Jonas Savimbi and UNITA’s national imaginary

Jonas Savimbi was born in Munhango, Bié, on August 3, 1934 (see Figure 1).Footnote ³ The son of a Protestant pastor who went to work with the Benguela railway, Savimbi spent much of his youth studying at the Protestant mission of Chilesso, which was run by the Evangelical Congregational Church of Angola (IECA). Having won a scholarship from IECA to study medicine in Lisbon, Savimbi rapidly began socializing with other African nationalists. After negative encounters with the Portuguese secret police—the International and State Defense Police (PIDE)—he fled to Switzerland, where he began making contacts with already established Angolan nationalist organizations, namely the Union of the Populations of Angola/National Front for the Liberation of Angola (UPA/FNLA) and the MPLA. Savimbi exchanged letters with the MPLA but eventually joined the UPA/FLNA.Footnote ⁴ That is the point when Savimbi’s political career took off, as he joined the FNLA and its Revolutionary Government of Angola in Exile (GRAE) in 1962 as Secretary-General and Minister of Foreign Affairs, respectively.

Figure 1.

Map of Angola.

Source: http://www.theworldmap.net/country/angola/

But Savimbi’s growing disillusionment with the strategy that UPA/FNLA’s leader Holden Roberto had delineated, specifically in relation to issues of nepotism, ethnic preference, and the refusal to commit troops and to position the leadership inside Angola, led him to break with this organization and form his own anti-colonial nationalist movement in 1966, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). As a liberation movement, UNITA’s contribution to the Angolan struggle tells a somber story, marked by a non-aggression pact made with the Portuguese armed forces in the 1970s.Footnote ⁵ For his part, Savimbi always denied the pact, as other key UNITA figures still do today.

Grounded on the ideals that resulted in the Muangai Declaration upon its foundation in 1966, UNITA’s nationalist project really began taking shape just before independence, when it began mobilizing people in urban areas for its cause. Savimbi masterfully invoked people’s anxieties not only before but particularly after independence, as I have detailed elsewhere (Martins Reference Martins2016). Through speeches that nurtured imaginaries about the state and government, labor and education, civic participation and dignity, UNITA was able to appease uncertainty and fear by presenting a solid alternative in a time of profound change and doubt. For those following UNITA, ideas about citizenship, external political leadership, and the political imagination of an independent Angola began to rest entirely upon the ideals of its leadership, particularly shouldered by Jonas Savimbi. This was the situation well into the late 1980s. It was Savimbi who began adapting and translating UNITA’s vision of a post-independence Angolan citizenship, with its core in Africanity, language, tradition, equality, and liberty; it was he who contested external political leadership by denouncing the new forms of inequality the MPLA would supposedly implement; and it was certainly he who began crafting the nation-building myth that drew significantly from aspects of “traditional” and often ethnic experience and imagination to conjure an Angola deeply contrary to that of the MPLA (Martins Reference Martins2016).Footnote ⁶ His speeches about citizenship and the rights of Angolans, warnings of the MPLA’s corruption and lack of traditional African credentials, external political meddling, and “true” independence from imperialism, all with a southern and Ovimbundu ethnic ring, resonated strongly with the people of Angola (Martins Reference Martins2016; Péclard Reference Péclard2015; Reference Péclard and Mourier2012:172–73; Messiant Reference Messiant1994:183–87). Savimbi argued that the MPLA’s one-party Marxist-Leninist state ideology, its ignorance or very basic command of African languages, and especially the fact that it had white and mestizo leaders, which UNITA saw as a continuation of colonial rule, represented far too many foreign aspects for the assurance of the rights of the people in UNITA’s regions. Savimbi was an outstanding communicator when it came to deepening the divide between the two movements, by nurturing UNITA’s national project through his own discursive imaginary.

In the mid-1980s Savimbi also became known in conservative sectors of the United States as a democratizer.Footnote ⁷ In 1985, he turned to Paul Manafort to revamp his image in Washington as a freedom fighter. Manafort’s lobbying produced the ultimate prize, a meeting in the Oval Office with then-President Ronald Reagan. By this time, Savimbi was already shrouded in the image of a well-educated African leader fighting for democracy in a continent being invaded by what Savimbi called Russian and Cuban imperialism. This was also the image he sold to UNITA supporters with immense success. Depictions of his meetings in Washington, D.C., were stamped on posters and flags at Jamba, the capital of UNITA, where Savimbi received many foreign visitors.Footnote ⁸ By the electoral campaign of 1992, Savimbi was able to claim he had forced the MPLA government to abandon the one-party system while presenting himself as the bringer of democracy to Angola, an image that still lingers today, particularly after several controversial MPLA governments since the end of the civil war.

