Angola: reinventing pasts and futures

What's in a name? For the ruling party of Angola. it seems, quite a lot. In December 2009, that party formally abandoned its original name from 1956, Movimento Popular de Libertaçao de Angola, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. Henceforth it would be known merely by the old initials: MPLA. Evidently the party thought it best to bury and forget terms like 'movements' and 'liberation'. Besides, it had long ago dropped the word Popular from new nation's first name, the People's Republic of Angola. Such fiery terms from a burnt-out era no doubt left a lot of people cold. But deleting those tokens of past ideals came at an odd time. For never in its 53-year history had the MPLA's claims to a popular mandate looked stronger. In high-turnout parliamentary elections in September 2008, it got more than four out of every five votes. Six years earlier, its triumph over warlord-led Unita, and the non-punitive peace deal that followed, met with overwhelming relief, even among people on the losing side. Since the war, popular expectations have risen, and many, at least in urban wage-earning strata, are optimistic about the future. Urbanised and Portuguese-speaking, most people see themselves no longer chiefly as members of ethnic blocs, but as citizens of one Angolan nation (Farinha et al, 2004, IRI 2004). The MPLA, more than any other political force, contributed to those outcomes.