The Route of Angola a Strategic Approach

By Miguel Junior

The present essay is the result of multiple investigations. However, it is important to clarify the reasons on the base of its conception. The transformations operated in Angola allowed the emergence of a political system of liberal democracy. Although that was the case, in practical terms, there are several trends.

Some tend to integration, others to disintegration, and the others are in an intermediate position. After all, everything gravitates around the fight to capture and maintain power, with a certain exacerbation and lack of knowledge of certain peculiarities of the pluralist system, as well as a lack of mastery of other aspects.

In parallel, there is a trend to ignore common history, life in society, national conquests, etc. There are also many misunderstandings concerning the handling of state life. Some arise from lack of political-strategic culture, others from eagerness to take power promptly, and others still from scarce clarity of some aspects of the functional model and lack of state vision. Likewise, the country sees statements that do not help internal life at all and contribute to increased vulnerabilities, thus forming a potential threat to national interests.

All in all, peace, stability, well-being, common good, and security require ways of thinking and acting that are more in line with a contemporary way of life. Still, we face a whole set of demands arising from present challenges, which require adaptation and the imperious need to help solve regional and international problems. But meanwhile, for this to happen, one must catapult to other levels of organization and strive mainly for clarity in the global operation of the state.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546280385

Miguel Junior

Miguel Junior is a general officer of the Angolan Armed Forces and military historian. He is author of several works and has published articles on defense, security and history.

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© 2017 MIGUEL JÚNIOR. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/27/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-8039-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-8040-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-8038-5 (e)

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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

I   The Two Big Changes

I.1. The fight for national liberation

I.2. The transition period

I.3. The national crisis

II   The Reality And The Democratic Rule Of Law

II.1. The reality and fundamental references

II.2. The democratic Rule of Law

III   The National Society

III.1. The determining factors of national operation

III.2. The trend of national society

IV   The Issue Of Democracy

IV.1. Pluralist will

IV.2. The democratic experience

IV.3. The defence and development of democracy

V   The Fight For National Liberation

V.1. National independence

V.2. The dimension of the fight for national liberation

VI   The New Life

VI.1. The phenomenon of New Life

VI.2. The path of New Life

VII   The Mainstays Of National Politics

VII.1. National policy

VII.2. The political dynamics and national policy

VIII   The Outlines Of Government Policy

VIII.1. The role and place of Government

VIII.2. Government policy

IX   Policies And Strategies

IX.1. The impact of war

IX.2. The lessons of war

X   The Route Of Angola

X.1. The stage of crisis management

X.2. The end of the crisis

Conclusions

Bibliography

PREFACE

Three main beams seem to form the bone structure of this essay by Miguel Júnior: national politics, the national crisis as a universe of vicissitudes that the Angolan community goes through and the strategies of its management.

The idea of national politics brings about two indispensable concepts, prior understanding of which will necessarily help ascertain the reach of the subject covered. I mean the concepts of post-colonial State in Africa, new theoretic configurations having been sketched.

This trend includes reflexions that operate, to this regard, with the concept of State – a space whose base lies on territory understood as a framework for coexistence of national communities. Nevertheless, it is around a modern Angolan state of a Western matrix, inherited from the colonial period, that this book conceives the idea of crisis as an allusion to the pathologic dimension of its materialisation.

The author does not explicitly weigh in on the approach of State and Nation. But those concepts impregnate his reflexion diffusely. It gives relevance to the historic grounds that form the spirituality of a shared destiny, concentrated in the extensional aspect of the concept of nation. Said grounds are detectable in the notion of fight for national liberation, reviewed in two moments: that of resistance to colonial occupation and that of the National Liberation Movement, also called modern nationalism. In his theory of National Liberation Movement, Amílcar Cabral already assigned primordial importance to culture, because, besides being the true basis for the liberation movement, he argues that the liberation fight is, beforehand, an act of culture. Herein lies the need for what he called re-africanisation of spirits.

Now, the deficit of Angolan elites as far as knowledge of the historic reality of the Angolan National Liberation Movement is at the centre of what will become a national crisis. Taking the assumptions on which the processes of socialisation of the elites of the National Liberation Movement lie, we will conclude, in effect, that such cognitive hiatus is one of the most powerful factors of the crisis, amounting to a genetic moment of the pathology that corrodes the formation of the State. Among the multiple circumstances and reference contexts, the author highlights the transition period that occurred in Angola from April 25th 1974 to November 11th 1975.

