Guinea: Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands: The Transition from War to IndependenceAuthor(s): Basil DavidsonSource: Africa Today, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 5-20Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4185452Accessed: 13/11/2009 07:43

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Guinea: Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands:

The Transition From War to Independence

Basil Davidson

When at last it arrived, eighteen years after six men had founded the party, eleven years after the party had launched armed struggle, the final success came easily, even gaily, above all surprisingly.

At a temporary base near the south-eastern frontier, the leaders of the PAIGC, the African Independence Party of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. told the visitor on August 14: "Now, if you like, we can send you to see the Portuguese commanders in Bissau, and then to the Cape Verdes. They were radiant with this happy culmination, but otherwise just the same: serenely sure of their party and themselves, unrelentingly at work, Aristides Pereira, secretary-general of the PAIGC, and Luis Cabral, president of the new republic, sparing time from endless meetings that wrestled with this sudden transition from war to peace.

With them were the younger men, still in their thirties, who have come to leadership through the years of struggle: "Chico" Mendes and "Nino" Vieira, now political leaders but also, for long, renowned commanders in these forests and savannahs; Jose Araujo and Manuel Pires, the PAIGC's negotiating team with the Portuguese, waiting to return to Algiers; others of the same mark and experience. We had passed days in talking. Now they asked, a little teasingly, measuring the effect: "The way is open to Bissau, if you want. . ."

Then days of travel by truck through the "old" liberated areas of the south, together with a score of senior PAIGC responsables also on their way to Bissau and the Cape Verdes. Tumults of rain, forest trails, roads that could not possibly deserve the name, pitted with sudden metre-deep holes and barricaded by cliffs of irreducible stone, or

Basil Davidson, a British journalist, writer and historian, is the author of so many books and articles on Africa in general and the Portuguese African territories in particular, all familiar to most of our readers, that it is pointless to try to list them here. He has been a welcome visitor in the liberated areas of all three of the newly independent or soon to be independent territories for many years.

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submerged in lakes of water falling from horizons that seemed to pluck at one's hair. Then, at last, the military base and river port of Cacine on the Cacheu estuary, evacuated by the Portuguese army three days earlier, and a grateful farewell to the truck. From here, it was said, the Portuguese airforce would lift us to Bissau, some 130 kilometres distant on a direct line, and the forests we had trudged in the past would slide painlessly beneath.

It still seemed hard to believe. Yet a Dornier came while we were still bogged axle-deep a score of miles from Cacine. Returning to Bissau before we could arrive in the rain-swept dusk, it came again the next day. Its Portuguese military pilot, taciturn but courteous, could take three passengers at a time. The Cape Verdean PAIGC leader, Silvino da Luz, would go on the first flight: he was in a hurry to reach the islands, to reinforce the organization of the PAIGC there. The visitor would go with him: now as in the past, the PAIGC cherishes its visitors. And the third would be Buscardini, since 1969 the chief of PAIGC radio in next-door Guinea (Conakry), also in a hurry because Bissau Radio was already at the service of the PAIGC but sorely in need of a new hand at the helm.

Buscardini is a young man of hard experience and few words, yet also a great retailer of proverbs with a salty wit, and even, it is said, an inventor of such proverbs. He has given me several more for my Creole collection. Now he says: "I've travelled by plane once before. That was when the PIDE arrested me in Bolama, and took me by air to their prison in Bissau. The plane was exactly like this one." In the seat of the Dornier beside me, he allows himself a cautious smile, im- mensely attractive in its sudden gaiety: "A unique experience, perhaps?"

It was not claiming too much. Not only because of this ending without bitterness of a long and bitter war, not only because of the co- operation of the Portuguese, dignified yet determined, but above all because of the attitude and approach of these men and women of the PAIGC. The visitor in his time had seen the ending of other wars, wars far greater but not so much less terrible, in grim avenging battles and aftermaths of victory sullied by "the settling of accounts." Yet here, however singular it may seem elsewhere, what Luis Cabral said a few days earlier appears true: "We have waged the war without hatred, and we are ending it without hatred". What was said by Pedro Pires, the PAIGC's military spokesman during negotiations with the Por- tuguese in London and Algiers, is also true: "We're trying to carry out all this, all this transition, in the best possible way. We have stuck to the principle that Amilcar Cabral taught us: that we are not against the Portuguese, we are against their system, their colonial domination." Perhaps other nations, older nations, might go usefully to school here.

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Basil Davidson

Unique, perhaps, in another sense as well. There comes to power, here, a political concept and praxis which have already powered and realized a new pattern of social and political independence, a pattern revolutionary in comparison with the reformist structures and in- stitutions of other newly-independent countries. Much already suggests that it mav deeply if indirectly influence the course of African development elsewhere. Guinea-Bissau is a very small country. But it may prove larger than its size.

