Journal of Southern African Studies

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‘From Cabinda to Cunene’: Monuments and the

Construction of Angolan Nationalism since 1975

Jeremy Ball

To cite this article: Jeremy Ball (2019): ‘From Cabinda to Cunene’: Monuments and the
Construction of Angolan Nationalism since 1975, Journal of Southern African Studies, DOI:
10.1080/03057070.2019.1674025

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2019.1674025

Published online: 25 Oct 2019.

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Journal of Southern African Studies, 2019
https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2019.1674025

‘From Cabinda to Cunene’: Monuments and

the Construction of Angolan Nationalism
since 1975

JEREMY BALL
(Dickinson College)

Since coming to power in 1975, the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of
Angola) government of Angola has constructed a nationalist narrative that serves to
honour and legitimise its rule. This article analyses the concrete and symbolic
articulations of this dominant national narrative through the lens of monuments: the
Hero
ınas monument, the Agostinho Neto Mausoleum, the Kifangondo monument, and the
Museum of the Armed Forces at S~ao Miguel Fort. Due to the exclusivist nationalism
presented in these spaces, alternative narratives and dissenting voices use unofficial
arenas such as blogs to exchange ideas and question dominant narratives. Activists have
also appropriated certain monuments to challenge dominant discourses publicly.
Keywords: Angola; nationalism; commemoration; monuments

Introduction
Angola as an independent political entity is a relatively recent creation. For roughly four
centuries Portugal exerted control over enclaves along the Angolan coast and several interior
kingdoms, and after the late 19th-century partition of Africa among European powers, it
conquered the independent political entities that constitute most of the territory today
recognised as Angola. The leaders of Portuguese Angola established administrative control
that united the disparate regions. Over centuries, from the early years of Portuguese
conquest along the littoral, a Luso-African elite developed a shared Angolanidade, a creole
culture that incorporated African and Portuguese influences.1 And yet, Angolanidade was
never fully cohesive in practice; interior elites, brought under Portuguese subjugation much
later, mostly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often distrusted Angolanidade as too
closely associated with a Lusophone, coastal culture and not sufficiently ‘African’. By the
1950s, profound divisions existed among communities over what it meant to be Angolan,
and the debate over the idea of Angolanidade became illustrative of the divisions. Thus, the
unifying forces of colonial administration, education, and culture failed to unite Luso-
African and African elites across the territory.

1 For an excellent analysis of sociocultural transformation and creolisation in 17th-century Angola, see M.P.
Candido, An African Slaving Port and the Atlantic World: Benguela and Its Hinterland (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2013). For the creolisation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, see J.
Corrado, The Creole Elite and the Rise of Angolan Protonationalism 1870–1920 (Amherst, New York,
Cambria Press, 2008).

ß 2019 The Editorial Board of the Journal of Southern African Studies

2 Jeremy Ball

It was among these disparate groupings that the independence movements of the 1950s
and 1960s developed in order to confront and fight the Portuguese.2 Divisions among
Angolan nationalists, however, meant that three distinct movements based on regional,
linguistic, and cultural differences developed. Thus, it was a politically divided Angola that
achieved independence on 11 November 1975. The MPLA (Popular Movement for the
Liberation of Angola), with its urban base and with the aid of Cuban troops and Soviet
armaments, defeated a coalition of US-, Zairean-, and South African-backed rival nationalist
movements: the FNLA (Front for the National Liberation of Angola) and UNITA (Union for
the Independence of the Totality of Angola). Thereafter, the MPLA set out to create a new
independent Angolan nationalism based on Angolanidade, the Portuguese language, the
liberation struggle itself, and colonial-era borders. As reflected in one nationalist motto
–‘Todo o povo Angolano de Cabinda ao Cunene’ (All the Angolan people from Cabinda to
Cunene) – a sweeping vision of national unity became emblematic of the MPLA’s
ideological goals. Shared suffering under colonialism, the liberation war, the treachery of
certain foreign forces that intervened, and the heroism of Agostinho Neto, ‘the father of the
nation’, became central tenets of the MPLA’s nationalist narrative for independent Angola.
And yet, because the moment of independence was not one of political consensus or a
shared founding moment, but one of military confrontation, the victorious MPLA imposed a
particular nationalist narrative that distorted actual events and did not allow dissenting or
contradictory voices. The official narrative dismissed the rival FNLA and UNITA nationalist
movements as enemies of ‘the people’ and enshrined falsehoods about the genesis of the
anti-colonial struggle and the opponents of the MPLA.3 The deep divisions and warfare
among rival nationalist movements, and even within the MPLA itself, were elided in favour
of a constructed and exclusivist narrative emphasising how the people, led by the MPLA,
overcame Portuguese colonialism and foreign intervention to achieve independence.
The MPLA’s nationalist narrative mirrored similar narratives across newly independent
Africa, where other leaders opted to accept colonial-era boundaries and to celebrate the
nationalist movements as foundational for new national identities.4 Because the Angolan
nation was a colonial creation of the late 19th and 20th centuries, the MPLA, rather than
challenging this imagined community, adopted a functionalist view of the nation in which
Soviet and Cuban models of nation building proved influential. As Michel Cahen explains,
‘this Stalinised Marxism advocated a one-party system with the state as the main actor in the
economy, homogeneity of the nation with only one language, corporatist labour unions and
authoritarian management of workers and peasants’.5 Thus, the MPLA functioned as the

2 For a fascinating study of the importance of music in defining an Angolan culture and nation, see M.J.
Moorman, Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to Recent
Times (Athens, Ohio University Press, 2008).
3 C. Messiant, ‘“Em Angola, At
e o Passado
e Imprevis
ıvel”: A Experi^encia de uma Investigaç~ao sobre o
Nacionalismo Angolano e, Em Particular, o MPLA: Fontes, Cr
ıtica, Necessidades Actuasi da Investigaç~ao’,
in Actas do II Semin
ario Internacional sobre A Hist
oria de Angola Construindo o Passado Angolano: As
Fontes e a Sua Interpretaç~ ao (Lisbon, Ediç~ao Comiss~ao Nacional para as Comemoraç~ oes dos
Descobrimentos Portugueses, 2000), p. 815; J. Pearce, ‘Contesting the Past in Angolan Politics’, in Journal
of Southern African Studies, 41, 1 (2015), pp. 103–19; J. Schubert, ‘2002, Year Zero: History as Anti-
Politics in the “New Angola”’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 41, 4 (2015), DOI: 10.1080/
03057070.2015.1055548, pp. 1–18.
4 For a critique of the nation-state model, see B. Davidson, The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of
the Nation-State (New York, Three Rivers Press, 1992). For a broader discussion about African nationalism,
see T.K. Welliver (ed.), African Nationalism and Independence (New York, Garland Publishing, 1993).
5 M. Cahen, ‘Anticolonialism & Nationalism: Deconstructing Synonymy, Investigating Historical Processes.
Note on the Heterogeneity of Former African Colonial Portuguese Areas’, in E. Morier-Genoud (ed.), Sure
Road? Nationalisms in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique (Leiden, Brill, 2012), 16–17. Officially,
Angola has been a multi-party democracy since 1992, although in practice the MPLA controls almost
everything and the lines between party and state are vague.
 From Cabinda to Cunene 3

arbiter of which perspectives to include and which to silence in official narratives of

