Partisan story
Sir: Mr Basil Davidson (Letters, 5 July), resents Mr Brian Crozier's accusation in his review of The Liberation of Goitre (21 June) that he derives 'relish' from 'the thought that a victory in Guinea will help freedom fighters elsewhere to turn southern Africa into a bloodbath.'
Mr Davidson is a civilised man and he quotes me, who am on the other side of the question, very fairly; but, being an apolo- gist for the PAIGC, he should not be too sensitive to Mr Crozier's comment. PAIGC, he tells us, is 'a revolutionary movement based upon a Marxist analysis', and its Cape Verdian leader, Amilcar Cabral, links the 'liberation' of Portuguese Guinea to the 'liberation' of the Cape Verde Islands. in- cluding the Sal air base, as 'indispensable to the struggle of the peoples of Angola, Moz- ambique and South Africa.'
The Cape route (and Sal) are vital to the West. Portugal holds her Guinea province from a sense of history but also of strategy. As a supporter of the 'freedom fighters' in Portuguese Guinea and Southern Africa, Mr Davidson must surely endorse, even if `relish' be too strong a term, the logical end of their endeavours.
Mr Davidson claims that PAIGC is not 'totalitarian'. Much the same was said of Fidel Castro and even of that other 'agrar- ian reformer,' Mao. He quotes Cabral as favouring 'decentralisation' atter independ- ence. 'We're inclined to think that Bissau will not continue to be our capital.' Pre- cisely! The capital of a 'liberated' Guinea might well be Conakry. The Portuguese en- clave could not stand in isolation and its likely fate would be either annexation to President Sekou Toure's near-Communist Guinea or partition between the latter and its other neighbour, Senegal.
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