Working the System: A Political Ethnography of the New Angola

263 Pages·2017·2.36 MB·English

by  Jon Schubert

WORKING THE SYSTEM
A POLITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE NEW ANGOLA
JON SCHUBERT
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Ithaca and London
Pour Agathe
C
ONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Language, Names, and Money
Map of Angola
Map of Central Luanda
Introduction
1.  2002, Year Zero
2.  Sambizanga
3.  Angolanidade
4.  Cunhas
5.  A Culture of Immediatism
6.  Against the System, within the System
Conclusion
Epilogue
Glossary and Abbreviations
Notes
References
Index
P
REFACE
Since the end of its civil war on 4 April 2002, Angola has often been
cited as a paradigmatic case of “illiberal peacebuilding,” of successful postwar
transition to economic recovery and formal, political liberalization, closely
managed and tightly controlled by a neo-authoritarian, dominant-party regime.
This book offers an empirically and analytically innovative perspective that
challenges the “Africa rising” narrative pervading mainstream media reports of
postwar Angola, and complicates the clientelist account of Angolan politics that
predominates academic literature. It does so by privileging an ethnographic
approach rooted in urban life, encompassing social strata commonly studied
separately. This book seeks, in doing this, to delocalize the anthropological gaze
and capture the radical social and spatial mobility of everyday life in Luanda.
How political authority and legitimacy are sustained in societies marked by
socioeconomic inequality and political exclusion is a long-standing preoccupation in
the social sciences. By working through the emic notion of the “system” (o sistema),
this book pays attention both to material practices and symbolic repertoires
mobilized in the coproduction of hegemony. For Angolans the system is
simultaneously a moral ordering device, a critique, and a mode d’emploi for their
current political and socioeconomic environment. The system is characterized by
multiple internal tensions: between the stasis and speed of urban life, between
blockages and mobility, between the past and the future, between memory work
and selective amnesia, between fear and hope, and between the affects and
aspirations of power. Through detailed analysis of the practices through which
people work the system, and of the political imaginaries and discursive repertoires
that make the system work, this ethnography looks at the myriad processes
through which relationships between “power” and “the people” are constantly
remade, renegotiated, and dialogically constructed. The analytical value of this
notion of the system is that it avoids reproducing a simplistic distinction between
state and society. By revealing the multiple linkages between these two spheres, we
can think beyond resistance and complicity, drawing out a more subtle account of
hegemony, beyond the cultivation of consent by the dominant.
Examining the functioning of the system through the eyes of its users, the book
therefore builds on anthropology’s critique of dominance as something produced
by a group of select individuals, and investigates instead what it means and how it
feels to live in and be part of such a polity. Its chapters explore the interweaving
strands that make up this mutually dependent relationship: history and the
disjunctures between official and affective memories, ideas of racial and class
identities, the idioms of kinship, and the practices and symbolisms of money
making. However, instead of reifying notions of memory, tradition, identity, or
corruption as analytical concepts, this work shows how social actors mobilize and
modify these idioms in their everyday interactions with power. Both in practice and
in imagination, this “New Angola” is constituted as essentially urban—upwardly
mobile and aspirational—with rural areas left behind. Thus Luanda epitomizes
both a lived reality and a political project that stands for the entire country, as well
as a laboratory of the global, offering new insights into the politics of the everyday
in dominant-party regimes in the twenty-first century.
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
My gratitude goes first to my informants, who appear throughout
this book, some anonymously and some named. Their willingness to share their
stories and daily lives with me made this book possible and shaped my
understanding of Angola. Their readiness to find time for me and my questions
despite the hectic pace of life in Luanda and their multiple obligations and
commitments, as well as their openness and generosity, still overwhelm me. You
know who you are, and if the results of this book find their way back to Luanda in
one form or another, still only a very small fraction of my debt to you will be
repaid.
