"To Defend the Earth is to Defend the Human"

“To defend the Earth is to defend the human.” “The soil preserves people. Can people preserve the soil?” Amilcar Cabral’s words continue to resonate deeply even decades after his assassination, offering powerful motivation to reimagine sustainability and justice on a continent facing mounting ecological and social pressures. This collection of Cabral’s writings, originally published in Portuguese in 1988 as Estudos Agrários de Amilcar Cabral, is not only a tribute to his vision, but also a call to action. Cabral’s revolutionary conceptualization of soil was that it was political, historical, and human. He warned against colonial extraction, monoculture farming, and private land grabs, insisting that soil must be understood through the lives and labor of those who live on it. For Cabral, earth, rain, stone, and breath were not just elements, they were the foundation of freedom.

Amilcar Cabral (1924–1973) was a Bissau-Guinean agronomist, revolutionary, and one of Africa's foremost anticolonial leaders. Carlos Lopes is honorary professor at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance at UCT. Lesley Green is professor of earth politics and director of Environmental Humanities South at UCT.