Last night, the Angola Field Group held another presentation at the Viking Club, this time a 1970s documentary/promotional video of Luanda in the colonial heyday. And what a place it was! The film was made in 1970 - just five years before the Portuguese upped and left, followed by the 27-year civil war. Luanda is eerily the same as it was 40 years ago - most of the buildings in the film still exist, but now run down and overpopulated. Luanda was once more modern than Portugal and among the top honeymoon destinations in the world for Europeans.
It took the presenter 10 years to track down a copy of the video, which was released (in '96?) and sold out and never re-released (but a lady did say an almost identical film was made for Mozambique, even with the same narrator!).
In the vid, you saw Portuguese people walking in the streets, eating at cafes, shopping, etc. There were also Angolans in the video, going to work, at mixed schools, etc. (apparently the Portuguese "brought in" a small group of indigenous Angolans and assimilated them into society). There was commerce and agriculture; we saw coffee plantations, cotton fields, timber. There were a heck of a lot more animals at Kissama; rhino, zebra, elephants, etc. We saw some footage of the palanca negra also. There were a lot of locally produced art and craft.
The presenter said after his mother watched the film, she told him, "Even though life looked good back then, it was only good for the Portuguese and the Angolan people weren't free. Now, at least we are free - that is the most important thing."
So, it made me wonder, which is better - to live in peace (and perhaps prosperity) but not be free in your own land, or to gain independence at the cost and destruction of so much and so many lives? Ideally, it would be independence through peaceful means...but only if it were a perfect world.
Anyway, the latest in Luanda is that the Kinaxixe Market in front of the Cuca building has been torn down to make way for a new shopping mall (above). The sidewalk repair project has reached our doorstep and looks like it is coming along all around Luanda. Election fever is underway. Lots of flags and posters (mostly MPLA) are up around Luanda for the Sep 5 parliamentary elections (see below - note that 'Vote no MPLA' means 'Vote for MPLA' in Portuguese). Only last weekend did we see a few UNITA posters (I like the logo, it's a rooster next to the rising sun - can just imagine the slogan: wake up to the dawn of a new era). It's only now that you can get an idea of who supports whom because people are wearing MPLA/UNITA T-shirts and caps. Some kandongeiros have also been kitted out for the elections. We saw bus loads of people singing and dancing and sometimes drinking Cuca beer. The buildings facing the streets to/from the airport have had a fresh coat of paint (but only the sides that face the main street).
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