And so the record of these extraordinary days may be worth recording in some detail. Perhaps, too, this detail may be all the more acceptable to readers long jaded by a surfeit of "guerrilla en- terprises" and "irregular adventures." Because here there is no room for all that sad romanticism. No heroics here, no crowing over the defeated. If one had to single out the hallmarks of the "style" of the PAIGC, they would be modesty, realism, and a sense of humour; the last no less welcome if at times a little mordant (but wars, alas, are like that).

There is the story of Major V., a youthful and impressive Por- tuguese officer who afterwards came to see us in Bissau. He had commanded an important camp in the interior. "That's you, Major V., is it?" asked a PAIGC soldier when Major V. formally handed over his camp. "Yes, I've seen you before. You were at a bridge at so-and-so, weren't you? Well, I was too. In the bush nearby. With a landmine for that bridge. Only you came a bit early. So you're still here, and that's good, isn't it?"

From Armed Struggle To Independence

The total evacuation of the Portuguese armed forces from Guinea- Bissau had been carried to its final stages, by the end of August, with only one shooting incident: a mutual confusion on May 27, actually before the evacuation began, and not serious. To understand how this peaceful transition has been possible, one needs to look back a little. It is not a boring story.

General Antonio Sprnola, who came to Bissau as governor and commander-in-chief in 1967 and stayed till 1973, and who today is president of Portugal,' proved more intelligent than his predecessor, General Arnaldo Schultz. As he has explained in sundry writings and interviews, he saw that he could not hope to win by military means alone. He invented his "better Guinea" programme, and tried to undercut the PAIGC by "good works."

1. This article was written September 9, 1974, upon the author's return to Britain from this visit, and therefore before Sprnola's resignation and replacement by Costa Gomes. -Ed. note.

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Three things would in any case have defeated this programme. Chiefly, the superior attraction of the PAIGC, both from their manifestly real anti-colonial liberation stance and from the evidence of a genuine social and political renewal in their liberated areas, large by 1968. Secondly, the fact that Spi'nola carried out his "good works" by military hand, a hand often harsh and destructive. Thirdly, the penury of Spi'nola's means for anything but military effort.

By 1970 the "better Guinea" programme had become little more a bad joke, and military action remained the sole alternative. Spinola reinforced this with an increase of bombing and helicoptered com- mando raids on liberated villages: his version of the US Army's 'search and destroy" operations in Vietnam. These transformed what was left of the "better Guinea" programme into something a great deal nastier than a bad joke, and achieved no long-term purpose. I saw this for myself two years ago, for I happened to be in the southern liberated areas when the last of Spinola's offensive operations got into stride. Militarily, it left matters just where they had been before.

Nonetheless there had developed by 1972 a certain balance of power, even a certain "situation of routine". A PAIGC commander commented last month: "We were all coming to the conclusion that the way we were fighting wouldn't do. Somehow we had to change it." And then, in January 1973, there came the murder of Amilcar Cabral in Conakry. The handful of traitors and enemy agents were at once eliminated, but the shock was a terrible one, and its effects very clearly went deep. "Suddenly we were all faced, each of us, with the absolutely personal and human need to break out and finish this war."

New tactics were devised: more offensive, better combined. New weapons came to hand. In March 1973 the PAIGC began shooting down Spinola's bombers with ground-to-air missiles. "That was a deter- mining factor, but there were others." In July, 1973, after months of range calculation, PAIGC artillery destroyed the key Portuguese strongpoint of Guileje.

"We had enough bombs for a month, allowing one for every half- hour round the clock. We had to use only 200: they collapsed after four days." But already things had changed. After April 1973 there were no more Portuguese offensives. "And so we knew that we had finally won, because there is no army in the world that can stand for long in that position. If the war had gone on, we should have brought in heavy armour and swept them from their biggest camps. It was only a matter of time - perhaps until 1975."

This important point is confirmed by what we have now learned from the Portuguese. Independence follows a clear victory in the field, even if the PAIGC has no wish to boast about it, a victory masked only by the consequence of the April 25th coup d'etat in Lisbon. Yet the other side also needs taking into account. The kernel of the Armed

8

Basil Davidson Forces Movement (in Portuguese: Movimento das ForSas Armadas) - the movement of the young officers who made the coup on the slogans of "Democratisation and Decolonisation" - took shape first in Guinea-Bissau, and was organized here with a political acumen which developed its structures right down through the ranks, something that failed to develop when the AFM duly appeared in Portugal. A process of negotiation with the Portuguese governmrent then began in Dakar at a meeting organized by President Senghor between Foreign Minister Mario Soares and PAIGC secretary-general Aristides Pereira. The Portuguese refused independence, but asked for a ceasef ire. The PAIGC rejected that, but agreed to a temporary truce. And this truce turned out to possess a dynamism of its own.

