" held by the elite in the
face of "the daily drama . of the usually violent confrontation between the
*mass of the people and the ruling colonial class* [emphasis
mine]."38<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#38#38>This
feeling of marginality in relation to the major participants and
events
in colonial society creates a need for an affirmation of identity and a
confirmation of subjectivity. This need turns the elite's sights to the
ground or group perceived to be at the other end of the social-cultural and
identification spectrum, the popular masses. Here, in the conscious effort
to transform themselves through historic actions, Cabral saw the second and
most important step in the re- creation of the elite, the "return to the
source."

The "return to the source" is the social-cultural and political step of the
colonized elite's denial of the fundamental premise of colonial domination:
its purported inherent superiority. The basis of elite identification with
colonial structures and ideologies is the belief in the supremacy of the
colonizers and their worldview. From the awe- inspiring sight of the
colonizer's techno-military power to the belief that a Ford automobile built
in the United Kingdom is superior in quality to one built in the United
States. *because it was built by the
British*,39<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#39#39>the
issue of colonial supremacy is not an issue at all. For Cabral, the
"return to the source" is "the denial, by the petit bourgeoisie, of the
pretended supremacy of the culture of the dominant power over that of the
dominated people with which it must identify
itself*.*"40<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#40#40>In
his view, speaking in regard to a diasporic dynamic, the "return" is a
need based upon the degree of spatial-cultural separation from the perceived
social-cultural source (i.e., traditional, originary, mass popular culture).
Within Cabral's formulation, the greater the separation from the source, the
greater the need for the source, regardless of geographic or historic
circumstances. "It comes as no surprise that the theories or 'movements'
such as Pan-Africanism or Negritude (two pertinent expressions arising
mainly from the assumption that all black Africans have a cultural identity)
were propounded outside black
Africa."41<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#41#41>This
"return" is more than a mere denial of the colonizer's power or a
desire for psycho-cultural affirmation. The acknowledgment that the elite
"must identify itself" with the mass populace signals that the "return to
the source" has its true power in elite commitment to concrete involvement
in mass popular life.

Concurring with Fanon, Cabral took note of the rise in cultural nationalism
prior to national political struggle and determined that the "return to the
source" demands more than the acknowledgment of pre-colonial native history
or culture while "one part of the middle class minority . . . uses the
foreign cultural norms, calling on literature and art to express the
discovery of its identity, rather than to express the hopes and sufferings
of the masses."42<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#42#42>The
return to the source can take on many forms as the elite wrestles with
various levels of immersion in colonial culture. Jay O"Brien argues that
"the [elite] growth of awareness of and opposition to foreign domination was
slow, fragmented and uneven, and its development depended on the . . .
degree of acculturation, the standard of living, the nature of the
individual associations with other social groups, the formation of ideas
about one's own and other's experiences,
etc."43<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#43#43>Yet
the most expressive, concrete, and, for Cabral, dignified, example of
the return to the source lay in its connection to organized mass popular
struggle. For Cabral, critical colonized elites merely think or believe that
the colonizer is not superior; the point is to prove it. In the context of
the Guinean revolution, this return takes on a decidedly social-cultural
and, equally important, geographical turn. When Cabral spoke of a return to
mass popular life, he meant a *physical* return to the areas inhabited by
the mass of people. For him, writing and organizing in predominantly rural
Guinea Bissau and
Guinea44<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#44#44>from
the early 1960's to the early 1970's, this move symbolically and
concretely signals "a step beyond colonial influence and
power."45<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#45#45>The
elite return to the areas where African culture "took refuge in the
villages, in the forests," underlines Cabral's emphasis on material
conditions and their relationship to consciousness and identity.

Culture, the linchpin that maintains and manifests the relationship between
material life and consciousness, serves as the transformative ground for the
returning elite. The elite's return to and participation in the lived
experience of the national liberation struggle serves as a process of
transformation through which the elite, by altering the material
circumstances of colonial domination (i.e. the building of medical clinics,
conducting educational programs, armed militancy,) slowly alter their
cultural and political consciousness. These perspectives intertwine as the
political question of anti-colonial militancy, through its changing of
material conditions, sets in motion the process of a change in cultural
life. This politicized and critical culture becomes a revolutionary culture
where the vestiges of colonialism's contradictions and pre-colonial
contradictions are transformed in light of revolutionary praxis and
self-critique. The primacy of this critical change is vital to the
transformation of the elite and the success of the struggle and the post-
colonial nation. According to Cabral, "one form of struggle which we
consider to be fundamental . the struggle against our own weaknesses ..This
battle is the expression of the internal contradictions in the economic,
social, cultural (and therefore historical) reality of each of our
countries."46 <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#46#46>This
battle against internal contradictions affects not only the returning
elite but also members of the mass popular forces and the larger traditions
under which they live.
II.