Angolan nationalism.6 As in Mozambique, the party embraced a forward-looking,
romanticised nationalism that anticipated the creation, in Agostinho Neto’s words, of ‘a new
man’ (um Homen Novo) living in a just society.7
In Angola, the fact that the war preceding independence continued as a civil war for most
of the period between 1975 and 2002 further entrenched the MPLA’s version as the
hegemonic narrative of Angolan nationalism. Angolans never united around a shared
foundational moment, and the civil war further fractured the populace. Didier P
eclard
observes that in the wake of its military defeat during the civil war context of 1975–77,
UNITA used ‘a broad narrative of exclusion according to which UNITA stood for those who
had not only been unjustly excluded from power at independence but also pushed (again) to
the margins of society in much the same way as had been the case during colonial times’.8
P
eclard’s analysis highlights why so many Angolans have felt alienated from the MPLA’s
nationalist narrative, retaining strong connections to other rival political parties, in that this
‘narrative of exclusion’, combined with suspicion of the Luso-African elites in the MPLA,
bolstered legitimacy among UNITA's supporters. Further, in the late 2000s, as Justin Pearce
found in interviews with Angolans, it was ‘made clear that each of the conflicts was
associated with a distinct set of narratives about Angolan history, about the role of the two
political movements within this history and the relationships of the movements to the
Angolan people’.9
In a recent book on Lusophone African nationalism, Eric Morier-Genoud boldly argues
that there ‘is an urgent need to revisit the subject of nationalisms and nations in Angola,
Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, to enrich and verify empirically as well as theoretically
what we already know of the subject’.10 This article responds to that charge by analysing
Angola’s official nationalism, with its hegemonic assertions and silences, through the lens of
official monuments. Monuments erected since independence reflect the MPLA’s discourse
on the past and offer insights into political organisations and power in contemporary Angola.
Understanding the layered discourses of these monuments – including external challenges to
their narratives in the form of protests and counter-monuments – affords an opportunity to
contribute to what Stephen Ellis, in a challenge to historians of contemporary Africa,
identifies as ‘the overwhelming problem of Africa today, and the one most in need of
rethinking: how to secure an equitable public order’.11
One of the exciting hermeneutical aspects of monuments is that despite their physical
fixity, their meanings are still fluid and open to interpretation. To this end, I adopt Duncan
S. Bell’s concept of a ‘mythscape’ as a useful lens. He defines a mythscape as ‘the
temporally and spatially extended discursive realm in which the myths of the nation are
forged, transmitted, negotiated, and reconstructed constantly’.12 I will discuss well-known
monuments in Angola’s mythscape that celebrate Angola’s first president and the MPLA’s
military victories. The monuments’ recent dates – all were erected within the last 30 years –

6 For a comparative case study of FRELIMO in Mozambique, see C. Fernandes, ‘History Writing and State
Legitimization in Postcolonial Mozambique: The Case of the History Workshop, Centre for African Studies,
1980–1986’, Kronos: Southern African Histories, 39 (2013), 131–57.
7 A. Neto, ‘Discurso do Presidente Agostinho Neto na Praclamaç~ao da Independ^encia de Angola a 11 de
Novembro de 1975’, read by the author on the walls of the Agostinho Neto Mausoleum.
8 D. P
eclard, ‘UNITA and the Moral Economy of Exclusion in Angola, 1966–1977’, in E. Morier-Genoud
(ed.), Sure Road?
9 J. Pearce, Political Identity and Conflict in Central Angola, 1975–2002 (New York, Cambridge University
Press, 2015), p. 12.
10 Morier-Genoud (ed.), Sure Road?, p. xvi.
11 S. Ellis, ‘Writing Histories of Contemporary Africa’, Journal of African History, 43, 1 (2002), p. 9.
12 D.S.A. Bell, ‘Mythscapes: Memory, Mythology, and National Identity’, British Journal of Sociology, 54, 1
(2003), p. 63.
4 Jeremy Ball

reflect the extent to which Angolan nationalism is currently under construction.13 Each site
contributes to the MPLA’s nationalist history of itself as Angola’s liberator from
colonialism, and national contributions by the FNLA and UNITA, much less any other
groups or interests, are downplayed or portrayed as colluding with foreign invaders and
designed to undermine independence.14 The stridency of this narrative, I contend, belies the
contested nature of Angolan nationalism, a dispute visible in recent forms of counter-
discourse and protest actions. In recent years, activists have claimed two of the monuments
under discussion as focal points for rallying supporters and challenging the MPLA’s
hegemony. These alternative, counter-hegemonic, and ephemeral uses of the monumental
spaces raise interesting questions about the negotiation and legitimisation of
Angola’s mythscape.

Constructing the Mythscape

The historiography of commemoration, monuments, and the politics of memory in southern
Africa focuses on particular colonies or countries during either the colonial or independence
era.15 Within the literature, there are relatively few studies focused on the politics of
memory in Angola – unlike the relatively vast scholarly literature on the subject of, for
example, South Africa, Namibia, or Zimbabwe.16 As in these examples, Angola’s governing
party began as a nationalist, anti-colonial party that formed an armed movement to fight for
independence. Like the former liberation movements-turned-governments in Zimbabwe,
Namibia, and South Africa, the MPLA uses its liberation credentials to bolster its
legitimacy. Jocelyn Alexander, JoAnn McGregor, and Terence Ranger’s analysis of
Zimbabwe’s ruling party could well apply to the MPLA as well:
[a]s in other countries born of liberation wars, Zimbabwe’s new leaders explicitly built their
legitimacy on their nationalist and liberation war credentials. But their version of nationalist
history was decidedly partial … the proclamation and enactment of official memory of the
liberation war has sought to silence, often with very direct repression, all
alternative memories.17

In one crucial aspect – the silencing of alternative memories – post-conflict Angola differed
from post-apartheid South Africa. The democratic South African state led by the African
National Congress promoted particular interpretations of past events, but it did not silence
alternative interpretations, and it fostered a political climate of open debates and
contestation.18 The MPLA, on the other hand, promoted ‘patriotic history’ in

13 M.D. Bembe, ‘Os Vectores da Construç~ao da Naç~ao Angolana e a Funç~ao do Estado’, Mulemba – Revista
Angolana de Ci^encias Sociais, III, 6 (2013), p. 172.
14 Angolan nationalism, with its silences and partial nature, has interesting parallels with Zimbabwean
nationalism. For more on the Zimbabwean case, see J. Alexander, J. McGregor and T. Ranger, Violence &
Memory: One Hundred Years in the ‘Dark Forests’ of Matabeleland (Oxford, James Currey, 2000).
15 J. Silvester, ‘“Sleep with a Southwester”: Monuments and Settler Identity in Namibia’, in C. Elkins and S.
Pedersen (eds), Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century (New York, Routledge, 2005), pp. 271–86; D.
Peterson (ed.), The Politics of Heritage in Africa: Economies, Histories, and Infrastructures (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 2015); M.J. Murray, Commemorating and Forgetting: Challenges for the New
South Africa (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2013); N. Kriger, ‘The Politics of Creating
National Heroes’, in N. Bhebe and T. Ranger (eds), Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Portsmouth,
Heinemann, 1995), pp. 139–62; M. Wallace, ‘Personal Circuits: Official Tours and South Africa’s Colony’,
Journal of Southern African Studies, 41, 3 (2015), pp. 635–52; R. P. Werbner (ed.) Memory and the
Postcolony: African Anthropology and the Critique of Power (London, Zed Books, 1998).
16 Schubert, ‘2002, Year Zero’; H. Becker, ‘Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana: Memory,
Culture and Nationalism in Namibia, 1990–2010’, Africa, 81, 4 (2011), pp. 519–43.
17 Alexander, McGregor and Ranger, Violence & Memory, pp. 1, 8.
18 Murray, Commemorating and Forgetting.
 From Cabinda to Cunene 5

commemorations of the pre-independence period to bolster its legitimacy and to sidestep

charges of corruption and authoritarianism.19 Yet, as historian Christine Messiant notes, a
common expression in Angola is ‘toda a gente sabe … ’ (everyone knows … ), a phrase
which colloquially acknowledges the discrepancy between official political discourse and
what people say in private to contradict the official version.20 For example, party officials
claim that MPLA members initiated the liberation war on 4 February 1961; however toda a
gente sabe that those who launched the attack shouted ‘Viva UPA’ (the predecessor party of
the rival FNLA nationalist movement).21 In other words, the MPLA played no role in the 4
February 1961 uprising, and yet they claimed to have orchestrated its events in order to
garner legitimacy. Pearce also points to how the MPLA’s deployment of history – like that
of the Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU[PF]) in Zimbabwe –
changed over time in response to the political demands of particular moments. He explains
how the party elevated Agostinho Neto from party leader to icon of national unity while
silencing inconvenient events such as the repression following an alleged coup attempt on
27 May 1977, and the killing of civilians in Luanda in October 1992 amid tensions between
the MPLA and UNITA over election results.22 These examples illustrate how the MPLA
created a historiography built on myths and silences.
Similarly, Angola’s built mythscape has been dominated by public, monumental
commemorations to MPLA leaders and to MPLA-led military victories, but the leaders of
the MPLA government of Angola were not the first to construct mythical monuments in
Luanda. During the late 19th and most of the 20th centuries, the Portuguese rulers of Angola
built monuments around the city commemorating the Portuguese nationalist myth of heroic
explorers, intrepid colonisers, and brave patriots.23 After independence the MPLA
government removed nearly all of these colonial-era monuments.24 In recent years, the
government has erected monuments to pre-colonial leaders, especially those who fought
Portuguese colonial expansion.25 The best known of these statues honours Queen Njinga, a
17th-century leader of the kingdom of Matamba, appropriated by the MPLA and
memorialised as an early Angolan freedom fighter, and stands at the entrance to S~ao Miguel
Fort.26 Queen Njinga is part of a new pantheon of national leaders. Likewise, the
government has erected monuments in provincial centres to honour indigenous leaders who
resisted colonial conquest: King Mandume ya Ndemufayo of the Kwanyama (monument
dedicated in 2002); King Ekuikui II of Bailundo (monument dedicated in 2010); and King

