Poet and literary critic who became one of the founders of the anti-colonialist movement and was at one time acting president of MPLA. His writings helped to arouse the nationalist ferment and his intellectual stimulus to the movement established for it a high reputation and a high priority among the liberation organisations seeking help from the OAU. In recent years ill-health has kept him out of the mainstream of liberation politics.
Background
Born on August 21, 1928, a Mbundu mulatto at Golungo Alto, 100 miles east of Luanda in Dembos country. Golungo Alto is a town and municipality in Cuanza Norte Province in Angola.
He died in London on August 26, 1990
Education
Educated at schools in Luanda. Then studied philosophy at the University of Lisbon and sociology at the Sorbonne in Paris. While there, he became active in opposing Portuguese colonial rule of Angola, and wrote anti-colonial poetry.
Career
At the Overseas Students’ Hostel in 1948 his nationalist enthusiasm was nurtured when he met Agostinho Neto, then a medical student, and Amilcar Cabral who had been sent from Guinea for engineering studies. In 1954 he left Lisbon for Paris to pursue his studies in a social science course at the Sorbonne. As an angry young poet he wrote laments about political prisoners such as “The Song of Sabulu”. Under the pseudonym Buanga Fele he wrote biting attacks on Portugal’s policies in Africa.
In 1956 he was in at the start of MPLA. In 1957 as an MPLA exile in Paris he helped to found the Movimento Anti-Colonialista (MAC) to co-ordinate the struggle against the Portuguese in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea. Three years later he was in Zaire and in June 1960 became acting president of MPLA on the arrest of Agostinho Neto. He considered setting up an operation headquarters at Kinshasa but Conakry was preferred.
When Angola came before the UN Security Council in March 1961 he sent a telegram to Moscow seeking the support of the Soviet government. Later that month at Cairo he was elected a member of the steering committee of the All-Africa Peoples’ Conference. In April 1961 he urged close cooperation of all liberation movements in confronting the Portuguese when he gave the opening address to the Conferencia das Organizacoes Nacionalistas das Colonias Portuguesas (CONCP) at Casablanca and he was elected president of its consultative council with a permanent secretariat at Rabat, Morocco.
In January 1962 he went to the USA on a lecture tour and lobbied for support. In May 1962 he attended meetings at Kinshasa aimed at unifying Angola’s liberation movements. In June 1962 he was a delegate to a conference in Ghana when a unified military command for Angola was agreed but the system collapsed quickly.
On Neto’s escape from detention Andrade handed over the presidency and at the first national conference of MPLA held at Kinshasa in December 1962 he was given the responsibility for external affairs in the 10-member executive.
His involvement diminished in 1963 but he returned to full-time commitment in 1964. It was largely through him that the MPLA won recognition from the OAU in November 1964. Since then his health has obliged him to take a hack seat for long periods.