In "Brief Analysis of the Social Structure in Guinea," Cabral analyzed the
property relations within Fula culture and their effect on social/gender
relations. He found that apart from the question of ownership and property,
"the Fulas women have no rights". They "are to a certain degree considered
the property of their
husbands."47<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#47#47>Cabral's
statements on the "internal contradictions" of indigenous culture
acknowledge complications that, on one hand, distinguish continental African
anti-colonial struggle from diasporic movements and, on the other hand,
reveal a deep commonality.

Cabral's reference to the Fula social structure and its sexual inequalities,
spotlights the manner in which, for continental African anti-colonial
struggle, the categories of "native" and "elite" overlap and create greater
levels of complication within the agenda of decolonization. The
contradictions of gender relations within Fula society are more than an
example of pre-colonial indigenous/mass popular practices that must be
addressed and resolved in the course of the anti-colonial struggle. These
contradictions also reveal the dynamics of power that exist; internal to
mass popular culture, alongside the colonizer's hegemony and which compete
with the anti-colonial struggle toward the end of its own goals.

The stratification within Fula culture and society indicates power relations
organized around the interests of the dominant group within that specific
society. These dominant groups present a challenge to the understanding of
elite classes. Unlike those classes that attain status and privilege through
the mechanisms of colonial control, "indigenous elites", derive their
positioning from the history, traditions and social organization of groups
that maintained their pre-colonial identity in the face of colonial
imposition. Unlike the theoretical formulation of the elite that has been
the subject of this discussion, continental African societies present their
own "elites" that jockey and vie for power within the confines of the
colonial space and the anti-colonial struggle. Unlike diasporic African
groups that reconstituted themselves in the shadow of colonial domination (
i.e. marginal to formalized political, social and religious institutions),
elite formations within continental African groups sustain an identity and
particular interests not exclusively based on colonialism for definition or
perpetuation. For example, the Ashante of Ghana, under the British colonial
policy of "indirect rule", maintained internal social, political, cultural
and religious institutions that predated British imperial disruption. These
pre-colonial formations continue to maintain particular intra- national
prerogatives and agendas that may or may not coincide with the goals of the
mass popular anti-colonial struggle undertaken by the leadership and the
grassroots activists. The question at hand is, what relation do these
extra-colonial elite formations have within the colonial schema? What is
their relationship to the anti-colonial struggle? How does Cabral read this
formation *vis a vis* his theories about class and leadership and how does
he address the relationship of these formations to the overall goals of the
mass popular struggle?

Unlike many leaders in continental African anti colonial struggle, Cabral
recognized the existence of class tension and struggle within African
societies. The claims that class is not an applicable category to African
societies stands as a means by which to stave off colonialism's efforts to
exploit weaknesses in the anti-colonial struggle and forge a unified
national identity in the midst of a multi-ethnic society. This denial of
class reveals a class-based prerogative, as stated by Kenneth W. Grundy. He
averred: "It has been argued by African nationalists and others that African
societies are 'classless'.... This ideological position is characteristic of
the elite in many regimes (capitalist, socialist, and under-developed
alike), who seek to rationalise, justify, and consolidate their dominant
positions."48 <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#48#48>Cabral's
analysis of Fula society elaborates on the traditional/pre-colonial
division of resources, social positions and privilege that are indicators of
pre-colonial class positions in African states. Along with those rare
leaders in the early to mid 1960's, Kwame Nkrumah's Convention People's
Party (C. P. P.) in Ghana or Nigeria's Northern Elements Progressive Union
(N. E. P. U.) and the Action Group, Cabral theorized colonial and extra-
colonial classes and was "willing to base their [incl. the PAIGC] policies
and political strategies and tactics on class analyses of social
forces."49<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#49#49>

Within the sphere of Guinean organizing and politics, the question of extra-
colonial elites is linked to ethnicity in the colonized state. The PAIGC's
early organizing attracted leadership from across ethnic lines but its hold
began to deteriorate as Cabral's "return to the source" demanded an erasure
of privileged identities/class positions whether they were based within
colonial systems or pre-colonial systems and their submergence in mass
popular culture and struggle. This purging of privileged identity also
clears space for the establishment of the new Guinean identity within the
new Guinean state. This more radical vision would alter the social-political
position of those who derived their status from colonial and pre-colonial
institutions. In an interview the PAIGC representative in Cairo, Gil
Fernandez, contended that "these Fulani have a kind of vertical society,
with a chief at the top, then a blacksmith or a worker, then the peasant,
and so on. They have been in a better position than any other tribe in
Guinea, and they resent
change."50<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#50#50>In
"Marxism and ethno-nationalism in Guinea-Bissau, 1956-76", Judson M.
Lyon
observed that Cabral's prescription for a "return to the source" "was an
unattractive option to many members of the commercial-civil service elite
and to the traditional ethnic leadership. For reasons both traditional and
personal, therefore, these other members of the Guinean elite felt unable to
accept such strictures."51<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#51#51>Tensions
with the pre- colonial elites centered on the maintenance of
traditional identities and privileges which were derived from or supported
by colonial institutions. The refusal of these elites to give up their
status and privilege caused a rift in the PAIGC and led to the creation of
ethnically based nationalist parties which finally led to the consolidation
of these various interests in the form of the *Frente de Luta Pela
Independencia Nacional de Guinea-Bissau* (FLING). The creation of FLING also
created a space for the Fula-based elites to pursue the preservation of
their class positions in the face of possible change in the colonial arena.
The Fula, recent historical residents to the area known as Guinea Bissau,
maintained long- standing tensions with the other groups in the area. The
Portuguese exploited these tensions, as the Fula chiefs were able to acquire
economic and political privilege through their close association with the
Portuguese in their efforts to pacify and gain control over the region. "The
colonial regime recognized and even strengthened the political position of
the Fula chiefs in return for their close cooperation with the colonial
administration. In fact, the Portuguese used the Fula leaders as chiefs
('warrant chiefs' so called) to rule over those stateless peoples like the
Balanta who had no such formal
leadership."52<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#52#52>This
privilege affected the possibility of Fula participation in the
anti-colonial struggle. Cabral insisted that the Fula hierarchy limited the
PAIGC's organizing, as opposed to the Balanta who maintain a horizontal
societal structure and were more open to the PAIGC's organizing
efforts.53<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#53#53>These
social and historic tensions further complicate the issues of
ethnicity and class, as in order to preserve their class positions under the
guise of preserving ethnic identity, the Fula, for the most part, supported
the Portuguese efforts by supplying information and bodies to the Portuguese
colonial war machine.