Anyone who knows Luanda also knows how impossible it is to get anything
done without a functioning support network. I truly only got by with a little help
from my friends. For their invaluable support during my fieldwork in Luanda,
generous hospitality, unfailing help, and precious contacts in the administration; for
boleias, broadband access, and little escapes; for lending me household items and
novels, and sometimes even a car; for funge and wining and dining; for singing and
dancing and inspiring conversations; and most of all, for their wonderful friendship
and kindness, many thanks to Pedro Quinanga, Dee, Bea, Doby, Jerry, and Lauretta
Geraldo, Hilla and Cavaliere Augusto Poma with Nico and Vittoria, Nuno Beja and
family, Andrew Kempson and Kristina Nauer-Statham, Isidora Marcela, Nuno and
Delphine Burnier Macedo, Branca Gonçalves, Adelina Rosa, Sónia Dias Serrão,
Katiana da Silva, Hendrik Selle, Lioba Gansen, Rita Soares, Vineira Kongo, Bento
de Jesus, Isilda Hurst, Pedro Chamangongo, Oliver Dalichau and Alfons Üllenberg,
Helena Marinho, Machteld Catrysse and Job Beeckmans, Cristián Castro, Tânia
Manso de Oliveira, José Tiago Catito, Helga Borges Silveira, Murielle Mignot, Julia
and Allan Cain, Cristiano Makiese, Elad Strohmeyer, Rev. José António, Rev.
Jerónimo Panda, Rev. Alberto Daniel, Rev. Gonçalves Augusto Damba, Rev. Pedro
António Malungo and Dona Noémia, Amb. Giancarlo Fenini, Dr. Júlio Mendes,
Dra. Ginga Neto, Dr. Cornélio Caley, Dra. Alexandra Aparício, Dr. Francisco Dias
Costa, Dra. Irene Neto, Gen. Peregrino Wambu, and Dr. Manzambi Vuvu
Fernando.
Several Angolan institutions and associations facilitated the fieldwork that forms
the basis of this book, in terms of affiliation, sponsorship of the research visa, access
to information, and general support: Ministério da Cultura, Arquivo Nacional de
Angola, Museu de Antropologia, Fundação Agostinho Neto, Fundação 27 de Maio,
and Development Workshop Angola.
The other essential precondition for doing research, especially in Luanda, is
money. Despite the deteriorating funding climate, I was extremely fortunate to
always obtain the next grant before the situation got really desperate. I am thus
truly grateful to the following funding bodies which, with their generous and
timely support, helped finance my research: the School of Social and Political
Sciences, University of Edinburgh; Theodor Engelmann-Stiftung, Basel; Janggen-
Pöhn-Stiftung, St. Gallen; Bolsa Rui Tavares, Lisbon; and Het Familie Heringa
Vereneging, Utrecht. A postdoctoral fellowship of the German Research
Foundation’s Priority Programme SPP1448 at the University of Leipzig allowed me
to make the necessary revisions and finalize the manuscript.
I thank Joost Fontein and Sara Rich Dorman at the Centre of African Studies,
University of Edinburgh, for their concise, frank, open, and insightful feedback and
critique, as well as their targeted encouragement. Their input at various stages of
my thinking process was very inspiring, and their counsel on academic life was
most welcome. Ramon Sarró and José-Maria Muñoz were the first reviewers of this
book and have provided critical fresh input and much-appreciated support ever
since.
At Cornell University Press, Jim Lance believed in this book from the beginning
and has, with enthusiasm, grace, humor, and very hands-on advice, helped me
move this book from the manuscript stage through the review and revision process
to its final form. Marissa Moorman and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira were intellectual
polestars from my earliest academic engagement with Angola and became fantastic
supporters of this book. Their insightful comments helped me refine some of my
arguments in the final stage of revisions.
During my postdoctoral fellowship in Leipzig, my project directors Ulf Engel
and Elísio Macamo were tremendously generous in their support for this endeavor;
Ulf Engel and Richard Rottenburg, as directors of the Priority Programme SPP1448
of the German Scientific Foundation (DFG), provided ideal material conditions for
finalizing the manuscript. In Edinburgh, James Smith, Barbara Bompani, and Paul
Nugent encouraged me very actively to join the Centre of African Studies. My
gratitude also goes to Harry West, formerly of the Department of Anthropology at
the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), whose guidance was essential
and who has continued to follow my progress with interest. In Switzerland, Patrick
Harries, who sadly passed away before this book was published, and Tobias
Hagmann were important early catalysts for discovering the joys and challenges of
academic research and writing, while Henning Melber and Veit Arlt have been a
constant source of support and valuable contacts. David Birmingham and Franz-
Wilhelm Heimer, doyens of Angolan studies, opened many doors, for which I am
very thankful. Special regards also to Natznet Tesfay at the Africa Desk at IHS for
providing me with gainful employment and giving me ample and flexible time to
focus on research.
