Cape Verde: From Tolerance Day to the Intolerance of a System

 

The Government’s Retreat and the Essential Question

After strong popular pressure, the decision to grant a half-day holiday (tolerância de ponto) only to the island of Santiago was finally reversed. Now, the right  has been extended to the entire country.
But the essential question remains: why was the people’s outcry necessary for the obvious to be done?

The Vice of Centralism

This episode, seemingly trivial, once again exposes the most persistent vice of our Republic: the visceral centralism that for decades has corroded the very idea of Cabo Verde as a plural and archipelagic nation.
What happened is not a mere administrative error. It reflects a political mindset that continues to confuse the State with the capital — and the capital with the country.

Praia as Centre and Frontier

Praia has become the epicentre of decision-making and, worse still, of defining what it means to be a “legitimate” Cape Verdean.
The rest — the islands, their voices, cultures and realities — are tolerated, not integrated. Useful, but peripheral. They serve to legitimise the rhetoric of unity, to gather votes, and to justify funding, yet remain excluded from the true table of decisions.

A Structural and Cultural Imbalance

The imbalance is structural, but also ontological and cultural.
The other islands orbit around an “official truth” emanating from the centre, where legitimacy feeds on habit and convenience.
Thus, what should be a plural and dialogical country becomes an inverted pyramid, sustained by inequality and by the hubris of an elite that confuses itself with the State.

The Dogma of National Unity

“National unity” in this context is more dogma than ideal.
“Unity” is invoked to silence difference, and “nation” to perpetuate privilege.
Any attempt to expose this distortion is swiftly neutralised by the old and useful accusation of parochialism— that rhetorical device so effective at delegitimising indignation and reducing protest to the caricature of resentment.

The term parochialism, used in this way, is a technique of silencing — a weapon of hegemonic discourse to keep the status quo ante, in the name of national peace, of course.

 

 

 

The Drowning Island

Meanwhile, the facts speak for themselves: historic companies such as Shell/Vivo Energy or ENAPOR, to mention only those two,  have been quietly transferred from São Vicente to Praia, weakening the economic and symbolic fabric of an island that was once the nation’s engine.
Nothing in this process is innocent. Everything converges toward a centralized model of power — one that drains resources, opportunities, and visibility from the periphery to the centre.

The Government’s recent U-turn does not erase the essential point: it took the people’s outcry to remind the authorities that Cabo Verde is not synonymous with Santiago.
And that, in itself, is a moral defeat for the State. Because what was done was not so much to correct an injustice, but to acknowledge — under pressure — that injustice is the norm.

Autonomy as an Ethical Necessity

The truth is that Praia does not see the rest of the country as part of itself, but as a necessary evil — a constellation of convenient appendices from which to extract democratic legitimacy, international funds, and electoral material. Nothing more.
That is why the question of the islands’ autonomy is no longer merely a political demand: it is an ethical necessity and a matter of civic survival.

But it is necessary, above all, to possess political and moral maturity to accept that autonomy does not divide: it balances; it does not threaten: it matures; it does not fragment: it creates responsibility.

The Final Question

A State that fears the autonomy of its parts is a State that does not trust itself.
And a country that accepts such a logic of hierarchical submission has already lost the essence of what it means to be a political community.

Therefore, the question that truly matters is not whether autonomy is possible, but whether its absence remains tolerable.   For, a country that must be pressured to act justly does not govern, it merely reacts. And centralism, even when it corrects its mistakes, the original sin remains - the most polite and persistent form of tyranny.