The Post-War Angola: Public Sphere, Political Regime and Democracy

This book explores the role of the 'public' in a post-war Angola in three parts. The first part of the book outlines how the notion of the 'public' is perceived. This starts off with a review of Habermas' seminal contribution, "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere" and the debate it provoked. Subsequently, this book argues that for many reasons Habermas' framework is not suitable for studying the 'public' in Angola, and as a result will proceed to outline an alternative approach in which the 'public' is instantiated through acts and practices of truth-telling or parrhesia as understood by Michel Foucault. Having outlined the approach to this subject, the second part of this book moves on to reviewing the history of the 'public' in Angola. The final part looks at the structure of contemporary Angolan politics. Following a review of the constitutional, legal and socio-economic framework within which public sphere in Angola exists, the present work examines the workings of the 'public' during and after Pope Benedict's visit to Angola in 2009. In addition, this book also looks at one of the few media outlets that managed to preserve its independence vis-a-vis the political regime, the Catholic Radio Ecclesia. This book argues that the current political regime in power since Angola's independence from Portugal in 1975 has succeeded in creating what is referred to in this work as a 'pseudo-public sphere'. In many ways this reality mimics the activities of a 'genuine' public sphere as defined by the German thinker, Habermas. Nevertheless, this same reality is owned and controlled by the regime. Albeit this restricted atmosphere is a 'counter-public sphere' emerging through acts of parrhesia, this book endeavours to analyse the complex interaction between the 'pseudo-public' and the 'counter-public'. In sum, this book will deepen the knowledge about conditions of public sphere and look afresh at the Angola's political regime and its possibilities for further democratic development. The primary readership for the book will be scholars, students, politician, policy-makers and civil society organizations across the EU, US and Africa. All in all, this work could prove to be an important and original contribution to the understanding of Angolan politics and society in post-war context.