For its part, the MPLA produced its own campaign to discredit Savimbi, often referring to episodes of violence, internal purges, and the burning of witches (Guerra Reference Guerra2002:174), events that severely tarnished his reputation.Footnote ⁹ By drawing on reports of violence committed by UNITA, during the 1992 electoral campaign, the MPLA was able to draw attention to Savimbi’s deep contradictions, turning Angolans’ attention to his warmongering ways (see Bittencourt Reference Bittencourt2016).Footnote ¹⁰ To accentuate such an image, the MPLA pointed to several of Savimbi’s electoral campaign speeches, which contained bellicose references at a time when Angolans were exhausted with war. His warnings from the time, “se me provocarem isto vai ficar feio” (if they provoke me it will be ugly) and “os ninjas estão a levar no focinho” (the ninjas are being beaten up), are still remembered and repeated in present-day Angola.Footnote ¹¹

The dominant epithet that defines the public memory of Jonas Savimbi today is indeed that of the warlord, the man who brought death and destruction to Angola. This image consolidated in the early 1990s as MPLA accounts placed sole blame on him for the return to war in 1992. In addition to the MPLA government’s political campaign against Savimbi, there was also a change in the international scene. The Cold War had ended, and Savimbi became a nuisance, a relic from the past. When confirmation of his death arrived in 2002, many people, especially in Luanda, celebrated effusively. “Shots were fired in the air and yelling in jubilation was heard saying ‘Savimbi is dead! Savimbi is dead!’”Footnote ¹² The widespread sentiment was that Savimbi’s death would bring not only peace but also order and prosperity to Angola.

Around 2014, toward the end of the economic boom that marked the country’s immediate post-conflict years, Jonas Savimbi began reappearing in a positive light outside UNITA circles. This occurred as the façade of Angola’s economic development began to crack, revealing massive corruption, severe and increasing inequality, and lack of social mobility for the overwhelmingly poor population. If Savimbi’s memory was kept alive after his demise by UNITA and its militants, many of his ideals are now being discovered and consequently re-popularized by those seeking within the Angolan nationalist blueprint a moral order and narrative to provide an escape from their debilitating status quo. As Pedro Neto notes, “Television, newspapers, governmental communications, but also discussions in public transportation or in local markets, implicitly or explicitly, keep on nurturing the shadow of UNITA’s founder” (Neto Reference Neto2017:318). Feared and hated by the majority, Savimbi still echoes in the hearts and minds of many Angolans. Why are his ideas still reverberating in Angola, and why is it important to examine his political memory? Through readings of Savimbi’s public memory, it is possible to ascertain not only the politics of fear and social control but also of opposition and morality.

A technology of fear and control

To maintain control and keep expectations of social mobility low, the Angolan government appeals to the proximity—both spatial and temporal—of recognizable national threats. It frequently instrumentalizes two key events/figures to instill fear and control any sign of revolt: the civil war and Jonas Savimbi as the bringer of death, through the articulation of the phantom of war, and the May 27, 1977, purge, the fraccionistas, and Nito Alves.Footnote ¹³ Through the national media, rumors, public speeches, and pronouncements on historical dates or at politically sensitive times such as elections, the MPLA has actively constructed an image of Savimbi as dangerous and violent. The purpose of such tactics has historically been to intimidate the large swaths of shantytown dwellers who form the traditional ecosystem of the MPLA but have become disenfranchised by it.

The brutality with which UNITA became known to treat civilians (see Pearce Reference Pearce2015b:107–42; Brinkman Reference Brinkman2000; HRW 2003) provided the MPLA with an abundance of evidence to craftily engineer and popularize the notion that equated Savimbi with death, misery, and confusão and portrayed UNITA as the party of the confusionistas. Footnote ¹⁴ This was a message the MPLA fed into its socio-political ecosystem, ubiquitously noting that without its protection and leadership everyone would fall prey to Savimbi’s murderous intents.Footnote ¹⁵

