a living fossil

More and more material is emerging on the Angolan elections. I’ve got some of my own thoughts published here with Open Democracy, where editor, David Hayes, makes contributing to the site a real pleasure. If you want to read more, you can also take a look at this report by Paula Roque who works at the ISS here in Johannesburg. Paula was in Angola during the elections on September 5 and 6. I was not.

And for those of you who are interested, I was told by a South African plant expert I met recently (at a very good party) that there have been sightings of 3000-year-old welwitchia, although he was only confident to confirm that this extraordinary plant only seen in Angola and Namibia does regularly live for up to 1000 years. The one pictured here is 1500 years old, or was when the photograph was taken. If you’re confused, read my piece in Open Democracy. It explains everything…

dipnote

It’s this kind of paternalism – remarkably bland though it may be – that I loathe. The emphasis, inevitably, on the hard work of the kindly ‘folk’ who did the observing (they got up at five and didn’t finish til midnight – I’d love to know the $/hour rate they get paid); and the millions of hopeful Africans waiting patiently and, ah!, peacefully in long queues aware of their humble role in history and an emerging democracy. Does anyone ever write about North American voters like that? This level of benevolence works for Bono and Bob but it makes the rest of us feel deep rage. Do these ambassadors and diplomats not listen to what Angola’s so-called civil society say and to what the many brave independent journalists write? For many of these people have been, and still are, the fundamental actors in this ‘emerging democracy’ (emerging what?) and, in many cases, the people who’ve struggled and been imprisoned in the battle to try and create it during the last thirty or forty years. Many of them are saying that these elections mark a (democratic) return to a one party state.

Oh, Dipnote Dan, what a disappointment. Don’t patronise the people, telling them to be proud. Your own country showed us the true crisis of democracy in 2000. Angolan people also know this. You don’t need to speak down to them as if they were your children, sweet and untarnished by the realities of life, ignorant to the truth in this world. You pat them on the head and smile sweetly at their peaceful nature, and then turn your back and walk home rubbing your hands in oil deals. We know the history of diplomacy in Angola, where British and Americans in the service turn their hand to ‘consultation’ in the oil industry within minutes of leaving their posts, exploiting all those endless garden parties and tête à têtes with the MPLA et cetera. There’s nothing democratic about any of that. Nothing at all.

what Angolans (and some others) are saying about Angola

“Only Bielorussia, Turkmenistan and some other rather strange places manage to get victories of over 80%. Angola is now part of such a select group of countries. Nothing to be shocked about. Business continues as usual, just with a new suit lent by the international community, branded legitimacy.”"

“And the winner is…  You see, it was predictable. The former rebels knew they would not make it. But it looks like they are now divided along ideological lines.  Well, the only positive thing is that the elections were not marred by violence – which is a big achievement.”

“Imagine knowing that you’re paying your taxes to a parliament in which over 80% of them belong to the MPLA! They’re not having more of my money.”

“Well I tried. I voted number three. I knew they’d win, we just didn’t know they’d do this well.”

“It’s ok, it’s ok. We’ll have elections again in four years’ time and we can get rid of them then.”

“How are you? Probably just as disappointed as the rest of us about the MPLA’s victory…”

and my favourite:

“I think vitória é certa is the wartime slogan that most readily comes to mind…”

 

P.S. You can see the preliminary EU observer report on the elections here, and the Angolan national electoral commission site – which provides very clear and easily accessible data on the results – is here.

so, the people go to vote

After waiting so long it was in a way most appropriate that my laptop crashed, burned and died the day before Angolans went to the ballot box. Initially my response was calm and quite collected but it became increasingly hysterical, angry and at certain stages abusive – “Did I hear you say you apologise if you’ve caused me any inconvenience? IF! IF! You’ve caused me more inconvenience than my mother in law in five years!”- as I tried to accept that my older machine was dead and for the scrap heap and the only option was to buy a new one. I now have a silver HP and am trying to learn to love Windows Vista. So far, just about, so good. But the truth is, I’ve become a lazy lady since meeting a wonderful man who happens to know a lot more about computers than I: I sit back and watch as he reprogrammes and exports and imports, and offer the odd helpful comment. “Surely clicking the mouse that fast that repetitively can’t be good for my new laptop?”