Like the construction of the elite within colonial institutions, the pre-
colonial elite existed solely through the continuation of specific
identifications and practices within the traditional society. For the
pre-colonial elite, the drive to maintain their status superseded any
efforts to create a new nation-state liberated from the social, political
and economic contradictions of the colonial and pre-colonial period. For the
Fula masses, the primacy of an ethnic identity (pre-colonial) over a
national identity (post-colonial) was related to the historic tensions
between the Fula and other groups in Portuguese Guinea. "Cabral at first
argued that the problem revolved around the resistance of the Fula chiefs..
However, by the early 1970's, Cabral was forced to admit that this attempt
[recruitment among the Fula] had largely failed and that the tie between the
Fula people and their chiefs proved to be much tighter than he had
expected."54 <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#54#54>

Attempts by the PAIGC to organize among ethnic groups with strict social
hierarchies failed in comparison to FLING, which created a space where the
preservation of an ethnic identity and privilege was part and parcel of the
organizational efforts. Lyon writes, "FLING was more successful because it
allowed Fula chiefs to continue their leadership positions, and because one
joined the party as a Fula through a Fula organization, rather than as a
Guinean."55 <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#55#55> The
competition for power in the colonial state among pre-colonial/ traditional
elites mirrored the resistance of the colonized elite whereby status and
privilege were acquired through both the pre- colonial and colonial systems.
Through selective alliances, Portuguese colonialism was able to carry out
its domination by reinforcing the traditional prerogatives and accommodating
the cultural identities of pre-colonial classes. Thus the colonizer and a
"native" group were able to co- exist over and against a larger body of
colonized peoples.

Any efforts to reorder the established system, bring to full empowerment the
masses of people and resolve the contradictions and disparities in status
and wealth of the colonial and pre-colonial eras threatened the colonial and
traditional order and those groups and individuals who benefit-(ed) from it.
The goal of Cabral and the PAIGC was to effect empowerment (i.e. a re-entry
into history) for all members of the colonized society, across all divisions
on both the macro and micro levels of human activity. This could be done by
creating a new Guinean citizen and society that was both cognizant and
critical of its culture and history and committed to the transformation of
the state and the individual. Anything less would merely perpetuate the
inequalities, colonial or pre-colonial, that would limit the creation of a
new and fully autonomous nation-state. Under Cabral and the PAIGC's
organizing, this reorganization of state, society, and consciousness would
affect every member of Guinean culture and society, especially those
populations most subject to pre-colonial and colonial forms of domination.

The question of the "role" of women in the anti-colonial struggle is one
that is asked across African cultures both, continental and diasporic. For
continental African societies, definitions of "womanhood" are shaped and
informed by both pre- colonial systems and, one might argue, colonial
examples and beliefs. The basis of articulations of "womanhood" within
diasporic cultures, it can be argued, are informed by pre- slavery cultural
mores as well as values resulting from enmeshment within colonial culture.
Regardless of one's standpoint, the overarching concern is the manner in
which African liberation, continental and diasporic, is articulated in
language and practice exclusive of authoritative female
influence/participation and mindful of female life and
experience.56<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#56#56>Stephanie
Urdang, in
*Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea –
Bissau*,57<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#57#57>details
how Cabral, the PAIGC and its cadres of women attempted to liberate
women in Guinean society during and through the process of creating a
liberated Guinea. She writes,

slow but perceptible change in sexist attitudes could be traced between the
period of mobilization and the end of the war.. The younger women who had
grown up under PAIGC were experiencing greater equality.. The older
generation of women had to struggle against the conditioning of a lifetime,
both their own and the mens', in order to break ground which their younger
sisters could follow.58<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#58#58>

