Antonio Agostinho Neto was one of the best and the more authoritative representatives of the “new wave” of African revolutionary democracy that came to power mainly in the mid-seventies. … This “new wave” of African revolutionary democrats went considerably further than their predecessors, the pioneers of national democracy of the sixties … in the scientific analysis of African society, of the objectives and stages of revolution and the arrangement of class forces, and in realising practical reforms. The conclusions which Neto drew from his own revolutionary experience and that of other revolutionaries represent one of the high points of political thought of the African national liberation movement of the seventies, and they deserve generalisation and analysis.
… Regarding armed struggle as the only means of opposing Portuguese colonialism, Neto and his colleagues in the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and also in Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) and the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), which headed the liberation movements in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, did not place absolute value on military action.
Neto understood the political nature of the war of liberation and the need for its political preparation and political leadership. He insisted on the organic combination of military and ideological, political, social and propagandist work. He stressed that the liberation movement should not