19 T. Ranger, ‘Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle over
the Past in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 2 (June 2004), 215–34. On the application
of patriotic history in Angola, see Schubert, ‘2002, Year Zero’; Pearce, ‘Contesting the Past in
Angolan Politics’.
20 Messiant, ‘“Em Angola, At
e o Passado
e Imprevis
ıvel”’, pp. 818–20.
21 Messiant, ‘“Em Angola, At
e o Passado
e Imprevis
ıvel”’, p. 818.
22 Pearce, ‘Contesting the Past in Angolan Politics’, p. 112.
23 J. Ball, ‘Staging of Memory: Monuments, Commemoration, and the Demarcation of Portuguese Space in
Colonial Angola’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 44, 1 (2018), pp. 77–96; V
ıctor Barros, ‘Portugal e
as Comemoraç~ oes aos Mortos da Grande Guerra em Angola e Moçambique’, Revista Portuguesa de
Hist
oria, 46 (2015), 301–26.
24 An interesting exception is the Monument to the Treaty of Simulambuco in Cabinda. The monument
celebrates an 1883 treaty declaring Cabinda a protectorate of Portugal. A possible explanation for the
monument’s continued existence is that it recognises independent Angola’s legal right to govern
the province.
25 The celebration of pre-colonial resistance fighters fits comfortably with the MPLA’s narrative of itself as the
modern embodiment of these earlier nationalists.
26 Angolan nationalism uses the pre-colonial past for purposes of imagining a nation with deep historical
precedence. For a comparative study of how contemporary Zimbabwean nationalism has appropriated pre-
colonial resistance fighters, see J. Fontein, The Silence of Great Zimbabwe: Contested Landscapes and the
Power of Heritage (New York, UCL Press, 2006); and N. Kriger, ‘The Politics of Creating
National Heroes’.
6 Jeremy Ball

Vunongue of the Nganguela (monument dedicated in 2015). The MPLA is hardly

exceptional among nationalist parties in Africa in using pre-colonial figures to confer
legitimacy in the present. As Joost Fontein argues, ‘Zimbabwean nationalism was by no
means exceptional in its use of Great Zimbabwe as national heritage; as a tool or “useful
rallying point” with which to “imagine” a nation with deep historical precedence into
existence’.27 In Angola, the MPLA does not elevate the pre-colonial past to the extent that
ZANU(PF) does in Zimbabwe, but rather uses indigenous leaders as nationalist tropes
within the mythscape. The MPLA conceives of the Angolan nation as primarily the product
of Portuguese imperialism.28 In this conception of the nation, the Portuguese language, the
experience of Portuguese colonialism, and the liberation movement itself become the
common threads of Angolan nationalism.29
Commemorating pre-colonial leaders is not a controversial aspect of Angola’s built
mythscape. In fact, most of the leaders honoured in monuments are highly regarded across
the country and among diverse communities. For example, a 2008 study of nearly 200
young Angolans indicated that the students held pre-colonial leaders Queen Njinga and King
Mandume in the highest esteem, above independence-era leaders, including Agostinho
Neto.30 Monuments specifically constructed to celebrate the MPLA and advance its political
legitimacy, however, contain within them the seeds of contradiction and even confrontation.
A sampling of these monuments, including the Hero
ınas monument (1986), Agostinho Neto
Mausoleum and Cultural Centre (started in 1982, completed in 2014), the Museum to the
Armed Forces in S~ao Miguel Fort (created in 1976, revamped in 2013), and the Kifangondo
monument (2004), demonstrates the inherently contested nature of Angola’s mythscape and,
thus, Angolan nationalism more generally.

Hero
ınas
One of the earliest MPLA war monuments is the Hero
ınas monument, which employs
Angolan women as symbols of MPLA nationalism. Located in the landscaped central strip
of Ho Chi Minh Avenue in Luanda, the monument honours five female MPLA guerrilla
fighters who were captured by FNLA troops on 2 March 1967 and who later died in
prison.31 The five women joined the 130-member, until then all male, Camy Squadron in
1966, and later that year the MPLA sent the squadron to join comrades fighting in the region
north of Luanda. Due to a severe lack of food and difficulty reaching their FAPLA (Popular
Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola – the MPLA’s military wing) comrades, a
contingent of roughly 20 soldiers turned back for an arduous, overland trek to their base at
Camp Kalunga in Congo-Brazzaville. After being captured in 1967, they were imprisoned,
reportedly tortured, and died.
After their deaths the hero
ınas joined an almost exclusively male pantheon of MPLA/
national liberation heroes. Images of the hero
ınas, in addition to other female martyrs to
revolution, frequently circulated among solidarity and anti-colonial movements (Figure 1).
As early as 18 April 1967, the MPLA publicised the women’s arrest and imprisonment in its
magazine Vit
oria ou Morte (Victory or Death) and demanded their release.32 The

27 Fontein, The Silence of Great Zimbabwe, p. 132.

28 R.S. de Oliveira, Magnificent and Beggar Land: Angola Since the Civil War (London, Hurst & Co., 2015),
p. 18.
29 M.C. Neto, ‘Igrejas Crist~as e Nacionalismo Angolano: O Paradox Cat
olico’, Mulemba – Revista Angolana
de Ci^encias Sociais III, 6 (2013), p. 186.
30 J. Mendes, E. Silva, and R. Cabecinhas, ‘Mem
oria Colectiva e Identidade Nacional: Jovens Angolanos Face
a Hist
oria de Angola’, Anu
ario Internacional de Comunicaç~ao Lus
ofona (2010), pp. 213–17.
31 The names of the five hero
ınas are Deolinda Rodrigues de Almeida, Irene Cohen de Brito Teixeira,
Lucr
ecia Paim, Teresa Afonso Gomes, and Engr
acia dos Santos.
32 L.J. Rodr
ıguez, Hero
ınas de Angola (Luanda, Mayamba Editora, 2010), p. 149.
 From Cabinda to Cunene 7

Figure 1. Poster title: ‘March 2: Day of Angolan Women.’ Below right: In Commemoration of the Anniversary
of the imprisonment of five heroic MPLA militants: Deolinda Rodrigues, Irene Cohen, Engracia dos Santos,
Teresa Afonso and Lucrecia Paim. Below left: Liberation Support Movement Information Center (no date).
Source: From the poster collection of the Basler Afrika Bibliographien (BAB). (The BAB’s permission to print
this poster is gratefully acknowledged.)
8 Jeremy Ball

Figure 2. Hero
ınas monument, Luanda, Angola. Source: Photograph by the author.

Organisation of Angolan Women (OMA), the MPLA’s women’s league, seized upon the
plight of the hero
ınas and listed their imprisonment as ‘a new crime against the fight of the
Angolan people’.33 In 1983, OMA held its first congress, titled ‘Emancipation of Women’,
and cited the hero
ınas as examples of how, ‘having fought side by side with men for the
liberation of the fatherland from the colonial, fascist yoke, Angolan women took the first
step towards their own emancipation’.34
The MPLA’s decision to build a monument to the hero
ınas in the 1980s parallels these
events, but the monument also encodes the cultural constraints faced by Angolan women
who sought to advance their social and political position during the liberation war and early
days of independence.35 On 2 March 1986 the government dedicated the monument, which
features a central plinth topped with statues of three women: one with a hoe, another
carrying an ammunition box, while the third slings an automatic rifle (Figure 2). An
inscription on the monument’s central plinth casts the women in a long tradition of women
fighters: ‘[t]hey follow in the tradition of N’Jinga and of so many other historical figures
who fought colonialism and foreign domination with tenacious resistance’.36
Although the monument celebrates Angolan women’s agency as fighters, the government
dressed the hero
ınas atop the plinth in the panos (cloth) typical of rural Angolan women,
rather than the military uniforms they wore as guerrilla fighters. Margarida Paredes argues
that this decision to depict the hero
ınas in panos served to redomesticate them and thus
dampen expectations arising from ideas about gender equality and women’s emancipation as
part of the revolution.37 Wrapping the figures atop the plinth in panos therefore reflects the
implicit societal expectation that after the war women would assume their traditional roles as

