Leaflet: Students and the African Liberation Movement, International Conference, Helsinki, Finland, 14-18 February 1971
Flowing out of a conference held in Helsinki in 1971, this booklet looks at the struggles and circumstances of the national liberation and anti-imperialist movements at the time in Africa. It has reports about the fight in countries like Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa as well as extensive sections, with interviews and photographs, from the parts of Guinea-Bissau and Angola that had been liberated already by freedom fighters.
In the sections about the liberated zones we learn of the efforts of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC) and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola's (MPLA) to defeat the brutal NATO and American backed Portuguese colonial forces, to build medical and educational facilities, vaccination campaigns and other steps.
There are interviews and quotes from a number of revolutionary leaders including Amilcar Cabral of PAIGC. This includes a lengthy excerpt from a discussion with Cabral that was held in January, 1971. Cabral is regarded as one of the great anti-imperialist writers and thinkers of the African and global anti-colonial struggle. Fidel Castro once said of Cabral that he was “one of the most lucid and brilliant leaders in Africa, who instilled in us tremendous confidence in the future and the success of his struggle for liberation.”
Tragically Cabral was assassinated January 20, 1973, only eight months before Guinea-Bissau became independent.
"Naturally Salazar, his substitute Caetano, and the Portuguese in general, as well as some of the Western press present us as great terrorists and Communists paid by Moscow, Peking, Havana and so on. We think that if really being a Communist means to fight for the independence of one's country, for freedom and for the right to progress, then this is very good propaganda for Communism," Cabral says. A reminder that the western media has always demonized and lied about anti-imperialist and socialist movements and governments just as it does today about countries like Venezuela and Bolivia.
(Click on scans to enlarge)
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