I told a friend about the laptop disaster and she said, “Lara, I’m so sorry our country is that strong.”

“What?” said I.

“Of course the laptop broke because of the MPLA.”

Who knows? I’d believe anything these days. Various friends have phoned as the results have streamed in, all with varying degrees of depression in their voices. What will we do now Lara? What are we going to do? A fellow blogger – morro da maianga on the right there – believes that Angola is following in the footsteps of Mexico, where a single party led the country for over 70 years until 2000. Currently the results are standing at about 80% in favour of the party that’s been in power for 33 years, the MPLA. And so I’m feeling that I was too optimistic in one of my reports for the M&G. Hope standing in the way of the writing. The Angolan ambassador who said, We aren’t just going to win, We’re going to crush the opposition, was right. And so this might well not be the beginning of a democratic process, but - as Wilson Dada (of morro da maianga) puts it so nicely – ‘the (democratic) return to the one-party state’ and later comments that this democracy in Angola is a simulation of democracy based on repression and violence. I don’t wish to wonder what the wretched so-called international community will have to say. Do they still think these are the best elections in Africa (I wonder, why do they limit their comparisons to the continent of Africa only? why do they look down from up there as if their own aren’t worth some comparison? so patronising, so patronising)? Best to keep quiet until all the results have come out, and we have heard just exactly what went on in the mess of Luanda. The key questions for me are: how many people voted? was there, as some predicted, a high abstention? what went on in the Lundas, the central highlands, and also Huambo? and what the hell happened in Luanda? I heard one report that half of the ballot stations didn’t open. I find that, even given the MPLA’s capacity to maintain control, quite unbelievable. So let me be quiet until we’ve had time to think and read all the information. But my heart is heavy and I feel for those friends who say they are losing hope.

whatever democracy is

Check out the small fry in Angola here, if you are interested. It’s been odd writing this journalistic stuff lately. I’ve been training and pushing myself so hard to move away from ‘reporting’ that I struggle to be in any way happy with anything that’s supposed to be short and make sense. The interest in non-sense and doubt never fades. I read the New Yorker in bed last week and became intensely irritated by a short story about rats that J had been given to help him with a film he’s working on that also involves rats. The story annoys because it’s so neat and tidy, so squarely set up, so structurally accurate, and it ends so utterly cleverly that you want to throw the mag across the room, or do as I used to when a student – leave it in neat torn piles by the loo as non-cushioned but glossy wipe. For the fact is that the real world isn’t neat and tidy.

J said, ‘Perhaps we could start a magazine in which everything admits to doubt and there are no knowing conclusions.’

‘Someone’s probably done it before,’ said I, ever pessimistic, ‘but no one wanted to buy it.’ And then I got annoyed with myself for not pursuing the idea further in my own blog.

And it’s one of the things that annoys me about these Angola elections. Everyone wants to ask silly questions and get neat answers. Will the elections be free and fair? People keep asking that. I don’t think they will, but it’s not a question simply of future tense. I don’t think they are nor do I think they have been. But how many of us ask the same question of the US elections, or the UK elections? I tend to respond thus and people look at me as if I’m dumb, or wilfully provocative like a teenager who’s started smoking weed. What is a free and fair election?

I think that I haven’t a clue. And will attempt to say so in an intelligent way tonight on the telly. I’m going to appear, beneath a layer of thick foundation and black eye make-up, on African Views (one hour, broadcasting to Africa ‘part of the States’ from 2000 local time to South Africa). I did point out to the producer that I am neither Angolan nor South African, nor, I added, African. Are you sure you want me? Yes, he said. We do. I’m nervous. Everyone will be looking for neat answers to neat questions.

