WORKING PAPER SERIES NO. 68
Flowing into the state:
Returning refugee youth and citizenship in
Angola
Jess Auerbach
jess.auerbach@stanford.edu
December 2010
Refugee Studies Centre
Oxford Department of International Development
University of Oxford
RSC WORKING PAPER SERIES NO. 68
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RSC WORKING PAPER SERIES NO. 68
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Abstract
This paper considers citizenship in its non-legal sense, using Angola as a case study and focusing primarily
on returning refugee youth and the manner in which reintegration programs are designed and
implemented in light of the transition to democratic governance. Through interviews with United
Nations and non-governmental organisation officials in Geneva, analysis of policy material and country
reports and a review of both theoretical and country-specific literature, this paper suggests that outdated
notions of childhood development still widely inform the manner in which youth are treated today. It
explores education as a means through which this process is manifest, in both UN and Angolan domestic
policy. It also questions the ability of education in and of itself to address the needs of young people in a
post-conflict setting in which civil and social institutions have been widely ruptured. It calls for the
engagement of refugee youth in the process of their repatriation at the earliest possible moment, and
highlights the need for a reframing of young people such that their contributions to Angolan and
international society are recognized and their ‘citizenship’ consequently validated at an experiential level.
Glossary
1951 Convention
AU
CCF
CRC
DDR
EU
FNLA
HRW
IDPs
IOM
JRS
MPLA
MSF
PTSD
RET
SADC
UDHR
UN
UNAVEM
UNDP
UNHCR
UNICEF
UNITA
USAID
WB
1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
African Union
Christian Children’s Fund
Convention on the Rights of the Child
Disarmament, Demilitarization and Reintegration
European Union
National Liberation Front of Angola
Human Rights Watch
Internally Displaced Persons
International Organisation of Migration
Jesuit Refugee Trust
Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola
Médicins Sans Frontiers
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Refugee Education Trust
Southern African Development Community
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
United Nations
United Nations Angola Verification Mission
United Nations Development Program
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
United Nations Children’s Fund
National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola
United States Agency for International Development
World Bank
RSC WORKING PAPER SERIES NO. 68
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Contents
Introduction: a gap of citizens
5
1
Youth in civil war
7
Angola prior to the civil war
7
The civil war: 1975-2002
8
The United Nations in Angola
8
Youth in the Angolan war
9
2
3
4
5
Praise and fear
11
Stage theory
12
Youth in conflict as extenuated liminality
12
The ‘youth bulge’ hypothesis and rootlessness as pathologies of young refugees
13
Abject heroes
14
Learning and education as soldiers and citizens
15
Present citizens
17
Citizenship, the role of nationalism and governmentality
20
Liberal democracy and active citizenship
22
International organisations in Angola
25
Refugee return, youth reintegration, and national development
26
How are they citizens?
28
Building characters for peace
30
References
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4
Introduction: a gap of citizens1
This is a paper about citizenship, about international organisations and about returning refugee youth in
Angola. In post-conflict states, populations are quickly divided, labelled, and responded to by
international organisations according to their perceived vulnerabilities and needs (Ohanyan 2008, Zetter
1991). Refugees, by virtue of the 1951 Convention on the Protection of Refugees (hereafter 1951
Convention) fall under a legal regime that offers protection provided that the individuals concerned have
crossed an international border and can demonstrate a ‘well founded fear of persecution’ (Shacknove
1985, Zetter 1991). After peace has returned to a given territory, however, international law encourages
refugees to go ‘home’ – a process which Anders Stefansson (2004: 74) has warned can sometimes be as
disruptive and traumatic as displacement itself. Though returning refugees are almost always ‘made’
citizens in the legal sense,2 this paper seeks to understand what else comprises citizenship. Approaching
the subject with the lens of anthropological experience, it considers how – if at all – international
organisations operating in Angola conceptualize citizenship with regards to those broadly circumscribed
as ‘youth.’ It takes as an understanding of ‘citizen’ “a member of a political community who enjoys the
rights and assumes the duties of [this] membership” (SEP 2006, see also Kymlicka 1995, Gibney 2004).
Angola was chosen as a case study for three reasons. Firstly, the civil war that began with independence
movements in 1961 but officially lasted between 1975 and 2002 was such that the majority of the Angolan
population had up until 2002 never experienced a country ‘at peace.’ The literature existing on Angola is
focused primarily on war, on humanitarian programming, and on the extraction of natural resources with
an apparent ‘gap’ around Angolan people (Chabal and Vidal 2007). Secondly, since 2002, approximately
half a million Angolans have returned to the state, many of them youth who were born or who spent the
majority of their lives in neighboring countries (UNHCR 2008: 1) and large-scale return is likely to
continue. Finally, the nature of the conflict in Angola and the presence of approximately fifteen million
landmines as of 1998 (Ukabiala 1999)3 has hindered many attempts at field-based research. According to
Justin Pearce, this, combined with damaged infrastructure and suspicion on the part of relevant
authorities, meant that the country was effectively closed to researchers until very recently. This means
there is now a need for careful empirical research to assist in the development and implementation of new
policies and programs (HRW 2003). This paper hopes to lay the foundation for such work.
Nine interviews were conducted in Oxford and in Geneva in March 2010 to provide primary data, six
with members of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and one each with
1
2
3
This paper was originally a dissertation submitted as part of an MSc in Forced Migration completed through St.
Antony’s College, Oxford. I wish to thank my supervisors, Drs. Jo Boyden and Oliver Bakewell, for their guidance
and patience during that process, as well as the rest of the staff at the RSC. I am tremendously grateful to the nine
people who agreed to be interviewed in Geneva and whose thoughts inform this paper at every level. Equally, this
would not have been possible without funding and continual support from the Rhodes Trust and Rhodes
community. Finally, I thank Justin Pearce for his willingness to share his abundant knowledge at every moment,
and Nina Hall whose friendship and insight completely transformed the period in which this paper came into
being.
Usually through the issuance of identity documents.
This figure is contested, however, and it is difficult to know how many landmines were really placed.
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representatives of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM), the Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS)
and the Refugee Education Trust (RET).4 These interviews have been used alongside an analysis of
academic theories of youth and organizational policy to suggest that ‘stage theory,’ developed by the Swiss
psychologist-philosopher Jean Piaget in the early twentieth century, still influences the approach that
international organisations take towards youth today. Youth is a contested category (Eybar and Ager
2004, Christiansen, Utas, and Vigh 2005, Hart 2008) and in this paper I rely primarily on the definition of
the United Nations as lasting from age 15 to 24 (UN 2010). However, I am also cognizant of the definition
used by the African Youth Charter that therefore bears relevance in Angola and categorizes youth as those
between 15 and 35 (Preamble, African Youth Charter).
In the first section, I look briefly at the history of Angola, paying particular attention to the role of youth
within it. The second chapter considers theoretical constructions of youth over the last two centuries and
demonstrates the tenacity of early 20th century psychology in influencing societal views of youth and
young people in the present. It also considers the extent to which language alienates refugees in its
semantic constructions, as explored by Liisa Malkki, and the effect of this ‘double discrimination’ on
youth. It considers Mats Utas’ formulation of ‘abject heroes’ as an alternative lens through which to view
young people in spaces of alterity that allows for recognition of their agency. The third chapter explores
nationalism as an enactment of citizenship, focusing on the role that it has assumed as a tool of nationbuilding in post-colonial Africa and assessing its usefulness when invoked in situations of refugee return.
The fourth and final chapter focuses on international organisations and the extent to which they are
involved in the production of citizens through their interventions within states.5 I address education as an
overarching theme, demonstrating that this is an ongoing process occurring whether or not young people
are enrolled in formal institutions. This exacerbates the need for programs focused as much in the present
as they are on the future, as without such grounding, the risk is to allow for the continual postponement
of liberal democratic reality. My conclusion is simple, yet it has significant implications for the
formulation of return programs throughout sub-Saharan Africa. It is that youth must be engaged in the
repatriation process from before they leave their country of asylum, that their skills must be recognized,
incorporated and developed on arrival. They be listened to and above all, exposed to governance
structures appropriate to liberal democracy. If this occurs, Angola’s ‘gap in citizens’ after three decades of
war and five centuries of colonial rule revoked the possibility of democracy, may well be filled. Under
such circumstances, youth may mature as competent, engaged members of society committed to the
principles of liberal democracy on which much of the contemporary world is run. If it does not, it is
unlikely that Angola, and other countries facing similar challenges, will change for the better in any
significant way.
As it stands, rather than focusing on youth as present citizens in both time and space, I suggest that
international organisations rely primarily on education to teach the norms of liberal-democracy in
4
5
I attempted to interview representatives from UNDP and UNICEF, but unfortunately these did not prove possible.
This research focuses primarily on United Nations (UN) organizations; specifically, these are the United Nations
High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United
Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). However, I use the term broadly to include organisations outside of the UN
system such as Save the Children, USAID and the Jesuit Refugee Services.
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incremental phases. Though education of this kind is undeniably of great importance, I argue that this is a
narrow view of what is needed in many cases. Rather, the current context in which young people operate
must be acknowledged as the terrain in which citizenship is practiced on a daily basis. Were this simple
awareness incorporated into the policy and programs that relevant organisations develop, I suggest that
the integration of returnee refugee youth would occur far more quickly, with positive implications for the
continuing development of the post-conflict Angolan state.
1
Youth in civil war
“The Colonel talked to me about the women coming back to look for their husbands. What if a woman came back
with a child fathered by someone from the other side, would they welcome her, I asked.
He gave me that non-smile.
‘To accept a woman who is carrying another man’s child – that’s all part of national reconciliation,’” (Pearce 2005:
173).
This chapter provides a brief history of Angolans and Angola from the fifteenth century to the present,
paying particular attention to the civil war of 1975-2002. It gives extra attention to the role played by
young people during three decades of armed conflict. This historical context is necessary in order to
understand the situation faced by returning refugees, ex-combatants, and civilians who stayed in Angola
(stayees) throughout the war. History, of course, has shaped the manner in which international
organisations have been able to operate within the state, which also informs their current programs. The
acceptance of “another man’s child” described above is representative of the many acceptances that must
be asked of post-war populations in attempts to recreate social fabrics after war.