Through May and June there began to be contacts between the troops in the field, begun mostly because peasants confined within Portuguese entrenched camps - in the so-called aldeamentos of Spinola's "better Guinea" programme - sent out messages to besieging PAIGC units asking them not to begin shooting again, because the Portuguese had no further wish to fight. Other contacts then developed, with Portuguese garrison commanders using such peasants to confirm this. There were even cases, it seems, when Portuguese commanders themselves walked off into the surrounding bush to find their PAIGC besiegers. Back in Lisbon, Spi'nola stuck to his refusal to concede independence, and evidently intended that his army should go on with the war. But his army had a different view.

By mid-July, the PAIGC had become increasingly impatient at a truce which seemed to be leading nowhere. But then, the AFM in Lisbon took over, with one of its senior members as Prime Minister. That made all the difference. As on April 25, Spifiola had to choose: either to make a personal bid for power from a political base that remained weak, or to go with the tide of change. However reluctantly, he chose the second, and made his famous speech accepting African independence. But in Guinea-Bissau at least, the full story when it can be told is likely to show that events had already out-run this speech, with preparations for an organized Portuguese withdrawal already underway.

In any case the dynamism of events again added their own ac- celeration. Early in August it appeared to the PAIGC that the Por- tuguese, all local contacts notwithstanding, were about to upset the truce. Orders were sent to PAIGC field commanders to stand by for renewed hostilities. Bobo Keita, the eastern region commander, was, like others, in direct or indlirect touch with the commanders of the Portuguese entrenched c imps in his region, most of which had aldeamentos filled with 1 cal peasants.

9

Faced with having to begin bombarding these camps again, with the inevitable risk of peasant casualties, Bobo questioned his con- science. He would carry out his orders, but the consequences worried him. So on his own initiative he sent ultimatums to the local Por- tuguese commanders, mentioning the date in question. "Leave before that date, and I'll let you through. Otherwise, war." Three garrisons accepted, and left. The news spread, and other garrisons quit their camps in the wake of similar ultimatums. Rapidly, then, the Por- tuguese command made contact with the PAIGC and accepted what Brigadier Carlos Fabiao, the far-sighted senior Portuguese repre- sentative in Bissau, afterwards told me was "an agreed calendar for withdrawal." And this began at once to be applied.

One may interject here that this withdrawal had nothing to do with running away. These officers and men had been bombarded countless times, and had not run. Now they took a political decision, entirely in line with the policy of the Armed Forces Movement. So much may be seen from a remarkable declaration issued on July 29, before the first withdrawals, by the territorial assembly of the Movement. This declaration gave complete acceptance to the claims of the PAIGC.

"The colonized peoples and the Portuguese people," it roundly stated, "are allies. The struggle for national liberation has con- tributed powerfully to the overthrow of Fascism, and, to an important degree, lies at the base of the Armed Forces Movement, whose officers have learned in Africa to know the horrors of a war without end, and so have come to understand the causes of the evils that afflict Portuguese society." Calling for that alliance to be reinforced, the declaration went on to describe the PAIGC as "the sole legitimate representative of the people of Guinea-Bissau," and to insist on "the recognition of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau." This is what the army thought before it began to withdraw; and orders arriving from Spi'nola to arrest "the ringleaders" were simply ignored.

By August 14 the Portuguese army had withdrawn from about 15 of its entrenched camps and strongpoints in the interior. By August 24, with growing goodwill towards the PAIGC, now de-mining additional evacuation routes, the number of evacuated camps had risen to 41, with senior PAIGC representatives now flowing into Bissau and on- wards to the Cape Verdes with Portuguese agreement and air trans- port. The rest followed duly of itself. All Portuguese camps were to be evacuated during September, allowing for unavoidable delays caused by torrential rain and countless landmines, and concentrated in three staging camps near Bissau until troopships could be found to take them back to Portugal. Meanwhile the negotiators in Algiers com- pleted their agreement, and the peace became as firm as the in- dependence of the new Republic already was.

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Basil Davidson

[rie lRealities Sur rounding The Transition

But a bare record is a poor thing upon occasions such as this. One needs to clothe it in the realities.

Pushing westward in our truck, the visitor given the cabin to sit in and a baby to carry, the infant of a peasant woman who has hopped a lift, we pass through the ruins of Guileje, this August 18, and briefly halt to look. Guileje was important in this war. Held until July 1973 by a picked garrison of some 400 men, nearly all white, Guileje was a major obstruction to PAIGC communications with their staunchest ally, the neighboring Republic of Guinea. Now there is nothing save rubble that will soon be lost to sight beneath the oncoming tide of vegetation. Only a hlandful of defenders got away through the forest. Their commander was among them and was sorely sanctioned, but it's hard to see what could have been gained by his staying and dying.

