The Gentle Rebel

Amilcar Cabral, 48, was something of a rarity among revolutionaries--soft-spoken, moderate and a reluctant convert to violence. He claimed to be a friend of the Portuguese, whom he was successfully driving out of Guinea-Bissau, a Switzerland-size chunk of West African swamp and jungle. There was nothing moderate, though, in the manner of his death. Two weeks ago he was gunned down as he walked with his wife and a bodyguard outside a borrowed villa in Conakry, the capital of neighboring Guinea. The bodyguard was also killed; Mrs. Cabral survived.

Who was responsible for the murder? Guinean President Sekou Toure, an ostensible friend who had allowed Cabral to make his headquarters in Conakry, initially blamed "hired murderers and mercenaries in the service of Portuguese colonialism." But Lisbon's denials ("We would rather face Cabral than anyone else") had the ring of truth. In Paris an association of Guinean exiles blamed Toure; they accused the highhanded Guinean dictator of encouraging Cabral's rivals in order to further his own designs on Portuguese Guinean territory.

Somewhat later Toure told a plausible story of murderous rivalries within Cabral's independence movement. The mastermind of the plot, said Toure, was Inocentio Camil, a top aide in Cabral's African Party for the Independence of (Portuguese) Guinea and Cape Verde (islands), known by its initials in Portuguese as PAIGC. As the Guinean leader told it, the assassins, after killing Cabral, kidnaped several other party members, tortured them, marched them aboard a fishing boat belonging to the PAIGC "navy," and sailed out of Conakry harbor bound for Bissau, the capital of Portuguese Guinea. Toure's patrol boats cut them off and captured them. Toure said that "many" PAIGC traitors had been rounded up and turned over to a tribunal consisting of Toure's own party, the ambassadors of several Third World countries and trusted officials of PAIGC.

Cabral's murder robbed Africa of its most responsible rebel leader. Educated in Lisbon and trained as an agronomist, Cabral founded his Independence Party in 1956, after he became convinced that the Portuguese would never leave Guinea without being pushed. Even so, PAIGC did not turn to violence until the early 1960s, when it initiated hit-and-run attacks from bases in neighboring Guinea and Senegal. "We fight," Cabral once said, "only to persuade Portugal that it is in her interest to reach a political agreement."

Eventually, Cabral's army of 7,000 regulars and about 10,000 militia pinned down some 30,000 Portuguese soldiers and African auxiliaries. Cabral claimed more than half of the country, and was able to demonstrate his control to a United Nations inspection team last year. His party built roads, schools, hospitals, and even set up a barter economy that he jokingly called "bush capitalism." Last summer he held an election for 15 regional councils. At the time of his death, Cabral was about to convene a national assembly that would declare independence and seek recognition from the U.N.

Leadership was assumed last week by a triumvirate composed of Cabral's half brother Luis, Aristide Pereira--one of the kidnaped leaders rescued by Toure's patrol boats--and Dr. Vitor Monteiro, a Portuguese-educated economist, who inherits Cabral's job as secretary-general of the PAIGC. More militant than Cabral, they will be far harder for the Portuguese to deal with, and their accession may well mean that the territory must endure a longer and bloodier war than if Cabral had lived. In Lisbon, a high government official judged that "the disappearance of Cabral is clearly not in Portugal's interest. His relationship with the Portuguese was a mixture of hate and love, but he was a motivated and sincere opponent."

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