33 Rodr
ıguez, Hero
ınas, 149.

34 Organisation of Angolan Women (OMA), ‘1 Congresso, “Emancipaç~ao da Mulher”’ (1983), pp. 7–8.
Pamphlet accessed at the Centro de Informaç~ao e Documentaç~ao Am
ılcar Cabral (CIDAC), Lisbon.
35 M.J. Moorman, ‘Intimating Nationalism: Gender in the MPLA’s Maquis’, in S. Pantoja, E.A. Bergamo, A.C.
da Silva (eds), Angola e as Angolanas Mem
oria, Sociedade e Cultura (S~ao Paulo, Editora Intermeios, 2016),
pp. 193–5.
36 Hero
ınas monument, Luanda. Translation is by the author.
37 M. Paredes, Combater Duas Vezes Mulheres na Luta Armada em Angola (Vila do Conde, Verso da Hist
oria,
2015), pp. 110–11.
 From Cabinda to Cunene 9

wives and mothers, a message reinforced by the common employment of the mother image
in MPLA monuments.
The MPLA’s decision to redomesticate the guerrillas is especially striking given the
radical possibilities that fighting for liberation opened up for thousands of Angolan women.
It also betrays the feminist sensibilities of the historical figures themselves. Deolinda
Rodrigues, one of the hero
ınas, wrote in her diary in 1964 that she rejected the
discrimination against women in the revolution outright: ‘[w]ill the Revolution obligate me
to marry? Is this necessary? [ … ] Nobody is able to force me to marry. [ … ] they want to
make believe that being single is painful, shameful, or the devil’.38 Ultimately, Rodrigues
rejected the pressure to marry, and eventually became one of the first women guerrillas, a
decision enshrined in a popular OMA hymn: ‘No longer women/Only in the house/No
longer women/Only working the land/The Angolan woman/Is a dedicated militant’.39 OMA
celebrated this revolutionary spirit in the goals articulated at its first congress in 1983, which
pointedly noted how Angolan women had ‘fought side by side with men for the liberation of
the fatherland from colonial fascism, [ … ] for their own emancipation, [ … ] and as citizens
ought to be guaranteed the same rights as their compatriots in all sectors of national life’.40
The juxtaposition of OMA’s demands with the redomestication of the hero
ınas in a
monument from the same decade illustrates the contradictions in the MPLA’s promises for
equality between the sexes and their expectations that women reassume the role of mother and
caregiver and not demand equal pay or the same benefits as men. Since then, many women
who fought for independence have complained that women are not recognised for their
contributions to the war effort beyond the largely symbolic recognition of the hero
ınas.41
Women war veterans, for example, who fought for all three of the nationalist movements,
have had difficulty accessing financial assistance awarded to ex-combatants.42 The Hero
ınas
monument thus sends an ambiguous message to Angolan women about their place within the
post-war landscape. On the one hand, the monument celebrates women soldiers and thus
endorses the radical promise of the revolution to guarantee men and women equal rights. On
the other hand, the depiction of the women in clothing characteristic of past gender
expectations supports Anne McClintock’s argument that ‘women [were] typically constructed
as the symbolic bearers of the nation, but are denied any direct relation to national agency’.43
A relevant secondary aspect of the discourse of the Hero
ınas monument is that the
hero
ınas died at the hands of a rival nationalist army (FNLA) and, unlike Angola’s war
monuments erected since the end of the civil war in 2002, there is less emphasis on the
MPLA as the defender of the Angola nation against foreign aggression. The fact that the
hero
ınas are celebrated as MPLA heroes also tacitly alienates women (and men) who
supported the FNLA or UNITA during the liberation war (1961–1975) and civil war
(1975–2003). The date on which the hero
ınas were captured, 2 March, is now a national
holiday – the Day of the Angolan Woman (‘o Dia da Mulher Angolana’) – although UNITA
supporters generally do not celebrate it.44 Since 2017, women’s rights activists have
reclaimed the monument as a place to stage counter-protests against the MPLA’s policies
targeting women’s freedom. For example, on 18 March 2017, opponents of a bill in the

38 D. Rodrigues, Di
ario de um Ex
ılio Sem Regresso (Luanda, Nzila, 2003), pp. 52 and 65. Cited in M.
Paredes, ‘Deolinda Rodrigues, da Fam
ılia Metodista a Fam
ılia MPLA, o Papel da Cultura na Pol
ıtica’,
Cadernos de Estudos Africanos, 20 (2010), p. 8.
39 OMA, ‘1 Congresso, “Emancipaç~ao da Mulher”’.
40 OMA, ‘1 Congresso, “Emancipaç~ao da Mulher”’.
41 Moorman, ‘Intimating Nationalism’, p. 187.
42 Paredes, Combater Duas Vezes, p. 242.
43 A. McClintock, ‘No Longer in a Future Heaven: Nationalism, Gender and Race’, in Imperial Leather: Race,
Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York, Routledge, 1995), p. 354.
44 Paredes, Combater Duas Vezes, p. 111.
10 Jeremy Ball

Angolan parliament to make all abortions, without exception, illegal, led a protest march
through Luanda culminating at the Hero
ınas monument.45 The protestors reclaimed the
hero
ınas as trailblazers who challenged the MPLA’s gender inequality and patriarchy,
although they did not go so far as to challenge the MPLA’s legitimacy. The protest also
attracted supporters of multiple political parties, which indicates the possibility of interparty
coalitions along gendered lines.

Agostinho Neto Mausoleum

Angola’s first president, Agostinho Neto, is memorialised in two prominent monuments in
Luanda as well as in multiple monuments located in provincial capitals.46 Since
independence, the MPLA has made a point of celebrating Neto as the nation’s founding
father and modern Angola’s first hero.47 Given Neto’s early death in 1979 after only four
years in office, the MPLA associates him with the aspirations of the early years of
independence and the desire to create a more humane and economically just Angolan
society. For this reason, he is celebrated not only as a political leader, but also as a poet with
a deep sense of Angolanidade – a sufficiently malleable figure and therefore perfect for
promoting the MPLA to multiple and diverse audiences. For example, during the 1980s the
MPLA often presented Neto as emblematic of the tropes of Angolanidade in order to stave
off criticisms from UNITA that the MPLA was not African enough. Moreover, the
geopolitical context of the 1980s – specifically Soviet and Cuban military support for the
MPLA – is also visible in the built mythscape of the Neto monuments.
The most significant of these monuments is the Agostinho Neto Mausoleum and Cultural
Centre, a 120-metre tower in Luanda’s Praia do Bispo neighbourhood. The MPLA
commissioned the monument from the USSR in 1982 and it reflects a Soviet modernist
style, with many likening it to a rocket ship in appearance. As Ros Gray notes, ‘the
mausoleum was intended as the centrepiece for an Angolan Red Square that would face the
Bay of Luanda’.48 It sat unfinished during the long civil war, but in 2014 a North Korean
construction firm finished a full rehabilitation of the site, which is now open to the public.49
Like many of its Eastern Bloc allies, the MPLA chose to embalm its leader and make his
body available for viewing in a specially constructed sarcophagus that sits at the centre of
the mausoleum. The exterior walls of the crypt holding the sarcophagus contain excerpts

45 Human Rights Watch, ‘Angola: Respect Women’s Right to March’, 17 March 2017, available at https://
www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/17/angola-respect-womens-right-march, retrieved 10 October 2019.
46 For a critical assessment of the Agostinho Neto monument in Huambo – erected on the plinth of the
colonial-era monument to the founder of Huambo [Nova Lisboa], Norton de Matos – see O. Castro, ‘Agora
Chamam-lhe Interesse Hist
orico’, Folha 8, 8 January 2016, available at http://jornalf8.net/2016/agora-
chamam-lhe-interesse-historico/, retrieved 10 October 2019.
47 For an interesting study analysis of memorialisation of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, see Kodzo Gavua,
‘Monuments and Negotiations of Power in Ghana’, in Peterson (ed.), The Politics of Heritage in Africa,
pp. 97–112.
48 R. Gray, ‘A Lingering Lusotopia: Thinking the Planetary from Angola’, ARTMargins, 3, 1 (2014), p. 23.
49 North Korean firms have constructed several prominent monuments in southern Africa, including both
Zimbabwe’s and Namibia’s Heroes’ Acre monuments. For more on these monuments, see R.P. Werbner,
‘Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun: Postwars of the Dead, Memory and Inscription in Zimbabwe’, in
Werbner (ed.), Memory and the Postcolony, p. 83; Heroes’ Acre Committee, ‘The Unknown Soldier:
Inauguration of Heroes’ Acre, 26 August 2002’ (Windhoek, Heroes’ Acre Committee, 2002); and Becker,
‘Commemorating Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana’, p. 525. Also see ‘North Korea’s “Biggest” Export –
Giant Statues’, BBC News, 16 February 2016, available at http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35569277,
retrieved 10 October 2019. On 30 November 2016 the United Nations Security Council banned the export
of monuments by the North Korean regime as part of Security Council Resolution 2321: G. Myre, ‘For
Autocrats in Need of Statues, North Korea Is No Longer An Option’, National Public Radio, 30 November
2016, available at http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/11/30/503884102/for-autocrats-in-need-of-
statues-north-korea-is-no-longer-an-option, retrieved 10 October 2019.
 From Cabinda to Cunene 11

