Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the languages of politics in post-war Angola, with an emphasis on how different versions of the past are promoted by the government and by its opponents to justify rival political claims.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the languages of politics in post-war Angola, with an emphasis on how different versions of the past are promoted by the government and by its opponents to justify rival political claims. During the war, the MPLA as a single party articulated an anti-colonial discourse that cast its opponents as imperialist proxies and enemies of Angola. Since the war ended, the ruling party has revived this nationalist discourse, asserting itself as solely responsible for bringing peace to Angola through its military victory over the UNITA rebel movement. Infrastructure development is presented as part of the same process of delivering peace, through repairing damage done by UNITA. This is accompanied by an ideology of order that casts any kind of opposition as disruptive and potentially dangerous.

As parliamentary opposition has struggled to find its role in a dominant-party system, the most direct challenge to the MPLA has come from outside of electoral politics. Here a new impetus has been provided by the coming of age of a generation of activists whose political consciousness has been shaped after the end of the war. This civic movement, rooted in the present rather than in the past, makes its claims by insisting on a contract between state and citizens. Nevertheless, challenging the official versions of history and asserting alternative claims about events that took place before the span of their own memories has become a central part of the common discourse that activists articulate in contesting the government's legitimacy.