In Angola, local governments are appointed by the central authorities. This means that Angolan citizens are only called to cast their ballot once every five year, for the general elections that will allocate a certain number of seats for each party in parliament. The party that gets the most votes then elects the President and from that point, basically all executive decisions taken in the form of Presidential Decrees. Angolan political analysts often speak of the “atypical Constitution” that allows this highly centralised system to be called a democracy despite the obvious structural denial of the citizens’ voices.

Adopted in 2010, the Constitution makes provision for the implementation of democratically elected local governments at the municipal level. In Portuguese, this strata of decentralised government is called autarquias. However, eleven years later, and while promised several times, the elections autárquicas have not been organised. They have become the elephant in the room in all political debates, both in parliament and on the streets. Several groups of activists across the country now mobilise around the motto “Jovens pelas Autarquias” (Youth for the Autarquias).

How to mobilise local communities?

In Luanda, I’ve been following diverse members of this network (individual or collective) for more than two years now. I try to follow the numerous activities organised across Luanda, ranging from press conferences to internal trainings, and from public debates to virtual campaigns. The video I present here shows a small event organised by a group called Projecto AGIR, that works in the Cacuaco municipality. Their goal is to educate local residents on the question of autarquias but also to campaign for their own future candidate.

This video is the first of two vignettes showing the two faces of their action. On the one hand, as can be seen here, Projecto AGIR positions itself as a community-based movement promoting non-partisan education and addressing the basic needs of local communities. They pride themselves in organising charity events such as soup kitchens, COVID prevention door-to-door campaigns or free legal assistance. Here, I show the setting up of an ephemeral library where any passer-by is welcome to pick a book to read on site. No questions are asked and the book selection ranges from religious essays to children comics.

However, the library features a majority of historical and sociological essays and that is a good reminder of the second face of Projecto AGIR’s general mission. Unequivocally, the library includes some of the most vocal denunciations of the power abuse perpetrated by the ruling party since independence. Titles such as Diamantes de Sangue by renowned human-rights activist Rafael Marques or Sou eu mais livre, então by rapper and activist Luaty Beirão are emblematic of the pro-democracy movement in Angola. The ephemeral library does not only promote a culture of reading or an ethos of public service, it also seeks to raise consciousness around social issues and to champion critical thinking against dominant narratives. The second video yet to come will present more precisely the political content that is only suggested here. Projecto AGIR – here represented by Selma who plays the role of Master of Ceremony at the end of the video – mobilises classic political tools: public lectures (from members of the project and/or guest speakers), mottos (“Minha Comunidade, Minha Prioridade” / “My community, my priority”), physical and virtual marketing (T-shirts, banners, etc).

Filmmaking as research method

I’ve been using video recording for a long time now. In the (abundant… and often redundant) literature on visual ethnography, video recording is generally presented as a great tool to complement live observation as it allows to capture a given situation in images and sounds. The footage collected can for exemple help to further analyse the exact material organisation of a particular setting or to better unravel the various layer of sounds and voices that characterise a landscape.

Visual ethnography is also commended for its potential in terms of writing and sharing a research project. The researcher-filmmaker can for example produce small vignettes in order to present particular moments, important places, or key actors (the present video would fall under this category). He or she can also produce feature films allowing a full presentation of the research (and here, please bear in mind that there are many different ways to write ‘scientific movies’ beyond the classic ‘National Geographic documentary’ style). Whatever the skills and interests of the researcher might be, I’d argue that from the moment he or she chooses to actually edit her footage, new questions arise around the necessity to build a narrative that fits the constraints of filmmaking (think: story-telling scaffolding, cinematic stylisation, didactic versus impressionist narration etc). Here, I opted for a minimalist scenario that follows the chronology of the event and conveys the simplicity of the means the activists have at their disposal.

Of course, filming also creates strong biases in the way the ethnographer behave on the field, both spatially (some shots may require unusual crouching or climbing here and there) and socially (the basic rule is “if I’m filming, don’t expect me to utter a word”). In the present case, it was actually the first time I got to experiment my new camera equipment in a real situation. I must say I was very pleased by how José and his colleagues let me “do my stuff” without much concern. I felt our relationship was ‘mature’ enough to allow more video recording as part of my participant observation. Technically, I still have a lot to learn, especially when it comes to the audio capture (my shotgun mic, mounted directly on the camera, is really not ideal for recording general audio landscape), and of course in terms of stabilising my frames and creating more rhythm in the final edition. Maybe, I’ll write more on this one day.

“Rain in Luanda” is not just “rain”. It’s a wake-up call. It’s a magnifying mirror showing us everything that’s wrong in our little microcosmoses. It brings up global warming and climate anxieties. It amplifies my internal rage against generalised urban failure. It feeds paralysing feelings of social injustice and spatial segregation. Social media buzz with tragicomic videos of people canoeing in flooded streets, pictures of semi-immersed cars and cathartic memes exorcising the fatigue felt in front of a too-well-known scenario.

Luanda is a city located in the tropical rain belt. Forget the scientific jargon and ask anyone on the street in Luanda: April is the month for heavy rains. It might not rain for 11 months but then comes April and the skies open. And Luanda is flooded. Every single year. And every year, we see new videos, new pictures, new memes. And we laugh and we cry. And we go on. What are we supposed to do?

‘Humanity is turning into its own monster’

A few hours after the rain stops, formal reports start to replace social media outcry. Local journalists provide the facts, cold and terrifying: 14 people died, 8000 lost their homes. They produce the material that is likely to call the attention of international media, like this series of pictures signed by a photograph of the French Press Agency and published by the US media Voice of America. There will even be a little bit of turmoil when the Portuguese President expresses his solidarity with Angola before the Angolan President made any official declaration. Armindo Laureano, editorialist of respected weekly newspaper goes lyrical about the feeling of abandon felt by his fellow citizens.