from Neto’s Proclamation of Independence on 11 November 1975 and the eulogy that
MPLA leader L
ucio Lara gave after Neto’s death. In the Proclamation of Independence,
Neto describes a new, just Angola that meets the necessities of all the people; it calls for the
state to provide medical assistance and guarantee equality. In Neto’s words, Angola is
envisioned as a socialist, workers’ state led by the MPLA. This idealistic rhetoric aimed to
educate the Angolan masses, but it also resonated with the stated aspirations of the MPLA’s
Soviet and Cuban allies. Neto ends his proclamation with an overarching call for national
unity: ‘[f]rom Cabinda to Cunene, united by the feeling of our common homeland, cemented
by the blood shed for freedom, we honour the heroes taken in five centuries of resistance,
and we will strive to live up to their example’.50
Neto’s bold optimism about Angola’s future is celebrated throughout the Mausoleum/
Cultural Centre. The interior of the structure includes reception rooms, a library/reading
room, and a terrace with spectacular views of the city and parade grounds. The grandeur of
these rooms reflects the MPLA’s current hegemonic power, removed from the struggles of
Angolan citizens, but internal glosses within the space stress Neto’s deep sense of humanity.
During multiple visits in June 2014, I joined several groups of school children on guided
tours that emphasised the sacrifices, family life, and heroism of Neto. Exhibits within the
Mausoleum detail Neto’s marriage to a Portuguese woman, provide bibliographic details
about their three children, and in essence argue for a non-racist society in which all are
welcome. The effort to explain Neto’s family may be an effort to blunt criticism from
UNITA and others in Angolan society who criticise the MPLA as an organisation made up
of foreigners and creoles. Thus, Neto hagiography has become another tool for nation
building.51 He signifies one of the foundational narratives of the MPLA’s exclusive
nationalism. The Mausoleum avoids all discussion of his most troubling and controversial
decisions, such as the massacre of thousands carried out by the state after an alleged coup
against the leaders of the MPLA in 1977.52
Central to the MPLA’s representation of Neto is the empathic image of the leader as
a poet of the Angolan people. As Gray writes, ‘the poems evoke an Angolan terrain
that, although lacking social justice, is imagined as verdant and prodigious [ … ] and that
functioned as nostalgic manifestos for the future’.53 Neto’s poetry is prominently
featured not only at the Mausoleum, but also in provincial monuments honouring him
across Angola. His verse has also been adopted in a variety of multimedia formats
designed to reach further than the rooted monuments. For example, in the film No
Caminho de Estrelas homenagem ao Poeta Camarada Ant
onio Agostinho Neto (1980),
director Ant
onio Ole begins with aerial views of Angola’s natural beauty overlaid with
voices reading a selection of Neto’s poems. The first part of the title, ‘No Caminho de
Estrelas’ (Pathway to the Stars) derives from one of Neto’s most famous poems; and
the poetry, written in Portuguese, serves to communicate the Angolanidade at the heart
of MPLA nationalism. The irony is that current Angolan reality strays so far from the
romantic vision presented. Rival national leaders who sought to challenge Neto’s
authority from within the MPLA, including Mario Pinto de Andrade, Viriato da Cruz,
Nito Alves, and Z
e Van Dunem, remain excluded from the hierarchy of nationalist

50 Neto, ‘Discurso do Presidente Agostinho Neto na Proclamaç~ao da Independ^encia’.

51 For comparative examples of nationalist biographies used for nationalism, see Werbner, ‘Smoke from the
Barrel of a Gun’, in Werbner (ed.), Memory and the Postcolony, p. 88.
52 L. Pawson, In the Name of the People: Angola’s Forgotten Massacre (London, I.B. Tauris & Co., 2014); A.
Botelho, Holocausto em Angola, Mem
orias entre o C

arcere e o Cemit
erio (Lisboa, Veja, 2008); D. Mateus


and M. Alvaro, Purga em Angola, Nito Alves, Sita Valles, Z
e Van Dunem, o 27 de Maio de 1977 (Porto,
Ediç~oes ASA, 2007).
53 Gray, ‘A Lingering Lusotopia’, pp. 6–7.
12 Jeremy Ball

heroes.54 More importantly, the socio-economic realities of Angola are far from the
socialist workers’ state envisioned by Neto in his independence-day address.55

The War Monuments

There is perhaps no more layered historical site in Luanda than S~ao Miguel Fort. Begun in
the 16th century as Portugal’s seat of military power in west-central Africa, its commanding
presence overlooking the city demands attention. After the last Portuguese authorities left
Luanda in November 1975, the MPLA’s army, FAPLA, took control of S~ao Miguel Fort.
Soon after independence, the government opened a small museum inside the fort. In the
overgrown courtyard, a pile of discarded colonial-era monuments lay in a heap. In 2013,
after extensive renovation, the government opened the Museum of the Armed Forces, which
Gray describes aptly as ‘a building that through its d
ecor and the objects it houses forms a
palimpsest of Angola’s violent colonial and postcolonial history’.56
An earlier layer of history is displayed in the courtyard of the fort. Eight colonial-era
statues that used to be displayed on pedestals throughout Luanda and which were removed
after independence are displayed in two groups. The statues stand in a sort of cemetery of
colonial-era heroes: Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal; Diogo C~ao, who explored
the Angolan coast in the late 15th century; Vasco da Gama, who discovered a sea route from
Europe to India; Paulo Dias de Novais, the Portuguese founder of the city of Luanda in
1573; Salvador Correia, who reconquered Angola from Dutch forces in 1648; General
Henrique de Carvalho, a 19th-century explorer who led an expedition to Lunda in eastern
Angola; and Pedro Alexandrino da Cunha, a 19th-century governor of Angola57 (see
Figure 3). A nameplate is affixed to each statue, but there is no explanation as to each
statue’s history or how it came to be in the fort.58 This curatorial silence is instructive of
how far Angola’s post-independence historical narrative ignores the Portuguese presence,
except when depicted as a repressive force to be overcome. Whether intentional or not, the
lack of an explanatory narrative sends a message that the colonial era is finished, not even
worthy of commentary and curation.
The courtyard also displays military hardware, including pieces of captured South
African weaponry, and the car used by Agostinho Neto during his exile in Congo-
Brazzaville. Next to a South African jet a plaque explains the plane’s capture during ‘the
battle of South African aggression’. The captured South Africa weaponry signals the threat
of a foreign enemy, the hated apartheid regime of South Africa. The discourse about South
African aggression, with virtually nothing about the civil war or the MPLA’s nationalist

54 For a comparative case study of Zimbabwe, see Alexander, McGregor and Ranger, Violence & Memory,
p. 254.
55 De Oliveira, Magnificent and Beggar Land; A.A. Tomás, ‘Refracted Governmentality: Space, Politics and
Social Structure in Contemporary Luanda’ (PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2012).
56 Gray, ‘A Lingering Lusotopia’, p. 3.
57 In June 2016 the government removed one of the last colonial-era monuments in Luanda, a statue of Pedro
Alexandrino da Cunha, governor-general of Angola between 1845 and 1848, honoured for his efforts to end
the Atlantic slave trade. The statue will be displayed in São Miguel Fort alongside the other colonial-era
relics. See, ‘Petição Contra as Obras no Antigo Largo Pedro Alexandrino da Cunha’, Novo Jornal, 1 June
2017, available at http://www.novojornal.co.ao/sociedade/interior/peticao-contra-as-obras-no-antigo-largo-
pedro-alexandrino-da-cunha-39114.html, retrieved on 5 July 2018.
58 Colonial-era monuments have been removed across southern African since independence. In neighboring
Namibia, for example, one of Windhoek’s most prominent colonial-era monuments, the Reiterdenkmal, was
removed from its pedestal and is now displayed inside the city’s former German fort. For more on this
monument, see The Equestrian Monument (Reiterdenkmal) 1912–1914: A Chronological Documentation of
Reports, Newspaper Clippings and Photos/Illustrations (Windhoek, Kuiseb Verlag, 2014). On Mozambican
monuments, see G. Verheij, ‘Monumentos Coloniais em Tempos Pós-Coloniais. A Estatuária de Lourenço
Marques’, in B.F. Torras (ed.), Actas do IV Congresso de História da Arte Portuguesa em Homenagem a
José-Augusto França (Lisboa, Associação Portuguesa de Historiadores da Arte, 2014), pp. 36–45.
 From Cabinda to Cunene 13

