Guinea-Bissau: Independence and Permanent Instability
Portugal recognised Guinea-Bissau's independence in September 1974, a year after the country had declared it and won it. The liberation war had been the most successful of Portugal's three colonial wars. Amílcar Cabral's PAIGC controlled most of the countryside by the late 1960s, ran schools, clinics and courts in the liberated zones, and had anti-aircraft missiles by 1973. Cabral was among the most serious thinkers any liberation movement produced — an agronomist who had surveyed the colony's soils for the Portuguese, which is how he acquired an unusually precise knowledge of its social structure, and who argued that the petty bourgeoisie leading such movements had to commit class suicide to avoid becoming a new ruling class. He was assassinated in Conakry in January 1973 by dissidents in his own party, with Portuguese involvement. Independence was declared that September and recognised after the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon. What followed is what Cabral had warned about. The party became the state, and the state became the army's property. There have been four successful coups and a long list of attempts. The president was overthrown in 1980 by his own prime minister; a civil war in 1998 destroyed the capital; a president was assassinated in 2009 hours after the army chief was killed by a bomb; and a coup in 2012 interrupted an election. No elected president has completed a full term. The country became a transit point for South American cocaine reaching Europe, which has funded the instability. Cabral's writings are still read, and the country he designed the theory for is the standing counterexample to it.
- Year: 1974 CE
- Category: Political
