Luzia Moniz
Africa-Press – Angola. For their survival, authoritarian regimes use fear as a political weapon, an indispensable and unavoidable instrument in the control and repression of society.
Fear, created in various ways and imposed on citizens to ensure the maintenance of power by the same group, even if this means stagnation or regression of society.
This maintenance, which serves as refuge, security and even physical survival for autocrats and dictators, aims to protect the status quo of the power elite, namely, the material, financial and social privileges, only achievable with access to power, a path to the appropriation of national resources and the consequent illicit enrichment.
Fearful of losing everything, including control of society, and becoming victims of their own repressive model, the power elite resorts to barbaric measures, namely the arrest and murder of opponents and critics.
It macabrely uses the deprivation of liberty or murder of opponents, critics, and protesters as a “preventive” measure to stop a possible widespread rebellion that could get out of its control.
By doing so, he demonstrates his fear that the fear will fade and that opponents will mobilize the population for a large-scale protest that will spiral out of control. Thus, he needs radical measures to “nip the problem in the bud,” that is, persecute, arrest, and assassinate the “most dangerous” protesters and opponents, as well as all those who hinder the “normal functioning” of the dictatorship.
With this sinister “preventive” control formula, the regime wants to avoid the disastrous consequences for its international image of a massacre using bombs or machine guns that it would have to use to suppress a potential popular uprising of thousands of citizens.
By adopting fear as an instrument of governance, the regime, more than threatening those who protest with the “Xê Menino, não fala política” from the song Velha Xica” by Waldemar Bastos, wants to say, especially to young people, “do not get involved in protest, criticism, opposition or demonstrations against politics and politicians in power.
Influence of the Arab Spring
If it is true that fear has long been used as a political weapon, with the events of the Arab Spring, especially in Tunisia, where the population courageously confronted and overthrew the dictator, in Angola the power panicked for fear of the contagion effect and, thus, reinforced itself, becoming even more intolerant of any attempt or outline of individual or group rebellion.
In a country that suffered more than two decades of civil war, thinking and acting differently from the guidelines established by the “Chief” means being labeled as dangerous to society and the preservation of peace and treated as a potential driver of a return to war.
In this phobia, the Angolan regime divides society between eager sycophants and critical opponents. Against the latter, labeled “enemies of Peace and National Reconciliation,” the use of all manner of violence is justified.
It resorts to the “political manipulation of freedoms in the name of reconciliation,” in the words of José Castiano, a Mozambican philosopher and author of the book The Inter-Munthu, and the “attribution of labels as part of the discourse of political delegitimization” of opponents, according to Jean-Michel Mabeko-Tali, a Congolese historian in Rótulos Atribuídos Rótulos Assumidos.
Fear instilled through speeches, party documents and their appendices, media incitement to hate speech, and the delegitimization of critics, opponents, and protesters. This endeavor includes so-called intellectuals, opinion-makers, and even religious leaders who, as in religion, encourage citizens to resignedly accept the fate laid out by “God.”
They resort to lies, superstitions, and charlatanism to manipulate people and lead them to believe that their poverty and the country’s condition, including the type of politicians and regime, are in accordance with God’s plans. Therefore, change in Angola is not in the hands of Angolans.
In this system, the head of the regime functions as a deity, unquestionable and infallible. Therefore, any challenge to his power and performance is seen as heresy, a desecration of the temple (of power), or a sin. Just as religion frightens sinners with hell, the regime, by conveying the idea that it is Angola’s sole savior, leads us to believe that without the MPLA, the country will disappear.
Justice and media in the spread of fear
To sow and disseminate fear, the justice system and the media are used, especially the far-reaching media whose mission is to legally pursue, imprison, manipulate information, and launch character attacks on anti-regime figures, even after their death.
In a repressive and warlike state of Angola that cruelly kills political opponents, throwing their bodies into the river to serve as food for alligators and other ferocious aquatic species, how can civic campaigns be organized to overthrow the dictatorship?
Will it be possible to do so peacefully, given the repressive nature of the regime, which is averse to dialogue with those who seek to build a society of freedom and dignity?
Destroy the dictatorship without violence
In his book Tools to Destroy the Dictator and Avoid a New Dictatorship – Political Philosophy of Liberation for Angola, based on Gene Sharp’s work, From Dictatorship to Democracy (1993), Domingos da Cruz believes and shows that in Angola it is possible to overthrow this regime by peaceful means.
This peaceful way to overthrow a dictatorship could be through an organized internal rebellion, to avoid the risk of overthrowing a dictator and replacing him with another, a kind of dictator-lite. Among the various measures to be adopted for the success of this revolution, unleashed through democratic resistance, the author, a university professor in Canada and former political prisoner of the 15+2 group, highlights, for example, never negotiating with the dictator, disobedience, and thoroughly studying the dictatorship’s weaknesses for effective and indispensable strategic planning.
How can this be done in Angola, where a party-state prevails, the largest employer is the State, institutions are all partisan, only 14 percent of Angolans of working age have formal jobs, unemployment rates are 30% and youth unemployment is over 60%, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE), and where being a public servant means flattering the “Boss”?
How can we strategically plan democratic resistance in an excessively security-oriented state, with all security agencies and bodies, both within and outside the country, defending and protecting the dictator and the dictatorship, instead of serving the state?
How can this be done in a country that transformed the wartime slogan for national sovereignty, “every citizen is and must necessarily feel like a soldier,” into “every citizen is necessarily a vigilante/cop”? How can regime agents prevent the infiltration of this Democratic Resistance?
All this taking into account that we are dealing with a People who in their recent History have not shown any great act of courage in the Country where fear and the security state have killed solidarity, encouraged individualism, the lack of a sense of collectivity and the promotion of the culture of selfishness?
Therefore, as Graça Machel argues, dismantling fear is an imperative (the first) for building a democratic society based on the rule of law and equality and for ending policies and practices adopted without popular involvement and participation.
How? With painstaking work. Given the dire social situation, which includes an army of kunangas and a high juvenile crime rate—a time-delayed bomb that will explode violently, scattering shrapnel in all directions—and, on the other hand, with the intensification of oppression, the signs point to a violent dismantling of a regime long since exhausted.
Not being a society based on Islamic culture, where citizens are willing to sacrifice their lives for a common cause, Angola, paralyzed by fear, will need great ingenuity to first neutralize fear and free itself from the dehumanizing regime.
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