Ricardo Soares de Oliveira writes that, as regards UNITA, the MPLA likes to “remind Angolans of that movement’s brutality and Savimbi’s responsibility for the war” (Soares de Oliveira Reference de Oliveira and Ricardo2015:102). The MPLA regime skillfully reconstitutes the UNITA menace by constantly suggesting that any political activity outside the scope of its purview and approval carries the possibility of a return to war. Jon Schubert called this the discourse of stability, a tactic he notes resonates well with “widespread popular anxieties” (Reference Schubert2018:170–71). And it is Savimbi who is popularly known to be at the center of instability. It was he who came to represent the suffering of the past and the fear of future repetition. As Pedro Neto argues, “Savimbi personified a mental frontier which synthesized many of the lived events and fears during wartime” (Neto Reference Neto2017:318). This mental frontier was fluid enough to allow the popularization of the idea that if Savimbi was ever to control the government in Angola, he would begin an assassination spree that would spare none.Footnote ¹⁶ To plant this belief, the MPLA resorted to media products that consistently vilified anything related to Savimbi and silenced people who mentioned him by accusing them of planning to bring war back to Angola. In essence, the MPLA successfully transformed the legacy and memory of Savimbi into a technology of social and political control, and the phantom of war became a key element in this.

Angolan national media has since 1975 referred to Savimbi in dualistic fashion, either completely silent about UNITA and Savimbi or openly referring to him as a criminal and armed bandit. In fact, the first time the silencing of UNITA and Savimbi gave way to a flood of references was during the 1992 electoral campaign. The MPLA’s campaign was rich in references to war, with José Eduardo dos Santos (JES) leading audiences in chanting “abaixo o ditador da Jamba” (down with the dictator of Jamba). Songs echoed from radio and television, often with metaphorical statements such as “of broken bridges I don’t want to talk/ wounds remain even on sight/ and since I want to make sure past struggles will never come back/ it is in Zedu [JES], it is in Zedu that I will vote.” MPLA speeches followed the same logics. One segment on television showed Kundi Pahiama speaking in Umbundu, stating, “If they are chosen, they will kill again. They are not in government and already they are killing. Tomorrow or after, when they are in power, how will it be?”Footnote ¹⁷ This depiction of UNITA and Savimbi continued throughout the late 1990s. For example, the 1999 Human Rights Watch report on Angola stated that the MPLA government instructed the media that “Savimbi’s UNITA was to be identified in reports as ‘armed bandits’ or the ‘forces of the criminal Savimbi’” (HRW 1999).Footnote ¹⁸ Much of this discourse still echoes today.

UNITA’s former president Isaias Samakuva recognizes that Savimbi has been and continues to be vilified through “intrigue, calumny and insult,” and that this alleged vilification continues to be conducted through media production and political propaganda.Footnote ¹⁹ Indeed, Savimbi quickly became the target of the MPLA government’s most prized tactic: the invocation of the phantom of war. News coverage and interviews, either in newspaper, radio, or television, are constantly shown ahead of politically sensitive periods, usually elections. The use of the threat of war is so prevalent that UNITA is obliged to reply, often by appealing to the electorate’s wisdom so that “ideas from the past and worn-out speeches” about war don’t turn them away from voting for UNITA.Footnote ²⁰ The case of a video put into circulation during the campaign for the 2012 elections is indicative of these politics of fear and control.Footnote ²¹ In a cartoonish way, a jingling figure appeared with a photograph of Isaias Samakuva’s face on its head. Showing the red and green colors of UNITA and the black cockerel in the background, the symbol of the party, a feminine voice started singing:

Burning flags and verses of Angola’s national anthem being scratched out were shown, followed by a series of explosions and lightning striking from the eyes of the cockerel. The clip ended with the photograph of Samakuva’s head on the cartoon falling, revealing Savimbi’s head, signaling the true nature of UNITA.

Such apparatuses of fear and control were again used after the polemical 2017 elections. Days after the election, it was reported that a small plane had dropped pamphlets over neighborhoods in Luanda. The pamphlets stated the elections were free and fair and that everyone should remember that “in 1992, UNITA also did not accept the results and engulfed the country in a war which caused thousands of deaths, pain, grief and much destruction.” It ended by telling people not to protest or join those who don’t respect the will of the people and to report disturbances to the police.Footnote ²³ The dropping of pamphlets with historical references exemplifies perfectly the use of this technology of fear and control. If the reference to 1992 serves to instill fear, the suggestion that people report others to the police clearly signifies popular control, something the MPLA has historically excelled at (see Mabeko-Tali Reference Mabeko-Tali2018:413–17).

