Abstract
Under the MPLA ruling government only Agostinho Neto, among the leaders of the three movements of the liberation struggle, has a marked presence on the Angolan memorial landscape. This in spite of the Angolan liberation war against the Portuguese regime celebrating the most prominent movements, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA); under the leadership of Agostinho Neto for the former, Jonas Savimbi for the subsequent and Holden Roberto for the latter. The exclusion based on partisanship and on discourse of ‘us’ and ‘them’ is not only in contrast to the decommemoration of his fellow compatriots, but also evokes the sentiment that the anti-colonial war was, by virtue, fought and won under the leadership of only one political movement, the MPLA. These systematic injustices, in remembering heroes of the anti-colonial war, of course, deviate from the Angolan Toponymic Law, which bolsters a more democratic approach to honour heroes of the liberation struggle for the national unity whilst also distorts the rich Angolan historiography of the anti-colonial war. By employing critical toponymic analysis, through assessment of the Angolan Toponymic Law, this article addresses the issue of exclusion of Holden Roberto and Jonas Savimbi in the spatial memorial in the post-independence and post-civil war epochs and thus interrogates the rationale behind silencing these legendary figures, who enjoy paramount respect in the pantheon of the contemporary history of the national liberation struggle.
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Epoch from 1979 to 2017 in which Angola was under leadership of the then authoritarian president José Eduardo dos Santos. The term Eduardist comes from his middle name, Eduardo.
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Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to Dr. Vasco Martins from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, for sending me some reading material which was helpful to write this paper. I am also indebted to the group of reviewers for their rich and valuable comments.
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da Costa, D.F. The exclusion of national liberation war heroes of the opposition parties in the memorial landscape: an analysis of the Angolan toponymic law. GeoJournal 88, 3079–3092 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10797-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10797-z