Tracing a War

A ngola has been ravaged by one of the longest on- going wars this century. An independence war against the Portuguese that began in the 1960s turned into a civil war shortly after the European colonizers left in the mid- 1970s. Fuelled and funded at various stages by Cuba, the United States and South Africa, this civil war appeared to have come to an end when UN- run elections were held in the early 1990s. But disputed election results and backtracking on peace deals have seen Angola continue to be abraded by violent conflict, currently between the democratically elected MPLA government and the rebel UNITA movement. South Africa's experience of this war was markedly different from that of Angola's, mostly because the physical space of Angola was the stage on which the theater of war played itself out. Angola's scars are physical as much as emotional. There was no denying that Angola was at war, whereas for South Africa, buffered by what was then South West Africa (now Namibia), it was all too easy (as was so often done) to deny any involvement in the war in Angola. South Africa, while openly acknowledging its own war against the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO), was more circumspect, initially, in conceding to its pursuit of SWAPO activists into southern Angola, as well as its financial and logistical assistance, from the mid- 1970s to the late 1980s, for the UNITA movement and their war against the Angolan government . Going to the 'border', for so many just- out- of- school, white, male South African conscripts, meant the eventuality of crossing the Cunene River that divided Angola and the then- South West Africa. As a symbol of the 'border' between innocence and maturity, it was an initiation that often went horribly wrong. This history of white conscripts, especially their tours of duty to the 'border', remains largely silent, even in the recuperative narratives of institutions such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The dead remains of this era of South African history are scattered in photo albums, hidden in clothes cupboards, mostly forgotten, often forsaken. The most recent escalation of conflict in Angola coincided, ironically enough, with the closure of the South African leg of "memorias fntimas marcas", an exhibition set around dialogues between artists from Angola, Cuba and South Africa. Roughly translated as memories, intimacies , traces, the exhibition is an exploration of the intimate memories that trace the psychoses of the Angolan war. In what probably constitutes its singular, uncontestable strength, the exhibition is a series of of- ten lyrical (if at times habitually poetic) explorations of the effects of a war that has j et to be properly acknowledged in post- apartheid South Africa. The brainchild of Angolan artist, Fernando Alvim, "memorias fntimas marcas'" interventionist politics leans towards an art of exorcism rather than an overt display of war images. "We're not making exhibition about war," says Alvim, "but rather raising Questions about a culture of war". In his reckoning, this culture of war is a shared experience between Angola, Cuba and South Africa: "1 was interested in the possibility of making an archive of the intimate memories and traces of that time. The exhibition is more a dialogue between victims than between winners and losers." What is taken up in the exhibition, with varying degrees of emphasis and success, is the juxtaposition between Angola's trauma and South Africa's amnesia, with the ambivalent position of Cuba somewhere in between these two experiences. The origins of "memorias intimas marcas" lie in a 21-day sojourn in Cuito Cuanavale, undertaken by Alvim, as well as Carlos Garaicoa (Cuba) and Gavin Younge (South Africa). The garrison town of Cuito Cuanavale was the site of a bitter battle waged between Angolan, Cuban and South African forces in 1987, the significance of which, for Alvim, lies in the fact that it was the first time South African forces withdrew their position. It marked the beginning of the end of South Africa's involvement in the war. "For Angolans, Cuito Cuanavale was a reason for the nation," says Alvim, "in that it was the first time South Africa had lost...