Technologies of fear and control invoking Savimbi have been continuously sustained by a series of products in various formats that summon a universe of memories uncontestably positing Jonas Savimbi as the ultimate villain. From the already-mentioned songs, videos, and state sanctioned media coverage to autobiographical and memory books, cartoons, and even videogames, all have contributed to paint a picture of Savimbi that, albeit with solid evidence, have largely depicted him as the ultimate evil in Angola. Examples abound. Authors such as R. Sotto Maior, Fernando Emídio, William Minter, João Paulo Guerra, or even UNITA’s own Samuel Chiwale all refer to fear and assassination, authoritarian rule, and personality cult (see Figure 2). Even in Chiwale’s book, which contains notorious attempts to provide a laudatory praise to Jonas Savimbi, negative issues emerge.

Figure 2.

From left to right: Emídio Reference Emídio2012; Chiwale Reference Chiwale2008; Minter Reference Minter1988; Guerra Reference Guerra2002.

Curiously enough, Jonas Savimbi made his way into a videogame titled Call of Duty: Black Ops II produced by Activision (see Figure 3). There the player plays an American special forces soldier helping Savimbi, who is holding a grenade launcher, to fight off MPLA soldiers with Brazilian Portuguese accents.

Figure 3.

Jonas Savimbi as represented in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 by Activision.

Source: https://www.dn.pt/sociedade/savimbi-aparece-no-jogo-call-of-duty-familia-esta-chocada-4980457.html

Savimbi is so strongly equated with belligerence that even caricatures use him as a reference to make other points. Sérgio Piçarras’ April 2018 cartoon did exactly that.Footnote ²⁴ The cartoon shows President João Lourenço holding a baton in his hand with the word “justice” written on it. Opposite him are displayed a series of other characters symbolizing the various sectors of the MPLA government surrounded by large bags of money and military tanks. The “speaker” of this group says “se nos provocarem isto vai ficar feio” (if they provoke us it will be ugly), a reference to Savimbi’s already mentioned threat during the 1992 electoral campaign. Amidst the confusion appears Piçarra’s caricature of the povo, the people, explaining to the president “Não kota, não são Savimbistas, são Eduardistas mesmo!!” (No elder/older one, they are not Savimbistas, they are really Eduardistas).”Footnote ²⁵

A cartoon illustrating the conflict between the new president of the country, João Lourenço, and the members of the old regime of JES (who are still members of the MPLA), pivoted around making a reference to Savimbi and the phantom of war (see Figure 4). Another of Piçarra’s cartoons depicting the conflict over Savimbi’s June 2019 reburial clearly exemplifies the embeddedness of Savimbi’s memory with the phantom of war (see Figure 5). In this piece, the ghost of Savimbi appears to frighten the MPLA character holding a flag with the inscription “pseudo national reconciliation” and a briefcase which reads “tricks, maneuvers and other intolerances.” The character says “Yes boss, we had to retreat. We were attacked by that ghost that’s been pursuing us for years and years!!” On the other side, UNITA supporters protest for a dignified funeral and the povo (‘the people’) in the middle laughs at the MPLA. The title says, “It is harder to kill a ghost than to kill reality.”

Figure 4.

Source: http://novojornal.co.ao/cartoon/interior/cartoon-da-semana-vai-ficar-feio-51598.html

Figure 5.

Source: http://www.novojornal.co.ao/cartoon/interior/cartoon-da-semana-fantasma-de-sempre-71058.html

Cartoons may not be drawn with strict analytical purposes in mind, and the character povo’s laughter is certainly misguided. In fact, the violence and numerous bellicose and totalitarian characterizations attributed to Savimbi’s person have greatly influenced how people imagine him and his organization. One artist and NGO worker interviewed in Huambo framed this around a politics of hatred:

Violence, fear, and control were always present during the civil war and remain key elements invoked by the mechanisms here explored. As Lisa Malkki’s work on Hutu refugees in Tanzania shows, “Everyday events, processes, and relations (…) were spontaneously and consistently interpreted and acted upon by evoking a collective past” (Reference Malkki1995:53).

