Fifty years ago this month, Amílcar Cabral was assassinated. Amílcar Cabral: The Life of a Reluctant Nationalist by António Tomás is out now from Jacana Media.

• Click to purchase (50% off the retail price)

‘Figures like Amílcar Cabral … helped us to imagine the horizons of freedom in far broader terms than were available to us through what we now call “civil rights discourse.”’ – Angela Davis

In a murder witnessed by his wife Ana Maria, Amílcar Cabral was shot dead outside his house in Guinea-Conakry on the evening of 20 January 1973, killed by members of his own party.

Despite Cabral’s assassination, Portuguese Guinea became the independent Republic of Guinea-Bissau. The guerrilla war that Cabral had started and led precipitated a chain of events that would lead to the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Lisbon, toppling the 40-year-old dictatorship. This paved the way for the rest of Portugal’s African colonies to achieve independence.

This powerful and searching biography by António Tomás, a native of Angola, is important not only in telling Cabral’s story, but in adding to much-needed accounts of Lusophone Africa in English.

About the author

António Tomás is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University, in New York. He has worked as a journalist in Angola and Portugal and has written extensively on issues related to Lusophone Africa.

Categories Africa International Non-fiction South Africa

Tags Amílcar Cabral António Tomás Jacana Media New books New releases