Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People's War

by Patrick Chabal

This book, first published in 1983 by Cambridge University Press and now issued for the first time in paperback with a new preface, tells the story of Amilcar Cabral who, as head of PAIGC, Guinea-Bissau's nationalist movement, became one of Africa's foremost revolutionary leaders. In less than twenty years of active political life, Cabral led Guinea-Bissau's nationalists to the most complete political and military success ever achieved by an African political movement against a colonial power. At the time of his death in 1973, months before Guinea-Bissau became independent, his influence extended well beyond the Lusophone world and Africa. Friends and foes alike admired his political acumen and skills and saw in him a potential leader of a non-aligned movement. His writings have shown him to be a sophisticated analyst of the social, economic, and political factors which have affected and continue to affect the developing world. At a time when there is a general sense of despondency about the future of Africa, as well as cynicism about its political elites, it is instructive to be reminded that the continent has produced a political leader of Cabral's caliber.

Genres: Africa, Western Africa

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 21, 1983

Reviews

[Antonin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an extremely valuable contribution to the growing literature on Africa's wars of national liberation. The people's war begun in 1963 by Amilcar Cabral's Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde) against the Portuguese colonial rulers of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde was Africa's most successful anti-colonial war. The author explains how Cabral's unique theories on African nationalism and people's war brought about that victory. He contrasts the PAIGC's successes with the considerably more difficult course followed by nationalist movements in the other Portuguese-speaking colonies, Angola and Mozambique.

Cabral was assassinated in January 1973, only months before Guinea-Bissau's independence. While he never saw the fruit of his labor, today he is widely regarded as a revolutionary theoretician on the same level as Che Guevara and Frantz Fanon. In my opinion, his pragmatism and insistence on the primacy of political work above military work places him above Guevara as a practitioner of people's war.

[PhattandyPDX · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amilcar Cabral: college educated Engineer who led a revolution to defeat Portuguese colonial rule.