I’ll probably stare at the camera in a state of confusion.

awfentik

How much does spelling really matter? If it is so very important, why then is Angola written Angola? Shouldn’t it be Ngola? Should Brazil be Brasil or Brazil? And should the Queen of Matamba be Njinga or Nzinga or Nzingha? Or Ginga? Should the Van Dunems be searching for their ‘roots’, along with the Vieira Dias and Do Nascimentos and Vieira Lopes and the Dos Santos? Should they be hunting through the Catholic church archives to find out their ‘real’ names? What’s a real name? If mine comes from Parson, as I’ve been told it does, should I not call myself Lara Parson instead of Lara Pawson? How authentic should language be, or leaders? How loyal to history? Why wear a Ralph Lauren suit when you could throw on a boubou? Why is it, in Luanda, that so many members of the elite are ashamed to speak autochtonous languages, that is, if they speak them at all? Should they perhaps be going for classes to learn them? I have never forgotten a breakfast meeting I had with the Unita General, Paulo Lukamba Gato, months after the Angolan war ended in 2002. He told me he had been warned to only speak European languages now that he was in Luanda, otherwise he would not be taken seriously. He was told this by fellow Angolans as advice for dealing with fellow Angolans – not Americans, or French, or Portuguese, or Brazilians. Who is the neocolonial here? Who is the oppressor here? I will never forget being told by an Angolan vice minister, ‘They are not like us, my dear; they must be treated like animals.’ By ‘us’ she meant me and her, two Europeans in her most humble opinion. ‘But you are a minister of an African country,’ I responded, ‘You are an African.’ She boiled with fury: ‘I’m like you. We are different.’ And so the gunshots rang out across the musseque where we stood, and the people ran for cover. She stood, stock still, in her Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and shiny black court shoes.

I pondered all of this and more at the weekend when I went to see Xala, a film by the late Senegalese writer and film-maker, Ousmane Sembene. The film explodes the neo-colonialist process as the resplendent elite receive briefcases stuffed with banknotes from white businessmen in the chamber of commerce, and are ushered along a red carpet into Mercs after a speech about “the African path to socialism”. “You’re not a white man,” Kader’s future mother-in-law says when he refuses to participate in the ceremony to ensure the successful deflowering of the bride. “You are neither fish nor fowl.”

A few years, an Angolan friend explained his feelings after visiting Senegal: ‘I realised that Angola isn’t Africa at all: Luanda is totally Western. I’d like to go and live in Senegal to be truly African.’

elections, the MPLA way

I’ve always said that you don’t need to exaggerate when it comes to reporting Angola. Less than three weeks before the country holds its second legislative elections ever, that old MPLA stalwart, Paulo Jorge, has gone and said what I’ve been raving and ranting about for months: that party political campaigning for the ruling party started at least 18 months ago. In fact, according to Jorge – the darling of what’s left of the myopic European Left (and that doesn’t mean all of us, so calm down; just those fools who still believe in the MPLA as a party that seeks liberation, justice and equality for the povo) – it began way, way before!

He told the Angola Peace Monitor (produced by ACTSA, once better known for its anti-apartheid work) that: the MPLA has been preparing for these elections since 2005, and its leadership has developed “a massive mobilisation effort of its militants, sympathisers and friends”.

He also describes the MPLA as “a national party, independent, progressive and modern, ideologically based on democratic socialism which congregates in its ranks Angolan citizens without distinction of social group, sex, skin colour, ethnic origin, religious beliefs, or place of birth”.

He forgot to tell us about the mobilisation of its enemies and victims and all those people who fear the party. And what about those who’ve been killed in, er, mysterious circumstances? Well I’ve done something on that here, for those who are interested in the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

You will note, in that story, the poster on the right. I took that photo in April 2007. It’s a photograph of President José Eduardo dos Santos (who next year will celebrate 30 years in power, hurrah) and, I was pretty sure, Rainha Nzinga (sometimes spelt Nzingha or Ginga). The words read, Honour and glory to our heroes. In fact, I am told by an Angolan on Mars (see below) that it is not the Rainha at all (Queen of Mbundu in Angola in the 17th century) but the late first president of Angola, Agostinho Neto, who died in 1979. Which makes the picture even more loaded, in my humble opinion: that the only glorious heroes of Angola are the two men who have led the country since 1975. Make of that, querido leitor, what you will.

something new

is here.

