ARTICLE: ‘Town, village and bush: war and cultural landscapes in south-eastern Angola (1966-2002)’, Afrika Focus 25, 2 (2012) pp. 31-43. (original) (raw)

Colonialism, Ethnicity and War in Angola

2020

Making a fresh contribution to our understanding of the history of Angola, this book explores the impact of social, political, and economic change upon the largest ethnic group of the country, the Ovimbundu. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in Angola, including oral testimonies and life stories, and participant-observation, this book shifts the viewpoint from the colonial enterprise, international politics and ideological alignments to focus on African experiences and responses. The author analyses the transformations introduced by Christianity and colonialisation and how they contributed to politicised modern notions of ethnic identity, creating communal imaginaries that began manifesting during Angolan's anti-colonial war. He then explains how the weaving of this ethno-political landscape assisted UNITA's mobilisation of significant parts of the Ovimbundu during the civil-war, essentially deepening popular belief in the axiom Ovimbundu-UNITA, and how the latter created a national imaginary that echoed social anxieties and moral discourses. The book then explores the links between ethnicity, politics, and war on the quality of postwar citizenship in Angola, particularly on people's integration in the citizenry or marginalisation from it. Articulating a reading of ethnicity that connects high politics and elitebased explanations with how ordinary people feel and discuss ethnicity, politics, and citizenship, this book will be of interest to scholars of African history and politics, as well as ethnicity and nationalism.

War and Identity in Angola: Two Case-Studies

2003

Guerra e identidade em Angola : dois estudos de caso. ; Este artigo analisa a ligacao entre diversas categorias de identidade e os processos pelos quais estas categorias podem mudar. Dois estudos de caso sao apresentados. O primeiro trata do norte e o segundo do sul-este de Angola. O primeiro estudo de caso mostra que as referencias a etnicidade nao sao necessariamente ligadas a unidade : mesmo sendo visto como um grupo unido pelos outros, os «Bakongo» continuem divididos de diversas maneiras. As identidades etnicas, locais e nacionais sao interligadas. Luanda/ Angola e oposta a Bakongo /Zaire. Esta dicotomia e, por sua vez, ligada a oposicoes politicas e raciais. O segundo estudo de caso mostra que as mudancas nas politicas da identidade nao occorem somente na area da identidade etnica. Os refugiados do sul-este de Angola veem a guerra atraves da oposicao entre pessoas da cidade e pessoas do bush, esta dicotomia sendo sempre mais ligada a violencia, tortura e mutilacoes. Um process...

Individualization and the Ethopolitics of Conflict in Rural Angola

African Identities , 2016

In this article, my goal is to contribute to the debate about the relation between sociality and individualization. It is under this perspective that I discuss the subject of conflict as social relationing. Concretely, I explore how everyday experiences of conflict between 'individuals' in an Angolan rural village can neutralize contemporary threats of asocialization between those same individuals and, in turn, promote commonality. I refer to this affective agency in present-day rural Angola as the ethopolitics of conflict. Although I approach the two subjects, this article is not specifically about individualization or conflict. Rather, it is about the social terrain where the two intersect.

A Far-Away War: Angola 1975-1989

2016

This book is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on the conflict increasingly referred to as the ‘Southern Africa Thirty-Year War’. That armed conflict extended from the Mpondo Rebellion, which started in 1960 and the uprisings in northern Angola in 1961, to the final whimpers of township unrest in South Africa in the early 1990s. It included the protracted insurgencies of the former Portuguese territories of Angola and Mozambique, the brutal Rhodesian ‘Bush War’ for Zimbabwean liberation, the foreign involvement in the Angolan civil war, the fight for the independence of Namibia and the ‘Struggle’ in South Africa.

Resenha “A Guerra Civil Em Angola, 1975-2002” De Justin Pearce

Revista Brasileira de Estudos Africanos, 2018

A guerra civil em Angola, 1975-20023, as was the book published on April 2017 in Portugal by the South-African journalist and researcher Justin Pearce, whose original edition in English presents a diametrically opposed title-Political identity and conflict in Central Angola, 1975-2002 with double edition in United States of America and in South Africa by the Cambridge University Press. The translation published two years later is interesting to the Portuguese-speaking reader and makes for a pleasant read. The book cover is ostensive, featuring a vibrant red that seeks to antagonize the black rooster symbol of UNITA and the black and yellow star symbol of MPLA. In this edition, differing from the original, the black and yellow star overlaps the black rooster. Its purpose has not gone unnoticed, because the book cover and the gesture of overlapping the political symbols of the two rival movements, besides the colors and title, seems to clash with the content. The book is the result of some dozens interviews of the author in the Central Plateau of Angola region, with its notably unpretentious original edition featuring on the cover the photography of a former fighter of UNITA in an ex-military area situated in the Bié province, whilst the back cover brings comments of reputable academics of Angola topics 4 .