[Citizens] expect from those who are leading them a word of comfort, of courage and of hope. And when those who should speak remain silent, for them it sounds like contempt, like the incapacity to lead and to deal with the situation. Life is hard and difficult. Citizens are in need of affection and attention, and those who govern, unfortunately, take time to read the signals.

Life is certainly “hard and difficult” but I don’t know if citizens are in need of affection. A good hug would probably be a nice gesture but I’d say they mostly need better urban planning, appropriate public works and reliable social support. There is something slightly patronising in this reading of a citizenry waiting to be ‘comforted’ by its President but it captures well how much these annual torrential rains tend to leave us flabbergasted. Or maybe I should say anaesthetised. Were we supposed to expect anything at all? The question is maybe less “what are we supposed to do?” than “what are we supposed to feel?”.

In a recent interview about his latest exhibition in Luanda, visual artist Thó Simões speaks beautifully of how “humanity is turning into its own monster”. The title of his exhibition, Between Monsters and Humans, is a reflection on how we are losing our sensibility in front of daily problems, more often than not we end up adapting to absurd situations instead of fighting against them. “I gonna give you an example,” goes Thó Simões, “if I wake up in the middle of the night and find my house flooded because it rained outside, but I don’t panic – I might be irritated and angry for a few seconds, but then deal with the situation as if it was mundane – then there is something weird in this scenario. The normal thing would be to panic.”

‘The normal thing would be to panic’

Thó Simões about his latest exhibition Between Monsters and Humans

So it rained in Luanda. I woke up at 5am to take our clothes off the line and I went back to sleep. My daughter was probably a little late at school, my workflow was a bit more interrupted than usual but that’s all. I could press that “I’m safe” button that Facebook likes to create when there’s a natural disaster. But the button doesn’t exist for Luanda. Who cares? People who are affected by the rain have other thing to do than press a Facebook button. People who are willing to press a button don’t know what rain is.

As I tidy my thoughts up, I realise that a rainy day in Luanda is yet another reminder of the interlaced privileges I have, as a French expatriate, as a white woman, as a knowledge worker. But then what? People are still throwing buckets of dirty water out of their living room as I write. Parents are scared their child might get electrocuted when stepping in their flooded backyard. “What would you save first if your house was flooded?” Tip: the answer is not my TV-set or my PlayStation.

And then, a second theme comes and runs through my Facebook thread. Fire in Cape Town. I heard of the wildfires on Table Mountain during the weekend but that was like floods in Luanda. Unfortunate. Usual. Today is different because of the pictures I screenshot below. It’s not about Table Mountain anymore, not even about overpopulated settlements on the Cape Flats where losing one’s home to a fire is common thing. Unfortunate. Usual. No. This time, the pictures are calling my attention. They are pictures of the century-old University of Cape Town. Pictures of the Jagger reading room aka African Studies library. On fire. And suddenly it feels like a personal loss. I spent long hours in that library during my PhD. I was a student, I was a sponge. Many things I’ve read there I have absorbed without really knowing how. It was before “Zotero” and before PDFs. It was old style book reading and journal’s scrolling…

Just like the floods in Luanda, the fire in Cape Town only reached beyond my ‘monstrous’ filters when it touched deep personal memories. In both cases, people have lost their homes. In Cape Town fortunately, it seems that people living on the slope of the mountain had the time to be evacuated. There, local government and civil society have been able to organise emergency accomodation and food assistance. In the last week, damages have been thoroughly assessed by professionals, and the popular emotion has partially translated into donations, either through dropping-off needed products for firefighters and evacuated students, or through financial donations to the firefighters, to the NGO coordinating the disaster response on the ground and directly to the University’s Donations Fund.

Here in Luanda, I’m left with my very own little privileged monster. I feel ashamed. I am saddened by the picture of an old building in flames but almost untouched by the images of the floods in the city where I live.

“People are at work, building and talking to each other.”

My personal emotion at seeing the library devoured by the fire makes me feel awkward and, once again, bounces against the whole “privilege” story. I can try and unravel my mixed feelings (sadness and shame, fear and lassitude, anger and cynicism etc.). Or maybe I should read more marxist theory and postmodern metaphysics. Instead, a colleague sends me the link to a great paper by Mũkoma Wa Ngũgĩ entitled White Privilege in African Studies: When You Are Done, Please Call Us. The US-based literary scholar speaks, with a wit and plainness I could ever only aspire to, of the “self-perpetuating and self-rewarding African Studies Industrial Complex”:

African Studies as a discipline is led by a conservative ideology (…) Covid-19 and the consequent lockdowns made this plain and clear — that the problem with African Studies is one of ideology and relevancy rather than becoming a more efficient and racially equal disciplined machine. In the US, we went into lock down —no more jetting into convention centers or more accurately, no more hustling for visas, airline tickets, discounted conference fees for Africa-based scholars, etc. Those on the continent quickly created alternative spaces, in addition to all the other initiatives and intellectual projects historically happening on the ground. (…) People are at work, building and talking to each other. The self-flagellating discussions about white privilege and African Studies were outside the radar of the urgent work that was being done.