Angola prior to the civil war
A comprehensive history of Angola is beyond the scope of this paper, but certain key moments need
highlighting. For the seven centuries before the civil war, Angola was part of the BaKongo kingdom of
South-Western Africa, trading extensively throughout the region (Fage 2001). In 1575, Luanda – now
Angola’s capital – was demarcated formally by Paulo Dias di Novais (Bender 2004: 137) and in 1885 the
Berlin Conference officially sanctioned what would amount to nearly five centuries of Portuguese colonial
rule. Characterized largely by the ‘degradado’ (‘degraded’) system of penal colonial expansion (i.e. the
removal of prisoners and societal delinquents to the outskirts of the empire), Portuguese rule was
exceptionally harsh, often chaotic, and based almost exclusively on resource exploitation (Bender 1978).
Relations between the Portuguese and the Angolan populace were strained, unequal, and often violent,
prompting Galvao de Melo to go as far as to conclude that “[w]e benefited little from Africa and Africa
benefited little from us. The Portuguese people and the African people remain unknown to each other:
foreigners” (in Bender 2004: 224). Portugal’s attitude towards its colonial subjects until the 1970s was
such that non-Portuguese rarely received higher education. As a result, when the Portuguese left Angola
in 1975, there were very few people with the skills required to run the national administration.
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The civil war: 1975-2002
The first hints of Angolan independence came in 1961 but were rapidly quashed by the Portuguese state
apparatus and did not have major ramifications either within Angola or elsewhere (Eyber and Ager 2004:
196). Three liberation movements existed: the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA),6 the National
Union for the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA),7 and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of
Angola (MPLA).8 Each was associated with a particular territory but their leadership was either
underground or in exile. A coup d’etat in Portugal on 24 April 1975, however, altered the situation
radically with the colonial state deciding to withdraw from all of its overseas territories as quickly as
possible (Chabal and Vidal 2007).
An original power-sharing agreement was created between the three liberation movements, but it broke
down rapidly – primarily due to the FNLA and MPLA accusing one another of attempting to seize power
outright. By August, the country was effectively divided by region and many civilians were caught up in
the conflict, leading to the first movements of refugees. UNITA called on the assistance of the South
Africans, and when Cuba began to aid the MPLA, the United States joined the fracas, thereby making the
Angolan war an important Cold War proxy conflict (Gleijeses 2002, Bender 2004, Malaquias 2007, Chabal
and Vidal 2007). 9 UNITA held the city of Huambo and it was there that the Portuguese flag was lowered
in a football stadium and that of UNITA raised in its stead in a ceremony at midnight on 10 November
1975 in which no single Portuguese was present (Bridgland 1986: 123-133).
The United Nations in Angola
On 22 December 1988, the United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM) was established in
order to facilitate the independence of Namibia. Comprising 70 military observers and 20 civilian officials,
it had a 31-month mandate to supervise the withdrawal of approximately 50,000 Cuban troops from
Angola (Malaquias 2007: 88). According to Daniel Spikes, this agreement was linked entirely to the
collapse of Soviet Union and had little to do with Angola itself (Spikes 1993: 322). Subsequently, the
mandate would be extended through UNAVEMs II and III to include the monitoring of the MPLAUNITA ceasefire outlined in meetings in Bicesse, Portugal. On 31 May 1991, Savimbi and the leader of the
MPLA, Eduardo dos Santos, met in Lisbon and signed the Bicesse Accord. Under the supervision of
UNAVEM II, this accord paved the way for elections in 1992 and was intended to bring peace to Angola.
The MPLA won the elections, but they were contested by UNITA and the country rapidly descended into
an even more violent phase of civil war (Birmingham 2002: 173). This period was nominally resolved with
the 1994 Lusaka Accord but in practice, continued until Savimbi was assassinated in 2002. The UN thus
played “no more than a ceremonial role” (Pearce 2007: 3) in the process that eventually bought the
conflict to an end.
Reflecting on the role of the United Nations during this time, Anstee observed that:
6
Frente Nacional para a Libertação de Angola.
União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola.
8
Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola.
9
The United States had and continues to have significant interests in Angolan oil.
7
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“The problem with the engagingly simple – and very possibly simplistic – approach is that when you try to
follow the precepts, reality has the uncomfortable habit of getting in the way. […] Democracy cannot be
created overnight, least of all in places with a long history of authoritarian rule or civil war” (1996: 127).
Anstee describes her sense that the international community wanted a ‘quick fix’ solution that did not
entail engaging in long-term, complex negotiations, evinced by the under-funding of the program and the
UN itself not having the foresight to refuse a mandate it could not fulfill (Pearce 2007: 22). From 1998
onwards, the UN played merely the role of commentator and observer in which its “muted criticism of
Angolan government strategy had little effect” (Pearce 2007: 24).
Youth in the Angolan war
Demographic data relating to young people in Angola are not consistent, due in part to the destruction of
most civil registries during the war and a lack of clarity regarding the term ‘youth’ itself. Little research has
focused directly upon young people, meaning that there is a paucity of empirical sources that address their
experiences during the conflict.10 Some of the ambiguities surrounding youth’s positionality during the
conflict as both guilty and innocent aggressors and victims is explored in the following chapter; here I
simply provide the context. In this section, I draw on three primary sources focusing directly on Angolan
youth: Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) 2003 report on child soldiers, Carola Eyber and Alastair Ager’s
2004 study of discourses of trauma, and a Rapid Assessment conducted by USAID Angola in 2006.
USAID (2006: vii) notes that as of 2006, sixty percent of Angolans were under the age of 20, meaning that
two thirds of the population had experienced only four years of peace in their lifetimes. The 14 to 24 yearold cohort were estimated at 2,944,000 or 19.3 % of the total population in 2001 (USAID 2006: 5). In
traditional, pre-war society, rites of passage at puberty marked the onset of juventude (youth) – the end of
which was contingent on marriage and social positioning and varied across regions (Eyber and Ager 2004:
197). Virtually all youth experienced extreme violence and uncertainty during the war, with most houses
being razed and / or villages attacked leading to displacement (CCF 2005: 31). Many young people,
particularly late adolescents but also children of all ages, were kidnapped and forced to serve (according to
their gender) either as soldiers or sexual partners, and occasionally as carriers, cooks, and messengers
(HRW 2003: 8-14, CCF 2005: 53, Pearce 2005: 142). Most youth had witnessed the death of at least one
family member and multiple friends (HRW 2003: 9, CCF 2005: 23) and in Eyber and Ager’s study,
conducted in year 2000, 71% exhibited symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a result
(2004: 202). It is impossible to determine precisely how many youth were displaced, but my interest lies in
the post-conflict reintegration process, in which the effects of war on the total population should be taken
into account.
During the conflict, religious institutions, particularly the Catholic Church, assumed responsibility for
providing what little formal education was available. Frequently the scale of displacement was such that
there was none (USAID 2006: 9). Eyber and Ager (2004: 199) describe growing up in Angola during the
war as one in which the daily reality was of extreme uncertainty and the fear of death at any moment was
a common experience. Those who were involved in military bodies learned to operate with regard to
patronage and in command-leadership structures, which USAID claim have left a “lingering inertia [… in
10
Eybar and Ager (2004), Stavrou (2005), and Porto et al. (2007) are notable exceptions.
RSC WORKING PAPER SERIES NO. 68
9
which youth are unprepared to] build things” (USAID 2006: 25). I do not have evidence to either refute or
support this claim, but it highlights the need to consider the ways in which socialization in periods of war
might inform the manner in which young people engage with mechanisms of government and civic
institutions (Eberly and Gal 2007: 77).
Eyber and Ager write of tensions between youth and older generations based in part on frustration that
adults had not been able to find solutions to the problems the country faced. They cite one informant, a
displaced elder who said “[o]ur problem now is that we os mais velhos [the elders], here, are also
struggling with life… The young people say that our traditions are outdated. But the reason why we don’t
manage to resolve our problems is because of the war” (2004: 198). Eyber and Ager demonstrate that
large-scale displacement has lead to shifts in the way that generations interact with one another, with
youth often becoming the main income-generators in households though informal trading in urban areas
and therefore demanding some say in how households are managed (ibid). They agree with the findings
of the USAID’s report and Porto et al. in reporting that young people returning from combat sometimes
found it difficult to communicate in the manner of civilians (Eybar and Ager 2004: 199). Yet they
emphasize that far from being passive, youth “lived full, multi-dimensional lives that involved work and
educational leisure activities as well as […] relationships within and outside of their household circles”
(Eyber and Ager 2004: 203).
João Porto, Chris Alden and Imogen Parsons (2007) have written one of the few studies that explore the
experiences of young Angolans who served as soldiers on both sides of the civil war in depth, though even
their study is unable to ascertain exactly how many young people were active combatants. They write of
the importance of societal demilitarization that must come from a commitment by all to resolve conflict
using non-violent means. This study is the most comprehensive done on youth in Angola and considers
some of what is required in reintegration between all young people, framed as the “emergence of a new
social contract [to create] the institutions and culture of good governance” (2007: 1).
Porto’s book and recent work by Justin Pearce (2010) on the history of what took place in the Angolan
war demonstrate that it is still difficult to gain an accurate sense of what happened in many of the small,
guerrilla-battles of the conflict. Porto et al. focus on the Disarmament, Demilitarization and Reintegration
(DDR) of soldiers in areas they could access and that had reliable records as case studies (2007: 49).
Disarming soldiers is a tangible manner of addressing recent history, but as with most conflicts, it may
take many decades before “truth” comes to light and people are able to speak about the past. As one
Baptist minister explained in a media interview:
“We need to disarm our minds first. We need agreement on what kind of life we want to live, what kind of society we
want. What kind of nation we want to be… Many Angolans, especially the younger ones who were born in the 70s
and 80s, know nothing else except the war… We have to make sure that people don’t think that that is the normal
way of life, that there is a proper way of living without conflict” (in Porto et al. 2007: 33).
This chapter has provided a brief history of Angola, focused primarily on independence and the
subsequent civil war. It has framed the UNAVEM missions that constituted unsuccessful attempts to
bring peace to the region, and has highlighted the involvement of all young Angolans, and indeed all
Angolans, in the conflict. It has acknowledged some of the generational tensions emergent from changing
social roles post-displacement and has emphasized gaps in existing literature on young people in Angola,
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but also about Angola more generally. As I have demonstrated, violence and displacement occurred to
such an extent post-conflict there has needed to be a process not of national reconstruction but of nation
re-creation, based on understandings of democracy to which very few people have been exposed. In so
doing, it has established the context in which the following analysis is written. Primarily, this thesis is an
attempt to understand how the bond between state and populace that has been said to break during
displacement (Shacknove 1985) is recreated. Young Angolans, the citizens of what is now a liberal
democracy, must acquire instantly the social capital required for ‘a proper way to live without conflict.’
