Eu e a UNITA | Me and UNITA

The Orlando's Edge that isn't Jesus

By WILLIAM TONET*

The book begins when reading lodges us in the clouds!

It's a sublime breath of fresh air from and for Angola!

A true stamp of settlement, born in the bowels of Rua 66, the high zone of Nova Lisboa (Huambo), where the author's secundinas are buried, under the complicit gaze of the 'eagle' that can't rescue them.

1975 emerges as a milestone of the peak of identity in the winds of change, which do not deify themselves because the horizon is there.

"Over the years, I have advocated for what I consider right for my land, Angola. I manage not to please either the Greeks (MPLA) or the Trojans (UNITA)," he assures.

The author places the carriage on the railway tracks, traversing all the interiors to the coast, envisioning, at each station, the euphoria and decline of ideologies responsible for the derailment of the sovereignty of dreams of multiracialism, never disembarking in the present/future.

"I am Angolan, born in Angola, studied, played, grew up, and became a man there. Even though I was forced by historical events to leave the country of my birth and to use my parents' Portuguese nationality, my heart has always been there and will always be."

The inked letters do not deserve to be blurred by someone who, at the end of a beginning, also becomes moved by the author's "I," like a tunic from a Bible, in the "apostolic" hand of the one who makes us march in "several books," all from one, whose geography of a long tongue of informative land makes succulent experiential realities blossom at every edge.

"Political transparency is one of the premises to be implemented right now, so that Angolans believe that UNITA does not condone corruption and fulfills its electoral promises, putting the interests of the disadvantaged first and controlling those in public office so that they serve the people and do not use their positions for personal gain."

"ME AND UNITA" is read with the same feeling as the woman who had been ill for 12 years, according to the Bible, believing that if she touched the edge (tunic) of Jesus, she would be healed...

Any reader, I believe, will bathe in the therapeutic waters, "healing" themselves with the informative waves about the epic moments in the history of Angola, so sublimely crafted in the work.

"We do not know, although they know, where the MPLA regime (which has been in power since 1975) wanted and wants to go by building monuments that extol the contributions of Angolans they consider first-rate (all those of the MPLA) and, of course, belittle all others. But now that the comadres (of the MPLA) have become angry – or it seems they have – we may finally learn the truth."

The truth that leads me to thank the friendly choice for such a Herculean task of not closing the infinite...

A truth that hovers over the mountainous clouds of Mbave (Huambo), spreading from that geographical center in a "KANAF" (Hebrew), ASA, for the Jews, meaning, still and also, the EDGE, which, when touched, heals the longing and utopia of identity humus, often distant from the mental library of each of us, despite the vigor of our promised land: ANGOLA!

Reading is therapy. Reading is a cure to immerse oneself in the complicit depths of a past/present that destroyed (yesterday), destroys (today), but does not erase the belief that the ungodly do not win, will not overcome all the storms because in the tomorrows of peoples, they will, as in this work, strum the irreversible anthem of CHANGE.

Twanpandula sekulu...

In the Preface. William Tonet is a journalist and director of the "Folha 8" newspaper.

**Gavião (eagle)"