On from Guileje to the upper estuary of the Cacheu, a broad mirror of wrinkled silver in the morning rain; here is the riverport of Gadamael whose main purpose was to supply Guileje. Gadamael was evacuated four days ago, but we find four Portuguese soldiers still here, a mechanic and a baker, a radio operator and a cook. Happy to be alive, and happy to be useful, they'll stay another week or so. Otherwise Gadamael is in the hands of a small detachment of the army of the PAIGC. Their flag is at the camp's masthead; beneath it, there lies about half a square kilometre of huts and sheds, their doors sagging open, their interiors empty save for the cast-off debris of an army that is gone. Later, in Bissau, I meet the captain who was the last Portuguese commander here. "One of the worst-hit places," he ob- serves laconically. He too is happy to be alive.

Then southward on a long and horrible trail to Camaconde, another evacuated camp, signalled by a mountain of empty beer cans and wine bottles by the wayside, mute witness to the pits of boredom and sorrow which the besieged defenders were long consigned. Then west again to the lower estuary of the Cacheu: and Cacine.

Gadamael and Camaconde may be nothing, but in our truck we have been expecting quite a lot of Cacine. After all, Cacine was the number two Portuguese marine base for the whole territory, a river port of some strategic value, and held by a considerable garrison. Two years ago I circled near it in the forest, and I too am expecting quite a lot of Cacine. If Sp6inola's "better Guinea" exists anywhere outside Bissau, surely it will be found here.

We are disappointed. The Portuguese Army is now doing its best to leave behind such useful installations as it can. Wisely, it has had no thought of any "scorched earth" policy. But Cacine shows how little there is to leave. On the landward side, behind exterior defenses, there are the huts of the peasant population that was confined here, the

11

aldeamento. How many peasants are here now, waiting till they have reaped their harvest and mines are lifted, before returning to their villages? I ask the African who was the Portuguese chefe do posto; he is helping the newly-installed PAIGC politico-administrative com- mittee to get a grasp of things, for Cacine was evacuated only three days ago. Maybe he will continue in some administrative post, maybe not; but probably he will, for the local population evidently have nothing against him as a person. Now he tells me that the aldeamento has 1,600 people.

Quite a lot. I remember that their concentration on the landward side of Cacine was one of the things that made it difficult to attack the garrison, beside the water's edge. Here we now find the marine barracks, together with concrete blockhouses, a couple of bars for the troops, officers' quarters, a hospital office, and finally the port.

The port . .. it is a word that should say something, but here it is only mnocked by the coloured tile in the wall of the hospital office: "Portuguese Colony of Guiney: 1946: Fifth Contenary of the Discovery," recalling Nuno Tristao's landfall on these shores in 1446. What these centuries have produced is a port that consists of one short jetty half in ruin, one crane capable of lifting a ton but without a winch, half a dozen outboard motors, and a dozen metal pontoon craft lying on the mud. The school consists of one small room so dirty that it might have been abandoned years ago: it possesses exactly eleven benches but not a single desk. Even the nearby "Military Chapel Number 5D of Fatima" is littered with iron bedsteads and a mess of unidentifiable rubbish. Everything here cries of misery and deprivation.

We fly to Bissau military airbase, and find it busy with departing transport aircraft. The three of us wait for a PAIGC car to come and pick us up. There are sly Portuguese looks, a determined care for dignity. A passing airforce lieutenant bustles by with his major, says to him: "Here are our fierce enemies of yesterday, coming from Cacine." Is it meant to annoy us? No, it's just embarrassment: the face-to-face is still very new. Everyone is correct and polite. We go into the pilots' bar and drink cans of beer; the barman apologises that it's not cold. As we come out again, two airmen are loading a dozen cap- tured PAIGC Koleshnikov sub-machineguns on a waiting truck. Is it a little scenario, specially arranged? Probably not, we decide; and Silvino jokes: "'Pity to see our good material going away like that." But we are happy when the car comes.

Driving into the city, we find the barracks of the African Special Commando. What has happened to all those African troops raised by successive Portuguese commanders, especially Spinola? Now we can find out. There were, it transpires, at least on paper, upwards of 17,000 of them. But many thousands were peasant "militias" in the small rural areas still under Portuguese control; and these the population

12

Basil Davidson

have already disarmed, or else they have hastened to hand in their weapons. Other thousands were conscripted into the Portuguese ar- my: they have also gone home, or are on the way home. There then remained the 600 trained killers of the Special Commando raised by Spinola for his "hunt and destroy" operations. They carried out their task as such men will, and became widely hated for their brutality and ruthlessness.

