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rfmcdonaldReuters notes that Angola gained its independence from Portugal just over 30 years ago. Only now, with the long post-independence civil war finally almost over, has the country felt free to celebrate its independence.
Writing later this month for South Africa's The Independent, Terry Leonard ("'Angola is a rich land with many poor people'") observed that the desperately poor post-war state of Angola is one marked by pell-mell transformation.
I've written earlier about the growth of Angolan Portuguese, how the local dialect of that language is well on its way to replacing Angola's indigenous languages. This isn't necessarily bad, and this doesn't doom Angolan identity any more than Ireland's Anglophone character threatens Irish identity. The degree of this language shift, together with the unplanned growth of Angola's cities not because of their attractiveness so much as because of the unattractiveness of devastated rural areas, does suggest that the process of change in Angola has escaped the control of the current corrupt government. Angolan history, as a point of fact, is marked by a uniquely exploitative and long-lasting engagement with Portugal that was responsible for one of the most thorough destabilizations of indigenous cultures by Westerners anywhere outside of the Americas, with the slave trade undermining the indigenous societies even as Angola's states and chiefdoms were decapitated by colonialism. In Angola, more than anywhere else in central Africa, the past is irretrievable.
With its Lusophone connections, its oil economy, and its fast-depopulating hinterland, it seems like Angola might manage to decouple as thoroughly from its African surroundings as Francophone Gabon to its north. Interesting things will be happening in and around Luanda in the 21st century. After all, look at 20th century Dublin's innovations. Surely similar things must happen in Dublin's Southern-Hemisphere twin.
Angola fought for 14 years against the Portuguese but celebrations on November 11, 1975 to mark its liberation were marred by fighting that was to last another 27 years.
"The war dashed all hopes that came with independence," said Cornelio Caley, professor in African sociology and history at Luanda's Agostinho Neto University, named after the president who led the independence fight and died in 1979.
"In theory, we should be celebrating 30 years of independence, but in practice, we're only beginning celebrate it now," he told Reuters. "It has been delayed."
Writing later this month for South Africa's The Independent, Terry Leonard ("'Angola is a rich land with many poor people'") observed that the desperately poor post-war state of Angola is one marked by pell-mell transformation.
Luanda, the commercial heart of the country and a city untouched by the fighting, gets priority on government spending.
"Rural areas are in shambles and I can't say if it is by design or neglect," said Corsino, who noted some rural areas are controlled by Unita, the former rebel group now an opposition party. "There is no work in Luanda. But in the countryside the people see no hope so they come here."
Most of Luanda's five million people live in ramshackle shacks in fetid and treeless slums that stretch for miles to the horizon. Most are unemployed in a city that oil has made one of the most expensive in Africa.
"Luanda is experiencing the fastest urbanisation in the world," said Lance Bailey, an Atlanta-based architect and urban planner. "It is home to 44 percent of Angola's population and growing at a rate of four percent a year."
The city, he said, was designed for 250 000 so most of the 200 000 new residents each year must live in the slums with either inadequate or no services such as water, sanitation and electricity.
[. . .]
Life remains hard and short. At one cemetery near on Luanda's grimy edge, row after row of graves, mostly unmarked mounds of red clay, have nearly filled the vast plot opened just five years ago. Life expectancy is just 37 years. And in a testament to the quality of health care, Angola has the highest infant mortality rate in the world at 192 deaths for every 1 000 babies.
Many rural roads and bridges remain destroyed by the fighting and many areas are still littered with land-mines.
Efforts to restart Angola's war ravaged agriculture are floundering. Most farmers, even in the fertile and once productive central highlands, live on subsistence farming and UN food aid.
"There is no incentive," said Corsino. "Even if the farmers grow a surplus there is now way to get it to a market."
I've written earlier about the growth of Angolan Portuguese, how the local dialect of that language is well on its way to replacing Angola's indigenous languages. This isn't necessarily bad, and this doesn't doom Angolan identity any more than Ireland's Anglophone character threatens Irish identity. The degree of this language shift, together with the unplanned growth of Angola's cities not because of their attractiveness so much as because of the unattractiveness of devastated rural areas, does suggest that the process of change in Angola has escaped the control of the current corrupt government. Angolan history, as a point of fact, is marked by a uniquely exploitative and long-lasting engagement with Portugal that was responsible for one of the most thorough destabilizations of indigenous cultures by Westerners anywhere outside of the Americas, with the slave trade undermining the indigenous societies even as Angola's states and chiefdoms were decapitated by colonialism. In Angola, more than anywhere else in central Africa, the past is irretrievable.
With its Lusophone connections, its oil economy, and its fast-depopulating hinterland, it seems like Angola might manage to decouple as thoroughly from its African surroundings as Francophone Gabon to its north. Interesting things will be happening in and around Luanda in the 21st century. After all, look at 20th century Dublin's innovations. Surely similar things must happen in Dublin's Southern-Hemisphere twin.