For Miguel Júnior, the national crisis, albeit its phenomenological nature, interposes between the long process of crystallisation of the Nation’s grounds, the formal act of political independence and the launch of the bases for a modern State.

Thirdly, the strategies to manage the national crisis imply means of reference, perceptions and images of the very crisis, seen as the relative absence of stability in every sense. For that reason, the author produces a brief panorama of what may be seen as the history of management of the Angolan national crisis that has lasted for a quarter of century. We face an endemic crisis, the author says. Actually it is a crisis of long duration. Hence the idea of strategy, referring us to an instrumental concept whose kernel concentrates noble values and conditions of existence of the national community, such as independence and security.

Despite its polymorph structure, the crisis still suggests the abandonment of the reductionist and monist vision whose dominance seems to exhaust itself in the prevalence of the political component. It is a temptation that the author resists, leaving no space for that vulnerability, whence would result expectable serious implications from the point of view of analysis.

Hence, the text remains in the terms of a proposal for open reading, the author proving able to sustain the necessary distance from ephemeral and precarious visions, avoiding the nefarious interference of categorical judgments, before the object of his reflexion.

The author shows his attention to internal social dynamics by validating the need for interdisciplinary thought about inclusive structural phenomena and the way of its articulation in the Angolan context.

Herein lies the topicalisation of the national strategy and defence that, underlying the whole book, have the function of relevance-regulating values whose scope extols the limits of common understanding among us.

Miguel Júnior’s book is undoubtedly an exercise in citizenship that, in the field of writing, falls within the production of an essayistic discourse dominated by the tension of free exam, in an effort that, while not overwhelming the reader, will at least make them share the itch of problematisation.

Luís Kandjimbo

INTRODUCTION

The present essay is the result of multiple investigations. However, it is important to clarify the reasons on the base of its conception. The transformations operated in Angola allowed the emergence of a political system of liberal democracy. Although that was the case, in practical terms there are several trends.

Some tend to integration, others to disintegration and the others are in an intermediate position. After all, everything gravitates around the fight to capture and maintain power, with a certain exacerbation and lack of knowledge of certain peculiarities of the pluralist system, and also lack of mastery of other aspects.

In parallel, there is a trend to ignore common history, life in society, national conquests, etc. There are also many misunderstandings concerning the handling of State life. Some arise from lack of political-strategic culture, others from eagerness to take power promptly, others from scarce clarity of some aspects of the functional model and lack of State vision. Likewise, the country sees statements that do not help internal life at all and contribute to increase vulnerabilities, thus forming a potential threat to national interests.

All in all, peace, stability, well-being, common good and security require ways of thinking and acting that are more in line with a contemporary way of life. Still, we face a whole set of demands arising from present challenges, which require adaptation and the imperious need to help solve regional and international problems. But for this to happen, meanwhile, one must catapult to other levels of organisation and strive, mainly, for clarity in the global operation of the State.

These are the fundamental reasons for the conception of the present essay, on par with others that I was able to find in interventions, interviews, conferences, national magazines and newspapers. I did not ignore suggestions, normally expressed in other press outlets.

In this line of discernment I did not waive recording the ideas of certain bodies, as well as individuals, about life in Angola. Another motivation is the need to increment research in the field of political science, namely. Lastly, the wish to see our country grow and the happiness of the Angolan people are other motivations.

The work is structured as follows: introductory part, chapters, conclusions and bibliography.

In the first part, evidently, when approaching the past, I was not limited by the chronologic aspects and problems. Mainly in the valuation of events and the search for lessons, as they allow enhancement and provide data susceptible of allowing corrections, if used rationally by social subjects. Likewise, I tried not to ignore information that allows understanding the evolution of events and the causes of transformations in the internal plan.

It would also be pointless to move on to other reflexions of a national nature without mentioning the reality in force as a product of historic evolution, and it would make much less sense to leave out national references, as well as the model of society chosen by the Angolan people. The importance thereof arises from contemporary demands, given that, to prepare any national projection, one must bear in mind the national reality, national grounds and