Background
He was born in 1922, into a hard-working Cape Verde family who ensured he got as good a schooling as was available.
He was born in 1922, into a hard-working Cape Verde family who ensured he got as good a schooling as was available.
He was educated locally.
On the mainland he began work at Bissau in the Post Office and rose to become a senior postal clerk by 1952, the year Cabral returned from Lisbon University as an agronomist engineer. He helped Cabral set up the cell system on the Marxist model with local adaptations so that these units could be activated when the PAIGC was founded in September 1956.
As Cabral’s right-hand man, he was put in charge of security and intelligence. The spark which brought the nationalist movement into open confrontation was a clash on August 3, 1959, when dock workers at Pidgiguiti, on strike for higher wages, were fired on by police. The toll—50 Africans killed and 180 wounded—led to a secret meeting of the PAIGC executive and a decision on September 19, 1959, to proclaim an all-out struggle against the Portuguese “by all possible means, including war”.
Early in 1960 he proved his skill in administration by setting up an exile headquarters for Cabral at Conakry and arranging courses for political officers so that they could win the confidence of village headmen and gain support for the revolution. In April 1961 he was elected secretary-general of the co-ordinating committee against Portuguese colonialism, established at Casablanca, Morocco, by the Conferencia das Organizacoes Nacionalistas das Colonias Portuguese (CONCP). He formed links with radio stations at Conakry, Dakar and Algiers in order that PAIGC bulletins could be broadcast regularly and be heard inside Guinea Bissau. When his preparations enabled him to give Cabral the assurance that the resistance movement was strong enough to go on to the offensive the armed struggle was launched in earnest in January 1963.
In October 1964 as deputy secretary-general of PAIGC he led a delegation to Peking seeking support plus training facilities, scholarships and arms from the Chinese but because of aid already being received from Moscow there was no substantial response until 1971. As the party’s delegate in charge of external relations he was obliged to undertake fund-raising missions and was frequently at OAU meetings. In March 1972 he led a delegation to Norway and Denmark.
At the time of Cabral’s assassination —on January 20, 1973—he had a narrow escape. Working late, as usual, at his office, he was seized by the assassins, taken to the docks and put aboard a boat bound for Portuguese Guinea. Just after dawn on January 21 the boat was sighted by Guinean spotter planes and he was rescued by naval patrol boats before he could be handed over to the Portuguese. On his return to PAIGC headquarters he took immediate action to counter any tendencies towards a split in the movement. He called for the struggle to go on with even greater vigour. Typical of his spirit was a communique signed by him on February 27, 1973, saying: “We want to reaffirm the resolute determination of our Party, our fighters and our militants in the villages to develop our armed action every day in every corner of the country.”
A grey-haired, elf-like, fine-featured person with a warm smile, he is a bom administrator with a good command of languages—French, English and Portuguese. Although overshadowed as a back-room boy by Cabral in the early days, he has become a much respected revolutionary leader abroad, widely travelled not just in Africa but elsewhere with visits to Europe and China.