This section has outlined why it may be challenging for them to do so given the historical context – the
rest of the thesis looks forward to how it will be possible.
2
Praise and fear
“Citizen did not start like that. When they first brought him, it was Elizabeth, my big daughter, who went down there
and brought him. When Mr. Moses see him, how the water fell from his eyes. He said, “Yes, yes, let the boy come.”
But now I worry. It is too much for him. Most people will not let a child like Citizen near the house after what he’s
done. They cannot stand the sight of them. They believe they are little devils. Bad bush” (Jarret-Macauly 2005: 1920).
The quote with which I begin comes from a novel entitled Moses, Citizen and Me which traces the gradual
re-integration into the family unit of Citizen, an eight-year-old boy who served as a child soldier in the
Sierra Leonean civil war. As the title suggests, the allegorical imperative is hardly subtle, and speaks
directly to popular discourses of childhood, nationhood and salvation. In this rubric, Citizen is precisely
the antithesis of popular conceptions of childhood within contemporary Western society, conceptions
emanating from the British Victorian era but now ubiquitous in much of the world. ‘Citizen’ is an eightyear-old who brutally murdered his grandmother, ‘Me’ is the narrator, an “ordinary British woman” and
distant relative of the other characters (Jarret-Macauley 2005: 21), and Moses is Citizen’s grieving
grandfather. By spending time with Citizen, the narrator restores to him his ‘citizenship’ as cast in
Western norms of liberal democracy based on the nuclear family unit (Aries 1962). The novel successfully
plays on tropes of innocence, potential and otherness that are pervasive in Western constructions of youth
and adolescence, particularly so when relating to Africa.
In this section, I engage these tropes in order to demonstrate that significant tension exists between the
‘praise’ and the ‘fear’ of youth in sub-Saharan Africa in theory and in the manner in which they are
perceived by governance structures and international organisations. Whilst they are understood to
embody the ‘fate of nations,’ (Boyden 2008: 8) they are also feared due to their perceived lesser moral
competencies (Piaget 1947), all-too-common marginalization, and at times exposure to violence (Argenti
2002: 124). Whilst youth themselves negotiate their allegiances and socio-political citizenship in complex
and nuanced ways, they tend to be classified in dichotomizing structures that cast them, to borrow the
titles of two recent volumes on youth, as ‘vanguards or vandals’ or ‘makers and breakers’ of the state
(Abbink and Van Kessel 2005, Honwana and de Boeck 2005, respectively). Education is often used in
rhetoric and in practice as a mechanism to ensure that youth become ‘vanguards’ of liberal democracy and
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11
acquire appropriate skills to ‘make’ and to participate both in the economic and political domain. Yet
frequently this proves to be rhetoric that is used as a distraction from the core issues that underlie
democratic practice in fragile post-conflict states, namely, accountable governance and the development
of a sustainable labour market.
Stage theory
The work of the twentieth-century psychologist-philosopher Jean Piaget (1896-1980) has had a profound
influence on the manner in which children are conceptualized in the contemporary world. He suggested
that children came to maturity in chronological stages that culminated in their fulfilment as ‘adults’ in
their late teens and early twenties (c.f. Hart 2006: 7, Evans 2009: 21). For him, a child should be ‘carefree’
– playing games that allowed for the development of both the physical body and moral judgment. Known
as ‘stage theory,’ this model divides childhood into several distinct phases during which particular
physical and intellectual skills are acquired (Beirens 2008: 145-6). It judges the level of a child’s
development according to the notion of a “cognitively competent and rational adult” (Beirens 2008: 146).
Notably, stage theory informed the drafting of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which
emphasizes the benefit of schooling over work, despite the many pedagogical benefits that particular kinds
of work entail (ibid., Temba and de Waal 2000, Bourdillon 2006). Piagetian thought has been enormously
influential in subsequent policy relating to children and youth across the globe (Hammarburg 1997).
Piaget’s theories contributed to a sense of childhood and adulthood being “almost opposite each other”
(Hendrik 1997: 153) and have informed a widespread perception of children as people who need to be
guided towards adulthood in age-appropriate ways whilst simultaneously being ‘protected’ from negative
external influences (c.f. Newman 2005: iii). Lev Vyotsky, however, critiqued Piaget, saying that “children’s
development and experiences of childhood are shaped by understandings of child development,
[available] routes to maturity as well as [what is entailed in] maturity itself” (Beirens 2008: 150). A
Vyotskian theoretical framework, therefore, opens space for research on the actual experiences of children
rather than their passage through proscribed phases of development. 11 It also allows for recognition that
actions undertaken by young people in many parts of the world entail a level of responsibility not typically
ascribed to their age-contemporaries in many Western regions (Honwana and de Boeck 2005: 7). In most
societies, children, as Michael Bourdillon suggests, are “repositories for sentiments such as altruism, care
and long-term commitment” (2006: 1203). Though frequently still perceived as passive victims rather
than engaged agents of their own futures (Galperin 2002: 105, Honwana 2006: 51), they nonetheless
occupy a place in which forgiveness – as in the case of Citizen, described above – is generally possible.
Youth in conflict as extenuated liminality
The terrain of youth is more ambiguous. Youth know more than children yet not as much as adults, and
consequently, the degree of responsibility ascribed to them for their own actions is frequently difficult to
ascertain, particularly when long-standing social fabrics have been ruptured and the community-based or
physical infrastructure needed to maintain them has been severely altered (Diouf 2003). Like childhood,
youth is a contested category. Legal definitions vary across countries and regions but are always based
11
Children are understood as per the CRC as being those below the age of 18.
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12
primarily on age criteria.12 By contrast, social and cultural understandings are more diverse and frequently
describe roles and responsibilities performed by individuals, and are usually gendered (Sommers 2001b,
Zimba 2002, Mgqolozane 2009, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2010). In almost all societies, however, childhood –
though transient – is delineated clearly. Youth, in contrast, tends to be liminal in the anthropological
sense of being ‘betwixt and between’ (Turner 1987) the experiences of being a child and being an adult.
Significantly, the beginning of youth (both in legal and usually in socio-cultural terms) overlaps with
childhood as defined by the CRC so that some youth receive the protection of this instrument and others
do not. In Newman’s words “[t]hey [youth] are not yet considered full social adults [which] means they
are denied many of the rights and protections associated with adulthood” (2005: iv).
Most societies have markers that determine the end of youth, whether this be through voting, graduation,
marriage, bearing children or other rites (Van Gennep 1960: 65). These markers make public the change
in status between one life phase and another, such as from youth to adult – in Angola usually happening
at the point of marriage (Eyber and Ager 2004: 194, Stavrou 2005: 66). However, during the civil war,
social transitions including those of marriage were profoundly disrupted (Eyber and Ager 2004). Unable
to establish households in the manner in which society was accustomed, youth therefore missed the
opportunity for societal re-incorporation as full adults. Simultaneously, biological maturity meant that
despite the lack of social rituals, several generations of children were born and raised, putting them in a
position of extenuated liminality – extenuated due to the circumstances of war, but liminal nonetheless.
When conflict ceases, finding alternative modes of ‘reincorporation’ is extremely important, as it is by so
doing that people learn to live both with themselves and with one another once again (Ross 2002).
The ‘youth bulge’ hypothesis and rootlessness as pathologies of young refugees
Briefly, ‘youth bulge’ refers to a high number of young people “bulging” the population demographic
curve in a given country or region. Introducing a paper in which he supports a link between youth bulges
and violent conflict (the ‘hypothesis’), Henrik Urdal (2002: 2) quotes Robert Kaplan who wrote “In cities
in six West African countries I saw […] young men everywhere – hordes of them. They were like loose
molecules in a very unstable social fluid, a fluid that was clearly on the verge of igniting” (1994: 46).
Kaplan’s words and Urdal’s treatment of them align with a rhetoric in which youth – and young men
most of all – are portrayed as dangerous threats to physical and social infrastructure. ‘Hoards’ is a word
that speaks to the imagination and elicits a sense of overwhelm and anarchy; that these youth were in
cities plays on fear of violence in urban spaces – the encroachment of otherness into the controlled spaces
of modernity (Sassen 2010).
Another way in which youth are frequently perceived as ‘problems’ may be demonstrated through an
analysis of Liisa Malkki’s (1992) argument of the power of metaphor with regard to imagery of rootedness
applied to the nation-state. She shows how refugees embody a category “aberrant” to the “arborescent
culture” of Western society that places tremendous value on identity fixed to particular locales (1992: 27)
such that “national” and “natural” are conflated in everyday parlance. The nation, she observes, is
commonly referred to in English and similarly in other languages as ‘the country, the land and the soil’
(1992: 26). Refugees and displaced people removed from the land to which they have an emotive claim by
12
For example, the African Youth Charter conceives as ‘youth’ as between 15 and 35, the Indian National Youth
Policy as between 13 and 35, the Canadian Youth and Child Advocacy Act, between 16 and19.
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virtue of birth and/or extended life threaten the stability of the whole and the “national order of things”
(1992: 36).
Through linguistic analysis of everyday speech, Malkki highlights the extent to which uprootedness (i.e.
displacement) is cast as pathology. The same occurs when the youth bulge hypothesis is invoked. A youth
bulge itself is purely a demographic phenomenon. The youth bulge hypothesis, however, when referenced
by the media and politicians, suggests that large numbers of youth in post-conflict states increase the
likelihood of continued violence, therefore that youth are violent, and therefore, that youth are also
amoral (Kagwanja 2005: 6, Simonse 2005: 243). If the history of the country concerned is one in which
young people have frequently served in armed forces – like in Angola – then this is further ‘proof’ that
they are not only likely, but have the technical know-how required to ‘ignite’ war once again (UNICEF
2009a: 9) thus threatening the polity, the nation and order itself. As such, they are caste as frightening
indeed.
Abject heroes
The ideas about youth that I have outlined suggest a tendency to view youth as aberrant and demonstrate
a broad discomfort with liminality and ‘outsiders’ on the part of Western theoreticians (Nyamnjoh 2006).
