Violence in Portuguese Africa

Abstract

THERE ARE MANY occasions and places where violence becomes commonplace. Striking examples of premeditated violence, in peacetime, and by no means far removed from us either in space or time, can be found in the history of India, Kenya, Algeria, South Africa, Rhodesia and other countries. In these same territories, violence in time of war has taken on the cruellest, bloodiest and most inhuman forms, which are in no sense an advertisement for the civic and democratic ideals advocated by their leaders. What the newspapers intimated has already been recounted in all its stark truth and cruelty by writers who lived through the events concerned. It was this kind of violence that occurred in the early stages of the war of independence in Angola (1961-62) and which has continued until the present day. The same thing will happen in connection with Portuguese Guinea, St. Tome e Principe, Cape Verde and Mozambique.