First published in Portuguese in 2012, Angolan novelist, Ondjaki’s evocative tale set against the backdrop of Luanda – the Angolan capital at the crux of the greatest commodity-centred urban transformation since the exodus of the Portuguese – stands as a poignant reminder of the gaping disparities between daily orchestrations and abstracted networks of global capital flow, fuelled by the proliferation of extractive industries and a faltering, kleptocratic government. If we stay and contend with urban theorist, Paul Jenkins, Luanda’s genesis traces back to the late 16th century, anchored around a natural harbour[1]. Over the centuries, the city saw successive economic transformations driven by extractive capitalism that evidence a continuum – from transatlantic slave trade to a plantation-based economy – sugar, cocoa, coffee, and cotton -, and later, in the mid-1900s till its present-day reliance on oil and diamonds.
Oil, the black gold, is one of many protagonists in Os Transparentes/Transparent City. The same way that oil is a central protagonist in my own personal tale; being the reason for the (illegal) annexation of our soils and waters in Cabinda into a newly independent Angola etched onto the Alvor Accord in 1975, a catalyst for our ongoing struggles for self-determination as Cabindans, and the reason for my own diasporic existence in exile since 1999. Paradoxically, those bits of hydrocarbons that unite to form a body and energy, appear to be the battleground on which multiple stories coalesce. In Ondjaki’s satirical tale, magical realism blends with tender comedy. As we enter the parallel worlds of urban Africa, schemes, laughter, and surreal daily mundanities collide with the cacophony of a kleptocratic government’s endless chase for extractive wealth, compounded by ongoing excavations, inland oil explorations, and infrastructure investments, at all costs. Herein lie the stark realities of a city in flux, a timeless tale about power, capital, and forged living in a rapidly changing urban landscape premised by the promise of (economic) prosperity and the specter of exploitation[2][3].
Margarida Waco
[1] See Paul Jenkins, et. al., City Profile Luanda, 2002.. In: Cities, Vol. 19. No. 2. Pergamon Press.
[2] See Jamie Cross, The Economy of Anticipation – Hope, Infrastructure, and Economic Zones in South India, 2015. In: Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol. 35.
[3] See Margarida Waco, Counterpoints – Extraction, Race and Global Capitalism. In: Archive of Forgetfulness. Web 2021, Print 2023, Huda Tayob, ed. Jacana Media.
