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 attached document, also 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.
Now, in 2015, it may be
thought that the propagation of such words was easy in those days, 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 few, and 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 openly supporting colonialism.
Portugal, for example, was then (and has never since ceased to be) a conspicuous
member of NATO, which is actually the armed wing of imperialism.
In these particular writings Agostinho
Neto does not, as the writings of Mondlane and Cabral that we have quoted 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 more than 40 years. They still have the
immediacy and the urgency that they had when they were spoken by Agostinho Neto
and when they were 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.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Agostinho Neto,
Messages to Companions in the Struggle, 1972, Part 1, and Part 2.