Acknowledging that the transformation in women's and men's views on gender
was not complete, Urdang describes scenes of female empowerment within the
process of national liberation: "I witnessed a number of encounters
involving women's cadres and their male comrades who had not totally rid
themselves of chauvinist ideas. The women's response was often angry, but it
always included a firm declaration of their rights and a demand for equal
respect."59 <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#59#59>Involvement
in the struggle itself appears as a means by which women within
the PAIGC develop a critical consciousness and take responsibility for the
resolution of contradictions internal to mass popular culture. Urdang quotes
at length, Teodora, a member of the PAIGC military cadre based at
Candjafara,

The belief that all women are good for is to do the domestic work and to be
a sexual partner and bear children still manifests itself in our society..
We continue to battle with these ideas and I can say that there has been a
very perceptible change over the years. Nonetheless, we cannot deny that in
reality despite our efforts, they still exist. But it is not just the men.
As Cabral used to point out, women themselves must have a clear
understanding of how these attitudes affect them. No one can fight for their
rights except women
themselves.60<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#60#60>

Through their participation all sectors of the populace will develop beyond
positions and identities known prior to the national liberation struggle.
For females, the category of "woman" and the various presumptions/meanings
of the category are subject to critique, vulnerable to change necessarily
redefined as the emergent nation, as a whole, necessarily changes and grows
beyond the definitions placed on it by pre- colonial and colonial systems of
meaning. These particular social, political and ideological struggles among
the colonized are reflective of the struggles necessary for the
transformation of the colonized elite. The commitment evinced by Cabral, the
PAIGC and its cadres to ending gender inequalities in the newly formed state
show the PAIGC's firm belief in the empowerment of all sectors of the new
society, recognition of the particular struggles and experiences of women in
pre- colonial and colonial conditions and a belief in the possibility of
human transformation in the midst of the national liberation struggle.

The process and demands of struggling for national liberation enable the
complete eradication of contradictions internal and external to the
struggle. As the consciousness of the mass populace would be transformed so
would that of the African petty bourgeoisie. Most significantly, like the
position of pre-colonial elite groups and that of women in particular
societies, elite immersion becomes not just an act of individual, but as
well, of communal and national change.

The material change in the social, cultural and physical position of the
elite is vital to all aspects of the national liberation struggle: "For
Cabral, to speak of the material relations which exist between man and his
environment and the relationships among the individuals and collective
components of a society is, 'to speak of history, but is also to speak of
culture'."61 <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#61#61>The
return to the source is a movement by the elite which alters the
geo-cultural and political relations of the colony. This alteration of
culture and consciousness relies upon the transformative power of elite
labor among the mass popular forces. The elite re- connection to mass
popular life plugs it into the physical and subsequently, cultural and
psychological life of the popular masses, thereby occasioning a re-entry
into "history" (i.e., proactive, autonomous, self-realizing and beneficial
behaviour) by the elite; bolstering mass popular culture and political
effort (through the contribution of the skills the elite have gained from
colonial institutions) and contributing to the overall national liberation
struggle. The return to the source provides an opportunity for the elite to
undergo the necessary changes that will contribute not only to the national
liberation struggle but also to the newly established nation-state. Like the
nation itself, in order to achieve true liberation (i.e. the complete and
total emancipation of the productive and cultural forces of the nation from
foreign domination) the elite must undergo a revolutionary conversion on the
most primal cultural, social and psychological levels. In a sense, the
transformation of the elite becomes symbolic of the anti-colonial struggle
as the colonized nation must throw off its dependence on the colonizer and
re-create itself through what former Ghanaian president, Kwame Nkrumah would
call "Positive Action".

Cabral, like Fanon, was more than aware of the dangers of an unreconstructed
leadership class. He knew that "the political leaders—even the most
famous—may be culturally alienated
people."62<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#62#62>The
return to the source and its testing ground, the national liberation
struggle, are the catalytic converters through which the elite must pass.
"Cabral agreed with Che Guevara that this Africanization, which in some ways
he equated with the removal of elitist attitudes, develops gradually during
the struggle.. Consequently, the longer the struggle [the likelier it is
that] the people at all levels [will] develop a new consciousness which is
vital for a successful social revolution after
liberation."63<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#63#63>In
essence, the core of the national liberation struggle is the creation
of
a new national consciousness through the personal and collective
participation of its members. For the elite, the return to the source works
in concert with the national liberation struggle to bring about more than a
mere reorientation but a thorough negation of the elite as individual, class
and category. Class suicide is the final step in the elite's growth. The
mass populace must grow based on its core cultural life, and at the same
time evolve self-consciously shed those traditions which harm the growth as
a people and as a nation. The elite, on the other hand, as individuals and
as a class, must *dissolve* and renew itself within the context of mass
popular culture and struggle for the sake of the new nation. Cabral's point
is not the reformation of elite leadership, or the emergence of a kinder
gentler African ruling class, or even the recognition of the advantages of a
popularly based elite stratum. He demanded the elimination of the elite as
individuals, as a class and as a concept, from the registry of anti-colonial
and national liberation efforts.

