“Portugal is not Uganda!” Cavaco Silva in 1992

“There are too many derogatory references to Africans for so few days”, said Expresso, almost 34 years ago. And Luís Filipe Menezes echoed the phrase spoken by the former prime minister shortly afterwards.

André Ventura and “this is not Bangladesh”: a sad soap opera from the presidential campaign. The phrase shouted and written with pride by the leader of Chega earned him, as expected, accusations of prejudice, xenophobia, racism and; the general secretary of the Socialist Party, José Luís Carneiro, defended intervention by the Public Ministry to activate sanctioning mechanisms against those who violate the rule of law; university professor and lawyer António Garcia Pereira the candidate for Belém to convince the court that the Chega party is unconstitutional; the National Elections Commission signaled that it would request intervention from the MP to assess possible illegality.

But Ventura — who even uses the infamous phrase with other countries — was not the only one in the history of Portuguese politics to refer to an African country as inferior to Portugal.

This is not Uganda

Almost running away from the page, in the “What they say…” section of the June 20, 1992 edition of Semanário Expresso, ZAP, when trying to confirm a suspicion, detected a chronicle that immediately brings to mind the phrase that would be written 34 years later by André Ventura.

The phrase in question came from the mouth of Cavaco Silvaat the time prime minister, and is cited in the weekly, apparently, by journalist José António Lima.

In grammatical terms, the only difference between the sentence attributed to Cavaco and Ventura’s sentence is the country.

“‘Portugal is not Uganda!’exclaimed Cavaco Silva regarding the threat of tanks in the streets suggested by Mário Soares”, reads the excerpt that ZAP was resurrected.

The “threat” attributed to Mário Soares referred to statements by the historic socialist (at the time president of the Republic), just two weeks before the European summit. Soares said that he preferred that the military who opposed the reduction in the Armed Forces committed procedural infractions instead of mobilizing tanks in the streets, during what was, at the time, “the most serious military affront to civil power since the Carnation Revolution”, compared the .

“A real scandal!”, continued Cavaco, following with another derogatory reference to citizens of African countries. “If even Cape Verdean emigrants vote in their presidential elections, why can’t ours?”, quotes Expresso.

“If the Portuguese were allowed to vote in a referendum on Maastricht, ‘Portugal would have the level of development of a North African country’”, the former President of the Republic also said, according to the excerpt from the weekly newspaper.

“They are too many derogatory references to Africans for so few days that only the nervousness of the institutional confrontation and the disdain of those who feel (for a few days) in charge of Europe can explain it”, reads the chronicle.

This is not Uganda (part 2)

A few sentences later, the text states that another social democrat, Luís Filipe Menezes, echoed Cavaco’s “piropos”, allegedly saying exactly the same phrase.

“Portugal is not Uganda to revise the Constitution every year”said the current president of the Chamber of Gaia, at the time Secretary of State for Parliamentary Affairs in the Government of Cavaco Silva.

“As feared, these Cavaco pyropops about the blacks soon took up school in the ranks of countless ‘yes men’ of the PSD. Let’s hope, at least, that they will never let them set foot in Uganda again”, finally appealed, the author of the text.