Revolution, Morality, and Heroism in Angola

Abstract This article explores the political uses of frameworks of heroism in Angola. It argues that after independence and governing a country it had to decolonize, the MPLA promoted a specific political morality and civic virtue by referencing its own heroes and heroines. It used its youth, women, and children’s party organizations as vehicles to indoctrinate society in the new revolutionary values and behaviours. Yet, after an immense work of signification, the archive on heroism and morality, specific to a political period, was made obsolete due to the political changes after the turn to democracy and end of the civil war.