Figure 3. Decommissioned monuments (from left to right: Lu
ıs Cam~oes, Vasco da Gama, Dom Afonso
Henriques), S~ao Miguel Fort, Luanda. Source: Photograph by the author.

rivals FNLA or UNITA, is a key component of the MPLA’s effort to imprint on Angola’s
mythscape the idea that the MPLA saved the nation from hostile foreign powers. Although
there is some truth in this official version of events, the silence about why FNLA and
UNITA fought the MPLA, and the reification of this narrative in public monuments and
museums, entrenches the MPLA’s discourse to the effect that it saved the nation and
safeguarded the interests of all Angolans. The MPLA has effectively rewritten the history of
Angola’s civil war not as one of contested nationalism, but as one of a legitimate nationalist
movement fighting foreign intervention by racists and imperialists and their
Angolan proxies.
The most recent layer of historical narrative installed at the fort is a celebratory entrance
arch constructed to commemorate the ceasefire in Angola’s civil war, signed on 4 April
2002. It was on this day, ‘Peace and Reconciliation Day’ in Angola, in 2013, that the new
museum was inaugurated. The bronze relief on the left side of the arch depicts the fighting
during the war for liberation with the face of Neto and the Angolan flag. The panel to the
right depicts the signing of the 2002 ceasefire between the MPLA and UNITA and
proclaims ‘abraços de reconciliaç~ao’ (embraces of reconciliation), but the image betrays its
own false intention via revisionist mythscaping. Angola’s second president, Jos
e Eduardo
dos Santos (1979–2017), is depicted in the panel even though he did not sign the 2002 peace
agreement.59 Regardless, the MPLA heralded dos Santos as ‘the architect of peace’ at the
signing ceremony and in state media.60 The scenes celebrated in the reliefs carefully avoid
the brutality of the civil war, which killed roughly 500,000 people, and displaced over a
million. The image of the ceasefire also belies the fact that the ceasefire resulted from the
government’s targeted assassination of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi. In its imagery and

59 The commanders in chief of the FAA (Angolan Armed Forces), Armando da Cruz Neto, and of UNITA’s
armed forces, General Geraldo Sachipengo Kamorteiro, signed the Memorandum of Understanding on 4
April 2002.
60 Pearce, Political Identity and Conflict, p. 165. For more on the constructed MPLA narrative of dos Santos
as the ‘Architect of Peace’, see Schubert, ‘2002, Year Zero’, p. 10.
14 Jeremy Ball

design, the message is clear: 1) the MPLA led the fight for independence and brokered the
2002 peace agreement; and 2) the interparty tragedies and divisions of the war are to be
erased from commemoration in the new Angolan nationalism.
In addition to the celebratory entry gate, the government erected a 75-metre flagpole,
officially designated the flag monument, visible through much of the central city. The height
symbolises Angolan independence in 1975 and the monument is dedicated to the heroes of
the homeland.61 Like earlier layers of history on display at S~ao Miguel Fort, these latest
additions tell a story of triumphant nation building. This mythscape reifies the MPLA as the
founders of modern, independent Angola while also paying homage to the hegemonic
political structure and petroleum wealth of the new nation. The vista from S~ao Miguel Fort
is of innumerable cranes and new skyscrapers doting Luanda’s skyline, which serves as
another type of monument to the new, forward-looking, prosperous Angola, a different sort
of economic mythscape.62 And yet, as Ant
onio Tom
as argues, oil revenues have allowed the
MPLA to erect infrastructure without the oversight or input of its citizens because the
government receives the vast bulk of its resources through payments from oil companies,
and thus does not answer to individual taxpayers.63 Ambitious housing projects and the
construction boom in Luanda send powerful messages to the Angolan public about the
government’s plans for the future. According to Pitcher and Moorman, ‘[i]f they are
successful, they [will] bury a complicated, torturous, divisive past by delivering a future that
is spatially and materially distinct from what went before’.64
The restricted version of history captured in the physicality of these commemorative sites
acquires an official voice within the fort’s main gallery. There, the story of the liberation
movement for independence and against foreign aggression is told as an inspirational story,
rather than as the contentious, divided past which happened.65 The narrative gives pride of
place to the MPLA, and includes only two small display cases featuring documents about
the other two independence movements, the FNLA and UNITA, and their respective leaders.
By focusing on the colonial era, the displays avoid discussion of the civil war. The visitor
comes away thinking of the FNLA and UNITA as small footnotes in the grand narrative of
Angolan independence.
A major component of the museum’s narrative focuses on ‘the battle against South
African aggression’. The South African invasion, Operation Savanna, that began in October
1975 and was stopped by combined MPLA/Cuban forces just days before independence, is
covered in detail, and includes displays of captured South African uniforms and artillery.
The uniform presumably belonged to one of the four South African soldiers captured in
December 1975 in Cuanza Sul Province.66 It is striking that hardly a mention is made of any
other foreign intervention in the Angolan civil war. The narrative emphasises the MPLA and
its Cuban comrades against fascist Portuguese and then racist South Africans. The extent of
Cuban aid is downplayed. In this part of the exhibit, FNLA or UNITA are mentioned as

61 B. Manje, ‘Bandeira é Monumento’, Jornal de Angola, 4 April 2013, p. 2

62 For analysis of the MPLA’s housing policy, see A. Pitcher and M.J. Moorman, ‘City Building in Post-
Conflict, Post-Socialist Luanda: Burying the Past with Phantasmagorias of the Future’, in N. Edjabe and E.
Pieterse (eds), African Cities Reader III: Land, Property and Value (online), (The African Centre for Cities
and Chimurenga Magazine, 2015), pp. 123–35; A.A. Tomás and R.C. Afonso, ‘Living Dangerously in
Petroluanda’, in N. Edjabe and E. Pieterse (eds), African Cities Reader III: Land, Property and Value,
pp. 111–22.
63 Tomás, ‘Refracted Governmentality’, p. 101.
64 Pitcher and Moorman, ‘City Building in Post-Conflict, Post-Socialist Luanda’, p. 125.
65 For analysis of a similar process of creating historical narratives as inspiration tale to consecrate the policies
of the ruling party in South Africa, see D. Peterson, ‘Introduction: Heritage Management in Colonial and
Contemporary Africa’, in Peterson (ed.), The Politics of Heritage in Africa, pp. 16–17.
66 G. Baines, ‘The Saga of South African POWs in Angola, 1975–82’, Scientia Militaria, South African
Journal of Military Studies, 40, 2 (2012), p. 106.
 From Cabinda to Cunene 15

