Culture and National Liberation

Both Sukarno and Cabral have the same main message. They preach the need for unity to move forward and rise against imperialism, but use different methods to do so. Cabral argues we must unite under the culture that the colonizes tried to take away from us and Sukarno wants different nations to unite despite their different cultures.

Cabral says that in order for cultural and national liberation we must retain our culture. He recommends that different classes and segments of the society come together for a common goal. The colonized's resistance to giving up their culture is what made the process more difficult for the colonizers. Cabral say's "the value of culture as an element of resistance to foreign rule lies in the fact that, in the ideological or idealistic context, it is the vigorous manifestation of the materialist and historical reality of the society already under domination, or about to be dominate." Therefore you cannot have national liberation without the liberation of culture as well. And the "violent war of liberation demands the mobilisation and organisation of a significant majority of the population, political and moral unity of the various social categories" to be free from imperial influence. Cabral recognizes the complexity of whatever the colonizer's have left behind, saying that we should keep whatever benefits us and reject the harmful influences. He says "if imperialist domination necessarily practices cultural oppression, national liberation is necessarily an act of culture" and so different strata must unite in the name of cultural and national liberation because they are one and the same.

This is where Sukarno's views differ from Cabral's. While Cabral says we need to unite as a culture, Sukarno does not feel culture has to be the uniting factor between nations in order to fight imperial influence. Sukarno famously says "what harm is in diversity, when there is unity in desire?" He urges nations to unite against imperialism driven by their desire to be free from the insidious influence left behind when the colonizers left. So cultural differences are neither a hindrance nor an aid, because all "third world" countries must unite to stand together and truly liberate themselves.

Both speeches are also similar in how they overlook problems in their Utopian pipe dream. Cabral wants people to unite, without acknowledge that Africa itself has many diverse cultures. There was not one unified culture before the colonizers and so how would their be one to return to after they have left? To be fair, he does acknowledge that "though culture has a mass character, it is nevertheless not uniform, it does not develop equally in all sectors of the society", but how can we achieve cultural and national liberation when a nation may have multiple cultures? Unfortunately he does not address how to unite, only that it must happen. Similarly Sukarno's rallying cry occludes the impracticalities of such open support between such politically and historically difference countries. Even thought they might have the same desire to combat imperialism, that desire might not be the most pressing and perhaps regional politics may prevent Sukarno's vision of liberation from actualizing. He assumes that this desire for liberation will trump all other nationalistic and cultural desire.