The Minister was writing a book, The Real Life of a Fighter, a dense volume of memoirs that he was hoping to bring out before Christmas. Though to be rather more precise, he’s writing his book with a hired hand – the hand of Félix Ventura. My friend dedicated a good part of his day – and even his night – to this work. As he completed each chapter he would read it to the author-to-be, discussing some detail or other, he’d take note of the criticisms and correct whatever there was to be corrected, and so they would go on. Félix would sew fiction in with reality dextrously, minutely, in such a way that historical facts and dates were respected. In the book the Minister conversed with real people (sometimes with royal people) and it would be most convenient if these people should tomorrow believe that they had indeed traded confidences and opinions with him. Our memory feeds itself to a large extent on what other people remember of us. We remember other people’s memories as though they were our own – even fictional ones.
‘It’s like the Castle of São Jorge in Lisbon – do you know it? It has battlements, but they’re fake. António de Oliveira Salazar ordered that some crenellations be added to the castle to make it more authentic. To him there was something wrong with a castle without crenellations – there was something monstrous about it – like a camel without humps. So the fake part of the Castle of São Jorge is today what makes it realistic. Several octogenarian Lisboans I’ve spoken to are convinced the castle has always had crenellations. There’s something rather amusing about that, isn’t there? If it were authentic, no one would believe in it.’
As soon as The Real Life of a Fighter is published, the consistency of Angola’s history will change, there will be even more History. The book will come to be used as a reference for future work on the struggle for the nation’s liberation, on the troubled years that followed independence, and the broad movement of democratisation the country experienced. Let me give you some examples:
1) In the early seventies the Minister was a young man employed in the Luanda postal services. He played drums in a rock band who called themselves The Un-namables. He was more interested in women than in politics. That’s the truth – or rather, the prosaic truth. In the book the Minister reveals that even at that time he was already dedicating himself to political activity, secretly (very secretly indeed) fighting against Portuguese colonialism. Driven by the bold blood of his ancestors (he makes several references to Salvador Correia de Sá e Benevides) – he created within the postal services a cell supporting the liberation movement. The group specialised in distributing pamphlets within letters aimed for colonial functionaries. Three of their number, the Minister among them, were turned in to the Portuguese political police and arrested on April 20th, 1974. It may be that the Carnation Revolution saved their lives.
2) The Minister left Angola in 1975, a few weeks before independence, and sought refuge in Lisbon. He was still more interested in women than in politics. Pursued by hunger he took out an advertisement in a popular newspaper: ‘Master Marimba: cures for the evil eye, envy, ills of the soul. Guaranteed success in love and business.’ It wasn’t an ad so much as a prediction. Within months he was (by magic indeed) a rich man. Women by the dozen made their way to his consulting room. Most were hoping to recover their husbands’ attentions, distance them from their mistresses, rebuild a failed marriage. Others just wanted someone to listen. He listened. His clients would pay, the Minister explained, according to their respective abilities. The women he cured offered him knitted cardigans to withstand the winter cold, and fresh eggs, and preserves. The wealthier ones handed him hefty cheques, they had electrical appliances delivered to him, good shoes, or designer clothes. A very beautiful blonde – the wife of a famous footballer – offered him herself. And eventually left him her car keys, the boot of the car filled with bottles of whisky. After the first elections the Minister returned to Luanda, and with the money he’d accumulated from so many years of consoling unfortunately-married women, he set up a chain of bakeries – the Marimba Union Bakeries. That is the truth that the Minister told Félix. The story Félix had the man tell in his true History was that in 1975, disillusioned with the course of events, and because he refused to participate in a fratricidal war (‘That hadn’t been what we’d planned’) the Minister went into exile in Portugal. Inspired by the teachings of his paternal grandfather, the wisest of men, well versed in the medicinal herbs of Angola, he founded in Lisbon a clinic dedicated to African alternative medicine. He returned to his country in 1990, once the civil war had come to an end, determined to contribute towards the reconstruction of the country. He wanted to give the people our-daily-bread. And that is exactly what he did.
3) The Minister’s return also signalled the beginning of his involvement in politics. He began by buying favours from certain people in the so-called ‘structures’ in order to accelerate the licensing of his bakeries, and it wasn’t long before he was a frequent visitor to the houses of ministers and generals. In just two years he himself was named Secretary of State for Economic Transparency and Combating Corruption. In The Real Life of a Fighter the Minister explains how – driven exclusively by great and serious patriotic motives – he accepted the burden of this first challenge. Today he is Minister for Bread-Making and Dairy Produce.