A nasty source of possible trouble? Yes, and everyone has thought so. But today - it's August 20 - these 600 are handing in their uniforms and dispersing from their barracks. Brigadier Fabilo has demobilised them in person, but the real credit goes to the PAIGC, one of whose veteran commanders has spent a week in telling them the score, in such a way that they have quietly accepted it. Now they have vanished as a force, and within another week or so the army of the PAIGC will occupy their barracks.

And those considered guilty of crimes in villages of the liberated areas they have raided, crimes of the type of the Wiriyamu massacre in Mozambique. What of them? This is talked of with reluctance, perhaps because there is a general eagerness to forget all those horrors that cannot now be mended. But the answer is available if one asks. "They committed those crimes for the Portuguese," says a PAIGC commander, "and so let them stay with the Portuguese. We don't want to begin our new life with trials and executions." The worst killers, accordingly, are being removed; one of the most despicable, apparently, was taken away to Portugal even before the Commandos' dispersal.

Bissau continues to confirm this undisturbed transition. In this pleasant little colonial town we take up quarters already occupied by PAIGC liaison staff, next to the Governor's palace with its heavy portico and ceremonial stairways, a palace now occupied by the courteous Brigadier FabiSo. He receives me without enthusiasm, but the acquaintance improves. There are other such meetings. These officers have the dignity of men who have faced harsh decisions with courage and sincerity. Now they are searching for their country's way ahead, sure at least that this way must be altogether different from the past.

Cities which liberate themselves rejoice: one remembers that from other wars, other liberations. Cities which are liberated from outside themselves go through a period of stunned quiescence, won- dering how to behave. This is how it is in Bissau. There are PAIGC slogans on the walls, a few banners: otherwise it is a city of people who do not seem to know what has really happened to them. This will be one of the major problems for the PAIGC: to absorb this relatively huge

13

urban population, around 100,000, whose best sons and daughters have long since joined the struggle, leaving behind a mass of those who have suffered in silence; or have not suffered; or, again, have even made a good thing out of the war. And with the latter, too, one remembers other liberations: especially when this or that "notable" now appears to claim his share in "the resistance."

The veterans of the PAIGC who are here as liaison staff, Juvencio and Julino and Baru and their group, take all this in their stride. All of them have friends or families in the town, and this is where the joy is vivid, unforgettable. Mothers and sisters arrive to embrace their sons and brothers, so wonderfully alive after years of an often terrible absence. There are moments of profound emotion, meetings that begin and end with a thousand mutual questions, visits to homes, little for- mal ceremonies that develop into jokes and laughter. Julino comes and goes on many liaison missions, while Juvencio ensures that all goes smoothly at the centre here. Baru takes time off to motor with me to neighbouring towns, rain preventing us from using the aircraft of- fered by the Portuguese command.

We inspect the political situation in Bissau. As elsewhere in the towns released from colonial control, the PAIGC is in course of establishing a transitional administration based on "comites politico- administrativos" elected or selected from party workers who have hitherto worked underground. When useful, these committees are incorporating African personnel who served the Portuguese. "Provided that the local population agrees," Baru explains: "In Pitche, for example, we took over the local chefe do posto, but the local people wouldn't have it, and we had to dismiss him. But in Cacine, as you saw, the people of that aldeamento had nothing against the chefe do posto as a person, and so we've kept him on to help us" All this will take a deal of working out.

Baru takes me to a meeting with 51 members of the 24 politico- administrative committees now beginning to work in Bissau. It lasts for a long time, and starts slowly. But Baru is a man of an electric personality whose power and persuasiveness have already yielded the undoubtedly great success of demobilising the Special Commando without incident, and he brings this meeting gradually alive. They labour to explain their problems: the biggest of these, clearly, is to deal with the apolitical demoralisation of the people among whom they live. They labour to explain their duties: to build the elements of a new self-rule, to apply the party's policies, to make sure there's no "set- tling of accounts", to overcome the "racist divisions" promoted by colonial rule... It won't be easy, not least because these party workers have still to gain the confidence and clarity that you find in the committees of the "old" liberated areas.

There's clearly a long way to go here. Each politico-administrative committee is supposed to consist of two men and one woman; a ratio almost always found in the committees of the "old" liberated areas.

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Basil Davidson But there isn't a single woman at this meeting. They do not tell -me why. No doubt it was with all such things in mind that Aristides Pereira, a man of penetrating judgment and a realist among realists, had remarked the week before: "We are entering a new phase: it will be less harsh, but more difficult."

