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Memoirs
Presenting
Letters of Credence in Guinea-Bissau
by
K Gajendra Singh
The small state of
Guinea-Bissau in West Africa, with a population of a million and half,
known as Portuguese Guinea in colonial era, is once again in the news
with another change of regime by force. On 2 March its President Joao
Bernardo Vieira was assassinated, in retaliation, by a group of soldiers
close to chief of staff Tagme Na Waie, who was killed at the President’s
behest.
Bissau won its independence from Lisbon in 1974 after an epic liberation
struggle by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and
Cape Verde (PAIGC) under Amilcar Cabral ‘s leadership , triggering the
collapse of the vast Portuguese empire built over centuries by naval
buccaneers and colonialists. An important naval station for refueling
and slavers, Bissau’s interior was never fully pacified and the eleven
year long bloody struggle for independence convinced the Portuguese
governor and military commander Gen Antonio Spinola that the days of
colonialism were over. In a historic blowback Gen Antonio de Oliveira
Salazar’s four decades old repressive fascist structure itself was
dismantled in Lisbon. Beginning with Bissau, independence dawned on Cape
Verde and other Portuguese colonies soon after.
Guinea-Bissau was helped
by Cuban military instructors who fought with the resistance and Cuban
doctors treated their wounds. The Guinean paper Nő Pintcha declared,
‘The Cubans' solidarity was decisive for our struggle.’ From 1966 to
1974, this was the longest Cuban assistance in Africa before it helped
out Angola. USSR supplied via Nigeria arms to the rebels including
rocket launchers to target Portuguese planes and Ilyushin II-14
aircrafts for bombing.
Curiously Frederick Forsyth, author of ‘The Day of the Jackal ‘,
whose 1974 book ‘The Dogs of War ‘, chronicling a failed plan by
a group of European mercenaries to topple the government of a fictional
African country and inspired by his own role in financing the 1973 coup
attempt in Equatorial Guinea, happened to be in Bissau But he denied any
role. He added that the two Bissau leaders were violent, belonged to two
contending tribes and loathed each other. There were reports that the
role of Bissau as a transit point for Latin American drugs to Europe
might have also played a role.
Gen Vieira had usurped
power in 1980 from Amircal Cabral’s half brother Luis Cabral, who became
President in 1974 as Amircal was assassinated in 1973 by Portuguese
agents in neighboring Guinea Conakry, where legendry Seiku Toure had
extended all help to PAIGC and other liberation fronts and organizations
in Africa and elsewhere. Gen. Vieira, was toppled in a 1999 rebellion
but after many coups and changes he was returned to power again in 2005.
Bissau’s history like many others who won freedom by sword has seen many
changes by force or coup d’etats.
I had been waiting for a
year to present my letter of credence to President Luis Cabral while
resident in Dakar, Senegal in 1978-81.Apart from Bissau and Cape Verde
islands , I was concurrently accredited to former British colony Gambia
and former French colony Mali (where I visited the legendry medieval
city of Timbuctou.) To be operational in a receiving state, the head of
the state accepts letters of credence from the Indian President in the
name of his Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary,
titles which had great significance and real power in olden days but now
with air transport, telephones and internet, Excellencies and staff have
been reduced to being postmen, travel and hospitality agents for
visiting ministers, MPs and other sundry delegations.
In New Delhi, the credentials ceremony for foreign ambassadors is a
grand affair which is organized at the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhavan (RB),the
President’s Palace, built by Great Britain in early twentieth century
for its Viceroy to impress the native princes and the Indian subjects.
The Indian Chief of Protocol (COP) and his staff have meetings with the
ambassador designate and go over the details of the ceremony with
painstaking care. On the appointed day the ambassador is escorted by COP
from his residence and by a mounted horse guard from the main gate of
the RB situated at the end between South Block and North Block housing
major ministries on the Raisina Hill. Before entering the main Palace,
national anthems of the two countries are played and the ambassador
presented with a guard of honor. The ambassador and his suite are then
solemnly escorted through a maze of imposing logias and stairways with
tall soldiers on security duty along the way. The ambassador then awaits
in the large Audience Hall. The Indian President then enters and
receives the letters with Ambassadors’ suite and equivalent number of
external affairs officials in attendance. The Envoy is then invited for
a brief talk and tea, where others also join in. The regal surroundings
and the solemn atmosphere leaves first timers truly impressed and in
awe. Mahatma Gandhi had suggested that RB be converted into a hospital.