clients of outside forces (the FNLA of Zaire and UNITA of apartheid South Africa). The
exhibit ends with a celebratory mural of the MPLA/Cuban victory at the Battle of
Kifangondo and the victorious declaration of independence by the MPLA on 11
November 1975.
The bulk of the exhibit focuses on the exploitation of Portuguese colonialism and the
start of armed struggle, beginning with the uprising against forced cotton production in
the Baixa de Kassanje on 4 January 1961, followed by outbreaks to free political
prisoners in Luanda on 4 February 1961, followed by the violent uprising on 15 March
1961. The chronology of these uprisings is accurate but surprising within the mythscape,
given that the MPLA officially recognises the official start date of the war for liberation
as 4 February 1961 and has encoded this chronology into other parts of the national
mythscape, including the designation of 4 February as the ‘Beginning of the Armed
Fight for National Liberation Day’ and the commemoration of the 4 de Fevereiro
monument in Luanda. The MPLA declared 4 February as the official start of the fight
for liberation and claims that its members led the attack on the prison on 4 February
1961. Messiant writes that this claim is untrue and that none of the attackers of the
prison identified as MPLA members, while the unexpected departure from the traditional
narrative within the fort’s exhibit is curious due to its sanction within an officially
approved mythscape.67
Within the MPLA’s nationalist narrative of overcoming rival nationalist movements and
foreign foes, the Battle of Kifangondo is celebrated as an iconic moment. Thus, a grand
monument commemorating the victory was the government’s first significant monument
constructed after the signing of the 2002 ceasefire ending the civil war. On 9 November
2004, Angolan president Jos
e Eduardo dos Santos and Minister of Culture Boaventura
Cardoso inaugurated the Kifangondo monument. Located 23 kilometres outside Luanda on
the Morro da Kifangondo overlooking the Bengo river, the Kifangondo monument
commemorates an important MPLA/Cuban victory that stopped the FNLA/Zairean/
mercenary/ELP68 advance on the capital on 10 November 1975, the eve of independence.69
The armed forces of the FNLA (i.e. ELNA, the National Liberation Army of Angola) aimed
to enter Luanda before the declaration of independence on 11 November 1975. ELNA forces
gathered at the Morro da Cal and proceeded along the Panguila–Kifangondo Road. FAPLA
and FAR (Revolutionary Armed Forces, of Cuba) forces, from their positions on
Kifangondo Hill, resisted and by 1800 hours on 10 November had stopped the ELNA-led
advance.70 General Salviano de Jesus Sequeira ‘Kianda’ explains that five Soviet truck-
mounted BM-21 rockets proved decisive in the defence of Kifangondo and thus in stopping
the FNLA advance on the capital.71
Rui de Matos, a sculptor and high-ranking official of the FAA (Angolan Armed Forces),
designed the monument and Tania Lee and a team of sculptors created the statues and reliefs
in South Africa. The monument reportedly cost US$4,500,000 and took two and a half years
to complete. It weighs just under eight tons and stands nine metres high. It is made up of

67 Messiant, ‘“Em Angola, Até o Passado é Imprevisível”’, pp. 845–6.

68 The Exército de Libertação Português (Army of Portuguese Liberation, ELP), made up of former Portuguese
military and settlers. They were referred to by MPLA supporters as ‘the band of Portuguese mercenaries’.
For more on ELP, see F.G. Osório, ‘Reflexões sobre a Batalha de Quifangondo’, in Miguel Júnior (ed.), A
Batalha de Kifangondo, 1975 – Factos e Documentos (Luanda, Mayamba Editora, 2013); and P. Silva, F.
Esteves, V. Moreira, Angola – Comandos Especiais contra Cubanos (Braga, Braga Editora, 1978).
69 M. Júnior (ed.), A Batalha de Kifangondo.
70 General T.A. de Castro, ‘O ELNA e a Batalha de Quifangondo’, in Júnior (ed.), A Batalha de Kifangondo,
pp. 18–20.
71 General S. de Jesus Sequeira ‘Kianda’, ‘A Influência da Batalha de Kifangondo no Contexto Nacional e
Internacional’, in Júnior (ed.), A Batalha de Kifangondo, p. 28.
16 Jeremy Ball

two figures standing on a central plinth and six large relief panels that depict various scenes
from the battle. According to Minister Cardoso, the monument
pays tribute to all those who, based on conviction, fought for independence … and we make
special mention of the Cuban fighters, who fought arm in arm with Angolans, in the
trenches, making possible 11 November 1975, sacrificing their own lives and sealing with
blood the feelings of friendship and solidarity with the Angolan people.72

The public recognition of Cuban fighters differed markedly from the period of independence
when the Cuban presence was deliberately played down so as not to threaten the MPLA’s
claim for international recognition. In fact, after the MPLA’s declaration of independence on
11 November 1975, the battle for control of the country and for international recognition had
only just begun.
The central plinth with a bronze statue of the FAPLA commander in the battle, David
Mois
es ‘Ndozi’, is encircled by a semicircle of six bronze panels illustrating various moments
of the battle and the arrest and court trial of 13 foreign mercenaries (ten British and three
Americans) captured in early December 1975, several weeks after Angolan independence.73
On 13 December, four South African soldiers had also been captured in Cuanza Sul Province,
only 300 kilometres from Luanda. A relief depicting the trial of the mercenaries in June 1976
(Figure 4) illustrates the MPLA’s view that foreign aggression threatened the new nation’s
sovereignty.74 The relief of the mercenaries’ trial depicts a pregnant Angolan woman
testifying, and as her individual testimony is not provided on the relief itself, her mute voice
becomes superimposed with the official, collective sentiments being voices by the crowds in
the adjacent relief: ‘Mercenaries sow struggle in Angola’, ‘Health workers help the
government of the Republic of Angola’, ‘Death to the assassins of the people’, and ‘Death to
the mercenaries’.75 Within the relief, the female figure again represents the birth of a new
Angola, a theme that emerged during the monument’s inauguration when President dos
Santos echoed the idea that the Battle of Kifangondo made possible the birth of Angola.
Within this mythscape, the depiction of crowds of ordinary Angolans indicates vast
popular support for the MPLA, while the pregnant woman testifying at the trial represents
the justice of independent Angola, even for mercenaries. The reality, of course, was more
complex. Individual voices, especially dissenting voices, during the independence era were
intentionally silenced. Large segments of the population distrusted the MPLA and supported
competing nationalist movements. The relief showing large crowds of chanting citizens
depicts a demonstration of support for the trial of the mercenaries organised by the MPLA,
through its Regional Department for the Organisation of the Masses, on 9 June 1976 in
Nazar
e Square.76 The capture and subsequent trial of the mercenaries bolstered the MPLA’s
legitimacy at a crucial time. Angola’s People’s Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced four of the
mercenaries to death by firing squad in June 1976.77 The other nine received sentences of up

72 ‘President da República Inaugura Monumentos a Batalha de Kifangondo’, ANGOP Agência Angola Press, 9
November 2004, available at http://www.angop.ao/angola/pt_pt/noticias/politica/2004/10/46/Presidente-
Republica-inaugura-monumento-batalha-Kifangondo,b42f0087-1380-42e8-84ef-dfa53f8e0a2e.html, retrieved
4 July 2018.
73 W. Burchett and D. Roebuck, The Whores of War: Mercenaries Today (Penguin, 1977); Baines, ‘The Saga’;
and A. Mockler, The New Mercenaries (New York, Paragon Publishers, 1987).
74 Sequeira ‘Kianda’, ‘A Influência da Batalha de Kifangondo’, p. 30.
75 The actual woman was Senda Isabel, in whose hut several of the mercenaries had hidden. See Mockler, The
New Mercenaries, pp. 221–3.
76 ‘People of Luanda Urged to Support Mercenaries’ Trial’, Luanda Domestic Service, 8 June 1976; Daily
Report Sub-Saharan Africa (FBIS-SSA-76-112), 9 June 1976.
77 W. Burchett and D. Roebuck, The Whores of War, and A. Mockler, The New Mercenaries. On the separate
case of South African soldiers captured during and after the South African invasion of Angola in 1975–76,
see Baines, ‘The Saga’.
 From Cabinda to Cunene 17

Figure 4. Relief depicting trial of the mercenaries, Kifangondo monument. Source: Photograph by the author.

to 30 years in Luanda’s S~ao Paulo prison. In spite of calls from heads of state to commute
the death sentences to long terms of imprisonment, President Neto decided to proceed with
the executions. As Neto explained: ‘[w]e are applying justice in Angola not only in the name
of our martyred people but also to the benefit of the brother peoples of Namibia, Zimbabwe
and all the people of the world against whom imperialism is already preparing new
mercenary aggression’.78 The MPLA put the US, UK, and South African supporters of the
FNLA and UNITA on trial for ‘imperialist intervention’, and in the process earned itself
legitimacy.79 The fact that the trial was the first time a group of mercenaries had been put on
trial by a government against whom they were fighting was also historically significant. In
February 1976, the Organisation of African Unity recognised the MPLA as Angola’s de
facto government.
At the 2002 inauguration of the Kifangondo monument, General Salviano de Jesus
Sequeira ‘Kianda’ argued that the Battle of Kifangondo and the independence of Angola
contributed to changing the geopolitical face of southern Africa.80 The Kifangondo
monument is thus part of the MPLA’s mythscape celebrating the defeat of foreign
aggression and apartheid, but it also resonates with the most common tropes and
contradictions of the MPLA’s memorial sites.

