“A nossa lâmpada não se apaga”: The Mnemonic Return of Angola’s Jonas Savimbi

Abstract

Rehabilitating the legacy of deceased leaders is a phenomenon particularly salient in Southern Africa, insofar as memories of liberation wars provoke considerable debate. After a protracted civil war, Angolans remain divided about the contributions of their historical leaders. Jonas Savimbi sits at the center of this division, a binary representation of both heroism and villainy. Martins demonstrates how Savimbi’s memory is invoked both as a moral source of hope for an alternative Angola—one imagined and disseminated by Savimbi and UNITA and appropriated by social protest—and as a technology of fear and control employed by the MPLA to assert political dominance.

« Un dieu ne peut pas mourir. » Divergences des récits sur la défaite des Tigres de libération de l’Eelam Tamoul

“…Le cas du leader des LTTE présente également des ressemblances avec l'héritage de Jonas Savimbi, leader de l'Union nationale pour l'indépendance totale de l'Angola (UNITA), tué au combat en 2002, dont la mort n'est pas encore acceptée dans certaines zones rurales. L'UNITA continue à utiliser sa mémoire comme force mobilisatrice, Savimbi étant vu par nombre d'opposants comme une figure morale contrastant avec la corruption du gouvernement 54 .…”

Processos revolucionários em discurso: descentralizando e desconstruindo os impactos do 25 de Abril em Angola

“…Essa hegemonia epistemológica não surgiu apenas do exercício intelectual. Foi, aliás, fisicamente imposta através da criminalização ou mesmo eliminação de versões alternativas, seja da UNITA (Martins 2021a(Martins , 2021b) ou da UPA/FNLA (M. Paredes 2022; Vicente 2023). Neste último caso, um episódio marcante ilustra este ponto: o fuzilamento público de Virgílio Sotto Mayor, um dos heróis do 4 de Fevereiro de 1961, envolvido no assalto à Casa de Reclusão Militar de Luanda e posteriormente preso nos campos de concentração do Missombo e São Nicolau.…”

Disrupting self-censorship, inventing public space through interactive performances in Luanda, Angola

“…Based on a three-year immersive sojourn in Luanda, the article discusses a series of festive events held on the streets in 2021-2022 to question freedom of expression, citizenship and entitlement in a context marked by a strong "culture of fear" (Schubert 2017;Martins 2021;Pawson 2014;Moorman 2008). It is grounded in the critical phenomenology of social space proposed by Kinkaid (2020), which provides original tools to unpack how ordinary embodied experiences might reflect broader modes of being in the world that are likely to disorientate dominant ideologies.…”