Thank you Mũkoma Wa Ngũgĩ for giving me the words to express what I’ve been feeling for some time now and that this troubled Monday of rain and fire has revived once more. “People are at work, building and talking to each other.” I have been increasingly frustrated in the past couple of years by the number of publications trying to list what it takes to be a “woke” white person, to commit to what is called “transformation” in South Africa, or, more academically, to be/ think / act “decolonial“. Although there might be some cool ideas here and there, I’ve felt that reading this kind of texts took me off the actual task of crafting spaces (mental, temporal, physical) for the kind of work and life I aspire to.

On the 17th of April, José, young activist, was arrested and beaten up by the police while he took part to a student march in Luanda. A week later, he calls for a new protest for better public services in his neighbourhoods. His Facebook post reads as follows: ‘I’m having a chamomile tea for body strength. Today the administration of Cacuaco is going to learn how things work’.

A week later, the mud is still sticky on the streets of Luanda and the smell of burnt wood and paper is probably still acrid on the ruins of the Jagger Library in Cape Town. I cannot really say I’ve tidied my thoughts and feelings up but I know it’s time to be at work, actively, everyday. Time to dig into those difficult conversations about privilege and being a monster to oneself. But also to feed all these other conversations that we deserve to have. Conversations about why rap music helps me link the dots in Luanda (coming up soon!). Conversations about the right to protest and how to make a march fun and uplifting (follow José’s advice above: drink chamomile!). Conversations about the choice of the dress for a young bride or about the place that sells the greenest veggies in town. Talking to each other might help keep the monsters at bay for a while, and in the meantime, we might make a few steps towards building a lighter, more creative and less judgemental space. For academia and for life.

On the 2nd of January 2021, a mural painted on the walls of a community space in Cazenga¹ was vandalised. The painting is an initiative of a group of local activists who have used the wall since 2011 to promote local artists, organise graffiti contests and more broadly celebrate their collective identity. Since 2020, the mural came to represent the faces of famous Angolan human-rights activists, hence its nickname “Wall of Citizenship”. The damaging of the painting coincided with the investiture of a new municipal administrator and was interpreted by the activists as a direct provocation against their movement. I reproduce below a text written by one of them, Hitler Samussuku, who expresses his indignation and recalls that it is not the first time the wall was targeted (my own translation from Portugueses to English).

This text is interesting on several levels. It shows the efforts made by the activists to make their action intelligible to a broader public and to offer their own definition of citizenship. It translates their twofold political strategy. Firstly, they are very effective in branding themselves as the legitimate voice of their local community. They are highly reactive on social media and make sure to comment almost immediately on any micro political event likely to highlight their involvement in their community and/or to denounce the enactment of the local authorities. Secondly, they make a deliberate effort to capitalise on any happening to bring together their peers and assert a sense of community that is based both on specific cultural references (here the hip hop culture at large) and on a clear political agenda (here a campaign for the organisation of local elections).

Samussuku’s narrative of the Wall of Citizenship is thus both a political artefact in itself and a living archive of a political movement in the making. By reproducing it here, I intend to capture the concrete expression of citizenship nowadays in Luanda and experiment a sort of cowriting where the voice of the activist can be heard at the same time than that of the researcher.

The Wall of Citizenship in Cazenga, in the words of Hitler Samussuku²

“Tomás Bika chose the plaza Mulemba W’axangola to organize a traditional ceremony with the sobas [traditional leaders] of Cazenga’s municipe that marked the beginning of his mandate as the new [municipal] administrator. The plaza that was chosen is a public space partly used by local youth for recreative activities (basketball and hip hop session). Since 2011, the wall on the side of the historic source was converted by the youth into a Wall of Citizenship where various public figures are honoured in the form of graffiti paintings. The first figures were Agostinho Neto and Jonas Savimbi³. Later on, members of the Youth League of the MPLA came and decided to remove the image of Jonas Savimbi. The young artists decided to exclude the portrait of Agostinho Neto. In April 2020, new portraits were added to the mural. Amongst them we can note: Padre Pio Wakussanga, Sizaltina Cutaia, Carbono Casimiro, José Patrocínio, Estrudes Gaspar and Rafael Marques⁴. After the death of Inocêncio Matos, killed during the street protest of the 11th of November of 2020, the artists added his image on the Wall of Citizenship. Yesterday, the neighbourhood woke up to find the mural damaged with motor oil, in particular the image of Inocêncio Matos. The authors of the erasure of the mural were later confirmed on the page of Tomás Bika when the incoming administrator revealed his decision to realise the rite of his investiture. The activists reacted on social media with texts calling for the boycott of his mission as administrator of Cazenga. This morning, a goup of young people managed to clean up the images.
The Vosi Yetu Project took this initiative, and not the University of Hip Hop, as we wrote yesterday.

“Make some noise”: the strategy of immediate publicisation

The text presented above demonstrates the diverse tools used by young activists to promote their activities and disseminate their messages. Social media are obviously key resources here. The text was initially published by Samussuku on both his Facebook and Instagram pages. He also forwarded it directly to me on Whatssap and when I asked whether I could republished it on my blog he edited it slightly and send me the final version on the same day. In addition to the text, the video was posted on YouTube on the very day of the vandalisation. Three weeks later, the video has been seen over 1300 times, a significant number for such a micro event, especially given the fact that most of the residents in that area have limited access to the kind of internet connexion allowing video streaming.

As Samussuku relates himself, the paintings were cleaned up just the next day. Undoubtedly, if it wasn’t for his effort to publicise the happening, the degradation of the mural would have only been noticed by those present that day. On the video, Samussuku says that he was called in by one of the local activists for he is known for his ability to make noise around events such as this one. This strategy of “noise making” also appears in addition of Inocêncio Matos to the wall. Contrary to the other figures, the young man was not known for his activism but because he died during a protest partly organised by Cazenga’s youth collective, the activists made him a martyr of their struggle. Making an anonymous protester a figure to be honoured is an important symbolic turn in the definition of citizenship. It implies that the essence of Angolan citizenship is not only in what a person does for / in her community but also in the relationship of enmity that this person might have towards the ruling forces.