Conclusion
In order to combat the coordinated power of the MPLA’s mythscape, those excluded from
its narratives have turned to creative means and alternative spaces to insert their version of
history into gaps and silences, when and if possible. A striking feature of Angola’s
commemorative landscape is the relative lack of dialogue or space for alternative historical

78 Cited in C. Dempster and D. Tomkins with Michel Parry, Fire Power (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1980),
p. 460.
79 ‘Angolan Membership in OAU Blow to Imperialism’, Vladimir Petrov Commentary, 11 February 1976,
translated into English and published in ‘Daily Report: Soviet Union’, Foreign Broadcast Information
Service (FBIS-SOV-76-030), 12 February 1976.
80 Sequeira ‘Kianda’, ‘A Influência da Batalha de Kifangondo’, p. 30.
18 Jeremy Ball

interpretations or understandings of the past. It is not even clear who the marginalised heroes
might be, due to a lack of public discussion on the issue, although competing nationalists
from movements other than the MPLA, or early nationalists such as the late 19th-century
newspaper editor Jos
e de Fontes Pereira, offer obvious candidates. Silenced critics of the
MPLA, such as Nito Alves and thousands of others killed in the massacres of 1977, and
other silenced dissidents such as Mario Pinto de Andrade, Viriato da Cruz, Revolta Activa
members, and Daniel Chipenda and others from the Revolta de Leste, offer other
possibilities.
The scarcity of competing narratives results from the MPLA’s construction of an
Angolan nationalism that celebrates the party’s role as liberator and silences its critics as
enemies of the Angolan nation. Moreover, the genesis of the monuments discussed above
came from official channels within the government with little to no input from the public.
As Schubert argues, ‘the master narrative of the “New Angola” is also physically imposed
on the urban cityscape; similarly, any substantive political dialogue about the war is
precluded as a threat to the “gains of peace”, which are measured again in purely material
terms of the built environment’.81 The civil society organisation Associaç~ao Kalu advocates
to preserve Luanda’s historical buildings, but the MPLA has largely ignored its input.82 The
lack of input from citizens is a common feature of contemporary Angola, due to a climate
of fear.
An unintended consequence of this top-down model of monument building is that the
public may simply ignore at least some of the more remote and brutalist monuments. For
example, the Kifangondo monument is located atop a hill on the outskirts of Luanda. When
I visited in July 2014, the monument was closed to the public and had the look of a grand,
yet abandoned space.83 In July 2017, in one of his last acts as president, Jos
e Eduardo dos
Santos opened the Victory of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale monument in the remote
province of Cuando Cubango.84 It is hard to imagine many Angolans visiting this remote
war monument in the (still) mine-strewn region. Angolans’ relative lack of interest in these
two grandiose war monuments reflects the limits of this specific strain of the MPLA’s
master narrative.
Even before the managed political transition in late 2017 from Jos
e Eduardo dos
Santos’s nearly four decades in power to the new presidency of Jo~ao Lourenço, Angolan
intellectuals began to challenge the MPLA’s version of exclusive nationalist
legitimacy.85 For example, the recent (2015) documentary film titled Independ^encia Esta

e a Nossa Mem
oria (Independence: This is Our Memory) produced by the Luanda-based
Associaç~ao Tchiweka de Documentaç~ao includes significant space for the memories of
FNLA and UNITA soldiers. The fact that the Associaç~ao Tchiweka de Documentaç~ao is

81 Schubert, ‘2002, Year Zero’, p. 1.

82 The Associação Kalu formed in 2003 due to members’ concerns about the loss of historic buildings in
Luanda. The group focuses on educating the public about Luanda’s built environment and argues for
historical preservation. For more information, see F. André, ‘Associação Kalu’, RedeAngola, available at
http://www.redeangola.info/especiais/associacao-kalu/, retrieved 4 July 2018.
83 Becker notes a similar uninterest in grandiose war monuments in Namibia: see Becker, ‘Commemorating
Heroes in Windhoek and Eenhana’, p. 532.
84 For a range of perspectives on the significance of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, see ‘Angola Forum 2018:
30th Anniversary of the Battle of the Cuito Cuanavale’, 23 March 2018, Chatham House, Royal Institute of
International Affairs, London, available at https://www.chathamhouse.org/event/angola-forum-2018-30th-
anniversary-battle-cuito-cuanavale, retrieved 1 July 2018. For a critical assessment of the monument’s
message and cost, see O. Castro, ‘Como Hitler, Matar e Mentir’, Folha 8 (6 April 2017), available at http://
jornalf8.net/2017/hitler-matar-mentir/, retrieved 1 July 2018.
85 J. Pearce, ‘Changing Nationalisms: From War to Peace in Angola’, in Morier-Genoud (ed.), Sure Road?,
p. 212.
 From Cabinda to Cunene 19

the family foundation of the late MPLA leader L
ucio Lara is significant because it
indicates that even within elite MPLA circles there is a new openness to
alternative narratives.
Non-monumental platforms and spaces have become increasingly important as sites
for public or artistic discourse and dissent. Printed alternative versions of Angolan
memory and nationalism are difficult to find and exist almost exclusively in digital
domains. These counter-narratives include perspectives that are sharply critical of the
MPLA.86 For example, blogs such as Maka Angola, run by investigative journalist
Rafael Marques de Morais, expose government corruption.87 In a country where Internet
access is limited and expensive, Angolan ‘Wikipedia pirates’ are also embedding content
in Wikipedia articles and linking them to closed Facebook groups, ‘creating a totally free
and clandestine file sharing network in a country where mobile Internet data is extremely
expensive’.88 However, the fragility of such spaces for challenging hegemonic narratives
and those in power was made clear in March 2015 with the imprisonment for ‘conspiring
against the government’ of hip hop artist Luaty Beir~ao and 16 other critics of the dos
Santos regime.89 Beir~ao was sentenced on 28 March 2016 to five and a half years in
prison.90 In spite of this repression, Beir~ao, who was released early from prison, voiced
optimism about President Jo~ao Lourenço’s recent moves to allow more space for
civil society.91
Monumentality, in essence, is antithetical to the notion of ‘alternative and pluralistic’
national histories. As a result, non-monumental platforms and spaces have become
increasingly important as sites for public or artistic discourse and dissent. So, while it is
not surprising that these alternative narratives would be silenced or excised from the
monumental aesthetic, their very censure invites dissidents and critics within Angola to
develop new, creative, and more flexible/fluid templates and aesthetics for their
commentaries. They are not necessarily suggesting another ‘monumental’ version of
history, but ultimately these other forms of memory require the monumental narrative in
order to assert their power as revisions or disputes with the formal narratives. They work,
in a sense, in concert with one another to demonstrate both the weaknesses and hegemony
of the monumental nationalist aesthetic – a call to scepticism rather than outright
dismantling, which would serve as a warning to others about the genre itself. It remains to
be seen whether these small and transitive openings will ultimately overcome the ‘culture
of fear’ and hegemonic modes of nationalism that have been constructed in post-
liberation Angola.92

86 For example, see ‘Angola Terra Nossa’, available at http://angolaterranossa.blogspot.fr/ retrieved 4 July
2018; Reviver Estórias, available at http://reviverestorias.blogspot.fr/, retrieved 4 July 2018.
87 ‘Maka Angola: Em Defesa da Democracia, Contra a Corrupção [Maka Angola: In Defense of Democracy,
Against Corruption]’, available at www.makaangola.org, retrieved 4 July 2018.
88 J. Koebler, ‘Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems with Digital Colonialism’,
Motherboard, 23 March 2016, available at https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nz7eyg/wikipedia-zero-
facebook-free-basics-angola-pirates-zero-rating, retrieved 4 July 2018.
89 P, Wilmot, ‘How an Underground Hip Hop Artist and his Book Club Threaten Angola’s Regime’, 1 April
2016, available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/phil-wilmot/how-underground-hip-hop-
artist-and-his-book-club-threaten-angolas-regime, retrieved 1 July 2018.
90 The prosecution of musicians recalls silencing of musicians that took place in 1977 (Moorman, Intonations,
pp. 165–89).
91 ‘Angola: Dos Santos a Lourenço, Transição Inesperada, Transformação Duradoura?’ IFRI Conference on
Angola, 26 April 2018, available at https://soundcloud.com/ifri/angola-politics-and-institutions-under-
lourenco, retrieved 3 July 2018.
92 D. Birmingham, ‘Is “Nationalism” a Feature of Angola’s Cultural Identity’, in Morier-Genoud (ed.), Sure
Road?, p. 220.
20 Jeremy Ball

Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) and the
Center for Lusophone Research for a Short-Term Research Grant, which made possible a
June 2014 research trip to Luanda. A grant from Dickinson College’s Research and
Development Committee funded a supplemental research trip to Lisbon in spring 2017.

JEREMY BALL
Dickinson College, PO Box 1773, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 17013, USA. E-mail:
ballj@dickinson.edu