At the core of broader academic literature on youth is a continual discomfort around choice – to what
extent do those in their teens and early twenties choose their actions in times of war? How should they be
judged on a moral level for decisions to kill, rape, prostitute themselves or betray their families in order
either to survive or to advance in economic and social terms? How do they themselves negotiate ‘friends’
and ‘enemies’ when those from both sides live in the same vicinity once again? And significantly, what
choices will they make in the future?
In contrast with the chronological, incremental-moral-development approach to youth proffered by
Piaget, Mats Utas’ recent conceptualization of ‘abject heroes’ to describe young women and men in
Liberia provides a lens more fitting to the realities of the twenty-first century. Drawing upon local
mythologies of heroes who also do wrong, Utas demonstrates “how complex emic ideas of modernity
correspond with local concepts of abject heroes […]. One and the same person can appear immoral in one
setting just in order to reappear in a moral guise in another social setting and at another time” (Utas 2008:
130).
Through ethnography, Utas demonstrates the kinds of choices that young women and men made as they
attempted to possess ‘moral power’ and experience inclusion in a ‘modernity’ from which they felt
excluded. Modernity represented what was attainable on a material level, and democracy the right of all to
have access to material wealth (ibid). Far from being passive subjects, his informants demonstrated a clear
awareness of the moral implications of their actions when these were detrimental to others, yet also
recognized within them a continuity with the challenges faced by local mythological heroes. Due to their
role in the war, many youth were largely excluded from post-conflict society and sought refuge instead in
a common ‘youth identity’ (Utas 2008: 114) by which they (unsuccessfully) attempted to reframe the
moral prerogatives of the ‘new’ state (ibid). Utas’ research demonstrates that for young Liberians during
the long civil war, conflict itself became “part and parcel of an African identity” (2008: 117) and that in
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order to survive within it, in the words of one of Utas’ informants, “there are times when you have to do
good and times when you have to do bad” (2008: 129).
This approach is useful because it begins to shift the discourse away from one that dichotomizes to one
that recognizes young men and women as complex agents negotiating a wide range of social, economic
and ethical decisions. Rather than assuming young people will be either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, moral or amoral,
(vanguard or vandal, maker or breaker) the notion of abject heroes demands that a vast middle terrain be
recognized, and that youth be seen to be constantly shifting their position within that space not out of
fickleness or lack of personal purpose, but out of a desire to make the most out of opportunities when they
arise according to their own moral and personal creeds and the practical requirements of survival.
Such an angle is important for research with all young people, but particularly with those who are
marginalized. In these instances, overlooking the nuanced roles that youth assume within society disindividuates and stereotypes them in ways that may hinder social change. Familiar with but rejecting
Western-style tropes of childhood, young Liberians make a strong case for recognition of their current
acts of citizenship. Without such recognition, which entails engaging them in dialogue as well as ensuring
socio-economic opportunities of development and employment, youth continue to feel excluded from the
modern world, bound by gerontocratic structures in which their own priorities are not attended to and in
which the discrepancies between their lives and those of their peers elsewhere are increasingly stark
(Stavrou 2005: 75). In the same vein, Utas’ writing on young female soldiers further challenges gender
stereotypes that cast women as victims. He shows how women assume roles as soldiers, negotiate
relationships with commanders, NGO staff and each other acting in turn as combatants and wives in
efforts to ensure their own social mobility, and where even ‘victimcy’ as a verb becomes a conscious act of
self-representation deployed strategically for social and economic gain (Utas 2005: 409).
Utas’ work is part of a corpus of writing increasingly calling for recognition of young people during and
after conflict that acknowledges the complexity of their moral position that is far more layered than
childhood psychologists such as Piaget would have us believe (c.f. Boyden 2003, Bray and Gooskens 2006,
Weiss 2006). Rather than developing a sense of morality as they grow, current literature acknowledges the
paradoxes that youth entails for many people who are conscious agents limited to some extent by
circumstances (Hart 2008: 17). Even when these circumstances are extremely challenging, however,
youth make difficult decisions based on rational analysis (Simonse 2005: 245). Finding ways to begin
dialogue with young refugees about the nature of these decisions is integral in the establishment of longterm, peace-related infrastructure.
Learning and education as soldiers and citizens
Working with rather than for youth is increasingly acknowledged as an essential component of the rebuilding of the nation-state (see for example Durham 2000, Sommers 2001, Boyden 2003, Turner 2004,
Honwana and De Boeck 2005, Boyden and de Berry 2004, Vigh 2006, Loizos 2007, Hart 2006, 2008). Stage
theory, the youth bulge hypothesis and notions of amorality, however, are hard to dislodge because they
offer moral simplicity that leads to a vision of a clear path to ‘improvement’ or ‘solution.’ Given the lack
of research that has been done in Angola, it is unsurprising perhaps that it is the latter rather than
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empirical evidence that appears to have informed policies and programs in Angola, though it is possible
that this is now shifting.
Fears of the moral degeneration of young people during their exposure to and participation in conflict
have lead to a particular focus on Demilitarization, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) (Porto et al.
2007) which, though essential, has firstly not been comprehensive (Human Rights Watch 2003, 2005,
Kaun 2008) and secondly, has focused far more on combatants than on those with whom they need to
integrate (Porto et al. 2007: 32). DDR, as suggested earlier, has become a token mechanism through which
youth escape their liminality and are reincorporated into society through a recognized ‘rite’ in which a
commitment to peace is made Nsamenang (2002: 69). Stavrou (2005), Honwana (2006) and Kaun (2008)
make reference to traditional rites of reincorporation that have taken place with some success in Angola
and the benefits that ensue from re-immersion in traditional value systems. However, the context of
massive population displacement and ruptured communities has made such occasions more challenging
and therefore less common. In Angola, communities have frequently not remained to go back to and
‘traditional’ leadership structures have had to be all but recreated.
The manner in which international organisations have adopted a somewhat anachronistic (Crisp pers.
com.) approach to Angola is explored in more depth in chapter four, and a deeper consideration of the
return process is entered into. Here, suffice it to say that a lopsided focus on ex-combatants, though
understandable in the circumstances of the end of a 30-year war, focuses attention on those who have
actively participated in battles rather than recognizing that all have been affected by the conflict. Working
in a holistic and comprehensive way to begin what is in effect a process of state (re)creation is essential,
and international organisations are significant actors in this process.
This chapter has drawn attention to the difficulties that face young citizens of post-conflict states.
Whereas the child depicted at the chapter’s beginning was deemed innocent because of his age, youth are
caste in a far more ambiguous light. Stage theory dictates that their moral development is incremental and
that they should therefore bear some responsibility for actions committed in war. Not being full adults,
however, makes gauging the level of responsibility attributed to them difficult, yet it also prevents the
nuance and complexity of many decisions made from being appreciated by powerful external parties.
Denied social recognition through the exigencies of war-time, youth may remain ‘trapped’ in a liminal
position which is particularly vulnerable to exploitation from politicians and the media.
Youth are invoked as dangerous and amoral, and the ‘learning’ that they are seen to receive during
conflict or time in armed forces only exacerbates the ‘problem’ that they pose to society. This mode of
thinking finds resonance in everyday language that is particularly exclusionary and condemnatory
towards forced migrants, which suggests an amorality entailed in ‘rootlessness’ or dis-place-ment and in
so doing condemns young refugees twice: first for their age and secondly for being ‘out of place.’
However, there is another side to this discussion, and that is the responsibility that young people are
simultaneously shown to hold for the future of liberal democracy in post-conflict states – the moments in
which they are the ‘vanguards’ of democracy and the ‘makers’ of the state (Abbink and Van Kessel 2005,
De Boeck and Honwana 2005). The following chapter looks closely at three core tropes that emerge within
the broad literature on young people in contemporary Africa and have particular salience to the
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conceptualization and experience of youth citizenship in Angola, namely education, nationalism and the
structure of liberal democracy.
3
Present citizens
“When a child picks up a gun, he becomes a man and inspires fear, if not respect. In my experience, African youth are
forgotten except when politicians need them for battle. If African youth are given a better education and the means to
influence their communities, then they will be less likely to be used as cannon-fodder, less likely to pick up a gun, and
more likely to read a book.
Seventeen years ago, against the wishes of my father, I picked up a gun, hoping to change the world. I survived and
learned. I learned the limits of the gun. Many of my comrades were robbed of that chance, for few remain alive. Of
those living, most hold senior posts in the Ugandan army; a few are in politics. Yet most died in combat or of AIDS.
Young Africans should remember this when they look for ways to make their mark” (Rabwoni 2002a).
Okwir Rabwoni was once a child soldier in Yoweri Museveni’s rebel movement in Uganda. After
Museveni assumed power, Rabwoni became a politician but has since shifted political allegiance and now
lives in exile in London. His work provides a useful starting point when trying to understand why the
trope of ‘child soldiers’ holds such powerful sway in discourses on youth and citizenship.
This extract demonstrates a profound reversal of social roles within community. Faced with a gun, adults
must cede to the demands of young people, thereby relinquishing claims to authority (Honwana 2006:
53). Equally, it cites education as the tool through which youth might influence the same adults without
recourse to violence, and alludes to the extreme loss of life that war entails.13 Many young people in
Angola now involved in post-conflict reconstruction in various forms were once combatants, whether as
‘children’ or as ‘youth.’ Those who were clearly ‘children,’ I have suggested, are usually easier to forgive
than those who, being older, are perceived as having some degree of responsibility for their actions. As
such, it is necessary to engage peripherally with the literature on child soldiers in an attempt to place
young Angolans in a broader context of peace and national reconstruction.
Rabwoni writes of young people needing to ‘make their mark’ in society, and it is this mark that is perhaps
most feared. Training for combat requires a separation from emotion, rigid discipline, and a willingness
to obey orders (Diouf 2003). Experience in armed units means that when the ‘battle’ shifts to one of
democratization (Pearce 2005), ex-combatants either return to civilian life or assume roles within the
army and civil service. Though all ex-combatants require demobilization, the process through which
youth and children experience it is seen as both particularly important and particularly difficult (HRW
2003: 17). This is largely because young people are perceived to be extremely vulnerable to ideological
13
HIV-AIDS, though beyond the scope of this dissertation, has also had a profound impact on combatants
throughout sub-Saharan Africa as its spread through the sexual conquests of war has, some argue, been responsible
for more deaths than combat itself (Elbe 2002).
