To browse Academia. The momentous event speaks volumes to both the short-lived heyday of the television documentary genre and to the visual status of what became the most protracted conflict in the continent.
Though largely overlooked by critical scholarship partly since it was censored in the lands it covered , one cannot overstate the unique significance of this film. It single-handedly achieved, in the first year, what proved impossible over the following forty years of conflict that beset Angola: to put it on TV screens worldwide, during prime time viewing hours, for mainstream audiences.
This article explores the relationship between Angolan guerrilla broadcasts and their effects on the Portuguese counterinsurgency project in their war to hold on to their African colonies. First and foremost, it analyzes the effects of these rebel broadcasts on listeners, be they state or non-state actors.
A reading of the archives of the state secret police and military exposes the nervousness and weakness of the colonial state even as it was winning the war. That armed conflict extended from the Mpondo Rebellion, which started in and the uprisings in northern Angola in , to the final whimpers of township unrest in South Africa in the early s.
A characteristic of this increase was that whilst the majority of wars that took place before the s were fought between states, conflicts progressively begun to take place within countries. The doctrines of the major world powers no longer seemed to determine the ideologies and objectives of warring groups and, almost as a new war strategy, combatants started to target civilians rather than fighting sections in order to achieve their objectives.