The transformation of the elite is a vital issue in the life of the newly
liberated state. Cabral's analysis is not an optimistic desire but one
conscious of the inherent perils of the elite and its participation in
national liberation struggles. The developed orientation of the petty
bourgeoisie makes it dangerous as its acquired skills under colonialism
empower it in the post-colonial
period64<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#64#64>and
its acquired political and cultural orientation under colonial
domination distances it from the mass populace. I quote Cabral,

To return to the question of the nature of the petty bourgeoisie and the
role it can play after the liberation . . . What would you have thought if
Fidel Castro had come to terms with the Americans? Is it possible or
impossible that the Cuban petty bourgeoisie, which set the Cuban people
marching towards revolution, might have come to terms with the Americans? I
think this helps to clarify the character of the revolutionary petty
bourgeoisie.65 <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#65#65>

Thus the role of the petty bourgeoisie is a dangerous point in the
progression toward national liberation. In order to fulfill the
possibilities of the national liberation struggle, the elite, who has
returned to the source, must be an oxymoronic term. To completely return to
the source is to no longer be an elite. Patrick Chabal quotes Cabral, "The
revolutionary petite bourgeoisie must be capable of committing suicide as a
class in order to be reborn as revolutionary workers, completely identified
with the deepest aspirations of the people to which it
belongs."66<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#66#66>The
petty bourgeoisie can no longer exist, "To do this it may have to
commit
suicide, but it will not lose; by sacrificing itself it can reincarnate
itself, but in the condition of workers or
peasants."67<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#67#67>

In a single blow, Cabral contended with and resolved the dilemma of Fanon's
"native intellectual" by formulating and proving through revolutionary
praxis that successful anti-colonial struggles must necessarily resolve
vanguardist tendencies by eliminating the vanguard (the elite class) through
its rebirth as members of the mass populace. This view appropriates the
traditional argument for elite leadership (the elite contribution of
colonial derived intellectual and technical skills) by utilizing these
skills from a new socio-cultural
position.68<http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#68#68>The
former elite becomes a skilled member of the mass populace as opposed
to
an elite temporarily aligned with the mass popular struggle.

Amilcar Cabral's analysis of the role of the colonized elite (petite
bourgeois and urbanized classes) stridently maintains its grounding in the
concrete realities of the PAIGC's anti-colonial efforts in Guinea Bissau.
However, the theoretical issues that he spoke to must be noted as to how
they relate to the larger question of elite activism within the African
diasporic experience as a whole. Cabral clearly theorized beyond the
standard assumptions of liberation struggles that argue the necessity of the
emergence of elite nationalists. No doubt in view of African independence
struggles of the 1950's and 1960's, dependence on mass popular
participation, e.g., Ghana, and peasant-based militancy, e.g., Algeria,
Angola, and Mozambique, Cabral's formulations critically reconsider the role
of elites in anti-colonial struggle. In light of their awareness of the
entrenchment of neo-colonial regimes which established themselves on the
backs of those previous independence struggles in places like Ghana,
Nigeria, or Egypt, Cabral and the PAIGC were forced to reconsider the nature
of elite consciousness in the post-independence period and, more to the
point, during the course of the national liberation struggle.

Amilcar Cabral's analysis of class and culture in the context of the
national liberation/anti-colonial struggle sought to simultaneously
formulate a means by which to understand the functioning of the national
entity at hand and construct the national body, yet to be. This two-pronged
approach postulated the necessity of the colonized subject's ability to
consciously change and transform him/herself into a new being. This new
being would no longer be a colonial subject in any form or fashion but would
be the citizen of a new nation, liberated from its colonial past. Though the
mass populace and its culture provided the doorway to national liberation,
it was the colonized elite who would be the key. The elite contribution of
technical and intellectual training would be of great benefit to the
revolutionary struggle but it was the process of elite growth which held the
greatest value. For the elite to dissolve and then evolve within the mass
popular struggle through the processes of "Re- Africanisation" and
"Returning to the Source", was a significant sign of the vulnerability of
Portuguese colonial culture and ideology. As well, it was a significant sign
of the social, cultural, political and ideological possibilities of the
post- colonial nation.

The elite reunion with mass popular struggle and culture disproves the lie
of colonial invincibility and superiority by showing how colonial subjects
can move beyond foreign domination. For the elite class, the class most
immersed in colonial ideology and culture, moving beyond the shadow of
colonial influence demonstrates the possibility of a new nation rising out
of the ashes of a dominated past. With an eye to the future, the reborn
elite, by becoming one with the mass population, suggests and actively works
toward a new democratic nation that attempts to deliver on the party's
national liberatory promises. The elite who serves as a "prodigal son" to
the people announces through strength of arms, ideology and conviction that
the future for national liberation is guaranteed as all vestiges of the
oppressive past have been laid to rest.
References

Cabral, Amilcar. *Revolution in Guinea*. New York: Monthly Review Press,
1972

------------, *Return to the Source*. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974

------------. "Original Writings." *Ufahamu*, 3, 3, Winter (1973)

