Even in enlightened circles, few Africans remember Dr Antonio Agostinho Neto as first president of independent Angola. Fewer still remember him as the most prominent philosopher-poet to come out of Lusophone (Portuguese speaking) Africa. Neto was a man who made a lot of sacrifices and defied the awesome powers of the repressive Portuguese secret police, the PIDE, to wage one of the most efficient anti-colonial wars against the most repressive colonial regime on the African continent.

Neto’s struggle was not against only Portugal, one of the poorest countries tucked away in the southern part of Europe. Rather, his was a struggle against world imperialism whose major financiers in the United States of America, Western European capitals and apartheid South Africa reckoned that it would amount to a disgrace if one of their own was humiliated. Beyond these, Neto had a running battle with black collaborators of the hated Portuguese colonial government who viewed him and his co travelers as ingrates who should show some respect for the Portuguese. In fact, the Portuguese were able to put up an impressive propaganda machinery anchored on a mythical thesis of non racism, a thesis that unfortunately converted some victims of slavery and black leaders in the Diaspora. For instance, way back in 1923, the former slave, WEB Dubois, while on a visit to attend the Pan African Congress in Lisbon, capital of Portugal, declared:” Between the Portuguese and the African and near African, there is naturally no racial antipathy, no accumulated historical hatreds, disliking and despising.” Fifty years later and, at a time the anti colonial struggle in Angola had weakened the Portuguese colonial structure, the Kenyan foreign affairs minister, Njoroge Mungai, told the United Nations General Assembly that Portugal “is a country where there is no racism.” All these changed in 1975 when the late Nigerian leader, General Murtala Ramat Muhammad spearheaded an international recognition for Neto and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Angola. (Portuguese: Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola,MPLA)

Before Neto and his co travelers arrived on the Angolan political scene, it would be wrong to assume that their elders threw up their arms in despair and accepted their fate as second class citizens in their own land. In fact, the pre- Neto years were years when some Angolan patriots and their white collaborators ignited literary and intellectual protest against centuries of Portuguese colonial and cultural arrogance. Some of them were Geraldo Bassa Victor, Mario Antonio and Francisco Jose Tenreiro. But by the end of the 1940’s and as a result of global post war nationalism, there appeared a new set of students and professionals from Lusophone Africa who spearheaded the new and authentic onslaught against the depiction of blacks as subhuman and as a people who could only become civilized by standards set in Europe. This group included Amilcar Cabral, Mario de Andrade and Neto among others. Unlike their mostly insinuating and murmuring elders, Neto and his co travelers jettisoned the aesthetic aspect of art in favour of a revolutionary aesthetic which viewed the written word as a weapon of liberation.