No dia 11 de junho, Justin Pearce (Stellenbosch University) será o orador convidado no Seminário do Grupo de Investigação Impérios.

Camps in Angola were crucial training grounds for the South African liberation army Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) from the late 1970s and through the 1980s, a period when the Angolan state army FAPLA was itself engaged in a civil war. The official position of the ANC and the Angolan government was one of solidarity based on a common political cause. Based on interviews and published memoirs, this article compares the understandings of politics that existed within the two allied armies, and how these understandings shaped and were shaped by the encounters between the two military forces during the time that MK was in Angola. For both groups, international solidarity was secondary to a nationalist vision. MK soldiers were fighting a liberation struggle in which they saw UNITA as the ally of their own oppressors; FAPLA officers subscribed to ideas of solidarity but their soldiers were reluctant participants in a civil war in which they recognised UNITA as compatriots. When MK soldiers were drawn into FAPLA’s military operations against UNITA, these incompatible understandings of the nature and purpose of the Angolan conflict fuelled support for the ‘mutiny’ of 1983-84.

Pelas 11h, na Sala Maria de Sousa do ICS-ULisboa.Será também possível assistir online, via Zoom