The spontaneous and consistent interpretation of figures and events explains how a young Angolan father who did not fight in Angola’s recent wars can turn to his unruly son and call him a “Savimbista” because of the confusão he was creating at the dining table.Footnote ²⁷ More importantly, it explains why Angolans understand the meaning of “Xé menino não fala política” (Hey boy, don’t talk politics), referring to the popular song Velha Chica by Waldemar de Bastos which summarizes the politics of fear and control: in Angola you don’t talk politics.Footnote ²⁸ It is through a distinct yet shared collective past of violence that fear and control were built into the narratives produced by the government, with the persona and legacy of Jonas Savimbi as the prime instigator. Nevertheless, it is also clear that the Angolan government could easily manufacture a narrative without resorting to much fabrication. It has done this by simply recovering and strategically invoking the violence and destruction of the war years as a direct consequence of Savimbi’s and UNITA’s actions, while completely downplaying its own responsibility for war-related violence. Here, the so-called vilification of Jonas Savimbi appears nothing more than a politically intelligent public relations strike turned usable technology through narrative dissemination and fixation, ultimately made factual by accounts of UNITA’s violence.

A politics of opposition and morality

From politically ambiguous heroes like Mau-Mau leader Dedan Kimathi (MacArthur Reference MacArthur2017; Coombes Reference Coombes2011) to mythologized struggle heroes like Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere, Agostinho Neto, Samora Machel, and others, heroes are an essential ingredient in the building of nations. But anti-heroes, particularly villains, also possess a vital role, that of warning “of the dangers of socially recognized threats,” which is why “much depends on the perspective brought to bear by potentially competing moral and political communities” (Lentz & Lowe Reference Lentz and Lowe2018:77–78). Savimbi is one such case where the binary oscillation between villainy and heroism is directly connected to competing moral imaginaries and to the political struggles produced by the contemporary social circumstances of Angolans.

Savimbi’s memorialization began shortly after his death in February 22, 2002, backed by UNITA supporters and other long-time opponents of the MPLA regime. As early as its August 24, 2002, edition, the newspaper folha8 published a picture of Jonas Savimbi on its cover under the title “Savimbi resurrected.” Reporting on the meeting of UNITA’s national political committee on August 20 and 21 of the same year, the piece states that “six months after his death Savimbi’s supporters swore fealty to his ideals and eternal fidelity until the party takes over power in Angola.”Footnote ²⁹ Yet, still unsure about how to deal with the legacy of Savimbi, the Political Commission officially discussed his legacy at a meeting that took place between January 29 and February 3, 2003, less than a year after his death. Newspapers of the time printed dozens of pages on how UNITA was debating whether to rehabilitate the image of Jonas Savimbi. As stated by the weekly Angolense, for UNITA to “think less about the passivo left by Savimbi and much more on his activo is still more rewarding.”Footnote ³⁰ During this meeting, the party entertained the idea of building a foundation, to be called Fundação Jonas Malheiro Savimbi, and a house museum, the Casa Museu Jonas Savimbi.Footnote ³¹ But the first order of work was to ask state authorities for the exhumation of Savimbi’s body, a request that was denied during the presidency of JES. Savimbi’s body was not moved to Lopitanga until June 1, 2019, where his family and UNITA organized a funeral. Contrary to Werbner’s findings for the Zimbabwean case, Savimbi’s funeral did not become an “event for passionately nationalist speech in moral condemnation of the regime” (Werbner Reference Werbner and Werbner1998b:91). The party’s president, Isaias Samakuva, simply gave a brief laudatory speech, thanking him for liberation, democracy, and the hope he left for generations of Angolans who did not know him.Footnote ³²

There was little time left for healing, particularly since it was UNITA’s own members who suffered most with Savimbi’s internal repressions. Immediately after the war, UNITA began a post-mortem process that further fixed an overall unchanged narrative, one that re-solidified Savimbi as the soul of the party with no room for internal rearrangements or the promotion of other figures. This speaks not only of the weight and presence of the man but also of persistent divisions in Angolan society in the post-war period. The fact that the mnemonic persona of Jonas Savimbi began reappearing mere months after the signing of the Memorando de Luena (April 4, 2002), which put an end to the conflict, also speaks to the politics of national reconciliation, or lack thereof, and of the nature of UNITA’s internal democratization. Precisely because no process of national reconciliation was endorsed, political dichotomies of old were left unchecked with no reason to subside.

