To re-issue Amílcar Cabral's work in South Africa is indeed an emotional experience. It forces us, among other things, to link the question of national liberation struggles to South Africa's chosen path of African renaissance. The political context of a postapartheid South Africa affords the ideal occasion to reflect upon the various values and insights that informed Cabral's understanding of Africa's renaissances. South Africa gained ‘independence’ and ‘freedom’ from minority rule in 1994. However, to speak of ‘independence’ and ‘freedom’ is to use unusual political terms in a South African context, where the term ‘democracy’ is preferred. Whereas official political discourse privileges ‘democracy’, the cultural critics prefer ‘freedom’, a word they are quick to deconstruct:

Drawing on the cultural critique of Albie Sachs, Ashraf Jamal suggests that whereas the word ‘democracy’ is meant to be a convenience for all South Africans, ‘freedom’

Sachs captures the contradictory role of culture in the process of attaining freedom by suggesting that:

Sachs's understanding of the romantic aspect of culture that is always ahead of real life, and consistently attempts to announce the dawn of a new culture, links the South African critic's views on culture to those of Amílcar Cabral. Cabral's writings on culture have lessons for Africa's national liberation struggles and the ethos of panAfricanism that is broadly understood as the inclusive process of political, economic, and cultural reconstitution.