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indoctrination and a lingering acceptance of stage theory which suggests that youth will take on whatever
they are taught, regardless of its ethnical implications (Durham 2000, Hart 2006, Lubkemann 2008).
Unlike in peace-time situations where national curriculums are agreed upon and teaching, at least in
theory, is monitored, youth are exposed to unknowns leaving them “malleable and vulnerable to
manipulation” (Sommers 2006: 12).
Regulated national education is recognized to provide space in which critical thinking and
comprehension of democratic principles is taught in school, thereby bolstering democracy – provided, of
course, that the teachers conform to ethical codes and do not use the spaces as further sites of
indoctrination (c.f. Fagerland and Saha 1989, Nicolai and Triplehorn 2003, Rose and Greeley 2006, Jeffrey
et al. 2008, Crivello 2009, Meinert 2009, Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2010). Though
unquestionably extremely important, school-based education is increasingly being shown to be, in Jeffrey
et al.’s words “a contradictory resource” that undermines established notions of power on one hand but
also creates new tensions within society to do with expectation. It “open[s] up certain opportunities to
undermine established structures of power while also often drawing young people more tightly into
structures of ideologies and dominance” (2008: 210).
In order to achieve the status and mode of work that young people aspire to through education, migration
is increasingly common in Angola, raising difficult questions as to the development of the (frequently
rural) areas they leave behind (Nsamenang 2002, Education for All 2010: 152, c.f. Crivello 2009 23). In
Angola, migration to urban centers has been largely involuntary, but its impacts have been the same –
estimates today place at least half of the population in urban areas, one quarter in the capital city of
Luanda and the other quarter in provincial capitals (Kaun 2008: 9). Furthermore, landmines on many
major roads still prevent access to and therefore development of rural areas, and in both rural and urban
spaces, jobs across the formal sector are hard to come by (UNDP 2009b: 2).
Further learning, too, is not easily available – at the beginning of 2006 there were 38,000 applications for
6,000 places in Angolan senior secondary education (USAID 2006 14). Given the negative social
experiences associated with aspiration without achievement (Matsumoto 2010), it is worth considering
how and why education remains so potent a symbol in much of the developing world. Equally, it is
important to note that whether or not young people are being schooled, they are learning, and it is what
they are learning that is usually of public concern. In schools, calculus and grammar might fill up
afternoons – in the army, that time might be spent acquiring techniques in sabotage or long-range
weaponry. Unsurprisingly, both state and civilians would prefer intelligent, energetic and motivated
individuals to concentrate firmly on the former, yet the cost of such a preference is that vocational skills
and locally-grounded knowledge is all-too-frequently overlooked as well (Nsamenang 2002). Newman
highlights the importance of vocational training when he suggests that providing young people with these
skills is an integral part of protection. He emphasizes the need to build on youth’s own perception of
themselves as “competent social and economic actors with insight into their own problems and ideas
about how to solve them” (Newman 2005: 30) and stresses that youth recognize the value of education
and skills development and therefore request exposure wherever possible, an argument echoed by Nancy
Farwell in her study of returning Eritrean refugees from the Sudan (2001: 45).
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Why is it that Western models of education are so profoundly valued? The answer is two-fold. Firstly,
education has long been seen to provide the social capital needed for employment in ‘modern’ labour
markets, thereby providing financial security and access to the consumer economy (Weisbrod 1962: 106,
Robinson and Sexton 1994: 142). Jason Hart (2006) offers a different but compelling analysis of the issue
by tracing the founding and subsequent establishment of Save the Children by Eglantyne Jebb in 1919.
Jebb, also the champion of the United Nations Declaration of Children’s Rights of 1924, felt that all
minors should experience childhood as it was known in Britain at the time – drawing on dominant
eighteenth and nineteenth century theories mentioned above, as a time of innocence, helplessness and
controlled learning (Hart 2006: 6). Save The Children was one of the first international humanitarian
organizations and remains a powerful force today (Walker and Maxwell 2009). Its institutional lobbying
power is significant, and from 1924 onwards Jebb’s ‘vision’ has permeated international policy to the
extent that attempting to provide children with Western-style education has been a crucial element of
democratization in all post-colonial states. It is only recently that some questioning of such education has
begun to emerge, which I will consider briefly in light of their implications for citizenship in the global
era.
A. Bame Nsamenang (2002) is one such critic. Conscious of the Western bias of adolescent psychology, he
attempts to provide a counter-narrative detailing adolescent reality in sub-Saharan Africa. He argues that
there is a disconnect between what education purports to do and what education does in parts of the
region. Given the reality of limited blue- and white-collar jobs, many students who do receive access to
education are unable to find ‘appropriate’ employment on leaving school, thereby swelling the ranks of
the unemployed. School, he suggests, is not suited to the life-trajectories of many young people in Africa,
who should instead be focusing upon agriculture and the maintenance of their own cultures in the face of
globalization (Nsamenang 2002: 62, 86, 91). This viewpoint would no doubt be met with considerable
skepticism by most of the youth concerned, but promoting ‘indigenous knowledge’ in more subtle
formulations is increasingly gaining resonance in mainstream policy-influencing arenas. For example,
Peter Easton’s study on indigenous knowledge conducted for the World Bank cites indigenous knowledge
as the “spark plug” through which solutions to contemporary socio-economic challenges can be found
(Easton 2004: 12).
More prosaically, Mitsuko Matsomuto’s recent research (2010) on Sierra Leone and Lotte Meinert’s
analysis of the introduction of Universal Primary Education in Uganda (2009) both note the gap that
Nsamenang identifies between the expectations of and realities provided by schooling. Likewise, unless all
the components of Jebb’s ‘ideal’ childhood are in place (nuclear family, economic stability, democracy
etc.) education in the Western sense may well fail to address the particular needs of many African
societies (see also Argenti 2002: 128-130). Here, the ‘youth bulge hypothesis’ gains popular resonance, as
when the gap between what people expect of their lives and what they get widens, so too does it become
“more rational that educated youth might take part in rebellion than uneducated youth” (Urdal 2002: 8).
When Rabwoni writes of a need to ‘make his mark,’ he speaks to an assertion of identity and involvement
in the polity that is made by all young people through their current contributions to social and economic
life. If these can be channelled for national benefit, so much the better.
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I am not suggesting that western models of education are wrong – indeed, they are astonishingly effective
– yet without simultaneous development of the formal economic sector, education may lead to some
degree of frustration. This has been the experience of many returning Angolan refugees who received
training and education during their displacement, yet have struggled to apply their new skills to daily life
on return as a result of lack of supporting infrastructure, and in some cases, the refusal of the Angolan
state to recognize foreign-issue certificates (Kaun 2008: 16).
Raised levels of formal education also raise levels of expectation – in many ways the purpose of schooling,
as it equips the population with the tools of engagement with governance structures. Problems emerge
when these structures exist but are corrupt and ineffective (as in Angola) as such corruption may place a
proverbial glass ceiling over much of the population (Felicio and Serdar 2009: 21). Ensuring this does not
happen should be inherently intertwined with pedagogical processes, as the two are mutually constitutive.
Liberal democracy relies on a relationship existing between the individual and the state (Arendt 2004
[1948], Held 1995, Rawls 2005). Schools are one of the primary spaces in which this relationship is
established through the experience of being part of a nation-wide education system, socialization, and the
development of identity (Farwell 2001: 51, Clacherty 2006 62, Angolan National Curriculum 2006: 2). A
deeper analysis of nationalism is therefore useful when considering citizenship in the post-conflict state.
When schooling has been disrupted, the trust between citizen and state ruptured by war and large-scale
displacement experienced, youth still find themselves with a legal ascription of identity which informs
where they can (and in the case of refugee cessation must) live, learn, and work.
Citizenship, the role of nationalism and governmentality
Citizenship, as I have defined it, comprises the membership, rights and responsibilities of belonging to a
political community circumscribed within a nation-state (Habermas 1994, Haddad 2003, Gibney 2004,).
Nationalism is the enactment of caring about or for one’s nationality (Soysal 2000) and governmentality,
first described by Michel Foucault, is the enactment of a regime of power itself that is reliant on nexus of
juridical practice and disciplinary power (Dillon 1995: 324). In this section, I consider how citizenship,
nationality, and governmentality interconnect, and the implications of this connection for young
Angolans.
International relations, politics, and philosophy have all developed extensive literatures on the topic of
citizenship, as it is fundamental to post-Westphalian modes of governance and inter-state relations.14
However, as Alexander Betts drawing on Andrew Linklater observes, the internal contradictions of this
system, which include tremendous financial inequality and differentiated power distribution between
states, increasingly “allow opportunities for people to move beyond the communitarian logic of the
nation-state and instead realize an international cosmopolitanism” (Betts 2009: 34). Such
cosmopolitanism has been addressed in the work of Jurgens Habermas (1994), Yasemin Soysal (1996,
2001), Paul Gilroy (2002), and Will Kymlicka (1996, 2007, 2010) amongst others. Betts’ recent (2009) text
on sovereignty, globalization and the state concludes with a short remark regarding ‘regionalism’- the
increasing cooperation of multiple states within a broader territory such as the European Union (EU)
14
It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to explore these corpuses, but significant contributions include those by
Hobbes 1991 [1956], Rawls 1972, Walzer 1983, Baubock 1994, Miller 1995, Linklater 1999, Kymlicka 1999, 2003,
Carens 2000, Benhabib 2004, and many others.
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(Betts 2009: 83). Regionalism lies between globalization and sovereignty, as through regional agreements,
states may “bypass the global” (Betts: 2009: 84) while still ensuring the support of other states. Angola is
part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and as most refugees went to states that
are also part of this group, regional belonging may well prove to be the marker of a cohesive life-narrative
of many Angolan youth.
Michael Dillon’s development of the Foucault’s notions of governmentality is helpful when considering
the manner in which young Angolans experience and influence the state. Governmentality, the enactment
and enforcement of state control, is premised on a defining paradox of power, namely that to be subject to
power is empowering (Dillon 1995: 324). In the real world, this translates as citizens who are subject to the
state having the right to contribute and to shape the state itself through their engagement with its
economic, social, and political domains. Such mechanisms of state control, now incorporated in the
conventions of liberal democracy, relied for their inception on the development of political arithmetic –
now known as statistics (1995: 329). Statistics allowed for the ordering of knowledge such that macro-level
control could be operationalised and in governance was reliant on civil registries and census data.
