Sukarno and Cabral: Importance of Culture

"And let us remember, Sisters and Brothers, that for the sake of all that, we Asians and Africans must be 

united."

For Sukarno, culture takes the background. The most important thing for him is unity, and this unity between the freshly decolonized world is one that is rooted in their united hatred for colonialism. Moreover, this sort of unity is also possible as these newly emerged states are confronted with the pressing need to define this independence. What does it mean to be an independent person? What does it mean to be free? These are the questions that these leaders that are gathered at Badung are confronted with. This unity against colonialism binds these countries and their leaders together. Sukarno acknowledges that there are many obvious and glaring differences between all the peoples, but he believes that the unique circumstances that they have found themselves in, unites them together. 

Moreover, they are confronted with a unique challenge -the threat is no longer of armies or arms of destruction that can only affect a section of geography. They have now entered the age of unprecedented amounts of destruction, where atom bombs can potentially wipe humankind off this planet at the whims and desires of certain people. Sukarno has a deep seated fear: the world in which his free country is born in is one where technology has shifted from facilitating mankind to potentially ending it. 

In such context, Sukarno raises the question of "ethical and moral content" of such independence. While he's not talking about culture, I think that the way Cabral phrases culture is one where glimpses of Sukarno's idea of unity can be seen.

In Cabral’s account of what culture means for

Africa, there is a desperation to stage it as this powerful entity that is central to the cause of the liberation movement. Many times in his speech, Cabral poses culture as an undeniable force, one that has “survived all storms” (Cabral 15). However, He also realizes the nuanced way In which culture operates in Africa. He calls for massive self reflection, to confront the pitfalls of culture in Africa, to recognize what a dynamic and different entity it is. He realizes the division of culture along class lines and differentiates the importance of culture for the peasantry as well as the high classes. 

However, what struck to me was that Cabral does not use the word culture as uniformly throughout his speech. Towards the end he claims that in order to liberate, one has to enhance the culture of the African peoples. I realized and hence I propose that perhaps the way that Cabral thinks of the word culture is not just as the conscious result of economic and political activities but also as one that also defines what it means to be a person in Africa as well as what sort of a universe such a person can inhabit and thrive in.

For Cabral, the colonizers had altered the very universe and tailored it to their specific needs for their extractive purposes. The point of culture and by extension the liberation movement, is to build the universe of Africa in a way that the African, the native could thrive and live in such a universe. In less abstract terms, as we discussed in class, many regions were turned into one crop regions to provide raw materials to the New World. Such regions  were only capable of meeting European demands and the people living were reduced to farmers and cultivators of the European needs. For Cabral, these sort of mini universes needed to be altered so that the African person is not just a cog in the machine of European needs, but a full fledged person that can live by his own desires, wants and needs. This was the culture, along with the historical and other influences of Africa that perhaps Cabral was imagining. 

After reading Cabral's speech, I did think that in many ways what Sukarno talks about as unity comes under the rubric of culture for Cabral. However different the ends to their goals, both have a deep seated belief that there needs to be a sense of unity in Africa, even if the unity is based on something as elusive as culture for Cabral, or for the shared trauma of colonialism for Sukarno. I think, as we discussed the lack of communication between territories of Africa during colonialism, the attempt by both these people has been to unite an area that was wrought destruction upon by the European colonizers, even if the experience lacked an intrinsic sense of sameness. In that sense, one can see how this task is desperate, and how vague concepts like culture and unity can function to help bridge the different experiences of so many regions together. People might have different cultures, but they both do cultures, and there's a sense of unity there.