Without going further in the exegesis of Samussuku’s words, what I’m interested in here is the fact that although the actual damaging of the paintings was in itself pretty anecdotical, the story of the damaged wall tells quite a lot about the politics of citizenship at play in Luanda nowadays. To understand why, one needs to look at the untold stories that are hidden in the text.

Preaching to the converted: the untold stories behind an incomplete “press release”

Hitler Samussuku is probably one of the most audible political activists in Angola nowadays. Beyond his direct involvement in community activism in the northern peripheries of Luanda, his (unforgettable) name circulates amongst all foreign journalists interested with youth politics in Angola. Samussuku is present in various student movements and exchanges with same-minded political groups throughout the country. As he himself says, he has deliberately made a brand of himself and is not scared to appear in events organised by international human rights NGOs, by the diplomatic community in Luanda or even by opposition parties, even if he never took any official positions within a political party. Feeding regular “press releases” to political observers in Angola has thus become a professional skill.

However, this strategy of immediate publicisation also comes with its pitfalls. The text reproduced above shows at least two main obstacles for community activists. Firstly, most readers who do not live in Cazenga will probably understand very little of the social and geographical context. In the present case, the name “Mulemba W’axangola” for example probably does not carry much signification for outsiders and the reference to the “historic source” remains largely an enigma. Secondly, the accusation made against the incoming administrator might seem largely unfounded unless the activists were able to entirely convey the broader political field in which they play. As a result, the text largely fails in its role as a “press release”: only insiders are likely to have all the keys to understand the message.

If a journalist had to publish the story, s/he would have to explain that “Mulemba” is the name of a tree that was traditionally used by Kimbundu people to mark their territory. In Cazenga, an old Mulemba tree has been recognised by the ministry of Culture as a historical landmark, hence the name “Mulemba W’axangola” given to the place. The story goes that the tree was planted in the early days of colonial occupation to mark the limit between Portuguese territory and ‘indigenous’ lands. The “Mulemba W’axangola” plaza is thus not a mere “public space” available for recreative activities. It is a highly symbolic place that is associated with the Nation at large. This historical element is crucial if we are to understand why a newly nominated administrator would choose this place to enact his investiture. Of course, a whole chapter could also be written about the ambivalent relationship that links the ruling party to the sobas. Again these “traditional leaders” are not just folkloric old men involved in witchcraft (as Samussuku suggests in the video), they do represent an important piece in the fragmented puzzle of authority assembled by the ruling party since the early years of the anticolonial struggle.

Another story that remains untold in Samussuku’s text is the multiple confrontations that he and his peers have had with the government in the last decade or so. The reference to 2011 for example is in itself a strong political statement, since it roots their anti-government discourses into the recent history of pro-democracy protests in Angola. More precisely, Samussuku represents a group of activists who are not only profoundly anti-MPLA, they are also involved in a long-running campaign for the organisation of local elections. If they are so vividly opposed to Tomás Bika, it is of course because the man represents the party they hate. It might also be because of things he’s done or said (Samussuku refers to the Facebook page of the man). But first and foremost, the nomination of the new administrator is a symbol of the failure of their campaign for a democratically elected local government. Behind the man lies a general governance system that leaves no space for local democracy. Here again, I could write a few pages about the weakness of decentralisation in Angola. Brad Safarik recently defended a PhD where he describes the relationship the central authorities cultivates towards rural peripheries as a form of “strategic abandon”. This idea would probably be very accurate to describe the situation in Cazenga but that goes beyond the purpose of this text.

Unraveling the manifold background stories that lie behind Samussuku’s short text would feed a whole academic paper. I might write it one day and submit it to Sources, a young academic journal that looks at original materials collected by social scientists in Africa. But my point here, is that, by not telling some of the key elements we need to understand his position, Samussuku might fail in his attempt to build comprehensive press release but he also (consciously or not) makes an important step for the mobilisation of his peers. Those who do decipher his messages are made to feel they belong to his circle. In this case, preaching to the convinced actually means creating a community of interest and leading its members towards an unequivocal political struggle that is directed against the local administrator in person. It then comes as a logical outcome to hear that the activists are calling for a boycott of the current administration or that some of them are considering running as candidates in the future elections.

The ambivalence of visual “history-telling” beyond contemporary graffiti

One of the key back stories of Samussuku’s text is the reference to a broader hip hop movement that goes back to 2011 and has been using the plaza of the historical tree for its “recreative activities” since then. In fact, Samussuku refers alternatively to “the youth”, “the artists” and “the activists” as one same group of people. The erratum added at the end of the text suggests that there have been some debates regarding the labelling of this group (“Vosi Yetu Project” rather than “University of Hip Hop”). But whatever the internal debates might be, it is clear that the people who are vehemently rejecting the authority of the new administrator in Cazenga self identify as members of a large hip hop movement. In that sense, it is worth noting that the wall of Citizenship is not merely described as a “mural” but as a piece of graffiti art.

In Luanda as in many places all over the world, the spray painting techniques experimented on the derelict metro wagons of Harlem in late 1970s New York City have become a mode of expression associated with emancipatory struggles. By definition, a graffiti is a visual cry for freedom. It is a way to reclaim a particular space that would otherwise be empty, dirty, or even dangerous. It relates to the voice of those who are silenced by the structures of power. It also questions the governing capacity of public authorities : it can be ruled out as vandalism or on the contrary be commissioned as a project of public art.