Statistics allowed for the labelling and definition of both other and self and rapidly became the foundation
of government knowledge therefore lying at the heart of power. Depending on who is counting, and
which database they fall into, refugees, IDPs, forced migrants and ‘the rest’ may have extremely different
experiences. If power is empowering, it does depends whose – and a crucial challenge to Angolan state
mechanisms is ensuring that the power of the Angolan government is empowering of its citizenry (Dillon
1995: 324). Crucially, decades of war have meant that the statistical databases on which governmentality
(as described by Dillon) relies have been destroyed. In its enactment of power and empowerment through
knowledge and discipline, therefore, the state needs first to constitute itself by finding out how many
citizens have survived, who has been born, and where in the country they are.
Beginning with the independence movements of the 1950s, nationalism has emerged as an important
countering tactic with regards to the energy and disenfranchisement of youth (Mkandawire 2005: 22).
Writers such as Franz Fanon and Stephen Biko attempted to formulate new creeds that described and
strengthened the role of Africa and Africans within the contemporary word. At independence, school
curricula were reformed to reflect the changed reality. In states that have experienced post-independence
conflict, such reforms have been re-instituted with a further emphasis on democratic values and human
rights and a recognition – at least in policy – that young people need to become partners in the process of
overcoming inequality and under-development (Amoako 2002: xi, Education for All 2010). Nationalist
projects have attempted both to maintain traditional gerontocratic structures and utilize the energies of
young people in economic development and national liberation (Diouf 2003: 3-4). Tension has often
existed between the neo-liberal democratic values to which liberation rhetoric frequently refers and the
reality of pervasive age-based power structures in many sub-Saharan states (Agbakoba and Nwauche
2006: 73). A further complication has been ethnic affiliations, which colonialism sought to smooth over
and post-independence nationalism in much of Africa likewise denied (Mkandawire 2005: 12).
In Angola, ethnicity is less of an issue than where one originated before the civil war began, as each
territory was associated with a particular political faction. Post-conflict, those associated with ‘UNITA
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areas’ have reported high levels of discrimination and distrust (Kaun 2008: 24). Importantly, those who
have spent time as refugees will have developed emotional and intellectual ties with people in their
country of asylum – whether nationals or other refugees – creating a further division of loyalties that is
not spatially-defined in the country of origin. This has great implications for work with young people, as
unlike for those who were already adults, youth’s formative relationships will have been forged in the
context of displacement rather than in locally-circumscribed spaces.
This reality has been recognized by the Angolan government and is referenced in its post-war education
policy (World Data on Education 2007). The curriculum is informed by the principles of national unity,
dignity, plurality of expression and political affiliation, and the respect of human rights (ibid). It is
currently in the fourth of five phases of revision following the end of the war – the implementation of
initiatives aimed at increasing the number of schools and the quality of education being received in them.
Article 79 of the Angolan constitution of 2010 commits to providing access to all for free and compulsory
basic education, pursuing science and technology as areas of national educational priority and supporting
academic partnerships with external agents in the provision of educational services (Constitution, Article
79 (1), (2), (3)). Furthermore, Article 81 explicitly addresses the needs of young people in light of
education, jobs, housing, sport and leisure (Constitution Article 81 (1) and (2)). 81 (3) goes on to say that
“[t]he priority objectives of the youth policy shall be the development of young people’s personality, the
creation of the conditions needed for their effective integration into working life, a love of free creativity
and a sense of community service.”
This article is significant because it describes the kind of people that the Angolan state desires, the kind of
citizens it would like youth to be. It implicitly acknowledges that youth have been outside the structures of
‘working life’ and therefore must be integrated, it recognizes the agency young people and it requests of
them an engagement with their communities. In its original Portuguese the word ‘personality’ is perhaps
better translated as ‘character,’ as character is something that can be ‘built’ whereas personality in English
usage is generally read to be intrinsic.15 The process of ‘building characters’ appropriate to peacetime is
one that has been largely assumed by international organisations in light of the Angolan war. Whilst no
single rhetoric or discourse exists on this process, a group of ideas that coalesce around the phrase ‘active
citizenship’ are currently dominant in policy and non-governmental spheres and bear resonance here.
The following section explores the inculcation of ‘character’ on the part of NGOs operational in Angola –
demonstrating the extent to which education is charged with the task of nation-building and the
inculcation of values deemed appropriate to liberal democracy.
Liberal democracy and active citizenship
‘Active citizenship’ is one model that has been formulated by the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP) to “catch” those who are excluded from formal education but nonetheless have not acquired the
social capital referred to above. Katrine Pederson defines ‘active citizenship’ as follows: “[it] refers to the
participation of citizens in the shaping of policies that impact their lives and demanding accountability
15
A política de juventude deve ter como objectivos prioritários o desenvolvimento da personalidade dos jovens, a
criação de condições para a sua efectiva integração na vida activa, o gosto pela criação livre e o sentido de serviço à
comunidade.
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from entities authorized to protect the public and serve the public good” (UNDP 2006: 9). For democracy
to function, citizens must be competent in the mechanisms of governance in order to decide how they
wish to be lead, and to hold those charged with doing so to account. They must also be able to avail
themselves of the state’s protection and contribute to the economy through both work and taxes. After
conflict has ended, the state itself needs to provide infrastructure and technologies to ensure on a practical
level the ‘bond of trust’ is (literally) in-stated and a sense of belonging to a nation and being lead by a
legitimate government is instilled. Through the engagement of the population, active citizenship becomes
a tool with which to mobilize populations to begin the emotional and technical investment in the state
that Shacknove (1985: 274) feels essential to the creation and maintenance of the ‘bond of trust’ described
above.
Increasingly, active citizenship has been taken up by international organisations and NGOs (c.f. IDRC
2004, ACFID 2007, Clarke and Missingham 2009). Through the shaping of policy it is hoped that
populations, and particularly the ‘youth’ within those populations, will develop an intellectual, behavioral,
and emotional commitment to the state that ensures their energy is harnessed in constructive rather than
destructive ways. Again, the fear of youth is implicit in this discourse as it plays on the assumption that
unless they are taught to do otherwise, young people will behave degenerately. A noticeable gap exists in
the literature concerning those who are simply not interested in becoming embroiled in state projects but
would prefer a future of “security and domesticity” (Argenti 2002: 149). With regard to Angola, this may
be attributable to their having been so little time to be ‘secure and domestic’ in, but elsewhere, the nuances
of the everyday in which sociality takes place for many youth in sub-Saharan Africa have been largely
neglected (Christiansen, Utas and Vigh 2006).
Individuals who choose not to be politically engaged in the rallying, exhibitionist sense that have
characterized both independence and civil-war conflicts, do not fit easily into the rhetoric of nationalist
projects, and indeed are sometimes seen as demonstrating the failure of such projects to ignite meaningful
change (Diouf 2003: 4). Existing at the margins of the state and nation, they “defin[e] new modalities of
action and propos[e] new language in their musical, iconographic and military expressions” (Diouf 2002:
6). But these, being the minutia of the everyday, are usually given little attention (Mbembe 2002: 144). In
its entirety, Diouf’s analysis of contemporary nationalism acknowledges the violence that has
characterized the post-colonial period in many sub-Saharan states, and suggests that this violence is such
that youth do not wish to be embedded in the memory of the collective nation-state. Instead, they seek to
re-arrange (and restore) the past through their actions in order to delineate their own space within both
traditional hierarchies and modernity (Mbembe 2002, Jeffrey et al. 2008, Utas 2008).
Ultimately, Diouf suggests, marginalized young women and men have only their bodies to work with –
whether to labour or to fight or to construct– and their bodies “express longings and demands that are
more creative than murderous” (Diouf 2003 10, see also Dillon 1995: 325). Here lies the ultimate irony of
the nationalist project of the twenty-first century: unlike in the past, we are all visible to one another
through contemporary technologies, yet precisely as in the past, tremendous inequality separates those
who have material wealth with which to trade from those who have only their own bodies. The nationalist
project asks that young people commit to states in which they recognize that their prospects are limited,
yet Brad Weiss (2005), writing on the experiences of young men in Arusha, shows that even
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marginalization can be a mechanism of communicating belonging. By identifying closely with the hiphop icon Tupac, who publically demonstrated his own feelings of pain and exclusion, Weiss suggests that
“pain becomes more than just the negative feelings of oppression and more, even, than the foundation for
a micropolitics of everyday encounters” (2005: 225). Under such circumstances, pain becomes “a way of
situating the subject […] in a powerful global order of meanings and relations” (ibid) and micro- and
macro-politics are connected, explored and represented in musical expression that both cites and develops
Tupac’s words.
The point that is all too often missed is that young people in Africa are the modern world and already do
participate in both the economic, social, and political domains of the nation-state (Bourdillon 2006: 1207,
Weiss 2005). They are already role models for younger generations (Argenti 2002: 151), and make
significant economic contributions to their households and engage with political structures as much as
they are able. Most importantly, as recent ethnographic studies have demonstrated (Hart 2008, Jeffrey et.
al. 2008, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2010), young people throughout the world exercise choice in the formulation
of both their identities and their actions, which often change according to the personal and socio-political
context (Utas 2005).
In sub-Saharan Africa, entrenched gerontocractic systems of authority mean that young people may find
it difficult to articulate their views in public domains, yet their actions demonstrate considerable
competencies in evaluating both the restrictions and the possibilities open to them (Whyte 2006: 258).
Though the tendency is for youth to be homogeneously classified as ‘vanguards’ or as ‘vandals,’ it is clear
that the reality is far more nuanced. Slowly – as the new Angolan constitution demonstrates – the need to
work alongside them is being recognized by both state and non-state actors.
In sum, this chapter has explored how youth are perceived when changing the world around them as the
socio-political landscape in which they act is itself rapidly shifting. Depending on their actions, youth may
be seen to have behaved in ways that were subversive to social norms, the remedy for which is education
through formal schooling in which social capital appropriate to peacetime is acquired. In this process (in
theory) youth learn what it means to be a ‘citizen’ of a ‘nation.’ In light of this, the Angolan constitution
has been drafted to acknowledge the difficulties of integration and the need to build people’s very
characters through education and youth participation in civic structures, as, by virtue of the act of
governmentality, their citizenship both imposes and enables national power by which they must abide.
For those unable to attend school, active citizenship has been promoted by UNDP to fulfil the same
function.