In Bissau our group divided. Some remained in Bissau on various missions of liaison or discovery. Others flew on to the Cape Verdes. On August 25 we came into Sal Airport, and found it crowded with cheering PAIGC supporters. Silvino da Luz and his comrades vanished from sight on their shoulders. Later they flew on to the Cape Verdean capital of Praia, on Sao Tiago, and a mass welcome. Their task is to complete the liberation of the islands.

The Situation In the Cape Verdes

No armed struggle was possible here, and the PAIGC has had to work in a difficult clandestinity. They built up an underground political organisation during the 1960s; and many went to fight for the liberation of the sister-territory of Guinea-Bissau as a necessary stage in achieving freedom for the islands. For although the Cape Verdeans have a clear identity of their own, an insular identity that is correspondingly and proudly aware of itself, they are linked to Guinea- Bissau by centuries of a shared history.

The colonial system denied this; but the denial is worth nothing. So much may even be seen from the old Portuguese name for Guinea- Bissau, Los Rios do Cabo Verde, in token of the African captives who century after century were carried from there to the islands. And all the circumstances of the armed struggle of the PAIGC on the mainland have shown in countless ways that the insularity of the Cape Verdeans is a lesser factor than their sense of community with the land from which their ancestors chiefly came.

This basic position of the PAIGC is now contested by two or three small groups deriving from the colonial bourgeoisie on the islands; their attitudes, in so far as they have made them clear, lean towards the acceptance of Spi'nola's Luso-African illusions. They seem likely to count for little. What was already obvious by late August, in any case, was that the large majority of the population of all or of most of the ten inhabited islands was vehemently, even euphorically, for the PAIGC. And this, just as clearly, is the factor which has led the Portuguese authorities, since mid-July, to an acceptance of the prospect of an imminent Cape Verdean independence. Only a major military repression could now prevent this, and no such repression is any longer possible.

15

The prospect is for a general election on the islands as soon as the necessary administrative steps can be completed, such as the com- piling of an as yet non-existent electoral register. This general election will produce a constituent national assembly for the islands, and this assembly will proclaim the islands' independence. Some time or other after that, but in no haste, this independent Cape Verde will decide whether to remain independent as a separate country, or, as the local programme of the PAIGC advocates, to become an autonomous unit within a federation with a similarly autonomous Guinea-Bissau.

And their famous "strategic significance"? Much was made of that by the overthrown dictatorship, arguing for more NATO aid; and the Pentagon, at least, is thought to have seriously considered the dictatorship's proposal that NATO, or at least the US Navy, should create a base here. But nothing was done, and the islands' military importance is probably far smaller than interested commentators have suggested. In any case the PAIGC has pre-empted objections of that sort by stating unequivocably that an independent Cape Verde will give no base to any foreign power.

The Republic of South Africa may now be watching with some dismay the passing of Sal airport into PAIGC control, for South African Airways has staging facilities there denied to it by the OAU on the continent. But, judging at least by the small number of South African flights that actually use it the importance of Sal appears relatively small; and in any case there is nothing that South Africa can do.

Meanwhile the Cape Verdeans are preparing for a future of their own. What this may imply in regained hope of solving the islands' harsh problems of acute poverty can perhaps be seen in a single fact: that some 2,000 Cape Verdean emigres have returned to the islands since last May. It goes without saying, of course, that there will be many problems of transition. These also exist in Guinea-Bissau.

The Problems of Transition on The Mainland

These problems of Guinea-Bissau are not the usual ones attendant on the coming of a post-colonial independence. The new Republic does not start from scratch: on the contrary, it already stands on its own political and social foundations, established and developed in wide rural areas long before the coup d'etat of last April; some were laid down as early as 1964. Here there is no question of having to take over this structures and institutions of colonial rule, as other African countries have been obliged or sometimes content to do. Here the patterns of an indigenous modernisation and democratisation of daily life are already well tested and installed. The problem is simply to extend these independent structures to areas and populations now released from colonial control. 16

Basil Davidson

the people now released from colonial control, and of joining them to an already liberated population whose ideas about morality and

This also means, among other things, that the new Republic will not be faced with any sudden challenges to find and define policies for further development. In this respect, too, the years of struggle have had their compensation in allowing time for thought and decision, experiment and experience. Leaders such as Aristides Pereira and Luis Cabral may now be wrestling with innumerable immediate questions; it remains that they display the calm confidence of those who are thoroughly aware of what they should do, and prepared to do it. At least since 1967 the long term developmental plans of the PAIGC have taken shape in detail; and if anyone should doubt this the texts are there to prove it, notably in the writings and recorded con- versations of Amilcar Cabral, one of the most profound political thinkers of his time.2 These policies are now defined in a series of national plans whose final elaboration has been in course this year.