While waiting in Dakar I had tried to fix a date for the credentials
ceremony through President Cabral’s ambassador in Dakar. I had sent him
many note verbales and copy of my speech to be delivered after the
presentation of the letters. I also reminded him verbally. Unfortunately
there never was a firm response .In the mean time I had presented my
letters in Bamako (Mali) , Banjul (Gambia) and Praha, capital of Cape
Verde islands. During my second visit to Praha, I met with the Egyptian
ambassador, who was resident in Bissau and visiting Praha. I wondered
why things were not progressing. He laughed and advised that I should
just make sure that President Cabral was in town. Then turn up and take
my chance. I asked why it was so, he replied that I would understand
when I reached Bissau.
So on return to Dakar, I
enquired from the Bissau envoy if during the next week his President
would be in town. He said, yes. Bissau is just south of Banjul 300 kms
away, where I would sometimes motor down to interact with the Indian
community of over a hundred , half experts and teachers and other half
businessmen ,mostly Sindhis. I would switch from French to English and
Hindi and baguette to toast bread. Next day with my very versatile
driver Sambha Kande in tow, who could speak apart from French, English,
some Hindi words, local regional language Wolof and few other west
African dialects, I took off for Bissau. We crossed by ferry by now a
narrow strip of Gambia and a narrower river Gambia at Farafenni back
into south Senegal. (The book ‘Roots’ by Alex Haley, an
Afro-American writer gives a fictionalized account of tracing his family
roots on Gambia river where his great-great-grandfather Kunta Kinte was
captured more than 200 years ago and brought to America as a slave. The
account turned out to be somewhat plagiarized but it made Gambia well
known in USA.) The nation of Gambia is a strip of land along the two
banks of river Gambia intruding into Senegal. We motored on bypassing
Ziguinchor an important political centre in south Senegal and then to
Sao Domingos in Guinea Bissau.
I had not consulted any
other ambassador accredited to Bissau for advice on the road conditions.
Up to the border to Bissau the roads in Senegal were well maintained
under President Sedar Senghor. But once we entered the territory of
Bissau it was another story. The first surprise was the Customs House a
few kms inside the border. Two ill kempt youths were lolling on what in
India we would call takhats, rectangle wooden planks supported on wooden
sticks, one on just bricks. We certainly startled the Customs Officers.
They had perhaps not encountered a Flagged Mercedes limousine coming
along the bumpy and uneven pathway. We did not stop as per practice when
crossing over into Gambia from Senegal and vice versa. But soon the road
morphed into bullock cart trodden paths one comes across in Indian
villages in backward regions. The last sixty kilometers took us 4 hours.
It was quite a driving feat to navigate the ditches and valleys. Some
kilometers before reaching the capital Bissau, the road did become
normal. Later, on return to Dakar when I told some ambassadors which
four wheel drive I had dared take, their jaws dropped. What if there was
a breakdown! Driver Sambha Kande settled the matter. Not again,
Excellence. Next time I took a plane, which lost cabin pressure on the
return journey.
Fatigued and shaken we reached Bissau around lunch time. At the only
reasonable hotel I was told there was no reservation. I insisted that I
had sent a telegram, which I had not. Soon they relented and agreed to
accommodate me in one of the fancy villas next door but with a high
tariff, where I learnt later diplomats were put up otherwise they went a
begging .The complex of villas had been constructed for the heads of
delegations for the recently concluded Africa Summit. In those days of
foreign exchange shortage, a generally disgruntled representative of the
Indian Finance Ministry laid down the rates for board and lodge in each
capital abroad. Unfortunately the revolutionaries took no notice of that
and even changed the prescribed currencies, which meant months of
correspondence with the ministry to settle the claims of expenditure.
Any way I had a somewhat frugal lunch and went for siesta as the Foreign
Office would be on lunch break. After siesta I went over to the Foreign
Office. It was smaller than a C type accommodation for mid-level civil
servants in New Delhi. There was a small entrance hall leading into a
largish reception room ,occupied by the Chief of Protocol .When I
introduced myself, he said, so you have come to present your letters of
credence. I said, yes. After some polite conversation he said that
President Cabral was visiting Ziginchor in Senegal and would be
returning by the evening .After a day he would leave for Mozambique on
the East coast of Africa. Perhaps after that the ceremony could be
fixed. Politely I responded that apart from Senegal I was accredited to
Mali, Cape Verde and Gambia too, so it would be difficult for me to hang
around for a week. He promised that he would try to fix the ceremony the
next day and his deputy would confirm the exact position in the evening
.He then took me around the office. There were around five or six rooms
in all and a small number of officers and staff to deal with all complex
international political and economic relations. Later I visited the new
foreign Office building under construction.
