Interview with Lara Pawson: On Writing In the Name of the People: Angola's Forgotten Massacre

Lara Pawson's In the Name of the People: Angola's Forgotten Massacre is the first book in English to deal with the events surrounding the 27 May 1977 in Angola, when a former government minister, Nito Alves, led a protest, or a revolt, against the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government. Unknown numbers of people were killed in subsequent reprisals. Through her accounts of conversations with witnesses, perpetrators, victims of brutality and bereaved survivors, Pawson illustrates the impact of the events of 1977 on the social and political culture of contemporary Angola. In this interview Pawson argues that her book challenges a 'crisis of historiography' that has to do with the way in which history has been defined by the stories of powerful male individuals and of organised politics. In particular, she reflects upon the obstacles faced by a left-wing writer in confronting the failings of revolutionary movements, and the shortcomings of politically committed historians and journalists who have uncritically accepted the preferred narratives of only one organisation or faction and dismissed the validity of alternative readings. Beyond the purely practical difficulties of researching an incident of which written records are sparse and unreliable, Pawson suggests that to pin down a single, empirical narrative is neither possible nor desirable.