"In 1956 the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) was founded by Amilcar Cabral and a group of comrades. Their goal was to liberate their country from the brutal oppression that was imposed upon it by Portuguese colonialism. Within eighteen years their goal was achieved and the Republic of Guinea-Bissau became a member of the United Nations in September 1974". So begins a pamphlet entitled A Revolution Within a Revolution: Women in Guinea Bissau written by Stephanie Urdang, a member of the Southern Africa Committee in New York and one of the editors of Southern Africa published by the committee. The following extracts are taken from this pamphlet which was published by the New England Free Press, 60 Union Square, Somerville, Mass. 02143, USA. This pamphlet also contains some beautiful photographs of women in Guinea-Bissau, taken by Stephanie during her visit there.
"In Guinea-Bissau we say that women have to fight against two colonialisms. One of the Portuguese, the other of men", said Carmen Pereira to me on my second day inside the liberated zones of her country. She is one of the leaders of the Party, being on the PAIGC Executive Council and the vice-president of the National Assembly. At the time she was responsible for the social reconstruction program of the whole south front and as such held one of the top political positions within the liberated zones.
Two colonialisms? It was a concept I heard repeated many times during my visit and is reflected in the practice of PAIGC in regard to women. I was struck by it, because as we women in Europe and North America are trying to grapple with the development of a coherent theory, the very concepts we are using can be found in a revolutionary situation such as Guinea-Bissau. Although the women I met spoke of fighting "male colonialism", men are not seen as the enemy - as little as the Portuguese people were seen as the enemy when fighting Portuguese colonialism. The fact that the Portuguese people were not their enemy was amply demonstrated by the coup. Colonialism, as a system of oppression, is seen as the enemy, and not the people who perpetrate it. All too often they themselves are victims of the same enemy. The women of Guinea-Bissau are fighting to change men's - and women's for that matter - attitudes that oppress women; It is a fight they feel that must go on within the context of the total revolution to free Guinea-Bissau from colonialism and to build a new society. One cannot be achieved without the other...
Building Women's Participation and Leadership
At the time of mobilization, when the trained mobilizers went into the countryside to win the support of the peasant the questions of women's liberation and the need for equal rights was raised. At first only a few women would attend the village meetings called by the mobilizer. But these women would tell others what was being said and encourage them to attend. Gradually more women gained enough confidence to go themselves, and so the numbers rose steadily. Once the armed struggle had begun — two years after the beginning of mobilization — and the first areas of the country were liberated, village councils were elected in each village to replace the traditional councils or chiefs. They attended to the organization of the day to day life of the village and acted as a liaison between the population and the Party and ^the army. PAIGC stipulated that at least two out' of five members of the council must be women. In this way, it was assured that women would be brought into the leadership at a village level, and through experience gained there, could later enter broader areas of responsibility. In order to achieve this the resistance of both men and women to having women on the council and so entering "political affairs" had to be circumvented. The way this was done to reach women through their traditional work. Each member of the council had a particular task. The women were to be responsible for providing rice for the guerrillas, an extension of their work. Once on the council they participated in the collective decision-making and now there are women vice-presidents and presidents of village councils, as well as women like Bwetna who have taken on much wider responsibility since then. There is another, facet that makes this tactic important. It gave additional status to the work of food provision. On or off the council it would have been the women's duty to provide food for the guerrillas as men could not have done it. By making it a job of the council it heightened the status by giving it political content...
Women in the Armed Struggle
There are growing numbers of women in all fields of work. Leaders in the Party, teachers, nurses, directors of schools and of hospitals, political workers. There were few women soldiers who went on combat while the war was still on, although many women were responsible for local defense. At the beginning of the war many of the women joined the militia and fought with the men.
