/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/LITERATURE-ANGOLA: Disillusioned with a Revolution

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 20 2000 (IPS) - Angola’s independence unleashes corruption and a lucrative business – in the guise of a sect that takes advantage of the gullibility and desire for mysticism of the nation’s people – in the latest novel by Angolan writer, Pepetela.

“A geraçao da utopia” (The Utopia Generation), written in Portuguese and recently arrived in Brazil, with its important market of readers, reflects the path of Pepetela’s disillusionment, hinted at in his first novel, “Mayombe,” though more thoroughly developed in its historical context in this new work.

The novelist has chosen four moments in history and four different locations for this novel. The first is Lisbon in 1961, where Angolan students dream of independence for their home country and a more just society.

It was that year, in the African community in Portugal, that the first armed actions of the liberation movement originated.

And already the internal contradictions of the future nation’s struggle for independence were evident. The reverse racism that complicated the participation in the movement by white Angolans – descendents of Portuguese immigrants – is represented by a medical student, Sara, one of the novel’s central characters.

Then in 1972, the novel’s second period, near the Angola-Zambia border, tensions erupt between the fighters and leaders of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which would head independence in 1975, but immediately declare war against two rival, but also anti-colonialist, organisations.

Regional, tribal and personal disputes are entangled with political conflicts. The writer reveals the processes that bring guerrilla chiefs to utilise accidental heroisms as a springboard to ensure their own advantages and future positions at the head of the new country.

The novel follows the conversion of one of the guerrilla fighters, Víctor (alias Mundial), into an opportunist who forsakes the ideals of his days as a university student and militant, as he takes every advantage of his leadership role in the guerrilla’s Eastern Front, on the Zambian border.

Víctor becomes Interior Minister once independence is achieved.

The disenchantment with the new path the movement takes as it builds an independent nation seems to consolidate in the third section of Pepetela’s novel, in 1982. Living as a hermit on a deserted beach, the purest of the guerrilla fighters, Aníbal, or ‘Commander Sabio’ (Wise), continues to fight the ghosts of his past.

Aníbal, whose former guerrilla comrades think he is crazy for having passed up on a leadership post in the new government, fills his days with undersea fishing. He kills a squid that had supposedly frightened him as a child.

He also plants and cares for a tree, talking to it and naming it Mussole, after his lover in the guerrilla war who was murdered by Portuguese soldiers.

“We were going to build a just society, without differences, without privileges, without persecution: the Paradise of the Christians (…) but utopia died and today it smells bad, like any rotting corpse. All that is left is empty discourse,” says the former guerrilla commander.

The final section, “since 1991,” is spent in Luanda, the capital of the country and of corruption, where the three young blacks introduced in Lisbon in 1961 are reunited.

The group is made up of a former football player turned crooked merchant, the former guerrilla who is now the corrupt Interior minister, and a former militant who had proclaimed violence as the slogan of the colonised.

The latter is the mastermind behind a sect that promises cures and sanctity through pleasure, a religion that captures the Angolan people because it adapts to their culture and yearnings. The other two men join forces with the ex-militant, offering money and political power as they build the cult’s first temple.

The public’s enthusiastic reception of the spokesman for the god ‘Dominus’ is evident from the religion’s premiere in Luanda, ensuring a future of huge profits for the three business partners.

This is the historical sum-up of Pepetela, the ‘nom de guerre’ of Arthur Mauricio Pestana dos Santos, known in Brazil for his two historical novels, “Yaka” and “A gloriosa familia: o tempo dos Flamengos,” in addition to “Mayombe” and “The Utopia Generation.”

Commander Sabio can be interpreted as being Pepetela’s alter ego, at least in part, in this latest work. Also sceptical about the possibilities of building a just nation in Angola, one free of discrimination, Pepetela has dedicated himself to the often- hermetic world of literature.

The author’s critical view of the anti-colonial process was evident already in 1971 and 1972 when he was part of the guerrilla force on the Eastern Front and wrote “Mayombe,” a prophetical work about the dissent and frustrated ideals the MPLA, and Angola, would face in the future. Conditions in the country left no room for fantasies.

After independence, Pepetela became vice-minister of Education. Angolan, but white, his superior was a black Angolan who did not speak Portuguese – he was from the northern part of the country, where French predominated among the European languages, and he had studied in Yugoslavia.

This was a typical situation in independent Angola’s first years: a black minister and a white vice-minister, responding to the political and technical requirements, respectively, of the moment. It was just one indicator of the numerous contradictions of the obstacle-plagued construction of African nations.

Tensions between the different ethic groups that make up the Angolan population – which are behind the prolonged civil war that is destroying the country – are mirrored in the distrust surrounding the Portuguese descendents, white and mixed-race, a natural result of the process of black affirmation in the fight for independence.

The Cold War, the Marxism adopted by the MPLA (even though it was completely alien to the local reality), ideological infighting, hostile neighbouring countries, the massive exodus of the Portuguese population from the country just prior to independence (throwing the economy into chaos), are stumbling blocks for the new country.

“The Utopia Generation” lefts its children an independent country, “but then took away its ability to enjoy it,” laments Pepetela through the words of his most lucid and most disillusioned character, the guerrilla commander-turned-hermit on a beach.