The chapter draws attention to the reality that youth are the modern world already, and that their
everyday actions shape both the current and future experiences of the rest of the population. Though
there are certainly difficulties involved in the establishment of an effective state mechanism after civil war,
modelling ‘citizens’ in the future tense prevents recognition of youth as citizens in the present. It also
prevents an acknowledgement of the “marks” (Rabwoni, above) being made by youth, creating a sense of
social invisibility. Both the state and the international community play a role in this process, with the
region become an important intermediary. In the following section, I look at international organisations
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operational in Angola, at their assistance with processes of refugee return, and at the need for their
insistence on financial accountability and good governance.
4
International organisations in Angola
“‘Maybe I am too negligent now, and I don’t even think about my culture. Maybe I have to find out. Because if I have
to go back to Angola some day, they will ask where I am from, and I will not know…
Someday I would like to go back home’ – Acacio, age 15, Johannesburg” (Clacherty 2005: 122).
International organisations, from global corporations to human rights bodies, play a significant role in the
day to day functioning of fragile, post-conflict, and ‘failed’ states (Salih 2001: 41, see also Slaughter 2004,
Bronner 2005, Ahmed and Potter 2006, Mathiason 2007). Angola has been no exception, though the
abundance of oil and diamonds within its territory, and its positioning as a Cold War proxy conflict
during the 1970s and 1980s meant that it has experienced far more international ‘trade’ via the
appropriation of its oil resources than it has experienced ‘development’ (Taylor 2006). In this section I
will focus on the United Nations (UN) presence in Angola, in order to examine the manner in which neoliberal citizenship norms are created in policy and practice, with particular attention to education
strategies aimed at inculcating the norms and values of liberal democracy. I will consider the mutuallyenforcing emphasis on education between the African Youth Charter of 2009 and development-based
initiatives, particularly the UNHCR’s recent development of ‘coexistence frameworks’ which, though not
aimed exclusively at youth, acknowledge and practically address the complex social, economic, and
environment-related needs of people (both returnees and stayees) in areas to which the displaced have
returned.
Nayef Al-Rodhan has suggested that basic educational skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic are no
longer sufficient in a globalized world (2007: 13). These should be supplemented by skills needed to
obtain such objectives such as empowerment, awareness, cultural understanding and respect, universal
moral values and social cohesion (ibid). Drawing on reports, policy documents, social theory, and
interviews with UNHCR representatives, I consider the increasing trend in international organisations
towards ‘participatory’ and ‘coexistence’ frameworks that attempt to inculcate the skills Al-Rodman
describes. Liberal democracy, however, is nothing but a label unless the state itself assumes the
responsibilities such a system of governance requires including transparency and the creation of
communication channels with citizenry. When directed to young people, such channels make progress in
reforming gerontocratic structures that have historically excluded youth from decision-making processes
(Eyber and Ager 2004: 198).
By focusing primarily on ‘education’ as per the African Youth Charter and the programs of UNDP,
UNICEF and even UNHCR, both international organisations and national governments demonstrate a
conceptualization of citizenship that makes it possible to shift attention away from the present to ‘future
generations.’ These generations, of people ‘in becoming’ (Christiansen, Utas, and Vigh 2006: 11) will, it is
assumed, hold their leaders to account thereby lessening corruption and allowing the state to be
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empowering – demanding rights and exercising the responsibilities of citizens, yes, but only in the future.
This demonstrates a profoundly Piagetian approach to education in which formal schooling is seen partly
as a tactic of reincorporation but primarily as a training-ground for democracy in which the rights,
responsibilities and duties of liberal democratic citizenship are taught in incremental phases. This section
demonstrates, therefore, that the focus of international organisations on civic education risks becoming a
panacea for demands for good governance.
Refugee return, youth reintegration, and national development
Currently, the UNHCR is in the process of establishing comprehensive strategies and “roadmaps” leading
to the cessation of refugee status of four refugee groups in sub-Saharan Africa originating from countries
where peace has been restored; Angola is one of them (Corliss pers. com.).16 After several years of
stability, democratic elections and the development of state infrastructure in each that are conducive to
refugees re-availing themselves of the protection of their state of origin as per the 1951 Convention. This
has significant implications for the formulation of the post-conflict Angolan state, and consequently, the
post-conflict citizen, as there are currently numerous Angolans throughout the region whose right to
remain based on prima facie status will end (Albert 2010: 16). Future returns will add to a population of
some 400,000 returnees at minimal estimate and four million IDPs settled in various locations (UNHCR
2008: 1).
Youth have not received specific attention in the formulation of return policy, though it is possible that as
cessation programs are concretized, there may be focus directed towards them, an eventuality I strongly
support. In one of the very few studies of refugee return in Africa, Nancy Farwell followed the return and
reintegration of youth who had been refugees in the Sudan but went ‘home’ to Eritrea (2001). She writes
that whilst in exile, youth kept alive the idea of returning to Eritrea, yet the razing of villages (as in
Angola) meant that it was difficult for them to imagine what ‘home’ might be and that anticipating return
had to coexist with “the realities of literally forging a new existence in the homeland, and questions about
resources and jobs” (Farwell 2001:65). To ease the transition, Farwell emphasizes the need to include
refugee youth in planning for return in the country of asylum (ibid), allowing them to consider what they
will need to overcome (and the opportunities that are provided with return) into their own visions for
their futures as well as to prepare for some of the challenges of reintegration that may, pragmatically
occur, such as difficulties with national and/or local languages. Cognizance of the need to include youth in
early discussions may prove essential as the UNHCR develops its cessation strategies in the coming
months.
The UNHCR has been strongly critical so far of its own role in the initial phases of refugee return to
Angola (UNHCR 2008, Kaun 2008), described by Jeff Crisp as “a cooking pot and a handshake at the
border” (Crisp, pers. com.). In part, this was because the UNHCR, like other international organisations,
struggled to maintain operational infrastructure over the course of the war, given the ubiquitous presence
of landmines and extremely high danger for both local and international staff. The UNHCR Angolan
operation faced funding cuts, a limited pool of Portuguese-speaking staff to draw upon and inter-personal
tension, but nonetheless established a functioning operation for refugee return. Unfortunately, this had to
16
The others are Burundians, Liberians and Rwandans.
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be significantly downsized before the project had reached a coherent conclusion, meaning that those
involved felt they were withdrawing from areas where they were needed the most (Marquez pers. com.).
What differentiates Angola from other states in this regard is that international assistance of such kind is
the only option available to many states whose economies simply cannot generate the funds required for
return and reintegration programs.17 Angola, by contrast, produces 1.9 million barrels of oil per day,
comprising 85% of a significant national income (CIA 2010). A recent article noted that if shared equally
amongst the 18 million Angolans, 2009 oil revenues of US$ 15. 7 billion would amount to about $870 per
person – certainly enough to repair infrastructure and provide basic services (Almeida 2010). The
government has the financial resources to take care of its own domestic and humanitarian needs, but is
severely compromised by endemic corruption amongst governmental elites (Taylor 2006: 12, WB 2010).
Donors, unsurprisingly, express strong reservations when asked to fund projects in Angola, resulting in a
situation in which developmental opportunities remain extremely limited despite recent and perhaps farreaching economic agreements with China (Campos and Vines 2008). The implications of this for young
people in the everyday is that many (particularly in urban areas) are exposed to tremendous wealth, the
origins of which lie clearly below the ground rather than in sustained personal labour, yet few have access
to this abundance (USAID 2006: 11). The capital city, Luanda, is one of the most expensive cities to live in
the world by global standards (Mercer 2010) and the persistent exclusion of the majority of young people
from this wealth is a daily reminder of the failure of the state to distribute resources equitably amongst the
population.
Given the UNHCR’s experience with displacement, it is unsurprising that they had to play an important
role in the return of refugees. Primarily, they have focused on the provision of ‘cedula’ – the national
identity documents that legitimize Angolans and allow them to access those national services that do exist.
Working in partnership with UNICEF, they have ensured that 120,000 infants were provided with this
document in the 2007-8 year (Marquez pers. com.). The provision of documents speaks to the legal focus
of the organization, which has been instrumental in the negotiation of Angolan repatriation. A careful
balance, however, has had to be kept between services to refugees as per the UNHCR mandate and
services to others. Corliss noted, that in this context staff-members who have thought about citizenship
beyond its purely legal formulation, recognize that simply providing ‘cedula’ is not enough to ensure the
successful reintegration of young refugees. However, given the funding restrictions faced by the UNHCR
and its need to focus on its core mandate of protection to those outside their country of origin, Corliss
commented that addressing the complex social needs facing reintegrating communities might be better
met by other agencies.
Interestingly, the UNHCR has indeed taken some steps to address the gaps of refugee return relevant to
the Angolan context relating, in particular, to social cohesion through the development of a “Provisional
Programme Guide on Coexistence Projects” (UNHCR 2010). This has been developed by the UNHCR’s
Operational Solutions and Transition Section (OSTS), the operational support unit of the UNHCR which
delivers strategic guidance on reintegration into field operations (UNHCR 2009). The idea of coexistence
projects is to create spaces and forums for communication across socio-political lines – in Angola,
17
Afghanistan and Zimbabwe are contemporary examples.
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primarily between ex-affiliates of UNITA and the MPLA. Without empirical research it is difficult to
determine the effectiveness of the coexistence model, which draws largely on peace-education processes
(Sommers 2001b). This model does not focus particular attention on ‘youth’ but it does represent a
growing awareness that ‘durable solutions’ as per the UNHCR’s framework entail more than bringing
people back to the country (UNHCR 2003b: 73). The extent of displacement in Angola is such that
durable solutions for refugees are very similar to durable solutions for the Angolan population as a whole,
and to address what is being done at national level, I now consider the UNHCR’s links with the UNDP
and other NGOs.
How are they citizens?
Returning refugee youth in Angola have not been the subjects of specific attention in studies in Angola,
other than through a recognition that those who have grown up in camps where Portuguese is not taught
or spoken regularly may struggle to reintegrate due to linguistic difficulties at school and at home (Corliss
pers. com.). Usually, however, they have received better education in camps outside of the country than
their Angolan counterparts (Kaun 2008: 20). The paucity of jobs described in previous sections means
that few will realistically find employment, raising questions as to the sustainability of return if youth had
been able to generate income in their countries of asylum. In order for such individuals to stay, the
Angolan government needs to ensure that the interest and energy of young people is utilized such that,
like the oil that drives the economy, its profit flows into the state.
