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Cape Verde
PAIGC political wing negotiated independence following Portuguese collapse.
- Independence
- July 5, 1975
- Before
- Portuguese Cape Verde
- Metropole
- Portugal
- Leader
- Aristides Pereira
- Transition
- Negotiated
- Movement
- PAIGC (Cape Verdean branch renamed PAICV in 1981)
Islands of the Atlantic Slave Trade
The Cape Verde islands were uninhabited when navigators in Portuguese service reached them in 1456; the Portuguese founded Ribeira Grande on Santiago in 1462, the first European colonial town in the tropics. The islands became an entrepôt of the Atlantic slave trade and developed the first Creole society. Recurrent droughts brought famine: those of 1941–43 and 1947–48 killed thousands, by some estimates as many as 45,000, and drove many islanders into contract labour on the plantations of São Tomé and Príncipe.
Cape Verdeans in a Binational Party
Cape Verdean intellectuals, among them Amílcar Cabral and Aristides Pereira, were central to the PAIGC, which aimed at the joint independence of Guinea and Cape Verde. The party fought its war on the mainland; the islands saw clandestine political work rather than guerrilla warfare. Cape Verdeans such as Pedro Pires served as military commanders in Guinea. After Cabral's assassination in 1973, Pereira took over the party's leadership and brought the war to its end.
Negotiated Independence
After the Carnation Revolution, the PAIGC became an open political movement in the islands, and in December 1974 it signed an agreement with Portugal for a transitional government of Portuguese and Cape Verdeans. On 30 June 1975 Cape Verdeans elected a National Assembly, with the PAIGC the only party standing. Independence followed on 5 July 1975, with Aristides Pereira as president and Pedro Pires as prime minister.
Chronology
- 1462 — Portuguese found Ribeira Grande on Santiago
- 1941–1948 — Famines of 1941–43 and 1947–48 kill thousands, perhaps as many as 45,000
- December 1974 — Portugal–PAIGC agreement on a transitional government
- June 30, 1975 — National Assembly elected, with the PAIGC the only party standing
- July 5, 1975 — Independence
- November 1980 — Coup in Guinea-Bissau ends plans for union
Aftermath
Plans for union with Guinea-Bissau ended after the November 1980 coup in Bissau, and in 1981 Cape Verde's party became the PAICV. The one-party state was abolished in September 1990, and in 1991 the PAICV lost the first multiparty elections while Pereira was defeated for the presidency by António Mascarenhas Monteiro, a peaceful transfer of power through the ballot box.
Legacy
Despite drought and scarce resources, Cape Verde ran literacy and public-works programmes under the PAICV. Its peaceful move to multiparty democracy in 1990–91, when the ruling party accepted electoral defeat, set it apart from most of Africa's one-party states of the period.