These plans derive from the realities of Guinea-Bissau, realities which the PAIGC is well qualified to know, for it has lived most in- timately at "the village level" for more than a decade. They show that Guinea-Bissau is predominantly a rural society at a very low level of technological development, and yet, at that level, potentially very viable in economic terms. This viability rests chiefly on favourable conditions for rice produiction. Even in 1973 the "old" liberated areas were producing a surplus of rice.

Long-term policy is to capitalise on this advantage, and, as it were, to build outwards from its village base. "What we want to do," com- mented Luis Cabral, "is to develop our country from the villages to the towns, not the other way round." Two implications follow. The first is to raise the standard of village life and of rural productivity: in this accepted priority one sees, once again, the continuing influence of Amilcar Cabral, who was not an agronomist for nothing.

"Our great need," continued Luis Cabral, "is to act in such a way that the peasants transform themselves into people who are thoroughly within the modern world"; and this process has already begun in the "old" liberated areas. Because "only if the peasants modernise themselves shall we have the guarantee of continued success." He might have been talking of almost any African country: the difference, here, is that the talk is not in contradiction to the policy. For a second implication is also accepted.

This is that an unavoidable need to continue with the export of "primary products" shall not lead to a situation in which "export growth" becomes the dominant economic regulator. The policy, in other words, turns sharply against what has been called, in other African countries, "growth without development." Development here

2. Refer to Amilcar Cabral, Complete Works, Maspero, Paris, November 1974, 17

is aimed at using exports as a servant, not a master. One may recall what Amilcar Cabral said in a conversation of

1967. "We shall put our whole priority on agriculture. That means more than cultivation. That means realising what people can do, can actually do. That's a question of village democracy, of village schools, of village clinics, of village co-operation . . ."3. And this unfolding of a "grass-roots democracy," of a rural development that is auto- generative and yet capable in its cultural expansion of comprehending the possibilities of modern science, is clearly the sense given by Luis Cabral to his word "modernisation."

"And that is why," Luis continued, "we intend that our recon- struction shall continue to give primacy to the people of the villages. First and foremost, we also want them to see concrete gains from their struggle in thier own villages, in the lives of their own families. For it is they who have fought hardest and suffered most during this long struggle." And that, again, was why the PAIGC would be no great hurry to establish ministries and departments in the towns, and least- of all in Bissau. Will Bissau continue as the capital? Perhaps. But if so, it will be a capital with a bare minimum of central administration, and departments will be spread around the interior.4

The problems of transition are thus of a different order from those familiar elsewhere. Three are important.

There is the need to install a national economy on a peacetime basis. This involves extending the structures of the "old"liberated areas, but refashioning these structures. No money has ever been used in these areas, but this must change. Radix malorum or not, money must displace barter, both in trade and in the voluntary contributions to the army and social services of the PAIGC that the people have until now paid in kind, chiefly in rice and such duties as canoe transport.

Not everyone, one gathers, will welcome this. The moneyless life has brought freedoms and comforts that have been very much a part of the life of this heroically egalitarian republic. Explanations will be needed: not least because the idea of paying contributions in money, rather than in kind, will arouse memories of colonial taxation. "And some of our foreign friends," offered Luis with the infectious smile in which, as in so much else, he reminds one of his brother Amilcar, "say that we are about to lose the best thing we have got - this absence of money." Monetisation, salary scales, money taxation: all these are immediate aspects of the economic problem.

Next there is the problem, already touched upon here, of absorbing

3. Quoted in B. Davidson: The Liberationof Guine, Penguin, London and Baltimore, 1969, pp. 137-8.

4. Since this article was written, the PAIGC has announced the transfer of the capital to Medina Boe in the interior, and the site of an important early battle in the liberation war. - Ed.

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Basil Davidson

politics have become very clear, and, within the limits of human frailty, even singularly pure during these years of individual and collective effort. There seems little doubt, for example, that the "alcoholisation" of no small segment of the population of Bissau reflects a general demoralisation such as the people of the "old" liberated areas have put behind them; partly because of the strenuous demands of a struggle that could be met in no other way, and partly because of a self-confidence that grows from the experience of self- liberation.

Thirdly, and no doubt most seriously, there is the acute shortage of technical and professional skills. What this means may be seen, in microcosm, in the "medical situation" of Bissau and other towns. This was among the discoveries made by the PAIGC in August: in this case, by Dr. Manuel Boal, the chief of the PAIGC medical service, who found a daunting problem.

On their side the PAIGC have built a medical service from nothing. No native (indigena) of Guinea Bissau had qualified as a doctor before the war began. During the war the PAIGC secured the qualification of ten doctors and eleven assistant doctors from their own people, losing one of the latter in a motor-car accident some months ago. They also have, this year, fourteen volunteer foreign doctors in their hospitals. They have similarly secured the training of 45 male and female nurses, and 237 assistant nurses, not counting about another hundred with very elementary nursing skills.

