Library Weekly

On 30 April 1926, Santomean poet and politician Alda do Espírito Santo, also known as Alda Neves da Graça do Espírito Santo or Alda Graça, was born. From a middle-class family that was prominent in São Tomé city, she attended secondary school in Portugal in the 1950s, where she met many of the future nationalist leaders of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique.

 

Alda da Graça returned to São Tomé in January 1953. She worked as a teacher and assisted the Portuguese lawyer Palma Carlos, who investigated the atrocities committed by the colonial authorities during the Batepá massacre of February that year. In December 1965, while in Lisbon, she was one of seventeen Santomeans detained for two and a half months by the Portuguese secret police under the accusation of having intended to establish a subversive movement in the archipelago.

 

Following the Portuguese revolution of 25 April 1974, she became one of the leaders of the Associação Cívica pró-MLSTP, which organized political actions in São Tomé while the leaders of the Liberation Movement of São Tomé and Príncipe (MLSTP) remained in Libreville, Gabon.

 

Since 1975, when São Tomé and Príncipe achieved independence from Portugal, she held several high offices in the government, including as Minister of Education and Culture, Minister of Information and Culture and President of the National Assembly. 

 

Alda do Espirito Santo is the author of the lyrics of the São Tomé and Príncipe’s national anthem, "Independência total". From its foundation in 1987 until her death, she was the president of her country's writers' and artists' union: União Nacional de Escritores e Artistas de São Tomé e Principe (UNEAS).

 

Alda do Espirito Santo died aged 83 in hospital in Luanda, Angola, on 10 March 2010.
 

(Source: English Wikipedia & Gerhard Seibert 2012, edited)

A literatura santomense e a resistência feminina por Alda Espírito Santo e Conceição Lima / Paulo Sergio Gonçalves. - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, 2018