National Independence was worth it when the soul was not small

Cape Verde, my country, completes today, July 5, 2023, 48 years of its National Independence. It was worth it because the soul was not small. Fernando Pessoa taught us that it is always worth it when the soul is not small. In fact, the challenges were enormous and the purposes noble, even if, admittedly, the paths to be trodden were winding and stony.

Luckily, where almost everyone else has failed, we win. They say and explain that our resilience, our wealth, whose unknown nature has yet to be revealed, has triumphed.

What is certain is that, with or without our effort, we took big steps, we took the long and incredulous walk and reached an unexpected peak. Yes, for a moment, we were in a flash. But times have changed, signs have changed. Regression and involution are in sight, with more than evident signs. Development has now emerged as a residual effect of the actions of politicians, when it should be the product of careful execution, as a result of intelligent planning.

Without being able to capitalize and develop its strategic resources and relying only on foreign resources, the country manages the current situation. Without innovating in the modus operandi and institutions, Cape Verde manages poverty, education, health, justice and security day by day, overshadowed by social fuses.

If once, in the early days of state building, we were bigger than the context, not in abstractions but in facing reality, today, due to our incompetence, we dwarf in the shadow of difficulties. We once again implore, not without embarrassment, that they open the doors of foreign embassies so that we can forcefully emigrate our young people - our productive forces; with more acuity we ask that our sick patients be received for treatment in foreign hospitals; we shamelessly mimic in education, wanting to transform 21st century Cape Verdean children and adolescents into 19th century European children, according to OECD standards; we wrong our citizens with a two-speed justice: fast to protect the political and economic elite and slow to provide security to common people who work day and night;

We cry in international public agoras for the forgiveness of the public debt when internally we are idiosyncratic wasteful and corrupt.

National independence was indeed worth it in the context of 1975 because the soul was great but national independence is worth little today with the rickets of soul and intelligence that forces us to go against the colonizer. Perhaps it is the dialectic of eternal return (Friedrich Nietzsche) and the dialectic of master and slave that sadly manifest themselves in their fullness (Hegel). Once freed, the slave recognizes his inability to enjoy his freedom and returns to the lap of the master against whom he once fought.

The moment is, I believe, to demand new policies and new politicians for a new Cape Verde. This is the only way we can open up new horizons of expectations and create new opportunities for those who lack independence and democracy.

Taken from Santiago Magazine