Sacred Hope [Poems of Agostinho Neto]

Author(s): Agostinho Neto

Publisher: Tanzania Publishing House, Year: 1974

Agostinho Neto was the first president of free Angola.

Arrested in February 1955, he was relased only in June 1957, having been held in prison for 10 months before eventually being sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment. And even his final release, in fascist Portugal with its total absence of democratic liberties, was due to the world-wide, campaign organised in defence of the life and freedom of the young man who was already recognised to be Angola's leading poet and a foremost revolutionary.

A booklet of his poems was published i n 1955, at the time of his arrest, and poems depicting the bitter life of the Angolan people and the poet's fervent belief in the future had long filtered through the curtain of silence Portugal had drawn over its repression of democrats and its bestial crimes in its colonies.