As suggested, returning refugees are a particularly significant group because having grown up elsewhere,
many have emotional, intellectual, and social ties to countries beyond Angola. With the exception of one
aspect of the UNDP’s ‘Program for Angola 2009 – 2013’ that focuses on deepening democratic
governance (UNDP 2009a: 3-4), little emphasis has been placed on current initiatives aimed at utilizing
what youth already know as part of the state-building project. It is essential that this knowledge is welled if
young returnees are to feel there is a place for them in Angola, as to continuously place more education as
a catch-all solution is to postpone analysis of current democracy in the hope that it will be better in the
future. Education is essential, and continuing education perhaps more so as both refugees and stayees
realize the need for new skills as they begin to re-establish community-based infrastructure and social
systems (Farwell 2001: 63). It must not start, however, from the premise that youth are empty vessels
awaiting knowledge, but rather that they are social and political beings who have knowledge, but may
benefit from some guidance in how to develop it.
In From Soldiers to Citizens, Porto et al. write of “[t]he importance of identity and its relationship to
citizenship, the latter being seen by some as an end point of the reintegration process” (2007: 3). I suggest
that conceptualizing citizenship as an endpoint in such a manner is disempowering for young people, as it
relies on them being ‘reintegrated’ which could take many years. During their integration, however, the
reality is that Angolans within Angola are citizens of the state.18 The important question is therefore not
‘are they citizens?’ but ‘how are they citizens?’ How do young people engage with the state? How do they
form relationships with one another? How do they negotiate their responsibilities with their aspirations?
What do they envision for their futures? Where are their futures located?
18
That is, assuming for argument’s sake, that the appropriate legal documentation has been issued.
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The UNDP in Angola has formulated its 2009-2013 strategy for Angola around four themes: poverty
reduction and achievement of the MDGs (including education), deepening democratic governance, crisis
prevention and recovery, and environmental and sustainable development (UNDP 2009b: 4-5).
‘Deepening democratic governance’ has the possibility of addressing some of the issues that I have raised
in this section regarding the commitment of young people to the state in the present rather than in an undefined future. UNDP, UNHCR, UNICEF and even USAID, however, do not take on the role that the oil
and diamond industries play within Angolan society, yet given their necessity in terms of the growth of
the Angolan economy, it is clear that it is these organisations and not NGOs (whose mandate is
emergency relief and development), who are and will remain responsible for the real “development” of the
state – whether that be towards liberal democracy or not.
In order to survive the civil war, young men and women in Angola assumed a variety of roles and
responsibilities far beyond what Eglantynne Jebb imagined as appropriate for ‘childhood’ in the beginning
of the twentieth century. They have fought, cared for siblings, traded, studied, built and rebuilt homes,
engaged in emergency medical care and travelled both voluntarily and involuntarily throughout the
region in attempts to find safety, to reunite with family or simply to begin elsewhere afresh (MSF 2002,
HRW 2003, Eyber and Ager 2004, Stavrou 2005, Kaun 2008, UNHCR 2009). If the questions raised above,
therefore, are answered solely within the framework of education, young people are seen only as shadows
of what is to come. But if they are recognized as citizens who already participate in the affairs of
community, state and region, governments, NGOs and their peers need to take them more seriously.
Almost ironically, by considering youth in this way, social and bureaucratic infrastructure to which youth
are intrinsically committed can be developed, and it is this infrastructure that is needed in order to make
educational interventions effective and far-reaching. Rather than considering that, in the words of one
recent social commentator “[a]nother generation is being mass-produced […] presenting a demographic
time bomb that threatens to detonate everything that has gone before them” (Wiwa 2010), recognizing
young people as citizens in their own right places them firmly in the present tense.
To reiterate, the African Youth Charter came into effect in 2009. Angola has signed it but has not yet
ratified it. As it is so recent, this document has not directly influenced the policies and strategies of the
NGO sector. Instead, I suggest that the inverse has occurred. The 47 NGOs operational in Angola in 2002
were faced with a tremendously difficult programmatic context. 19 Invariably, they were forced to perform
some kind of triage, and with regard to youth, education is an obvious project that young people desire,
yields measurable results, and is seen to have long-term effects. For example, UNDP ran a Civic Education
program which ran from 2006-2009 and claims to have reached in excess of 5 million people through
community-radio broadcasting (UNDP 2008: 36), UNICEF committed to training 8750 new primary
school teachers in 2009 (UNICEF 2009b) and education-support remains a priority for NGOs including
the Development Workshop and the Christian Children’s Fund. Education is fundamental to human
rights (UDHR Article 26) and is the second Millennium Development Goal defined by the international
19
Churches have assumed critical roles because they remained within Angola for most of the war (Gallagher). Only
47 NGOs functioned within Angola as of 2001, compared to 150 in Ethiopia and 4028 in Nigeria (Salih 2002: 53).
These included Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UNHCR, the UNDP and UNICEF.
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community as an urgent priority for address across the world. It is therefore hardly surprising that
education has come to form the bedrock of the African Youth Charter, a document that will need to be
considered when planning future initiatives with young people in Angola and elsewhere, to the extent that
it is mentioned 110 times in the course of 31 Articles. Accountability and good governance do not appear
at all.
In this section, I have suggested that international organisations in Angola have found themselves in a
challenging environment that has compelled them to focus primarily on the provision of base-line
services including immunization and the provision of identification documents. I have demonstrated a
growing realization within the UNHCR, manifest in the recently-developed coexistence framework, that
such provisions, though important, are only one aspect of the multi-faceted strategy required in the
consolidation of liberal democracy. UNDP has acknowledged the need for supporting good governance
and its current policies reflect and institutionalize this (UNDP 2009b).
Simultaneously, international organisations have focused on the provision of education as ‘triage’ when
faced with low literacy, weak skills and massive under-employment, with the anticipation that these skills
will allow young people to demand and exercise their rights as citizens in the future. Though undoubtedly
such skills will help youth in the future, if the economy does not develop such that there are jobs,
institutions and structures in which these can be applied, reintegration and indeed development is
significantly compromised. Insistence on accountable governance and legitimate dialogue with youth in
the present, therefore, is one of the primary roles that international organisations should be playing in
Angola. The quote with which the section began, from 15-year-old Acacio, emphasized the need to ‘think
about culture’ (Clacherty 2005: 122). Culture, to Acacio, was the mechanism through which he would
‘know where he was from.’ In attempting to build a new, national culture of liberal democracy, youth
must first be carefully listened to in order to ascertain where – ideologically and experientially rather than
geographically – they come from in the present. By so doing, it becomes possible for democracy to take
root in the collective imagination, and through the simultaneous establishment of institutions to support
it, democracy shifts from ideology to lived experience.
5
Building characters for peace
Each of the preceding sections began with a vignette: first, the Colonel accepting another man’s child;
second, Citizen, ‘little devil, bad bush;’ third, the soldier who inspires fear but no respect; finally, Acacio –
a young man whose home is Angola, a country he does not know at all. These vignettes serve to humanize
the broader themes of a displacement, violence and (re)making of the state that this paper has addressed,
focusing attention on the complex issues around partnership, judgment, power and belonging that face
returning refugee and displaced youth. International organisations have been challenged by a country that
is financially rich, but statistically poor – both in the sense of governmentality as the nexus of knowledge
and power, and in the profoundly low income, life expectancy and health of the majority of Angolan
citizens. As a result, they have focused on the provision of basic services such as immunization and the
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provision of identity documents. These, it is hoped, form the basis on which liberal democracy can be
constructed, the responsibility for which will ultimately lie with the Angolan government.
Were the process of national (re)construction to rely only on the very young and the very old, this
approach might be sufficient to capture and rebuild the social institutions that, in a distant past, facilitated
the cohesion of Angolan society. But the reality is that a great many people were displaced in childhood,
and grew up in war, and many more were born during the conflict. These individuals comprise sixty
percent of the Angolan population, and those who were refugees have been returning in large numbers, a
scenario that is set to continue at an even greater rate in the near future. Whilst outside Angola, refugees
were exposed to diverse influences, acquired new skills, new expectations and new visions. “Going back
home” is therefore a phrase that, without appropriate consultation and discussion, may well ring empty
for many.
In attempts to address the tremendous needs of both returning refugees and the Angolan population as a
whole, international organisations have placed a great emphasis on education. Education, I have
suggested, is one of the most important methods of instilling national identity and developing the skills
required for active, liberal democratic citizenship. However, as Jeffrey, Jeffrey and Jeffrey (2008: 210) have
described, it is also a contradictory resource as it allows for the continual postponement of democratic
accountability. Without simultaneous growth in the economy to create jobs, providing education can
become a panacea for addressing the needs of good governance, particularly in Angola where the
economy is growing steadily due to oil revenue but corruption prevents profit from reaching the majority
of citizens.
As UN representative Margaret Anstee suggested (1996: 201), democracy does not come over night and
peace itself is not the sole solution in relieving the suffering of people – though it may well be a
precondition. Rather, there needs to be a shift in the way that people communicate with one another so as
to allow a multiplicity of perspectives that includes the thoughts, opinions, and desires of Angolan youth.
These youth are neither innocent nor guilty of the events in which they were caught during thirty years of
civil war, but rather, as suggested by Utas in his formulation of the term ‘abject heroes.’ they have come
into being in time of insecurity that has compelled them to negotiate in creative ways the exigencies of
daily survival – for those who stayed, for IDPs and for refugees alike.
Many of the skills youth have acquired in this process of war and displacement are skills nonetheless, and
will be of tremendous value to Angola in the future. It is imperative that the international organisations
who work with them see them not as citizens-in-becoming but as present citizens, in both body and in
political practice. By developing programs based on this conceptualization, they will facilitate the flow of
youth’s energy, innovation, and intelligence towards to the betterment of all Angolans rather than
allowing it to remain hidden – much like the oil – and identifiable only in small spaces. Here it is worth
reiterating Article 81 (3) of the Angolan Constitution of January 2010. It states that “[t]he priority
objectives of the youth policy shall be the development of young people’s personality, the creation of the
conditions needed for their effective integration into working life, a love of free creativity and a sense of
community service.” This vision speaks to the ideals of liberal democracy, and in recognizing youth as
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31
present citizens, international organisations may well be able to play a part in its realization in the
Angolan state.
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