This little medical corps has been able to service a large number of rural clinics and several hospitals. But now they must cope as well with the population of the areas released from Portuguese control. So what medical reinforcement can be expected there? Dr. Boal found a depressing situation. With the help of Portuguese colleagues, he found that the total number of civilian doctors in the whole area under Portuguese control was exactly four, one of whom is down with sleeping sickness; with these, there were 30 trained nurses and about 80 assistant nurses.

Worse again, half the nursing personnel and all the three valid doctors were concentrated at a relatively huge "central hospital" of 500 beds in Bissau. In the "Portuguese area" outside Bissau, ap- parently, there has been only one hospital that deserved the name, and a few others that in fact are little more than "in-patient" clinics. Only the presence of about 80 Portuguese military doctors, assuming civilian as well as military duties, has enabled this system to function, even at a primitive level.

All these military doctors are now to be withdrawn. Unless some of them are allowed and willing to stay, or other foreign volunteers im- mediately assembled, the vast hospital in Bissau will have to close down, as well as many other "hospitals" in towns elsewhere.

19

Severe though such problems are, they are the immediate problems of transition. They present no long-term problem of development or stability; and they can scarcely be thought to be as difficult as the problems that the PAIGC have had to meet and solve since 1956. Looking beyond them, the leaders of the new republic have good reasons for confidence.

They are mindful, too, of wider claims. Throughout these past months, they have evidently taken good care to keep closely in touch with their colleagues in Mozambique and Angola, and to co-ordinate their own strategy for negotiation with FRELIMO's in Mozambique, and, insofar as possible, with that of the MPLA in Angola. They have wished it to be known, in Luis Cabral's words, that they have been and remain aware of "our great responsibility to end this struggle here in an orderly and humane way: not only for our own country's sake, but also as a useful precedent for the Portuguese in helping them to un- derstand their situation in Mozambique and in Angola, and its necessary solution."

BASEL AFRICA BIBLIOGRAPHY

Recent publications in the series Mitteilungen der Basler Afrika Bibliographien/Communications from the Basel Africa Bibliography:

Vol. 9 (December, 1973), 86P + 9 plates. DM 18,-. With contributions by Paul Jenkins, Mission House Basel, and H. Max J. Trutenau, Dept. of Linguistics, Legon, Ghana. - The Archival Collections in the Mission House, in Basel, with special reference to Africa. - A Forgotten Vernacular Periodical. - A Historical Note on the Size of the Akan, Ga and Dangme Speaking Populations in Ghana. - The "Christian Messenger" and its Successors: A Description of the First Three Series of a Missionary Periodical with Articles in Ghanaian Languages (Twi and Ga) 1883- 1931.

Vol. 10 (February, 1974), 70p. 514 entries. 3 indices. DM14,-. H. W. Stengel: Bibliographia Wasserwirtschaft in Sudwestafrika (Bibliography of Water Affairs in South West Africa).

Vol. 11 (July, 1974), 48p. DM 9,-. Raymond E. Dumett, Purdue University, Lafayette, Ind.: Survey of Research Materials available in the National Archives of Ghana.

Vol. 12 (forthcoming, about 200p., price about DM 30, -). Akyem Abuakwa and the Politics of the Interwar period in Ghana. (Joint publication with the Historical Society of Ghana) - Seven papers on Gold Coast politics between the wars, and colonial Akyem Abuakwa as a caee study in the evolution of Akan institutions.

Basel Africa Bibliography, P.O. Box 235, CH-4001 Basel, Switzerland

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Article Contentsp. 5p. 6p. 7p. 8p. 9p. 10p. 11p. 12p. 13p. 14p. 15p. 16p. 17p. 18p. 19p. 20

Issue Table of ContentsAfrica Today, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 1-114Volume Information [pp. 108-114]Front Matter [pp. 1-88]Editor's Note [p. 2]Review: [Correction]: Bibliography for Social Science Research on Tanzania [p. 2]Review: [Correction]: The Traveler's Africa: A Guide to the Entire Continent [p. 2]Guinea: Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands: The Transition from War to Independence [pp. 5-20]Whites in Angola on the Eve of Independence: The Politics of Numbers [pp. 23-37]Ethnicity, Politics, and History in Mozambique [pp. 39-52]Black Worker Unrest in South Africa 1971-1973 in Its Historical Context [pp. 53-74]Humanitarian Assistance to Liberation Movements [pp. 75-87]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 89-94]Review: untitled [pp. 95-96]Review: untitled [p. 97]Review: untitled [p. 98]Review: untitled [pp. 99-100]

Letter to the Editor [p. 100]Publications [pp. 101-105]Back Matter [pp. 106-107]