African
Revolutionary Writers, Part 4b
Agostinho Neto
Agostinho Neto, the first President of MPLA and the first
President of the independent republic of Angola, was a great writer - a poet -
as well as a great revolutionary leader.
The downloadable document linked below is as good an example
as could be found of how, through radio, speech, and eventually through the
translation and compilation of the same into a pamphlet by the solidarity
movement, the kinds of words which held the liberation movement together, and
also publicised it, were made and multiplied.
At this stage, in 2011, it may be thought that the
propagation of such words in those days was easy, or automatic. Nothing could
be further from the truth. The liberation movements were outsiders. Their
supporters in other countries, whom Neto here mentions and acknowledges, were
not in the mainstream. The countries which now parade as “the international
community”, as “NATO”, the “ICC”, and in other guises - in other words the
governments of the metropolitan Imperialist countries - in those days were
solidly and quite openly supporting colonialism. Portugal, for example, was
then (and has never since ceased to be) a leading member of NATO, which is
actually the armed wing of imperialism.
In these particular writings Neto does not, as the linked
writings of Mondlane and Cabral did, reflect explicitly on the place of
intellectual work in the national democratic revolution.
Instead, this set of three items, presented together as a
pamphlet, directly exemplifies such intellectual work in practice.
It is hard not to be moved by these words even after the
passage of nearly 40 years. They still have the immediacy and the urgency that
they had when they were spoken by Agostinho Neto and heard by the three
different audiences to which they were addressed.
These words carry truths and lessons that still need to be
learned and re-learned.
In a different mood, some of Agostinho Neto’s poems,
translated into English, can be read if you click here.
Please download and read this text:
Further reading:
Eduardo Mondlane, The
Struggle for Mozambique, 1969 (6938
words)
Amilcar Cabral, The Weapon of
Theory, 1966
(7710 words)
Ruth First, Workers or
Peasants? 1983 (4922 words)
Ruth First, Libya
- the Elusive Revolution, 1974 (5141 words)
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