The Impact of Colonialism on Angolan Family values traditions in relation to religion and language use

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LITERATURE REVIEW1

Conceptual Framework1

Colonialism in Africa3

Angola's Experience with Colonialism4

Angola's Recent History5

Perspectives of Colonialism6

Cultural and Religious Transformation8

Civil Society's Disengagement and the Government10

Impact of Colonialism on Angola13

The Colonial Legacy14

REFERENCES16

LITERATURE REVIEW

Conceptual Framework

It has been argued that what makes one theory or model superior to another is its intrinsic value, its logical consistency, elegance of formulation, economy of concepts, and comprehensiveness (Thomas, 1994, 28). An even more important standard is related to its usefulness - defined in terms of a conceptual framework's actual or potential explanatory power - in the sphere of analysis and action (Rodney, 1982, 69). If one uses (Prakash, 1995, 65) formulation, none of the established, generic theoretical perspective presented is fully adequate as a theoretical framework for this dissertation on the failure of the peace process and obstacles to elected government in Angola.

Rather, what is needed is a theoretical approach that is able to take into account the various factors that influence politics and society (Pakenham, 1991, 75). The theoretical perspectives commonly used to study African politics fall short of this goal. This is also the case for Angola. Why? Let us begin with modernisation theory. As noted before, this perspective tends to focus on domestic rather than external explanations for political realities, and on socio-cultural rather than structural and economic factors. In Angola, however, politics and society have been defined and, therefore must be explained - in terms of both domestic and external factors (Njoh, 2006, 33).

If ethnicity, tradition, class, tribe, religion, personal ambition, and other internal factors are important, so too have been the colonialism, "imported ideologies", Angolan regional strategies, and Angola's potentially privileged position in the New International Divisions of Labour and Power due to its vast natural resources (Moss, 2007, 138). The dependency and underdevelopment approaches could be useful if the dissertation sought to explain how imperialism has hindered Angola's development. Although Angola's condition - and its inability to create a stable political environment since independence - can be partly attributed to imperialism and colonialism, there are other complex elements that need to be taken into account. Nationalism, regionalism, ethnicity, class, and ideology are just as important to understand African realities as the distinction between core and periphery, exploiters and exploited (Miller, 1996, 41). Finally, although the statist model is "Africa-centric", its primary concentration is the state as an independent entity. This is problematic for the purposes of the dissertation. In order to analyse the peace and electoral processes, the thesis will need to concentrate on state-society relations.

The question of what prevented civil society from playing a more active and constructive role during the twin peace/electoral processes is crucial to understanding its failure. Angola represents a unique case (Mamdani, 1996, 53). Both in the region and the continent, transitions to elected government have been generally peaceful once the rules governing them were accepted by all involved. In other words, there are no other instances where the loser in an election ...