In Luanda, it is easy to say that derelict spaces are numerous, freedom of expression limited and governing capacity aleatory. In her PhD thesis dedicated to hip hop culture in Luanda, Jacqueline Lima Santos argues that young Angolans have used graffiti to develop emancipatory narratives⁵. She takes the courtyard of the University of Hip Hop in Cazenga as her core example of the vitality of Angolan graffiti, reproducing almost word by word the narrative of Samussuku. At the time of her fieldwork, the Wall of Citizenship had not been labelled yet and the paintings found there were not as directly political as they are today. To illustrate the capacity of graffiti artists to make bold statements, Lima Santos brings up the example of a large mural painted downtown Luanda to protest against the planned destruction of the Elinga Theatre.

The mural painted on the wall of the Elinga Theatre is indeed a spectacular example of visual protest. It shows that the professional graffiti artists who are emerging in the city are not only bold and talented ; they are also able to navigate a complex cultural space where public art is rarely formally commissioned but where local authorities are nevertheless likely to let artists take ownership of certain walls as long as it is for embellishment purposes. However, murals have a much longer and more ambivalent history in Angola. Deolinda Collier unfolds the multifaceted heritage of the murals originally painted in rural villages in the Eastern Angolan region of Lunda. Through an in-depth study combining critical history, anthropology and arts, Colliers shows that the Lunda paintings have taken various meanings since they have become the object of academic research in the 1930s. They have been central to both colonial culturalism and socialist propaganda and have become emblems of Angolan art following;wing complex trajectories that range from blunt stolen art to politically conscious acts of cultural re-mediation⁶

In this general context, it is clear that Angolan graffiti is not just a “glocal”⁷ expression of hip hop culture and that the Wall of Citizenship does not only illustrate an interpersonal struggle between Cazenga activists and the MPLA. Visual “history-telling” in Angola is a contested field where deep ideologies have been at play for at least a century.

Through this discussion of Cazenga’s Wall of Citizenship, I attempted to show why it is important to listen closely to what activists have to say. The point is not just to reproduce their discourses, to highlight their multimedia skills or to praise their ability to articulate citizenship both in theory and in practice. Unravelling how they craft their messages helps understand their growing capacity to mobilise. This political capacity extends beyond their “natural” constituency defined by geography (“the youth of Cazenga”) or mere cultural affinities (“the hip hop community”). Most importantly, it is a capacity to mobilise around an unequivocal political agenda that demands a radical change of paradigm. The untold basis for the adhesion to this movement is threefold: rejection of the MPLA, lobbying for the organisation of local elections, and readiness to participate to these decentralised municipal governments. The question that remains is how the state will respond to these demands that have now become impossible to ignore.

1. Cazenga is a popular neighbourhood located about 5km from Luanda’s city centre
2. my translation
3. Agostinho Neto is the official ‘Father of the Nation’, he became the president of the Republic of Angola in 1975 when his movement, the MPLA, declared independence in Luanda. Jonas Savimbi was the leader of UNITA, another anti colonial movement, who also declared independence on the 1st of November 1975, in the Southern city of Huambo. Neto and Savimbi soon became fierce enemies as MPLA and UNITA engaged in a war that lasted until Savimbi was killed in 2002
4. this list includes internationally acclaimed human rights activists as well as less visible figures known mostly from the local community they serve
5. Lima Santos, Jacqueline, 2019, Imaginando Uma Angola opós-colonial: a Cultura hip-hop e os indigos políticos da Nova República, PhD dissertation in Social Anthropology, University of Campinas
6. Collier, Deolinda. 2016. Repainting the Walls of Lunda: Information Colonialism and Angolan Art, University of Minnesota Press
7. the word “glocal” is a neologism used to capture the process of local appropriation of global trends

A few weeks ago, I took part to an informal meeting organised by an international institution in Luanda. The objective was to gather the opinion of various social scientists in order to support their emergency task force whose mission was to imagine different scenarii regarding the imminent arrival of the Covid-19 in Angola. The convenor explained that they were elaborating five scenarii of gradual gravity. Stage five would require the immediate evacuation of all their foreign staff out of Angola.

Although no one was naive enough to expect social scientists to foresee what would happen, the idea was that, thanks to our in-depth understanding of social dynamics, to our capacity to analyse situations from within, we could provide valuable insights on topics such as « are the poor able to apply the basic hygiene recommendations in their home? », « are the churches aware of the crisis underway? What is their messages? », « is it likely that people in the musseque would rebel against the state and march onto the city? », « would a state of emergency bring up wartime memories and (re)ignite post-traumatic stress? » …

The meeting was pleasant. We shared the last jokes received on Whatssap and I suspect we all felt somehow flattered to be able to contribute with our own expertise.

But to be honest, I also personally felt as a total fraud in there. I had no clue what would happen, or not happen in the next few days, weeks, months, be it in Angola, in ‘Africa’ or in my own home. As everyone else, I was scared about the « worst » that was coming, the « looming humanitarian and security crisis », « the triple hit », « the chaos » that everyone was predicting. I remember thinking that there were no good translation for « bracing oneself » in either French or Portuguese. We were bracing for the impact. A few days earlier, I had been losing my mind pondering whether I should follow the flow of expats flying back to their Europe or US-based home (the decision to stay in Angola came when I realised it was my only home anyway). A few days later, we would receive the news of the first official cases of Covid-19 infections in Angola.