As the nation had emerged after a revolution with support from Soviet
Union and its allies ,many communist states had resident Missions in
Bissau and extended economic assistance and know how .One Ambassador
told me that as rule bound apparatchiks at home (equally true in New
Delhi) insisted that all aid must be requested and acknowledged by note
verbales and as the Bissau Foreign Office was short staffed he used to
carry typed requests and replies, get them signed to satisfy his foreign
ministry. By now it was clear why there was no reply to my many formal
demarches from Dakar.
I then went over to the Egyptian Embassy to renew my contact. Cairo was
my first foreign posting in 1962 during Nehru-Nasser era, where I learnt
Arabic and found Egyptians very friendly, perhaps because like Indians
they are very hospitable and easy going. Abroad ,I would invariably call
first on the Egyptian diplomats and found them always very helpful. The
Egyptian ambassador briefed me about the diplomatic corps and the
political situation.
Later he came over to the complex which appeared to be a place for
rendezvous for the post revolution glitterati and diplomats. By seven
PM, a music band had materialized and started pounding out some
excellent dance music, the exhilarating mixture of African and Latin
rhythms and melodies .Soon everyone was swaying and dancing. I could not
resist and joined in. Among others I met with a Belgian lady, European
intellectual type who try to compensate for European horrors done to
Africans by helping out freedom movements. She had started in Burundi
and then shifted to Bissau .She taught at a school and wrote serious
revolutionary fiction. But like other African colonies, there were many
Cuban personnel too, mostly Afro-Americans, including military officers
and soldiers who had stayed on after the revolution. In fact in some
African nations, they formed the personal guards of the new rulers,
somewhat like US mercenaries for President Hafiz Karzai’s security in
Kabul.
After half an hour the somewhat taciturn Deputy Chief of Protocol, who I
was told also doubled as deputy intelligence chief came over and
confirmed that the credentials ceremony was fixed for 4 PM the next day,
much to my relief. The following day, President Cabral received me with
great warmth and affection.The ceremony was very simple and brief with a
guard of honor and my handing over the President’s letter recommending
me as his trustworthy envoy. Unlike most heads of state, who receive the
Letters in ceremonial formal attire, Cabral, a revolutionary was dressed
in a Safari Suit .
We talked about the situation in India and Africa and bilateral
cooperation. What India could do in training their technical personnel
and assistance in small scale industry. Apart from funds, the other
constraints were the language and the distance. He enquired about Indira
Gandhi, although she was out of power. In the Afro-Asian world, India
was known by its tall leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi and
Krishna Menon for his speeches in the United Nations, New York against
colonialism and imperialism and now Indira Gandhi. Africans still
cherished Indian support for colonized nations of Asia, Africa and Latin
America.
Throughout the 1960s,
during the wars of liberation in Portugal's colonies, Antonio de
Oliveira Salazar, the fascist dictator ruled firmly (since 1932), but
had to resign after suffering a stroke in 1968 and soon died. He was
replaced by Marcello Caetano. But the grip of Salazar’s National Union's
party over the country and in particular over the military leadership
steadily weakened. The wars to hang on to the colonies in face of fierce
resistance created dissent among the ranks of the military. Gen Antonio
Spinola who was the military commander and governor of Portuguese Guinea
from 1968 to 1972, became the deputy chief of staff of the Portuguese
army. In his 1974 book Portugal and the Future he asserted that
Portugal could not win a military victory in Africa. This led to his
dismissal. But after an army coup by left leaning officers which ousted
Premier Caetano Gen. Spinola became the provisional president. He
welcomed liberals and socialists into the cabinet. But soon young coup
officers wanted to take an even more radical direction. Gen Spínola
resigned as president and was forced to flee Portugal after being
accused of having organized a counter-revolutionary coup in 1975. But
his book had served as a beacon for young officers. In 1975 almost all
the remaining Portuguese colonies gained independence and in April 1976
Portugal held its first free general elections in more than 50 years
which resulted in Gen. Antonio Ramalho Eanes being elected as the
President .He appointed Mario Soares as Prime Minister. The winds of
independence and freedom blowing among the oppressed people of Asia,
Africa and Latin America were breaking the shackles of slavery and
exploitation. The Portuguese were the last to hold out in their colonies
. But the spark for freedom ignited in Portuguese colonies in Africa led
to the dismantling of the repressive Salazar regime in Lisbon and
freedom for the people of Portugal.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador
(retired), served as ambassador to Turkey and Azerbaijan from August
1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to
Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation
for Indo-Turkic Studies. Copy right with the author. E-mail:
Gajendrak@hotmail.com
March 22, 2009
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