Meanwhile – I love this – these are some of the searches that have brought you to me:

how to find the clitoris without looking

this may sound strange and unbelievable

helicopter society and the institute of

yellow and black flags

what does angola need

fortune of eduardo dos santos

And I’ve been thinking about these. The idea that anyone thinks they can find what Angola needs on the internet should never be allowed near the country. Ever. A quick Google, stick some money in an envelope, and send it to some NGO. Oh dear oh dear. What will become of all these paternalist beings desperate to feel sorry for Africa. Go away, I tell you, Go away! And as for the clitoris: I have this image of a woman desperately trying to bend her creaking back far enough to see her clitoris, but unable to get there. She finds a mirror perhaps, and struggles with the hair. Strange and unbelievable.

And for those of you who read Portuguese, read this today, by my friend Wilson Dadá in Angola, a man I very much admire.

getting in

I’m looking at the legs of a slim young woman wearing a pale pink nylon nightdress with a hem of neoteny pink ribbon at her knees. Strapped to her back like a baby, a crate of bottles of beer with red and white paper labels only just identifiable as not Coca Cola. Balancing on her head, another large crate. All around are rushing people supporting large objects and weighted down with goods bundled in colourful sheets. A substantial woman with thick buttocks and solid stomach stands with her arms around a long slim brown object wrapped in plastic sheeting and taller than even she, with her heavy red and green headdress of waxed cotton. A man behind a desk is talking about my passport in a weave of English and Portuguese. But I’m gazing at the brown thing the woman hugs, slowly identifying the object as a plastic plant with a thick brown plastic trunk twisted into a figure of eight and several thick green flaps that are leaves. A plastic cheese plant for Angola. The man stamps my passport; I walk out into the sharp light and my eyes sting with tears. All around, gates and wire fences and rolls and rolls of rasor-wire and men slapping long black canes to their thighs. Three young men are walking slowly, leaning forward so far they might collapse to the ground but for broad hands pushing against the handlebars of thick bicycle frames. Wedged between the crossbar and the peddle bar are two large brown bags full of cement from China. Balanced on each seat, another two bags. Great power from the bodies of resilient men. A cream queen-size mattress floats by, a sting-ray, with sides gently ballooning up and down in rhythm with the two legs beneath that are moving swiftly towards large black gates and barbed wire. A teenage girl with soft skin is heading for Angola flaunting armfulls of large crimson roses with plastic drops of water glued and glistening from cotton petals. A pair of slim women totter on several inches of plastic and metal, dragging huge suitcases on small wheels. A young man in a three-wheeler chair rotates a pair of peddles with punching fists that power a bicycle chain above his knees. His vast shoulders bulge from sparrow hips. On top of flattened thighs and shoved into all remaining space in his chair are many packets of green plastic coat hangers. Three separate wheelchairs peddle past: more deformed legs folded gently and neatly into faded canvas seats or hang from the side like empty cotton stockings tossed over a cupboard door.

‘This is nothing,’ the man boasts, ’sometimes it’s medieval.’

The discourse of the white man when he leaves his over-industrialised land and heads for that which is dubbed developing. He is keen to show that his experience is extra ordinary, that he is particularly brave, particularly adaptable, and that he is in touch with his wild side which he tells himself is savage, and that is why he – unlike all the other foreigners he meets – is able to cope.

To cope… Medieval…

Does an Angolan whisper in this way when he is showing his Nigerian friend how to negotiate London’s King’s Cross train station? Does he say, ‘This is nothing: normally it’s cowboys and indians’? Does he also ignore his own alcoholism and nicotine addiction, insisting that it is a sign of his liberty, his freedom, his alternative take on the world. Does he, too, explain away his serial love affairs with local women in their teens and early twenties as a reflection of his neverending youthfulness?

(But the argument does not happen.)

