Amilcar Cabral (Amilcar Lopes Cabral) was an African intellectual revolutionary trained in Portuguese Marxism, who made a significant contribution to the independence movement of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde islands. He was born on September 12, 1924, in Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau. His father, a Cape Verdean, was a poet, polemicist, and schoolteacher; his mother was a shopkeeper, guest house owner, and later, seamstress. The family moved to the Cape Verde when Cabral was four.
Cabral was home-schooled until twelve. He did his primary schooling in Praia and subsequently went to Gil Eanes Lyceum in Mindelo, São Vincente Island. Gil Eanes was then a literary and social beehive, alive with discussion groups and social activists examining Cape Verde’s social and economic deprivation amid continuing droughts and famine. Amilcar Cabral was deeply influenced by these discussions and the reality surrounding him. By the time he left for Portugal to pursue university studies in the autumn of 1945, he was transformed, committed to leading an active, socially transformative life.
As the founding leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde, Cabral wore several hats: he was the chief diplomat and the commander in chief of the liberation movement; he was also the master organizer of the party and of the incipient state in the liberated areas. Yet, Amilcar Cabral was far from solely a man of action; he developed a complex and sophisticated political theory of national liberation that gave substance and meaning to political action.
However, despite the worldwide focus on the struggle in Vietnam at the time, the inspiring dynamism of the campaign waged in Guinea-Bissau–together with the figure of Cabral–captured international attention. In the introduction to an early collection of Cabral’s writings and speeches, Basil Davidson (1979) describes Cabral as someone who expressed a genuine “enduring interest in everyone and everything that came his way” (x).
Like so many revolutionary leaders Cabral was “loved as well as followed” because “he was big hearted” and “devoted to his peoples’ progress” (xi). Due to his leadership and brilliance, “governments asked his advice” and “the United Nations gave him its platform.” However, deserved it was, Amilcar Cabral never indulged in this praise, and instead focused solely on his commitment to the liberation and self-determination of the world’s working-class and oppressed.
Moreover, Cabral was shot dead at point blank range on January 20, 1973, just as he was getting out of his vehicle outside his home in Conakry. His killing was politically motivated. His murderer, Innocencio Kani, led a group of dissidents who wanted Cabral replaced with someone less “Cape Verdean” and more “Guinea-Bissauan.” On the other hand, the Portuguese armed forces, then led by General António Spinola, aided and abetted this group to have Cabral replaced with someone willing to reach a negotiated settlement for Guinea-Bissau only.
Although not fully acknowledged in the field of education Cabral’s decolonial theory and practice also sharpened and influenced the trajectory of Freire’s (1921-1997) thought. Through the revolutionary process led by Amilcar Cabral, Guinea-Bissau became a world-leader in decolonial forms of education, which moved Freire deeply. That is, because of the villainous process of Portuguese colonialism, which included centuries of de-Africanization, re-Africanization, through decolonial forms of education, was a central feature of the anti-colonial struggle for self-determination.
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