So there I was, in an acute moment of personal uncertainty, sitting in a meeting whose objective I found dubious from the start but that somehow made me feel empowered. And as the discussion unfolded, I realised that my spontaneous reaction was always to emphasise the fact that Angolans might actually be better prepared for this whole thing than ‘we’ (international staff, foreign experts, expats) were and than we expected.

we need to tell stories about the everyday lives of everyday people who struggle, aspire, fear, grieve, and overcome in no more and no less than anywhere else.(Jess Auerbach, in African Argument, 19 March)

Who am I to speak for Angolans?

I told my colleagues that for most Luandans I knew, dealing with food scarcity was actually a familiar struggle and they knew how to handle it. In the family where I used to stay during my first sojourns in Angola, I saw several days of food stock go to waste because of prolonged power cuts. Of course we were all pained and only ate rice for a couple of days afterwards but nobody went mad about it. It even seemed I was the only one feeling angry about it.I remember once delaying having a shower because our water tanks were empty. My host told me not to worry and just use half of the last jerrycan. The next day, water was flowing out of the faucet.

These are just small anecdotes but they are good reminders that my own idea of scarcity and danger doesn’t compare with that of people who grew up in wartime, who have long given up on the public health system to support them and whose purchasing power has already been divided by two or three in the last couple of years. They are highly vulnerable yes, but they are also used to count only on themselves and aren’t weight down by excessive worry or anger.

At the end of the meeting, the convenor was teasing me for being so optimistic. I smiled but deep down, I felt that it wasn’t exactly a matter of optimism. It was actually a genuine concern for not overgeneralising our own fears and for trusting that a lot of people in Luanda were actually connected to the world enough to understand what was going on and to prepare themselves as rationally as we were. Stocking up on food as much as they could, keeping their homes cleaner than usual, lecturing their children on hand washing and elbow-sneezing. I had no doubt churches were already reading sermons about the responsibility of caring for those who are ill. Public schools were actually quite good at disseminating propaganda materials such as these little posters who explain how to wash your hands properly (even if they often don’t have running water).

So no, I wouldn’t call myself an optimistic per se. I do not believe that Angolan lives worth less than French or Italian ones nor that the people here is more acquainted to death, hence better able to cope with a deadly pandemic. I do not believe in the myths of genetic advantages linked to melanin levels or in a miraculous blockage of the virus at the borders of African countries. But I’m also very skeptical about Armageddon discourses that spread fear and distrust, especially when we basically have no clue about what is happening, let alone what will happen. I asked my host whether they also wrote optimistic scenarii where the situation in Angola would not follow the dreadful exponential curves seen elsewhere. « No. Our job is to plan for the worst. »

I left the meeting quite ill at ease. I don’t want to live in a world made of worst-case scenarii.

I want to be in touch with what real people really do in their real lives. I’m not ready to give up on the diversity of opinions, tactics and priorities that each of us is likely to develop. And I certainly don’t want that my own worldview comes to define the fate of people I don’t even know.

I’m utterly privileged. I belong to the dominant class on almost every aspect. My skin color is a privilege. I earn a fix salary in a stable currency and even in the context of Angola where many products are so overpriced, I earn enough money to buy virtually any kind of food I like (that hasn’t always been the case for me in Luanda in the past decade!). I also own a very powerful passport that allows me to easily travel to more than 160 countries in the world (against 61 for the Angolan passport). And although I’m a woman, my professional status undoubtedly grants me a certain recognition and authority (I still have to figure out what to do with that though). So no, what I’m saying here is not that « don’t worry we’ll all be fine in Angola » just because I personally have no reason to fear for my life.

Things are more complicated than « Covid-19 x (individual poverty + weak public health) = disaster ». 

A month later, it seems that « the worst » hasn’t come yet and slowly, we hear new voices saying that, maybe, the African apocalypse might not take the form of a crowned virus causing respiratory symptoms. Angola remains one of the least infected countries in the world, with only 26 official cases to this date. So yes, figures aren’t transparent and governmental communication is far from perfect. The state was prompt to suppressing basic individual rights, less so to organise support for students, informal workers or even health professionals. But yet, it seems that there hasn’t been any cases of « communitarian contamination ».

As weird as it may sound, the acute class divisions that slashes Angolan society in almost impermeable stratas might play a positive role for once.

The people infected with Covid-19 all arrived by plane. They belong to the privileged class that can afford a passport and international tickets. They do not spend their days in overcrowded markets. They do not live in overcrowded tin houses in overcrowded neighbourhoods. They do not commute everyday in the overcrowded candongueiros. They also don’t depend on the public health system.

Maybe, the epidemic will not take off in Angola after all. Maybe it will be tamed internationally early enough. Maybe Angola will write one of these unbelievable scenarii that the country is so familiar with. Or maybe, what is happening at the moment is simply a proof that the ‘worst-case scenario’ approach just does NOT help to deal with real life.

I still have no clue about what is going to happen to Angola but now I understood that I might have to start playing my part in countering these ready-made tales of humanitarian emergency that dominates how ‘Africa’ is thought from outside and governed from within. More than before, I am convinced that prudent, reflexive, and grounded social science could help shift this trend. Forget prospective scenarios. Stop making promises and predictions. Embrace the slowness of observation. Accept the partiality of chaotic understandings. Give space to the other stories that come  from the past, from the people themselves, or even simply from the streets as the work by manetov showed above illustrates.

