Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

CONCLUSION
". . ..the armed liberation struggle is not only a product of culture
but also a factor of culture." Amilicar Cabral at the Eduardo
Mondlane Lecture, Syracuse University, New York, February 20,
1970'
The above statement was made by one of the most important African
thinkers in the Twentieth Century. Amilcar Cabral was the political leader and
primary theoretician of the national liberation movement in Guine Bissau and the
Cape Verde Islands from Portugese colonialism. In this instance, he was speaking
about the role ofthe armed struggle in defending the emerging national culture of
the colonized African and as an aspect of the culture of national resistance. By
stating that armed struggle is "a factor of culture," Cabral, like Frantz Fanon also
asserts that anti-colonial violence plays a role in transforming the culture of
oppressed people . Amilcar Cabral's perspective on the relationship between
armed resistance and culture could also be applied to the Mississippi Freedom
Movement.
The tradition of armed resistance of African descendants in the U.S . is the
human response to oppression itself. As one can see from otherhuman experi-
ences, armed resistance is one natural response of human beings to oppression
and to achieve social change . Parallels can be drawn between the armed resistance
movements of South Africa and that of Black people in the U.S . The initial
resistance of the Zulu kingdom in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centu-
ries, led by such leaders as Cetewayo, Dingane, and Bambaata against European
settlers, are early examples of indigenous South African armed resistance . In the