ISS BOOK LAUNCH AN OUTBREAK OF PEACE: aNGOLA`S SITUATION OF `CONFUSION`

Date: 2005-10-14 to Invalid date

ISS BOOK LAUNCH
AN OUTBREAK OF PEACE: aNGOLA`S SITUATION OF `CONFUSION`

 

 

AFRICAN SECURITY ANALYSIS PROGRAMME

 

Map to ISS Offices >>>

 

Date: Friday, 14 October 2005
Venue: ISS Conference Room
Block C, Brooklyn Court

361 Veale Street
New Muckleneuk
(Parking in Brooklyn Mall and ABSA Court)

 

Time: 13h30 (tea and coffee)
14h00 (Book Launch)
14h30 (Light Snacks)

 

RSVP: Charlene Harry
Tel: (012) 346 9500
Fax: (012) 460 0997
E-mail: [email protected]

 

DavidPhillip Book Information

AN OUTBREAK OF PEACE - Angola ’s situation of ‘confusion’, by Justin Pearce

 

‘The colonel talked to me about the women coming back to look for their husbands.
What if a woman came back with a child fathered by someone from the other side, would they welcome her,’ I asked.
He gave me that non-smile.
‘To accept a woman who is carrying another man’s child - that’s all part of national reconciliation.’

(Chapter 12, War and Peace in Angola, February 2003)

 

The Angolan story is only another in the fantastic web of indulgence, misery, absurdity and suffering beyond expression that is bred in peace no less than war in ‘situations’ the world over. The story told in this book involves an understanding of what is particular to Angola, but it goes far beyond that. It is a story of the extremes of the human condition and, as such, its relevance is timeless.

 

Combining reportage and analysis, Justin Pearce shows the human face of Angola at a critical juncture in its history. Jonas Savimbi, leader of the rebel movement UNITA, was killed in February 2002. Crippled by the large imbalance between its resources and those of the MPLA government and the death of its messianic leader, a cult figure who has been described as of Mao-Tse-Tung proportions, UNITA collapsed, giving Angola its first extended period of peace since the nationalist uprising against Portuguese rule in the 1960s.

 

Working as the BBC correspondent based in Luanda, Justin Pearce was the only English-speaking journalist based in Angola in 2001 and 2002. He travelled extensively in Angola, hearing the testimonies of those whose lives were shaped by political divisions and war. He was also able to observe how Angola was governed in a manner which had little in common with the ideals professed by the government since independence.

 

The title of his book comes from a remark by Herculano Coroado, an Angolan journalist whom the author met in London shortly before going to Angola for the first time. His assessment of his homeland was:

 

‘ Angola is not a country. It`s a situation. A situation of confusion.’

 

As is clear in the book, the words ‘situation’ and ‘confusion’ have a particular resonance in Angola. Both are part of the fatalistic discourse adopted by Angolans when talking about the war, or about the state of their society. Hunger, corruption and all manner of human misery may be blamed on the ‘situation’, something which is implicitly unchanging. ‘Confusion’, for its part, can signify anything from the usual English sense of the word – a muddle, a misunderstanding – to a full-scale war, blurring the moral distinction between the two.

 

This is an important book. It speaks to the non-specialist reader with an interest in African affairs; or people who have a particular interest in Angola, be it through business, humanitarian or policy development work, and who are looking for a perspective on the country`s recent social history.

 

But it speaks beyond that – to the heart. The heart of those who profess to ‘love Africa’, who wish to witness its ‘re-birth’ and who linger to mourn its past.

 

"This is a great book. There is simply no better account of Angola`s modern tragedy. Justin Pearce is a tireless and gifted reporter who has sweated and struggled to reveal the true ghastliness of Angola`s war and the "workers`-party-turned-millionaires` party" that won it. But at the same time, he holds out hope that this tortured country`s tenuous peace will hold."

- Robert Guest, former Africa editor of The Economist and author of "The Shackled Continent: Africa`s Past, Present and Future".

 

The Author:

 

Justin Pearce was born (1967) and educated in Cape Town, South Africa. During the late 1980s he was active in the movement against conscription and militarisation in South Africa, at a time when conscripts of his generation were being deployed by the South African Defence Force in Angola and elsewhere in southern Africa. He began his career as a journalist on the now-defunct weekly newspaper South, in Cape Town, before moving to the Johannesburg-based Mail & Guardian.

 

From 1998 until 2001 he wrote mostly on African affairs for BBC News Online. In 2001 he was appointed BBC correspondent in Angola, and lived in Luanda for two years: the only English-language correspondent stationed in Luanda during the critical period of Jonas Savimbi`s death and the ensuing moves to end the civil war in Angola. During this time, Justin Pearce also contributed to The Economist, The Guardian, and Africa Analysis (London); Reuters, IRIN, Mail & Guardian and Sunday Times (Johannesburg); and Público (Lisbon).