A man in blue uniform marches up and down the border fence with a three foot bendy whip of rubber. Wherever he goes, waves of people with goods stacked on their heads canter away, a human current moved by the moon of force. A woman and her son try to escape, to run through a hole in the fence a little further up. A dash for the space in the barbed wire. Someone shouts: ‘WOAHA!’ The man in blue turns and starts running, his hand high up behind his back, his whip trailing, its tail springing at his heels. The mother screams, still running, her son ducks and gets through the hole, the whip comes down but too late, she is frantically bending and twitching for a space to duck through. She vanishes into the ground, out of sight. I only see the border guard turn and walk back, dragging his whip now limp across the dusty ground. Boys come to the car window and from beneath their arms, uncover several large bottles of mineral water. Their eyes shift side to side as if it is a crime to sell someone water. In a mirror, I see a tall uniformed man with dark sunglasses, marching towards the car. The water boys leap into a sprint and vanish as quick as they came, but the guard still strides forward waving a white metal cane with something loose and dangly hanging from one end. An electric cattle prodder. The men in blue once those boys herding their cattle by the side of the road.

inside the castle

Is he mad or blind?… In the realm of total acceptance there are no accidents. He once told a friend accidents do not exist in the world but only in our heads. There is no world without causation, and the idea of accident reflects the limits of human perception, our inability to know all connections and so pursue total causality.

Later, He went to an exhibition of Picasso paintings and expressed (to his friend) his opinion that this artist is guilty of wilful distortion. He said he did not think so: ‘He merely notes the abnormalities which have not yet penetrated our consciousness. Art is a mirror which “runs fast” like a clock – sometimes.’

This is from an introduction to Kafka’s The Castle. I’ve been thinking about it since my memory was jogged by Tim Etchells’ notebook from Prague (‘An Axe to Break the Frozen Sea, 8 August 2008), and I’ve been thinking about it even more since reading M John Harrison’s brilliant 1991 book review here. That review depresses me because the author was so clearly on fire when he wrote it, and it is so rare to have that rage and understanding and clarity. It’s a beautiful review. The writing is enough in itself to make me feel a fragility that is far too luxurious, far too much, for this world. But I’d like to live in it all the time.

Am I mad or blind, or do my eyes turn the images in front of me into something else without my knowing such that I see what isn’t there at all, but what my eyes see? This question is partly what stopped me from wanting to report news any more – partly what stopped me being able to report news any more. But I also believe that this is what totalitarian states do, which is why Kafka interests me so much, and why Angola (oh, Angola, forgive me) interests me so much. But these are obvious cases. Totalitarian states are effective because you believe you are mad, because your perceptions of what is really happening are tested and confused and thrown up. Someone is murdered by the State – and everyone says it was an accident of increasing violent crime. But you know, somehow, through perception, that he was murdered by the State. That is a too obvious, too straightforward example. The better examples are much harder to explain, the better examples are not obvious – they are very fuzzy, very subtle, very nuanced. You don’t know why you are scared but you are, or why you are confused but you are. And because you don’t know why you are scared and fear insanity. And slowly you become that.

Distinctions of fact and fiction are more frightening, maybe, in apparently non-totalitarian, apparently liberal, capitalist states. As ‘Julian’ comments on M John Harrison’s post (linked above), Deleuze has argued that we can view ‘theft as the original act of exchange, leading to the ‘coding’ of pleasure and desire that leads to tyranny and capitalism’. Shifting points of truth and the lie and the fact and the fiction. Talking of murder, remember Dr Kelly. And yet in places like Britain, such is the desire for fact and certainty, you can’t even consider that something which appears to be fantasy – Dr Kelly murdered by the State – to be fact. The limits of human perception are exaggerated and expanded out to trap the humans who live in the web (“Of course he wasn’t murdered, this isn’t Russia for God’s sake!”). We trap ourselves, our lives, in a divide between fact and fiction which never existed anyway.

Why is this so complex? So unbelievable. It seems so clear to me.

Am I mad or blind?

By the way, my mum and dad have been married for 47 years today.