Abstracts from the Call for Papers:

For this special issue of the Revue d’Histoire contemporaine de l’Afrique, the journal wishes to address the cultural history of urban societies in Southern Africa (19th-20th centuries) that was first shaped by encounters between various African societies and European settlers, imperial diasporas (Indians, for instance) and other immigrants (e. g. Chinese, Greeks), between repulsion and attraction, domination and resistance, invention and accommodation. It insists on the relationship between a specific place and stage – cities and towns – and the cultural forms that developed therein.

…

The objectives of the special issue are manifold:

• This special issue aims to examine the effect of urban living on individuals and groups, how their material, symbolic, and mental frameworks have been disrupted by their culture(s).
• We are eager to shed light on a new trend of scholarship about urban life and culture in Southern Africa (with topics such as urban experience, food, fashion, sexual and sentimental encounters night life, public lighting, etc.).
• A consideration of the “cultural” dimension of urbanity will deepen our understanding of the articulation between space, inhabitants, and identities.
• We would like to incite multi-scale approaches, including secondary urban centres in the analysis of urban cultures. Case studies are of course expected, but comparative studies will be highly appreciated.
• Papers considering the gender dimension of the topic will also be welcome.

Deadline for Proposals: 15 April 2020

Contact the Special Issue Editors

sophie.dulucq@univ-tlse2.fr
rey_matthieu@yahoo.fr
noor.nieftagodien@wits.ac.za

Exploring new digital experiences

Revue Française des Méthodes Visuelles, while acknowledging the preponderant role of photography and cinema in the evolution of research practices, remains open to other types of (audio)visual methods. And if researchers can claim to be from visual sociology or visual anthropology, they can also be from other disciplines, in an institutionalization of disciplines or sub-disciplines more or less asserted in this field (PINK, 2003). Since The Nuer (1940) by Edward EVANS-PRITCHARD and Balinese Character (1942) by Margaret MEAD and Gregory BATESON, the resulting photographic and then film production (Jean ROUCH among the precursors) is necessarily linked to aesthetics and the history of visual art in a complex and often ambiguous relationship. Documentary film, for example, is part of the history of cinema and the history of visual methods. It is logical that documentary film should be permeable to the introduction of digital technology and then to its almost-generalization, which goes much further than the abandonment of silver film by the creation of new formats that are more or less stable in their evolving aesthetics.

Jacobo SUCARI, in a classification of contemporary documentary (2012), adds to the usual categories of “documentary of cinematic tradition” and “video documentary” four other categories that illustrate the tensions between film and video:

1. the documentary in a contemporary art process,
2. the expanded documentary,
3. the transmedia documentary and
4. the web documentary.

The porousness between visual methods in social sciences and the art of documentary filmmaking inevitably leads to the implementation of methods inspired by this rapid upheaval of forms through digital technology. This is why, in connection with point 5 of our Editorial Manifesto “Exploring new digital experiences by fully exploiting the opportunities offered by online publishing” (BOULDOIRES, REIX, 2017 & 2018), Revue Française des Méthodes Visuelles proposes, in this issue 5, to shed light on these methodologies involving so- called “interactive” images, a field that is rich yet unstable due to the speed of the socio-technical innovations that cross it.

By using the expression “interactive images”, which we prefer to interactive documentary (ASTON, GAUDENZI, ROSE, 2017) or to “interface-films” (DI CROSTA, 2009), we wish to better grasp, in their formal diversity, visual methods producing research devices such as digital documentaries, but also video games, serious games, immersive and performative installations in virtual, augmented or mixed reality.

… with interactive images, the new status proposed is that of “spect’actor” or “interactor”

Beyond the strictly computational interactivity, the interactivity offered to the spectator is at the heart of the device, which allows a more individualized way than in the format of the cinematographic work with its linearity. The user is truly included not only through the interactivity induced but also through personalization, participation and immersion. This user can co-construct the content, for example, by integrating a self-produced video, but whose insertion is planned by the creator of the device (e.g.: web documentary). Without considering that the classic film viewer is a passive spectator before, during and after the projection, with interactive images, the new status proposed is that of “spect’actor” or “interactor” (PROULX, 1998). This is the case of the panoramic movement of the documentary film imposed in the chronological scrolling of the animated images, which becomes optional in the case of virtual reality from a capture with a 360- degree camera. This is why four elements must be taken into account in the methodological modalities:

• image (and sound),
• technology,
• user/work interactions and
• lived experience (MARIN CARRILLO, 2019)

visuals cannot be limited to a visual and interactive design of research in a context of increased social demand for more attractive ways of scientific dissemination

Although in a broad sense some researchers integrate visual methods into visual studies, the epistemological position defended here does not favour research work where only content analysis or semiotics of a corpus of visual productions of users (e.g. semiotics applied to images produced and distributed on a digital social network such as Facebook during a social protest). The image is not considered as an object of research but as an indispensable element of a methodological research practice (CHAUVIN, REIX, 2015). Similarly, in a context of Arts and Sciences collaboration increasingly praised by some institutions, visual creation cannot be limited to audiovisual formatting such as the scripting of research data (e.g. interactive mapping of scientific data), non-visual methodologies in social sciences or in life sciences.

In this call for papers, visuals cannot be limited to a visual and interactive design of research in a context of increased social demand for more attractive ways of scientific dissemination. A capture of images and sounds relative to a social group is indispensable under the authority of a researcher with his freedom as a creative author in writing, editing and digital design.

This call for papers invites researchers to propose papers that deal with the precise use of visual methods resulting in research productions consisting of interactive images (e.g. research webdocumentary; immersive research device with headsets and headphones). Revue Française des Méthodes Visuelles is also interested in proposals for critical reflection with an epistemological perspective, both in terms of duration and the diversity of digital forms that claim to use visual methods. For this reason, a non-exhaustive list of work axes is proposed: status of the interactive image; participation in the research of the subject or social group studied; user reception of the production of visual and interactive research; interactive narration; between interactive aesthetics and research design; the sensory experience in visual methods; etc.