"When the revolution reached its armed phase", states the PAIGC document on women, "and the groups of guerrillas reached the underground, women gathered information on the movements of enemy troops and prepared food which they took to guerrilla bases. Later when the military operations were intensified the women started to supply the front, making, like the men, long marches through the bush. They came from all regions of the country, crossing the length and breadth of the bush, and they accomplished this mission braving all sorts of difficulties and obstacles. The women finally went to guerrilla bases where they learned to handle arms and from where they went out to integrate with the groups of militia. Some of them fell as heroines on the field of honor. Examples of this are the women who fell on the free soil of the glorious isle of Komo, the first liberated portion of national territory, where for 75 days women alongside the men, resisted a violent attack by Portuguese colonialists who tried to reoccupy the island" (1). When the army was reorganized from a guerrilla militia into a national army, few women took on the role of armed soldier, although they remained in the local defense units. PAIGC felt that through their experience men were better in combat than women. Guinea-Bissau is a small country, they said, and there were more men than needed who wanted to join the national army (FARP) - not the case in other armed struggles. PAIGC has had to fight a war, the most efficient army possible had to be a priority. But there is no doubt too, that guns and power are often equated. I wondered seeing guns everywhere and usually in the hands of men, just what effect this might have on the girls and boys growing up. Towards the end of the war, women were being trained to take part in combat with FARP, but independence came before this was put into effect.
It is however important to understand the perspective in which PAIGC placed the armed struggle in its overall revolution. What was and is constantly stressed is that all work for the revolution is equally important. Soldiers are not seen as heroes above anybody else. The armed struggle is a means to an end and not the end in itself. Of paramount importance is work for the revolution...
Political and Personal Independence
It was the consciousness of the women's struggle that I found in the women cadres I met, that gave me a glimpse of the future. As much at Bwetna N'Dubi and village councilors I talked to epitomized the changing situation for peasant women, so did the young women cadres — many of them from peasant background themselves - represent the new society that is emerging. Articulate, militant, confident, they spoke with ease about the revolution and their concept of it and about the need for women themselves to fight for their own liberation within the context of the Party. One evening I sat with a number of young women and men around the table at a boarding school. My interpreter had recently returned from being out of the country for six years. He turned to me and said with some awe and a great deal of satisfaction: "It is amazing to me to see the way in which men and women can sit around a table and talk as equals like this. It was not possible at the beginning of the struggle or •ven six years ago. We have come a long way"
"One of the principles of our fight is that our people will never be free until the women are free as well"
- Amilcar Cabral, 1971
The older women told me how difficult it was at the beginning to convince men to take them seriously. "Things have changed enormously since those days", Francisca told me. "But even up until the present this is still a problem. Men need to be polished! At the beginning they treated me as inferior. Even those with whom I had as much responsibility within the Party would think that whatever a woman does cannot be as good as they could do. 'Huh, she's just a woman' they would think. It's a continual fight. Although things are much better, I am still having to fight with my comrades about these attitudes - not towards me anymore, but towards the younger women in the Party who are just beginning to take on responsibility. There is no point in fighting for political independence if you don't also fight for personal independence." The younger women by nine or ten years appeared to feel that the problem was hardly there. And when it was, they felt in control so they did not get angry or feel that it was something they had to fight strenuously against. Jacinta put her view in the following words. "Sometimes it is a problem because some men feel that they have to make advances to women, because if they do not, they are not men. It is true that men have these ideas. For example, a comrade came here a little while ago. He'd never been here before and he did not know the women here. After about one or two hours he began making propositions. Not directly bat you know how they are. If one woman likes him, if she has ho commitment to another, she can accept if she wishes. We don't think that by accepting, it is a commitment for ever. For if a man has a desire, the woman has a desire as well. That is normal and it is the same for both women and men."... Eleven and a half years after the launching of the armed struggle PAIGC was recognized as the legitimate government by Portugal. However PAIGC does not believe that independence means the end of the revolution. There is still the emerging new society to be" fought for and the goal of a society free from exploitation - including sex discrimination. In regard to women, much has been achieved in just over a decade. But we must not forget that it is only a short space of time and that the road ahead is yet a long and hard one. That I could see part of the revolution in process was both exciting and inspiring. But what I saw was a beginning. I could gain some sense of the hard struggle ahead in the many women still hesitant and diffident about their role; in the men still harboring the beliefs that women should not have total equality.
Many women and men expressed the view that they have only begun. Their struggle for a new society, for a new woman and a new man will continue long after the last of the Portuguese soldiers have left their shores.
Notes:
(1) PAIGC, Report on the Politico-Socio-Economic Role of Women in Guinea and Cape Verde Island. Published in Women in the Struggle for Liberation by the World Student Christian Federation, 235 E. 49th Street, New York, N.Y., 10017, Page 52.