UNITA had good reason to continue invoking the memory of Savimbi, as the numbers underscore. In the 1992 presidential elections, the year Angola returned to war and Savimbi was seen as the figurehead responsible, Savimbi gained 40.07 percent of the popular vote against 49.57 percent for JES. Although Savimbi lost the election, his votes amounted to 1.579.298 to JES’s 1.953.335, while UNITA scored 1.347.636 against the MPLA’s 2.124.126 votes in the legislative vote. Despite the fact that UNITA kept crying fraud, it is clear that Savimbi had substantial popular support, especially since he won more votes than his party did. UNITA’s popular support oscillated heavily throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, as subsequent electoral results in 2008, 2012, and 2017 show, but it does not appear to have subsided enough for Savimbi’s memory to diminish today, even though the plan for the redemption of his figure was not unanimous within UNITA after the war.

As early as eight years after his death in combat and eighteen years after those 1992 elections, the Semanário Angolense newspaper on August 7, 2010, published a large picture of Jonas Savimbi on its cover page under the title “Savimbi, o morto está a mexer-se” (Savimbi, the dead is moving). A small description of the piece said,

The Semanário Angolense had already produced an exposé on the use of mnemonic products related to Savimbi’s legacy on February 23, 2008, under the title “Savimbi: de vilão na vida real a herói do audiovisual” (Savimbi: from villain in real life to audio-visual hero).

The author, Dani Costa, claims,

The DVD in question, entitled “O Muata da Paz e da Democracia em Angola 1992–1993” (The Muata of Peace and Democracy in Angola 1992–1993), is not a feature film but rather a series of clips of speeches and political rallies made in Jamba in the late 1980s and in Huambo, Lubango, Benguela, and Luanda during the 1992 electoral campaign.Footnote ³³ The news article observes that while many might expect an incarnation of the devil with horns and a tail, the DVD presents a Savimbi unknown to large swaths of the public, a patriotic figure whose commitments and preoccupations had only to do with the supreme interest of Angolans. As he often said, and UNITA members still sing, “First the Angolan, second the Angolan, third the Angolan, the Angolan always.”

This sort of memory product speaks of how vivid Savimbi’s memory is in Angolan society. Today there still exist websites online where users can download dozens of Savimbi’s speeches and use them as cell phone ringtones. In one of these titled “Lessons on administration, speech by Jonas Savimbi,” the leader of UNITA is heard saying to its cadres,

This is the type of message that finds much ampler resonance in today’s corrupt post-economic boom Angola than it did during the poor and war-torn years. It represents a narrative of opposition and morality open for appropriation, provided by the only Angolan ever in a position to liberate the country from what many consider the MPLA’s corrupt and immoral ways. But such popular readings of Savimbi’s rhetoric must be unpacked. It is essential to understand which people follow—the man or the moral ideals. In this, the picture becomes more complex and ambiguous. For one, it is clear that UNITA supporters follow both the person and the ideals. In these circles, Savimbi is always o presidente (the president), o mais velho (the elder), o Doutor Savimbi (Doctor Savimbi), the great sanctified, wise leader. And they recognize that UNITA still carries what they call passivo, the “bill” Savimbi left behind, the war, the destruction, and the assassinations. Nonetheless, UNITA still uses Savimbi as a great mobilizer of people. The party organizes official celebrations on his birthday with events where immense crowds of thousands of people congregate, carrying UNITA flags and portraits of Savimbi and Samakuva. In poor rural settings outside Luanda there still are people who don’t believe Savimbi is dead (see Neto Reference Neto2017:318).

But for many people outside UNITA, Savimbi has begun to symbolize a politics of opposition and morality that has been cheated and disposed of in post-war Angola. This discourse of morality, however, is not new. The first section of this article showed how Jonas Savimbi and UNITA had already in the 1970s begun to develop a political program and national idea for Angola that was different from that of the MPLA. When people who had been with UNITA during the war spoke of the movement’s national project, whether or not they remained sympathizers, they spoke of inclusion, representation, and citizenship (Martins Reference Martins2016). The conclusions of their moral debates, rooted in Savimbi’s speeches, seem to inform the basis upon which conceptions of social virtue can be used to criticize themes such as injustice, corruption, and inequality in contemporary Angola. Here resides an old source of morality for opposition-making that continues to be open for appropriation. This appropriation, as Felicitas Becker states with reference to Julius Nyerere, “is not about the man but about what he can be made to stand for” (Reference Becker2013:261), a blueprint “for constructing a claim to a collective moral and political project” (Fouéré Reference Fouéré2015:34).

