GUERRILLA BROADCASTERS AND THE UNNERVED COLONIAL STATE IN ANGOLA (  –  )* Marissa J. Moorman Indiana University Abstract 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. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA’s Angola Combatente) and National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA’s Voz de Angola Livre) broadcasts allowed these movements to maintain a sonic presence in the Angolan territory from exile and to engage in a war of the airwaves with the Portuguese colonial state with whom they were fighting a ground war. 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 ner- vousness and weakness of the colonial state even as it was winning the war. Key Words Angola, Southern Africa, independence wars, media, nationalism, technology. Luanda is twice marked with the history of liberation radio. The brutalist modernist edifice of what is today Rádio Nacional de Angola (RNA) (Angolan National Radio) (Fig. ) – the former colonial broadcaster (EOA) – built to counter the disturbing broadcasts of the lib- eration movement radio broadcasts, is still at the center of the country’s communications network. A block away, a modest, well-maintained, representation of the Movimento Popular para a Libertação de Angola’s (MPLA) (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) radio program Angola Combatente (AC)(Fighting Angola) is part of a mural (Fig. ) on the walls surrounding the military hospital. This work of public art recounts the history of the MPLA’s struggle and triumph against Portuguese colonialism. The modernist radio station is the product of late colonial counterinsurgency infrastructure and the mural the result of a postcolonial socialist popular art mobilization and official * I thank my colleagues in the NIHSS-funded Comparative Workshop on Liberation War Radios in Southern Africa, s–s, held at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa in February  and at the Universidade Pedágogica in Maputo, Mozambique in November  for engaging my work and allowing me to cite their work in this article. I am grateful to David Morton and to the anonymous readers and editors of The Journal of African History, who pushed me to clarify my argument and tighten my writing. This piece is part of a forthcoming book Powerful Frequencies: Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola, –, under contract with Ohio University Press. Author’s email: moorman@indiana.edu Journal of African History, . (), pp. –. © Cambridge University Press   doi:./S https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853718000452 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 3.87.105.70, on 25 Nov 2021 at 18:11:40, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at