Customer Reviews

The former Portuguese colonies: Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Sao Tome, and Principe (A First book)

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It is written in 1981, in the First Book series, and it is nice to have it. Because it expresses views and expectations, originating from the optimism of the seventies, about the future of the colonies. Actually it is a lovely and sympathetic pamphlet, with 12 black and white pictures of beautiful people expressing their hopes and expectations that all will be better from then on. And there are maps as well. All that in a booklet of only sixty pages. The language is secondary school level. Now, thirty years later, we know how that future has looked like. How the liberation movements deteriorated into either burocratic molochs or criminal bands. How women were pushed back in subservancy and inferiority. Cabral, Machel and other idealistic leaders were still alive. IMF and World Bank had not yet invented their SAPs, and the effects of the world oil crisis of the seventies were not yet felt on the vulnerable economies. RENAMO and UNITA were not yet the devastating tools of South Africa and its western allies that they became later, and that made so many people suffer for the geopolitical interests of a few powers. All these make the booklet a nice collector's item for students on Africa.