Yet, if the representation of Savimbi as a moral articulator of social, political, and economic anxieties is not an original phenomenon but simply a re-appropriation of old political content, what is driving his mnemonic rise? The answer resides in the unprecedented economic growth registered in Angola in the post-war period, which produced an eccentrically multimillionaire elite amid an overwhelmingly poor population. The complete dismantling of a communist centralized economy in the 1990s and its progressive transformation into oligarchic rentier capitalism disrupted the balance of equality between people and redefined conceptions of personal and communal virtue. It is in such circumstances that Savimbi began appealing to a disgruntled populace, offering a moral solution to those who look for a narrative mechanism to defuse inequality and weave a politics of morality.

There is a parallel here with Janne Rantala’s findings on the uses of Samora Machel’s memory among rappers in Mozambique, particularly in the way that Machel’s voice is mobilized “in order to amplify criticism of the present day administration” (Rantala Reference Rantala2016:1176). Savimbi’s voice, too, is mobilized to “valorise equality and criticise current politics” (Rantala Reference Rantala2016:1176). As Justin Pearce noted, the youth measure the government’s narrative of post-war reconstruction against their own personal experience, much aware of “the government’s strategic use of history” (Reference Pearce2015a:115). The historical narrative that informs contemporary socio-political protest in Angola turns the government’s narrative backward, while alluding to the same events: the repression of May 27, 1977, under the motto “we have been living with war since 1977”; and UNITA, Savimbi, and the phantom of war, as “in the last ten years we have seen that it is not UNITA who made Angolans suffer” (Pearce Reference Pearce2015a:115). Claudia Gastrow also noted how growing anti-MPLA sentiment due to housing demolitions in Luanda helped to overturn previous stereotypes about Savimbi, who went from being “half-human” to “defender of the cause of the people” in one of Gastrow’s interviews (Reference Gastrow2014:16). As Marie-Aude Fouéré found when studying Julius Nyerere’s memory, Jonas Savimbi also appears to many as an icon of integrity and incorruptibility “in the face of present socioeconomic and political conditions, especially the disillusionment, disenchantment and demoralization of the political space” (Reference Fouéré2014:3).

The notion that “at least” neither Savimbi nor his family accumulated wealth is often presented to establish a contrast with the Dos Santos regime. Some point to Savimbi’s speeches and loosely extract elements not only of virtue and morality, but also of firmness and strength they believe are lacking in Angola, rarely engaging critically with his historical practice. A piece in the Seminário Angolense titled “Porque interessa relembrar Savimbi? A força do homem morto” (Why does it matter to remember Savimbi? The strength of the dead man) exemplifies this:

Others are more adamant in pointing to what they call the demonization (vilification) campaign the MPLA undertook to discredit Savimbi. Surprisingly, this demonization story has captured the curious rhetoric of some anti-MPLA activists today. This can be read in Nuno Dala’s article “Carta aberta aos angolanos que festejaram a morte de Jonas Savimbi” (Open letter to the Angolans who celebrated the death of Jonas Savimbi).Footnote ³⁶ Dala writes that for years the group who abused power in Angola—meaning the MPLA—used the state to demonize Jonas Savimbi; his deeds as a maker of independence were silenced, and his errors strongly emphasized. To those who celebrated his death it should be clear that “the hegemonic group who made you viscerally hate a nationalist who prioritized Angolans, made you love the engineer [JES] of hunger, plunder, corruption and social apocalypse, the architect of peace [JES] that still smells of gunpowder.”Footnote ³⁷

Savimbi’s memory is invoked as the piece required to maintain balance, to keep the MPLA in check and to fight the regime if need be. It is the search for the “big man” who would enforce order in what many recognize as the immoral and corrupt regime of the MPLA. “Since Angolans allowed the MPLA to kill Savimbi, who is left to fight their corrupt and oppressive ways?” This is a question and statement I have heard countless times in public and private conversation with Angolans everywhere, from taxis to marketplaces, living rooms, and street bars. For a growing number of Angolans who distrust the memory of Savimbi as it was propagated by the MPLA, UNITA’s founder looks more like a progressive thinker who may hold answers.

Yet, narratives that allude to Savimbi may not necessarily entail a link to UNITA. There is a difference between looking into Savimbi’s memory in search of a political and moral compass and blindly following his often deadly political pragmatism. The summoning of Savimbi’s memory is indeed a politically charged activity, but only insofar as it provides a familiar template upon which people can articulate narratives of contestation and position themselves with reference to the current state of affairs. Although this always appears to entail the option of the strong man, it does not assure that man should be Jonas Savimbi.