Some elements of this book have been presented elsewhere and have also
greatly benefitted from previous critical commentary. Parts of chapter 1 have
appeared as Jon Schubert, “2002, Year Zero: History as Anti-Politics in the New
Angola,” Journal of Southern African Studies 41, no. 4, 835–52 (4 July 2015), and parts
of chapter 5 as Jon Schubert, “ ‘A Culture of Immediatism’: Co-optation and
Complicity in Post-War Angola,” Ethnos (8 February 2016); both are reprinted by
permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd. Many thanks to the publisher for giving their
permission to reprint these passages here.
Over the past few years I have found that people working on, and passionate
about, Angola are a small, tight-knit community. Many of those people have
become good friends rather than just fellow Angolanists, and their feedback and
ideas at various stages of this project have been invaluable sources of inspiration.
During my year in Luanda, I was fortunate not to be entirely alone, and I am happy
and grateful that I could count on the support of my brilliant and inspiring fellow
researchers and companheiros de luta Claudia Gastrow and Aharon de Grassi. Our
late-night discussions over improvised dinners in my dingy flat in B. O., or over
Somalian street food and cucas in Mártires, are fond memories. Justin Pearce and
Lara Pawson have been extremely loyal friends and unflagging supporters of this
book since its very first stages, while Chloé Buire has given me enthusiastic
comments ever since I put the first results out into the public. Didier Péclard and
Ruy Llera Blanes have provided support and encouragement throughout. Sylvia
Croese, António Tomás, Paulo Inglês, Abel Paxe, Gilson Lázaro, Cláudio Tomás,
Jess Auerbach, Juliana Lima, Louise Redvers, Aslak Orre, Lisa Rimli, Anne Pitcher,
Jeremy Ball, and Cláudio Silva have all been highly valued interlocutors on all
things Angolan over the past ten years. Any limitations, mistakes, or
misinterpretations in this work, however, are solely my own responsibility.
Although writing a book is ultimately a rather solitary experience, I am thankful
to my wonderful friends for spirited discussions at various stages of my research
and writing. For their steady support and intellectual companionship over many
years, my warmest thanks go to Henri-Michel Yéré, Laurent Cartier, Heid Jerstad,
Jenny Lawy, Luke Heslop, Wim van Daele, Julie Soleil Archambault, Jason Sumich,
and Tristam Barrett. Many other good friends also have provided moral and
logistical support, feedback and comments, and happy dinners. In Edinburgh, many
thanks go to Leila Sinclair-Bright, Gaia von Hatzfeld, and Ben Epstein. In Pristina,
Vigan Jashari, Shpend Emini, Laurent Moser, Natasha Froejd, and Ludwig Román
were invaluable sources of support. In Germany, I am especially grateful to Andrea
Behrends, Judith Beyer and Felix Girke, Friederike Stahlmann, Maarten Bedert,
Solange Guo Châtelard, Hadas Weiss, Katja Naumann and Geert Castryck, Forrest
Kilimnik, Lena and Chris Dallywater, and Dmitri van den Bersselaar and Alba
Valenciano for their friendship and support in matters both academic and practical.
My family in Switzerland and Belgium—and elsewhere—have provided
constant moral and emotional support, as well as temporary homes to facilitate my
constant moving during these years of academic wandering. My parents, especially,
have encouraged me throughout my career with their love and their trust in my
choices. Because it is thanks to my family history that I ended up in Angola in the
first place, this book is in many ways also for my siblings, Ulrich, Paul, and Agnes,
who share an Angolan childhood with me.
Above all, I thank my wife, Agathe Mora, to whom this book is dedicated.
Without her love and support none of this would have been possible. Her
constructive input has helped me overcome moments of doubt and aimlessness and
has led me to sharpen my arguments in unforeseen ways. More important, life with
her and our son, Emile, is a fantastically joyful and fulfilling journey that gives
meaning and purpose to all these endeavors.