REFERENCES

ASTON Judith, GAUDENZI Sandra, and ROSE Mandy (2017), I-Docs : The Evolving Practices of Interactive Documentary, Wallflower Press, New York.
BIELLA Peter (1993), « Beyond Ethnographic Film: Hypermedia and Scholarship », in Rollwagen, J. R. (ed.), Anthropological Film and Video in the 1990s, The Institute, Inc.
BOULDOIRES Alain, REIX Fabien (2017 & 2018), « Méthodes Visuelles, de quoi parle-t-on ? Images fixes, Images animées », N°1 & N°2, Revue Française des Méthodes Visuelles, MSHA, Bordeaux.
CHAUVIN Pierre-Marie, REIX Fabien (2015), « Sociologies visuelles. Histoire et pistes de recherche », L'Année sociologique, 2015/1 (Vol. 65), p. 15-41.
DI CROSTA Marida (2009), Entre cinéma et jeux vidéo l'interface-film : métanarration et interactivité, De Boeck, Bruxelles.
HARPER Douglas (2012), Visual Sociology, Routledge, London.
HOWARD Alan (1998), Hyper Media and the future of Ethnography, Cultural Anthropology, 3, p. 304-15. IBANEZ BUENO Jacques, CHABERT Ghislaine, LAMBOUX-DURAND Alain, WANONO Nadine, Dir. (2017), Visual methods and digital worlds, CNRS, Universités La Laguna, Bourgogne Franche-Comté & Savoie Mont- Blanc, Cuadernos de Comunicacion, Tenerife.
MCDOUGALL David (2006), The corporeal image Film, ethnography, and the senses, Princeton University Press, New Jersey.
MARIN CARRILLO Alba (2019), Innovación tecnológica y formas de representación en el documental social. Desde los formatos interactivos hasta las experiencias inmersivas, Universidad de Sevilla & Université Savoie Mont-Blanc, Cotutelle de thèse de doctorat en communication.
PINK Sarah (2003), « Interdisciplinary agendas in visual research: re-situating visual anthropology”, Visual Studies, Vol. 18, No. 2, p. 179-192.
PROULX Serge, BARDINI, Thierry, BELANGER Danielle (2000), « Des nouvelles de l’interacteur : phénomènes de convergence entre la télévision et Internet », Sociétés et Représentations, no. 9, Paris, p. 161-180.
REMILLET Gilles, WANONO Nadine (2014), « Collaborative and Interactive Presentation: Tracks Of A Discipline Evolution », Anthrovision [Online].
SUCARI Jacobo (2012), El documental expandido: pantalla y espacio, Universitat oberta de catalunya, Barcelona.

I experimented an online tool created by ESRI, a private company that sells mapping and GIS instruments. The software is called StoryMaps and has some cool features to display texts, visuals and basic maps. However, as I discovered halfway through the making of this story, you have to pay 600 euros a year if you want to enjoy all the options… I didn’t pay so what you’ll see here is really just the basic product, without customisation or more elaborated maps. I think I’m fine with that! https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/c5e5e2643a07478593dcca5ff19d7780

I suspect that in his mouth being ‘performant’ basically means being ‘expensive’. The more you spend, the better you are, the more money you receive – on loop… He defended his twisted ideology as an ‘inegalitarian’ or ‘differentialist’ law. Arghhh, how can you be the CEO of a major knowledge production centre and just use these words without any kind of background knowledge? Ever heard of John Rawl’s ultra classical Theory of Justice that explains that if equity doesn’t mean equality, the ‘unequal treatment of inequality’ can only be legitimate when it favours those who are on the weak side? What about having a look at Justice and the Politics of Difference where Iris Marion Young demonstrates how ‘differentialism’ should be used, precisely to deconstruct the entrenched privileges of those who, as M. Petit, think that their own ideologies are nothing less than ‘natural laws’? …

I worked for a very well funded research project before being recruited at the CNRS. We had so much money that we could afford fancy hotels and plenty of plane tickets. We attended some of the most expensive conferences in our fields (that could be a topic for a future post…). But comfy rooms, Oedipian academia and catastrophic carbon prints do not produce ideas. My experience from working for a ‘darwinian’ project also came with a LOT of pressure to show off the results of our work even though the work was still in process. We all came very close from a burn-out. Two of us actually really had a very bad time either during or shortly after working on that grant. The money was not a saviour, it quickly became the main problem. I still want to think it is not automatic, other projects might run much more smoothly, even with a lot of zeros on the budget lines. But there is no direct link between big money and good research.

I do believe we did ‘excellent’ research at the end, and that did not came from where the extra money was spent. Basically, the research was good because we were a bunch of dedicated researchers (willing to spend 18 months away from their families to conduct fieldwork). We were paid decent salaries (twice the salary of a young CNRS recruit). We were given good equipment (a computer, two cameras, a printer … you know the kind of basic stuff we have to beg for at CNRS). We did ‘excellent’ research because we are ‘excellent’ researchers. And we definitely could have done so with less money if only we all had secured positions in a reasonably resourced institution that does not despise strong social science, i.e. a long-term commitment with people. The kind of academic commitment that made the quality of our research is built through time and consideration. It has nothing to do with a strategic alinement with grant-providers nor with some brainless loyalty towards the short-lived ideological lexicon of the time…