Chabal, Patrick. *Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People's War*.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983

Chilcote, Ronald H. "The Political Thought of Amilcar Cabral." *The Journal
of Modern African Studies*, 6,3, (1968)

Cole, Johnetta B. "Culture: Negro, Black and Nigger." *New Black Voices*.
Abraham Chapman, ed. New York: New American Library, 1987

Dhada, Mustafa. *Warriors at Work: How Guinea Was Really set Free*. Niwot,
CO: University of Colorado Press, 1993

DuBois, W.E.B. *The Souls of Black Folk*. New York: New American Library,
1969

Fanon, Frantz. *The Wretched of the Earth*. Trans. Constance Farrington. New
York: Grove Press, 1963

------------. *Black Skins, White Masks*. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New
York: Grove Press, 1967

Fernandez, Gil. "A Talk with a Guinean Revolutionary." *Ufahama*, 1,1,
(1970)

Grundy, Kenneth. "The Class Struggle in Africa: An Examination of
Conflicting Theories." *Journal of Modern African Studies*, 2,1,3, (1964)

Hammond, Richard J. "Race Attitudes and policies in Portuguese Africa in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries." *Race*, IX, 2, (1967)

Hubbard, Maryinez L. "Culture and history in a revolutionary context:
approaches to *Amilcar* Cabral." *Ufahamu*, VI, 1, (1976)

KRS-ONE. "Criminals in Action (CIA)." Lyricist lounge: Volume One. Open Mike
Records, 1998

Lorde, Audre. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House."
*Sister Outsider*. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984

Lyon, Judson M. "Marxism and ethno-nationalism in Guinea-Bissau." *Ethnic
Studies*, 3, 2, (1980)

O'Brien, Jay. "Tribe, class and nation: revolution and the weapon of theory
in Guinea Bissau." *Race & Class*, XIX, 1, 1977

Opuko, K. "Cabral and the African Revolution." *Presence (sic) Africain*,
105, 1, (1978)

Thiam, Awa. "Black Sisters, Speak Out." *Daughters of Africa: An
International Anthology of Words and \Writings by Women of African Descent
from Ancient Egypt to the Present*. Margaret Busby, ed. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1992

Urdang, Stephanie. *Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea-Bissau*. New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1979
Endnotes

1. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#1b#1b> The Atlanta
University Center (The Inter Denominational Theological Center,
Clarke-Atlanta University, Morris Brown, Spelman College and Morehouse
College) is a collective of historically Black colleges in Atlanta, Georgia
that maintain distinct collegiate institutions, enrollment and missions yet
function as a single entity in that students are allowed access to resources
across campuses.

2. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#2b#2b> Cole,
Johnetta B. "Culture: Negro, Black and Nigger." New Black Voices. Abraham
Chapman, ed. (New York: New American Library, 1987).

3. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#3b#3b> KRS-ONE.
"CIA (Criminals in Action)." Lyricist Lounge: Volume One. Open Mike Records,
1998.

4. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#4b#4b> Within the
context of external colonialism, "national liberation" was the goal for many
African communities. In other cases, Pan-Africanism (Nkrumah's Organization
of African Unity) or Federation (C. L. R. James' along with others lobbied
for a West Indian Confederation promptly after independence from British
colonial rule) were the goals of post-colonial governments but at the heart
of all instances lay a nationalist base. I argue pursuant to Chapter 1's
discussion of Afri-US peoples as an internally colonized group, that in lieu
of a "national liberation struggle", the "Civil Rights Movement" (the period
of conscious and organized Afri- U. S. social political struggle roughly
dating from the Birmingham Bus Boycott of 1954 to the mid 1970's) was the
primary staging area of political alliances between Afri-US elites and mass
popular action. "Desegregation" and "Equal Rights" were the rough
equivalents to Ghana's "Freedom Now" and Kenya's "Uhuru Sasa." This is not
to discount the Nationalist agendas of the Black Power Movement or the
revolutionary aims of the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army,
Revolutionary Action Movement or the cultural nationalism of Maulana
Karenga's US movement. Yet for the sake of this argument and the analysis of
colonized elite participation in mass popular anti colonial struggle, the
Civil Rights movement and its residual effects best serve as Afri-US
examples.

5. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#5b#5b> (New York:
Routledge, 1994).

6. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#6b#6b> ibid, 88.

7. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#7b#7b> ibid, 89

8. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#8b#8b> In 1959, the
PAIGC helped organize and lead a strike of Guinean dockworkers at Pijiguiti
that ended in a Portuguese military raid leaving over 50 strikers dead and
more than 100 injured. See Cedric Robinson. "Amilcar Cabral and the
Dialectic of Portuguese Colonialism."

9. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#9b#9b> Dhada,
Mustafah. Warriors at Work: How Guinea Was Really Set Free. (Niwot, CO:
University of Colorado Press, 1993)145.

10. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#10b#10b> Chilcote,
Ronald H. "The Political Thought of Amilcar Cabral". The Journal of Modern
African Studies, 6, 3 (1968): 373. States Chilcote, "Cabral entered a second
phase of activity by serving as a consultant to the Portuguese Government
and to private firms in Angola and Guinea...focusing on land problems, his
technical and theoretical writings at that time demonstrated a profound
concern for finding development solutions to problems of the African
masses." (374-375) As stated in the introduction to some of Cabral's
original writings (Ufahama, Vol 3, No 3, Winter 1973), "The reader should
bear in mind that although Cabral wrote these articles while still a
Portuguese civil servant, he identified problems, located blame and
recommended solutions which few, if any Portuguese civil servants today are
either cognizant of or courageous enough to put in print." (31)

11. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#11b#11b>Revolution
in Guinea. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969).

12. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#12b#12b> Akin to
the French Evolué colonial system, Portugal established a system of colonial
control that would attempt to erase indigenous culture and society by
offering to Guinean subjects Portuguese citizenship (and limited amounts of
privilege) if they would in turn renounce their original languages, cultures
and religions and embrace Portuguese language culture and religion. This
status extended to phenotypical transformation as Portugal maintained the
fiction of a Luso-phone racial paradise in its colonies through colonizer
and native miscegenation. Those Guineans who achieved this status were known
as Assimilados and became the highest strata of Guinean colonized society.
States K. Opuko, "The cultural achievements of Portuguese imperialism are
quite plain for us to see. After some five hundred years of colonial rule in
Guinea, only 0.3% of its inhabitants achieved the status of assimilados, the
remaining 99.7% could neither read nor write Portuguese." "Cabral and the
African Revolution". Présence Africaine 105, 1(1978): 58.

13. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#13b#13b> Cabral.
"At the United Nations." ibid, 35.

14. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#14b#14b> Cabral,
Amilcar. "National Liberation and Culture". Return to the Source. (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1974) 49.

15. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#15b#15b> This
perspective does not at all romanticize or guarantee the revolutionary
desire of the peasant/rural/colonial marginal groups within the colonial
context. Ironically this same distance which allows for a culturally and
geographically distinct and separate indigenous culture, also encourages the
reluctance of these groups to enter the anti colonial struggle. PAIGC
representative to Cairo, Gil Fernandez states, "The peasant in our country
is basically very conservative. Mainly that is because they did not have
very much contact with the Portuguese [emphasis mine]---99.9% of the
population literally. So when you go to the countryside and tell the
population, look we're forming a party; we have the guns and we want you to
help us and join the party, they answer, are you crazy? How can we possibly
fight the Portuguese when they have the tanks and planes and cars, and we
can hardly strike a match?" Ufahama, Vol 1, 1, (1970): 8. Cabral states in,
"Brief analysis of the social structure in Guinea", " It must be said at
once that the peasantry is not a revolutionary force . . . A distinction
must be made between a physical force and a revolutionary force." Revolution
in Guinea. (New York: Monthly Review Press 1972) 61.

16. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#16b#16b> Cabral,
"Identity and Dignity in the Context of the National Liberation Struggle".
64

17. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#17b#17b> Lorde,
Audre. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House". Sister
Outsider. (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984) 110.

18. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#18b#18b> "National
Liberation . . ." , 41.

19. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#19b#19b> ibid.

20. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#20b#20b> ibid, 43.

21. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#21b#21b> ibid, 44.

22. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#22b#22b> This
refers to Afri-U.S. scholar and activist, W.E.B. Dubois' pronouncement on
the existential dilemma of Afri-U.S. peoples, "Double Consciousness." The
Souls of Black Folk. New York: New American Library, 1969

23. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#23b#23b> ibid, 45.

24. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#24b#24b>Chilcote,"During
this early phase of his career Cabral associated with
African students from Angola and Mozambique through such official
organisations as the Casa dos Estudantes do Império and the Centro de
Estudos Africanos."ibid.

25. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#25b#25b> Cabral,
"The Nationalist Movements of the Portuguese Colonies". Revolution in Guinea
76.

26. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#26b#26b> Hammond,
Richard J. "Race Attitudes and Policies in Portuguese Africa in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries". Race, IX, 2 (1967). Hammond writes,
"Lusotropicology, as invented by Gilberto Freyre, boils down to an assertion
that the national character of the Portuguese has enabled them to create in
Brazil and elsewhere a unique multiracial society," 205.

27. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#27b#27b> Chilcote,
373.

28. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#28b#28b> (New
York: Grove Press, 1963).

29. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#29b#29b> (New
York: Grove Press, 1967).

30. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#30b#30b> ibid,
130.

31. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#31b#31b> Fanon.
Wretched of the Earth. 171.

32. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#32b#32b> ibid,
172.

33. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#33b#33b> Cabral,
"Identity and Dignity . . ." Revolution in Guinea, 67.

34. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#34b#34b> ibid,
178.

35. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#35b#35b> Fanon.
Wretched. 169.

36. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#36b#36b> ibid,
175.

37. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#37b#37b> Dhada
details the attempts of Cabral and his fellow Lusophone African companions
to establish organizations independent of the Portuguese government in
Lisbon to mobilize around issues of Portuguese colonialism. "Cabral,
Agostinho Neto and Mario de Andrade met to revive their plan . . . to
establish an independent centre for the study of African history, culture,
and civilization." 142.

38. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#38b#38b> ibid, 62.

39. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#39b#39b> Anyone
familiar with Ford automobiles would ask, "what's the difference, Ford is an
ill made car regardless." However, the power of British colonialism's
influence maintains its hold over the post-colonial subject. I have to thank
my colleague Meredith Gadsby for relating this view held by a member of her
family living in Barbados.

40. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#40b#40b> Cabral,
"Identity and Dignity. . .," 61.

41. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#41b#41b> ibid,
62-63.

42. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#42b#42b> ibid, 68.

43. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#43b#43b> "Tribe,
class and nation: revolution and the weapon of theory in Guinea Bissau".
Race & Class XIX, 1 (1977): 7.

44. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#44b#44b> Because
of his high public profile and the strategies of the PAIGC's political and
military organization, Cabral spent most of the Guinean liberation struggle
at the PAIGC's primary training camp in Guinea (formerly French Guinea)
under Sekou Toure's protection or was traveling throughout Africa, AsiA,
Europe, the Caribbean and North America on behalf of the PAIGC's negotiator,
ambassador and publicist. Mustafah Dhada reports that prior to his
assassination Cabral only visited Portuguese Guinea 4 times and logged over
600,000 miles representing the liberation movement. (Dhada, Appendix C,
Tables 1-5) 171-180.

45. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#45b#45b> Arguably
this tactic, though based on Cabral's particular analysis of Guinean
geography and culture, is open to broader interpretations in regard to
urbanized societies in the African diaspora and the political- geographic
terrain created by colonial policies.

46. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#46b#46b> Cabral,
"The Weapon of Theory". Revolution in Guinea , 91 - 92.

47. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#47b#47b> ibid,
"Brief analysis of the social structure in Guinea". Revolution inGuinea ,
57.

48. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#48b#48b> "The
Class Struggle in Africa: An Examination of Conflicting Theories," Journal
of Modern African Studies 2, 1, 3 (1964): 379- 393.

49. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#49b#49b> ibid,
389.

50. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#50b#50b> "A Talk
With A Guinean Revolutionary." Ufahamu Vol. 1, 1 (1970): 8.

51. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#51b#51b> Ethnic
and Racial Studies, Vol. 3, 2 (1980): 160.

52. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#52b#52b> ibid,
162.

53. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#53b#53b> Cabral,
"A Brief Analysis . . ." Revolution in . . ., 61.

54. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#54b#54b> ibid,
163.

55. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#55b#55b> ibid.

56. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#56b#56b> Awa
Thiam, in "Black Sisters, Speak Out," (Daughters of Africa: An International
Anthologyof Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from Ancient
Egypt to the Present. Margaret Busby, ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992).
argues the connection of African women, continental and diasporic, to anti
colonial struggle and the necessary inclusion in these battles of the
particular issues facing women of African descent. She writes, "The problems
that beset Black women are manifold. Whether she is from the West Indies,
America or Africa, the plight of the Black woman is very different from that
of her White or Yellow sisters,[ although in the long run the problems faced
by all women tend to overlap] . . . Where Black women have to combat
colonialism and neo-colonialism, capitalism and the patriarchal system,
European women only have to fight against capitalism and patriarchy," 476,
478.

57. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#57b#57b> (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1979).

58. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#58b#58b> ibid,
237, 240.

59. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#59b#59b> ibid,
240.

60. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#60b#60b> ibid,
241.

61. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#61b#61b> Hubbard,
Maryinez L."Culture and history in a revolutionary context: approaches to
Amilcar Cabral". Ufahama Vol. VI, No 1 (1976): 78

62. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#62b#62b> ibid, 80.

63. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#63b#63b> ibid.

64. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#64b#64b>Cabral."The
moment national liberation comes and the petty bourgeoisie takes
power we enter, or rather return to history, and thus the internal
contradictions break out again." "Brief analysis? " 69.

65. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#65b#65b> ibid, 72.

66. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#66b#66b> Amilcar
Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People's War. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983) 177.

67. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#67b#67b> Cabral,
"Brief analysis . . ." 72.

68. <http://www.westafricareview.com/vol2.2/peterson.html#68b#68b> ibid.
States Cabral, "The African petty bourgeoisie . . . this is the only stratum
capable of controlling or even utilizing the instruments which the colonial
state used against our people. So we come to the conclusion that in colonial
conditions it is the petty bourgeoisie which is the inheritor of state power
(though I wish we could be wrong)," 69.
 ------------------------------

Copyright 2001 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

*Citation Format*

Peterson, Charles (2001). RETURNING TO THE AFRICAN CORE: CABRAL AND THE
ERASURE OF THE COLONIZED ELITE. *West Africa
Review<http://www.westafricareview.com/>
:* 2, 2 [iuicode: http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?101.2.2.3]

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html

To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